458 



NEW ENGLAND FARRIER. 



Oct. 



Btarcn, sugar and gum. It is well known that the 

 earliest flour made from first cut grain possesses 

 a peculiar sweetness. Corn picked while still soft, 

 and dried, retains its sweetness. The only point 

 to be looked to is, not to cut grain before it at- 

 tains its full development of material. This point 

 has been found to be just at the period when it 

 commences hardening. No grain should be al- 

 lowed to stand a day after it becomes so solid as 

 to require a gentle pressure to crush the kernel 

 between the thumb and finger-nail. This rule 

 applies to wheat, oats, and indeed to all cereal 

 crops. Gathered at this time, which is usually 

 eight to ten days before perfect ripening, there 

 will not only be more and better nutriment, but 

 the yield of grain, and especially of flour, will be 

 from five to ten per cent, greater, and often more, 

 than if the cutting had been deferred ten days. 

 The decidedly superior value of straw cut green, 

 is another important item to be taken into ac- 

 count. The increasingly high price of hay, and 

 the advance in the demand and value of stock, 

 render it important to give more attention to the 

 preservation of straw. Wheat or oats straw and 

 corn-stalks, if left standing until fully mature, are 

 little better, and little else, than so much wood ; 

 but stop the ripening process as soon as it is 

 practicable to retaove the grain, and you secure 

 straw and stalks worth one-fourth to one-half 

 their weight of hay, as the latter is ordinarily 

 cured. Would it not be better to run the risk of 

 getting a few pounds less of grain by too early 

 gathering, if thereby you secure a greatly supe- 

 rior quality of feed in the straw ? 



The reasons for cutting grain early apply with 

 equal force to all crops gathered for forage. 

 Taste a stalk of grass just as it is losing its flow- 

 er, and you will find it sweet, succulent and ten- 

 der. A few days afterward, it is more like a dry 

 piece of wood. But cut it down at the former 

 period, dry it in small masses to prevent heating 

 and fermentation, and it will retain much of its 

 Bweetness, and contain a large proportion of the 

 sugar, starch and gum. We state an undeniable 

 fact, one established by rigid experiment, that 

 four tons of hay gathered just as the flowering 

 season is over, will yield more nourishment than 

 five tons gathered ten to twelve days later. We 

 have the best authority for saying that one acre of 

 grass, which, when cut fully ripe would yield 

 1,000 pounds of digestible nourishing matter, and 

 2,000 pounds of woody fibre, will, if cut 10 to 12 

 days earlier, yield from 1,500 to 1,800 pounds of 

 nourishing material, and only 1,200 to 1,500 

 pounds of woody fibre. We will not stop to es- 

 timate what an immense saving would be eSected 

 to the country were the principles above stated 

 thoroughly understood and practiced upon. 



Farmer's Journal. 



OLD Gardens. — All gardens — especially old 

 ones — should have a dressing of lime every five 

 or six years. If before the lime is applied, they 

 were dug twenty inches deep, and the subsoil 

 thrown on top, the eff'ect would be surprising. 

 It would be doubly as productive. Ashes and salt, 

 every three or four years, are also excellent. Ma- 

 ny persona enrich their gardens heavily year after 

 year with barnyard manure, and then wonder that 

 their crops are annually growing less. If they 



would follow our system of occasionally liming, 

 ashing and salting, as we have often recommend- 

 ed — of course only applying one of these agents 

 in any one year — the ground would soon be 

 brought back to its original fertility. 



Digging deeply the garden late in the fall, al- 

 lowing the ground to lay in lumps, for the action 

 of the frost through the winter, will also be found 

 to have an excellent effect. — Germantown Tel. 



For the New Mngland Farmer. 

 ON THE CULTIVATION OF WHEAT. 

 Read before the Concord Farmers' Club In the winter of 1860-1. 

 BY ELIJAH WOOD, JR. 



Among the diflerent kinds of grain which form 

 the principal nutriment of the civilized world, and 

 to the culture of which civilization is even attri- 

 buted by modern writers, the first rank is conced- 

 ed to wheat ; and also where the largest amount 

 of the most expensive products of the earth are 

 both cultivated and consumed, particularly wheat, 

 we find a corresponding amount of intelligence as 

 the result. Wheat seems to be really the grain 

 for the world, and nothing has been substituted 

 for it. The opinion has prevailed for a long time 

 in New England, that it can be raised only on the 

 strongest and best soils, while the land is new. 

 The consequence has been that the cultivation 

 has almost entirely ceased here. 



Now what is the reason that we succeed on new 

 land, but fail on the old, or upon that which has 

 been long under cultivation ? That we succeed in 

 either case, affords evidence that there is nothing 

 in our climate, the peculiarity of our seasons, or 

 the nature of our soils, which renders it necessary 

 that we should depend upon our Southern or 

 Western neighbors for this necessary article of 

 food. Must it not, then, be attributed to improp- 

 er management, or to neglect in preparing our 

 soils for this particular kind of grain ? I am of 

 the opinion that where it was once raised when 

 the land was new, it can be now raised with a 

 probability of success ; that the principal cause 

 of failure has arisen from having exhausted the 

 soil of that particular kind of nourishment which 

 is adapted to its growth. New land is filled with 

 vegetable matter. Restore the soil of your old 

 fields, by the application of vegetable manure, 

 and they would again produce similar results. A 

 better system of cultivation is being now intro- 

 duced ; more labor is bestowed on less surface 

 than has been practiced. The manures best cal- 

 culated for wheat, are allowed by all agricultur- 

 ists, to be animal matter, and one of the constitu- 

 ent parts of wheat, (gluten,) exists in bones, urine, 

 horn, night-soil, the refuse of the soap-boiler, the 

 offal of the butcher, <S;c., and the proper applica- 

 tion of these substances in sufficient quantities 

 will ensure a good crop. 



The common divisions are into bearded or 

 beardless, into thin-skinned or white, and hard or 

 flint wheats, or into white or red. The white 

 yields the largest proportion of flour or starch, 

 the flint, of gluten, which is the most nutritious 

 part of the wheat. No advantage would come 

 iVom my enumerating the various kinds cultivated. 

 Every district, I suppose, has its favorite ; and it 

 is with wheat as with every thing else, that pub- 



