11 



Frost Warnings. 



The following is clipped from a recent number of the 

 " American Cultivator" : — 



"The practical application of the work of the Weather 

 Bureau of the Department of Agriculture, by farmers them- 

 selves, is being more and more apparent. Just after one of 

 the cold waves which passed over the South not long ago, 

 the following telegraphic despatch appeared in a Memphis 

 (Tenn.) paper, telling of the frost in Mississippi : ' No dam- 

 age resulted to tomato plants, as growers were warned by 

 cannon firing on receipt of the Weather Bureau report. 

 Prospects are still good for over two thousand acres in at this 

 point.' Being warned a full day ahead of the coming freeze, 

 the truckers had time to protect their crops." 



The methods employed for protecting crops from frosts 

 are various and are generally well known. Small gardens 

 or fields can be covered by cloths, newspapers, etc. ; large 

 cranberry bogs, if properly constructed, can be flooded, 

 and others not provided with the reservoir for flooding are 

 many times saved by l)uilding fires or smudges on the wind- 

 ward side of the bog if it is not too large, and if very large 

 several fires in the middle. 



The use of the smudges is well known among the tobacco 

 growers in New England and Kentucky, as well as in the 

 great wheat fields in the northwest and to the orange growers 

 of Florida. In the latter district large stove-like arrange- 

 ments are used, in which tar is burned ; this causes a thick 

 smoke, which efiectually protects all })arts of the groves 

 which it reaches or covers. In Germany a compound of tar 

 and sawdust is used for the same purpose. Generally in 

 our own sections brush fires are used, and are constructed 

 so as to cause as thick a smoke as possible. Being placed, 

 as we have said, on the windward side of the field, the 

 smoke drifts slowly over the plants, either close to the ground 

 or some distance up in the air, and just as surely protects 

 them from the frost as though they were covered by a cloth. 



We do not know whether this process is in use among the 

 grape growers or the truck gardeners, but see no reason 

 why it will not work perfectly well with them. In most 



