1 90 CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. 



It thus appears that when the crop was selling at a low 

 price, eight and a half cents per pound, it produced a profit of 

 lilty-seven dollars and twenty-seven cents; and if it be put 

 down at the lowest price it has ever brought in the market, 

 gay five cents, it would still leave the cultivator twenty-two 

 dollars and twenty-seven cents per acre. The season was 

 unfavourable, and consequently the yield of seed was trifling. 



ROBERT G. JOHNSON, Esq., of Salem, New Jersey, a gentle- 

 man well known for his extensive acquirements and great 

 practical knowledge, furnished some time since, at the sugges- 

 tion of the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet, an account of a 

 crop of broom corn raised on his plantation in the summer of 

 1839. He says: 



MR. F. S. WIGGINS: 



-My land is a loamy soil, and in good condition, producing generally 

 about sixty bushels of Indian corn per acre of wheat from twenty to thirty 

 and of barley from thirty to fifty. 



My usual method is to cart out all my manure from the barn-yard through 

 the winter and early in the spring, so that the greater part thereof is upon the 

 fields by the time the plough can be put into the land. The cultivation of the 

 broom corn by Mr. BROWN, (Col. JOHNSON'S farmer,) and by him attended to 

 until the brooms manufactured by him were sent to market, amounted, ac- 

 cording to his estimate furnished me, to ninety-six dollars and fifty cents. 

 While in conversation with him he drew from his pocket a paper containing 

 the following words: "Was raised on eight acres of land, the property of RO- 

 BERT G. JOHNSON, broom corn that made four hundred dozen of orooms, that 

 weighed one and a quarter pounds each. Many of the stalks measured sixteen 

 feet six inches in length, and produced four hundred and thirty bushels of 

 seed. 



"ISRAEL E. BROWN." 



I would observe that I commonly manure my land at the rate of from thirty 

 to forty loads per acre such was the dressing the land got previous to the 

 planting of the broom corn. The land being in high tilth, produced, from 

 careful attention, a most luxuriant crop of stalks; I think they must have ave- 

 raged from fourteen to sixteen feet in height throughout the whole field. I 

 have not been inclined to encourage the rearing of the broom corn more than 

 a sufficiency for family use. I consider the broom corn a much more exhaust- 

 ing crop to the soil than any other grain. There appears to be an oleaginous 

 quality peculiar to it, and somewhat analogous to flax seed, which in my judg- 

 ment has a tendency to produce the impoverishment of the soil. The seed 

 makes excellent food for hogs and cattle. 



Its nutritious quality may easily be discovered from the fine colour and taste 

 which it imparts to butter from the cows which are fed on it. The best way 

 to use the grain is to grind it with a portion of oats say about one-third of 

 oats to two-thirds of the seed. Indeed it is so hard and flinty that it should 

 always be ground before feeding it to any kind of stock. 



Good broom corn seed weighs about fifty pounds to the bushel. Its value 

 compared to oats may be considered as about half as much again; so that 

 should the market price of oats be, say twenty-five cents per bushel, the broom 

 corn seed would be worth thirty-seven and a half cents. 



Brooms. I think there is a difference of twenty-five, if not thirty per cent. 

 in the quality of brooms sent to market, from such as I generally use in my 

 family. I always endeavour to procure from the manufacturer, and for which 

 I pay him an extra price, such as are made from the stalks before the seed 

 ripens on them. A broom made from such tops will last much longer than 

 one made from the ripe brush. But the peculiar excellency of the broom con- 

 sists in its fibres being more soft and elastic, and performing the act of brush- 



