116 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



March 



grass can be got -witliout manuring. Fur making 

 manure, too, corn is better than is usually sup- 

 posed. One hundred bushels, properly fed to 

 cattle or hogs, will make two hundred bushels of 

 as good manure as can generally be bought. In 

 culti\ating corn, there is no danger of too fre- 

 quent hoeing. The best field the speaker ever 

 raised, he hoed for seven weeks in succession, 

 and was satisfied that it paid well. One great 

 benefit of such a practice is, that it brings the 

 corn forward a week or fortnight earlier. 



Mr. Brown related a case in his own experi- 

 ence, where he planted a piece of corn, manuring 

 one portion highly, and letting the other go 

 without any dressing whatever, but hoeing it 

 often instead. The result was that he got nearly 

 an equal crop where there was no manure. But 

 he would advocate high manuring, with frequent 

 hoeing. The importance of a thorough pulveriza- 

 tion of the soil is not properly understood by the 

 farmer, and should receive his earnest attention. 



Mr. Flint, Secretary of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture, said that Indian corn had always seemed to 

 him the pride of New England, being indigenous 

 to the soil and peculiarly adapted to the climate. 

 No crop bears our severe droughts so well, and 

 there is none which we can rely upon with more 

 safety. Of late years, it is the universal practice 

 among the best farmers to plant corn on a flat 

 surface, without hilling. Cultivated in this man- 

 ner, with deep plowing, the speaker believed that 

 it would seldom feel a drought. If the corn is 

 hilled, the roots are often laid bare to the scorch- 

 ing sun. Of varieties, there is one which has 

 been tried for a year or two very successfully, 

 called the King Philip. He had distributed some 

 hundreds of papers of the seed, and the result 

 had been eminently satisfactory. A kind, called 

 the Canada corn, is raised in Maine with much 

 success. Large ci'ops, of 100 bushels and up- 

 wards per acre, are raised in Plymouth county, 

 of a variety called the Webiter, or Plymouth 

 county corn ; but it is said to shrink more during 

 the winter than the Canadian corn. 



Mr. Clark, of Waltham, detailed an experi- 

 ment made by him the past season in raising corn. 

 lie prepared two acres, plowing thoroughly and 

 manuring deeply. One acre he planted about 

 the middle of May, and the other about five days 

 later, with an addition of 250 lbs. of guano to 

 the manuring. The yield showed a balance in 

 favor of the guano lot of about 15 per cent., 

 while it also sufiered less from the drought than 

 the other. One lot was planted with 8 rowed 

 white, and the other 8 rowed yellow corn. The 

 speaker believed that corn was pre-eminently 

 adapted to the climate of New England, and Avas 

 of the opinion that it sufiered less than any other 

 from the drought last season. But he doubted 



whether the corn was as profitabte as the potato 

 crop. A bushel of potatoes can be raised easier 

 than one of corn, and are worth more in the mar- 

 ket. One great advantage of the potato crop is, 

 that farmers are in no danger of being deluged 

 with importations from the AVest or South, as in 

 the case of grain , for they are not raised to any 

 extent there, lie thouglit farmers sliould pay 

 more attention to them than heretofore. 



Mr. Fay alluded to the remark of Mr. Shel- 

 don in regard to corn fodder, as an important con- 

 sideration in estimating the value of the corn 

 crop. His own practice is to cut the corn, even 

 before it has quite turned yellow, and stack it 

 with the corn in the shocks, allowing it to remain 

 until dried , when it is husked in the barn and 

 the stalks put one side for use. The stalks are 

 chopped up fine, and by means of a small steam 

 apparatus are steamed for six hours, when they 

 are ready to be fed to the cows, who eat it freely ; 

 sheep eat it precisely as they would turnips. The 

 expense of the steam ajiparatus, which is kept in 

 operation in connection with a furnace, is about 

 ninepence per day, and it feeds six or seven cows 

 and a flock of sheep. The quality of the milk is 

 much improved by it. The speaker thought that 

 the value of corn fodder and the amount of ma- 

 nure which corn makes, in addition to its intrin- 

 sic value, placed it before the potato as a profita- 

 ble crop. 



Mr. Clark expressed himself comvinccd of the 

 correctness of the last speaker's views, but re- 

 marked that in ordinary seasons many more bu- 

 shels of potatoes can be raised than of corn. 



Mr. Sheldon thought that the comparative pro- 

 fit of corn and potatoes to the farmer depended 

 very much upon the nature of his land. Last 

 year on good corn land he did not get over 50 

 bushels of potatoes, while he got 35 bushels of 

 corn. On swamp lands he had got 400 bushels of 

 potatoes to the acre. In such a season as the 

 last, corn would be the most profitable. In rais- 

 ing corn, he had found that when plowing up 

 grass land it was best to plow in August, run- 

 ning 9 or 10 inches, and in the spring let the old 

 sod remain without cross-plowing. The crop 

 would be better. 



Mr. BucKMiNSTER of the PfoMy/(/nY7?i, was hap- 

 py to notice that the value of the potato crop 

 had not been overlooked by the speakers. He 

 thought the profit on a crop depended on the 

 kind of lai^d cultivated, and every farmer must 

 judge for himself. He would like to know which 

 was best for fodder, sweet, yellow or Southern 

 corn ? 



Mr. Hall, of Hampshire county, said he had 

 fed o-reen corn fodder to his cows ; they ate it 

 greedily, and gave more and richer milk. His 

 horse also thrived remarkably on it. He fed the 



