60 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



September, 1912: 



stable manure and spread it evenly. The lot was 

 50 x 200 ft., so the dressing was not extra heavy. 



All through the fall and winter I read more 

 agricultural literature than ever before, and now 

 and then I found or made a chance to talk with 

 some practical farmer. My soil was a light sandy 

 loam, so early the following April it was ready for 

 the harrow. On the seventh of April I planted 

 three rows of peas, two of a dwarf early and one 

 of a late variety. A row of onions was added 

 the next evening, and also two rows of potatoes. 

 Everything went in the long way of the lot to 

 facilitate working with the wheel hoe. 



By the first of June I had everything planted, the 

 two remaining rows being devoted to odds and ends, 

 and the rest of the lot to beans and sweet com. 



The last week in June we had our first peas, and 

 with the help of my wife and a boy, three and a 

 half bushels were picked for the Fourth of July 

 trade. They sold like hot cakes at $2 per bushel, 

 which made me wish that there had been twice as 

 many. From those two rows we gathered a total 

 of five and a half bushels, and from the late row 

 four bushels more. The price however, fell from 

 $2 to $1.20 at the end of the season. 



When the early peas had been harvested the 

 vines were pulled and the ground replanted with 

 beans. Late in July the string beans from the 

 main plot were ready to pick, and on the tenth of 

 August we had sweet corn. Beans and corn were 

 planted together in the same row, the corn hills 

 being four feet apart in the rows, with beans drilled 

 in between. The rows themselves were but three 

 feet apart, with no two hills of corn coming opposite. 

 So far as I could judge, each crop did just as well 

 as it could have if planted alone. The corn was 

 picked and the stalks cut as early as possible, giving 

 the bean crop ample time to ripen. 



For the first year the receipts and expenditures 

 were as follows: 



3^a bushels early peas, at $2 $7 



2 bushels early peas, at $1 . 60 . . . . 3 



4 bushels late peas, at $1.20 .... 4 

 6 bushels beans for baking, at S3 . iS 



2 bushels onions, at $3.50 7 



Si dozen sweet com, at 20 cents ... 1 



10 dozen sweet com at 24 cents . . . 2.40 



5 pecks string beans at 40 cents 



Total receipts ....... $45 -So 



Plowing and harrowing, 3 hours at 50 cents Si. so 



5 loads of stable manure at Si . . . . 5.00 



3 bags commercial fertilizer at $2 . . . 6.00 

 Rent of lot a. 00 



Total expenses 

 Profit . . . 



SiS -5o 



S3000 



In addition to the favorable cash return, we had 

 an abundance of fresh vegetables for the table 

 both winter and summer. I have not kept any 

 accounts since the first year, but every season 

 since I have had the pleasure of spending from $40 

 to S60 that did not come via the pay envelope. 



Maine. John E. Taylor. 



Preparing The Soil For Alfalfa 



WONDERFUL in productiveness, a persistent 

 cropper for years when once established, and 

 a phenomenal enricher of the land, alfalfa also makes 

 three heavy crops of hay a season, hay of the most 

 remarkable nutritive power. Its roots are deep 

 growing, and besides gathering and storing in the 

 soil immense quantities of nitrogen from the at- 

 mosphere, they mellow the ground, rendering it 

 friable for other crops and filling it with humus. 

 So rich in protein is the hay that experiments prove 

 it is a great saver of grain, and even poultry is 

 fed upon it. 



The seed may be sown in spring (the preferable 

 time) and in August, but not later than the 15th 

 of the month. But whenever seeding is done, the 

 most careful preparation of the soil is required. It 

 should be plowed not less than six weeks previously, 

 and cross plowed or harrowed thoroughly every 

 week until seeding time, if this is done in August; 

 and if the seeding time is to be in spring, then an 

 August and September fallow, with at least three 

 careful harrowings a week apart, following good 

 plowing, should be given in spring. This practice 

 kills millions of weeds. 



Having at last secured a fine seed bed, lime it 



heavily, if the farm does not lie in limestone coun- 

 try; spread over it evenly three to five hundred 

 pounds of soil from a live alfalfa or clover field that 

 has not been allowed to become powder dry, and 

 sow the seed, brushing it in lightly unless sown just 

 before a soaking rain. Twenty pounds of seed is 

 required for an acre, and it will be well to divide 

 the seed into two equal portions, sowing one half 

 across the field one way and the other at right angles 

 to it. Some farmers use more seed than this, but 

 if good seed is obtained and it is carefully sown, not 

 letting it bunch in spots and leaving the soil bare 

 elsewhere, twenty pounds is enough. It is needless 

 to say that the soil must be fertile and well drained 

 before seeding. 

 Connecticut Hollister Sage. 



A Woman's Success with 

 Watercress 



DURING recent years a considerable number of 

 women have engaged in some special line of 

 agriculture, either as a pin-money-earning job 

 added to their regular duties, or as their sole means 

 of livelihood. Of the various subdivisions of 

 agriculture either poultry, small fruit or gardening 

 are more generally chosen by these new recruits 

 to practical farming; but some special line of 

 gardening seems the favorite. In this line one of 

 the special crops that has never yet been over- 

 produced is watercress, and that it is both a suit- 

 able and a profitable crop for women farmers to 

 raise is probably nowhere better demonstrated 

 than by the success of a woman near Bryn Mawr, 

 Penn. 



Mrs. Watson began growing cress commercially 

 eight years ago. Her husband, a carpenter, owns 

 a small place of two acres, and she had been looking 

 after the poultry and marketing the surplus eggs 

 to private customers about the town. Across one 

 corner of their place runs a small spring-fed brook, 

 which was fairly choked with the native watercress. 

 One day while Mrs. Watson was delivering eggs 

 at one house the grocer also made his daily delivery 

 of supplies, among which were some bunches of 

 shamefully bruised and wilted watercress. She 

 remarked about its condition and made some in- 

 quiries about the amount of cress used by this 

 family. The next week, when she delivered eggs, 

 she left a box of fresh cress at each customer's 

 house with a brief typewritten announcement 

 that she could supply the cress in any quantity. 

 She received such a favorable response that she 

 had soon made serious inroads on the supply of 

 wild cress in the brook. 



Then she began growing it. She first planted 

 Nasturtium officinale, which is easily grown, sowing 

 the seed along the brook bank and in the stream 

 itself; also in a small "bottom" made wet by the 

 stream's overflow or by rains. But she soon found 

 that there was objection to this variety as it is a 

 little too pungent for some people. So on that 

 account she next planted Erfurt sweet, but it was 

 not of satisfactory growth and she changed several 

 times, finally settling on Lepidnm savita as the best, 

 considering that there was demand from her trade 

 to be supplied in winter. 



To produce this new supply she devised the plan 

 of sowing the seed in drills, in boxes six inches 

 wide, by three feet long, by eight inches deep, they 

 being set on galvanized trays (for bottoms) made 

 by the local tinsmith. This method is yet fol- 

 lowed. The seeds are sown weekly to keep up a 

 constant supply and as the cress is used from a box, 

 the soil is enriched by an addition of a little leaf 

 mold and fresh soil and again sown with seed. 



Mrs. Watson first kept the tin boxes on an im- 

 provised platform before the southern windows 

 of the house-linter, a one-story room used in part 

 for fuel storage, etc. As the demands for the winter 

 cress increased this arrangement was outgrown and 

 various other adaptable corners about the house 

 were pressed into service. Last winter the trays 

 were placed in this lintem window, on the floor of 

 the attic over the kitchen, before an east dormer 

 window, and finally a small brooder-house, having 

 a glass front and facing south, was pressed into 

 service. 



Mrs. Watson has realized that these arrangements 

 are not exactly satisfactory owing to the greatly 



increased business she now has and she is debating 

 between some form of low, cheaply-built greenhouse, 

 and the sheltering and inclosing of a portion of 

 the creek. Artificial heat is not so necessary as. 

 is the mere shutting out of severe cold weather and 

 giving a measure of sunshine and pure air. 



One secret of Mrs. Watson's success lies in her 

 plan in the delivery of her goods. With a woman's 

 eye for neatness, and a memory of those bruised, 

 wilted grocer's bunches of cress ever fresh in her 

 mind, she takes the precaution to have every 

 bunch of her cress fresh and clean, wrapping each 

 bunch in a paraffin paper. Last year, as a further 

 step, she inaugurated delivering it in neat card- 

 board cartons. For her private trade the cartons 

 are of either a dozen or half dozen bunches' capacity. 

 Cartons containing a dozen or two dozen bunches 

 are used for the stores. During the past winter 

 she was sending away, by mail, thirty-one half- 

 dozen bunch boxes twice a week, besides furnish- 

 ing her private trade and two local grocers every 

 day. 



The total outlay for equipment for growing in 

 both winter and summer has been less than one 

 hundred dollars. The chief labor is in cutting, 

 tying and wrapping (and with the winter crop, 

 watering) while the cost of the cartons is slight. 



The "business" is paying over five hundred per 

 cent, interest on the cash invested. Also Mrs. 

 Watson said that she was making more money in 

 growing watercress than she ever did from selling 

 eggs from a flock of seventy to eighty hens. There 

 is nothing difficult about growing cress, and any 

 woman living near a city who is fortunate enough 

 to have a fresh stream, or spring, on her place, can 

 make good money from raising it. 



Washington, D. C. Joel Stanwood. 



Maintaining Green Pastures 



WHEN ;the sizzling days of midsummer are 

 upon us we are prone to eye askance the 

 pasture lot and wish it were better. If one is 

 given to estimating the value of a piece of ground 

 from its products, then perhaps a permanently- 

 green, well-set pasture is among the most desirable 

 of all the farm fields. On a little farm of ten acres, 

 like mine, where but two acres can be devoted to 

 this useful purpose, the inclosure is doubly valu- 

 able as it provides a place for exercise as well as 

 feeding. But the question arises, when the heat 

 of summer has made every blade sear and dry, as 

 to what may be done to keep the pasture green all 

 through dry weather? It is very true that a 

 diversity of grasses, sown together to keep growing 

 successively in their seasons, is an excellent plan, 

 but if nourishment and moisture for the roots are 

 lacking, what then will prevent failure? 



Where it is not possible to follow rotation, 

 giving every field to this use once in four to six 

 years, let the worn-out pasture be turned over, 

 thoroughly harrowed and reseeded, directly upon 

 the sod; and there is no better time to do this than 

 in midsummer. If portions of the field be more or 

 less mossy or given over to sorrel, consider the soil 

 acid and cover it thoroughly with ground limestone, 

 which may nowadays be bought from all dealers in 

 commercial fertilizers. And if a stand of clover 

 is desired, it will pay to lime the entire field and 

 scatter four or five hundred pounds per acre of 

 inoculated soil from some clover or alfalfa ground, 

 before seeding, that those inestimable, nitrogen- 

 gathering nodules may be a part of the assets. 



In any event, where it is at all possible, cover the 

 ground with good, old-fashioned yard manure and 

 plow it in, so as to fill the soil with all the humus 

 obtainable. Along this line comes the plowing in 

 of clover or alfalfa, and for the pasture there cannot 

 be devised a more useful proceedure. Not only 

 does it gather up, for future use, much nitrogen, 

 but it fills the soil with vegetable, sponge-like mat- 

 ter which sucks in moisture and holds ^t until the 

 summer, when it is most needed by the grasses and 

 clovers. The result is, green pastures. 



Why not make an alfalfa field for a pasture, use 

 it for two or five years, and then plow under deeply? 

 To be sure such seeding will have to be more care- 

 fully and thoroughly prepared for than grass seed- 

 ing, and, following repeated harrowing and rolling, 

 must not be done later than August 15th. 



Massachusetts. John S. Gunntng. 



