18G9.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
87 
How to Raise a First-rat© Crop 
of Potatoes.-" J. M.," Chester Co., Pa, There are 
many ways of doing tins. Cut as you only enter on the 
farm this spring, you will work to ill sad vantage. To ob- 
tain the best results, it is necessary to prepare for the 
crop two or three years beforehand. All that you can do 
this year is to select the best land on the farm, put on 
400 lbs. of Peruvian guano, cultivate thoroughly, and 
suffer not a weed to grow. A two or three-year-old clover 
sod, on warm, rich, sandy loam, gives a good chance for 
potatoes. Do not plow until you are ready to plant. 
Sow the guano broadcast after plowing, and harrow it in 
or apply a tablespoonful in each hill, and mix it with the 
soil. Mark out the rows, both ways, three feet apart, and 
drop a fair sized potato in eacli hill. Start the cultiva- 
tor as soon as the rows can be distinguished, and repeat 
every week or ten days until there is dangerof disturbing 
the roots. We usually bill up a little, making a broad, 
flat hill. A tablespoonful of plaster dusted on the young 
plants soon after they come up will usually do good. 
Wc recommend guano because in our experience it does 
not increase the rot. But it is only fair to add, that wc 
have not found even barn-yard manure, if thoroughly 
rotted and well mixed with the soil the fall previous, half 
po injurious as some people would have us suppose. If 
anyone will put 25 loads per acre on our potato land, 
we will agree to plant and run the risk of the rot. But 
wc would use Borne guano as well. The truth is, that it 
is useless to expect a large crop of potatoes, say 350 
bushels per acre, without plenty of manure. 
Compression of £»oils l>y Starring. 
— "A. S. C," of Ohio, says: '"I notice your article on 
the compression of soils in the January No. of the Agri- 
culturist, page 0, and write to ask what such a fact teach- 
es on subsoiling. If stirring tire ground leaves it in con- 
dition to pack more closely, why is subsoiling not inju- 
rious?"— Yankee-like, wc will answer the question by 
asking another. If stirring the soil leaves it in condition 
to pack more closely, why is plowing or spading not in- 
jurious? An isolated fact teaches nothing. If soils are 
compressed by stirring, it is absurd Jo say, in the face of 
all experience, that stirring the soil must be injurious. 
And so the fact wc mentioned does not prove that sub- 
soiling is cither beneficial or injurious. In undcrdraiu- 
Jng a clay soil, as the water is carried off by the tiles, 
the clay dries and contracts, and the whole soil by degrees 
becomes full of little fissures, that permit the water to 
percolate through it. Shall wc say that because the soil 
contracts by draining, therefore draining is injurious? 
Self-sown Clover.— C. A. Winders, of 
Alleghany Co., N. T., writes : "A farmer who recently 
moved here from Pennsylvania, says : ' If yon sow 
wheat in the fall, sowclover seed on the last light snow 
in the spring, and if the growth is large you may pas- 
ture it a little in the fall without injury. The next sum- 
mer, when the clover is nicely in blossom, pasture until 
it is time to plow for wheat. Plow and sow wheat, and 
the next year you will have a good crop of clover without 
sowing any seed.' 1 He says that under this treatment the 
land will grow richer and rlcheruntil you will be obliged 
to kill the clover. Wc have thus wheat and pasture alter- 
nately, the land constantly growing better with only one 
expense for clover seed. Have you ever known this 
tried? Will not the clover seed be covered too deep to 
grow, and if it grows will the land improve under this 
severe wheat cropping?" We think a farmer had bet- 
ter raise his clover seed in the ordinary way and sow it 
in the spring on the wheat. No sensible farmer would 
think of sowing clover seed in July or August, and plow- 
ing it under. Should he sow a bushel or two per acre 
there would probably be three or four quarts not cover- 
ed so deep, but it would not germinate and from this 
the land would be seeded. So in plowing under a crop 
of clover, which had partly gone to seed, we might get 
a crop of clover the next year, but it is a slovenly system. 
To plow under clover seed worth $8 or $10 per bushel, 
or say $300 per ton, is rather expensive manuring 1 
Raisins' Steans on a ff,ars;e Scale. 
— A Virginia gentleman wants to know how to raise 
beans on a large scale. — Take a good piece of clover or 
grass sod, plow it carefully, barrow, and roll. Get a drill 
that plants two rows at a time. The one we use makes 
the rows 2'« feet apart. It is better to mark the land 
first, as in this way the drill can be kept in the marks, 
and the rows will be straighter. We set the elides of the 
drill to drop five or six beans in hills about fifteen inches 
apart. If a common grain drill is used, set it so as to 
drop a bean about every three inches, the rows, of 
course, to be % l / z or 3 feet apart, as before. Drilling, 
we think, gives a larger yield, but dropping in hills 15 
inches apart is more convenient in hoeing and in pulling 
the crop. We generally sow beans as soon as wc arc 
through planting; corn. We drill in about three inches 
deep. If the ground is mellow, the seed will all be cov- 
ered. If not, it is necessary for a couple of men to fol- 
low the drill with hoes, and cover any beans that are on 
the surface. This completes the operation of planting. 
As soon as the i-ows can be distinguished, go through 
them with a light cultivator, and continue to do so as 
often as is necessary, which is about as often again as is 
generally supposed. Destroy with the hoc all weeds that 
cannot be reached with the cultivator. They must not be 
suffered to get the start. This is the great secret of suc- 
cess. We would advise no one to plant beans on a large 
6cale who cannot command the necessary labor to hoe 
them at the right moment. Last year wc turned over a 
heavy crop of clover in June, and planted beans imme- 
diately after the plow. They soon came up, and, except 
on the sandy parts of the field, there were few weeds, and 
no hoeing was necessary. But when there arc weeds, 
they must be killed. Wc insist the more on this point 
from the fact that the beau crop of the United States is 
diminished every year more than one-half, simply from 
the growth of weeds. And nothing is gained by it, for 
the extra labor of pulling the beans is more than would 
have sufficed to hoe the crop, if done in season. Pulling 
costs about $2.00 an acre. Curing we will treat on in a 
future article. For ordinary cultivation the white medium 
is probably the most profitable variety. 
Are Potatoes Injured I>y Wire 
Worms good for Seed ?— Mr. L. I. Jackson says 
that last spring he plowed up a piece of old sod and 
planted it to potatoes. At hoeing time he was greatly 
elated at the prospect of a large yield ; but when he 
came to dig them he found half the crop destroyed by 
wire worms. Some of the worms had gone their whole 
length into the potatoes. He asks: "Will it answer to 
plant such worm-eaten potatoes, or will it be better econ- 
omy to buy new seed?"' The potatoes arc probably just 
as good for seed as if they had not been injured by the 
worms. It is generally best to change seed frequently. 
Wheat an«l Clover Alternately is 
the old-fashioned plan practiced when the country was 
new. On some of the '"oak openings" of Western 
New York, which had been annually burnt over by the 
Indians, and when the land was consequently destitute of 
organic matter, the plan of growing clover and plowing 
it in every other year for wheat greatly increased the fer- 
tility of the land. The clover obtained organic matter 
from the atmosphere, and the soil contained abundance 
of mineral matter, which was developed by cultivation. 
In process of time, however, the laud got surcharged 
with organic matter. This, as is well known, has a 
tendency to retard the ripening of the crop. Large crops 
of straw were grown, but the grain was light. Rust, too, 
often injured the wheat, and finally the midge came and 
the system had to be abandoned. As long as wc can 
continue to grow large crops of clover, we may be sure 
that there is no lack of plant-food in the soil for wheat. 
And if growing clover and wheat every other year will 
keep the land clean, and is more profitable than a mixed 
system of cropping, wc can see no objection to it. 
CSrimdiiis; - Com on the Co"fos. — J. W. 
Bliss, of Nebraska, wishes to know if corn and cob 
meal is injurious to stock. We have heard of cases, 
where it has been fed in very large quantities, in which it 
has injured the stock, but in our experience wchavu had 
no trouble with it. It is certainly better to grind cob and 
grain together than to feed it whole on the cob. But so 
far as the nutriment contained in the cob goes, it will 
not pay for the costof grinding. Better shell the corn and 
grind it, and then feed the meal with cut hay, or bran. 
Our Indian Farmer. — We published 
nearly a year ago a description of the corn crib of Mr. .T. 
T. Jones ("Ottawa Jones"), a successful farmer of Kan- 
sas. In a letter recently received he writes: "I have 
Jived in Kansas for thirty-two years, being an Indian at 
first. I knew very little about farming, and in fact I 
know very little about it now. Having no one to teach 
me I did the best I could for those times, beginning with 
a single hoe in a hazel thicket, planting a few hills of 
potatoes, enlarging the area of my garden and farm with 
more suitable farming implements and increased power; 
in a few years, I made out to open a farm of more than 
100 acres. All that time I knew nothing about sowing 
small grain, such as wheat and oats, but Mother Neces- 
sity had to be my forcible teacher. Now I can teach many 
white farmers who come from the East how to farm in 
Kansas. In addition to this knowledge, I have learned 
more of the art of farming in many particulars in reading 
your valuable paper than in any other way; yes, than 
from all the farmers in this country put together. I wish 
every farmer, every housekeeper, every gardener in our 
entire country had it; we might then, in a very few years, 
have a far better system of farming than now. Farmers 
at the East come to the West and open extensive (arms 
and in so doing, they go to a good deal of expense ; but 
unfortunately they go to skimming over the land for tbreo 
or four years, and then some of them will begin to cry, 
'Kansas is too dry;' some, 'too wet;' some give the- 
alarm of ' grasshoppers ' or the ' chinches,' or some other 
lamentable cry against Kansas, and give up farming for 
some speculative or more lucrative business. There are, 
however, a few honorable exceptions to this condition of 
things. But as a farming community in the West, we 
arc making poor work at farming." 
Stabling- Cows antl Horses to- 
gether.— '-J. S., 1 ' Chippewa, Canada. 'Will the breath 
of cows be detrimental to horses kept in the same sta- 
ble ?" — It is usual to keep these animals in separate 
stables on large farms, more as a matter of convenience 
than for any other cause. But the multitude of people in 
villages, who keep but one or two horses, and as many 
cows, quite as generally keep them in adjoining stalls. 
If the stables are well ventilated and the urine is absorbed 
by muck or other deodorizers, so that there is no bad 
odor, the health of neither will suffer from the compan- 
ionship. There is, perhaps, no foundation for the popu- 
lar opinion that the breath of cows is wholesome for con- 
sumptives. Any pure air like that of a well-ventilated 
stable is much better for them than the close, hot, dry 
rooms invalids usually occupy. 
Clover.— Mrs. P., of Sand Prairie.— The best 
time to sow clover is probably in August. It should then 
be sown on well-mellowed ground, with a dressing of plas- 
ter, say 10 bushels to the acre. The kind of seed wc pre- 
fer is the medium, or common red. The pea-vine makes 
very coarse hay, but is the best for plowing under green. 
Sown in the spring it is best to take a quiet morning in 
March, when a light snow has fallen on ground that has 
been bare and has thawed. Clover does very well sown 
upon winter grain, or with spring grain, but better by it- 
self. Suitable top-dressings for light land plowed in the 
spring to be sown with clover, are plaster, ashes, any fine 
compost, Peruvian guano, made fine and mixed with 
plaster and soil, or superphosphate of lime. It is worth 
while to roll the land after sowing. It may be dono any 
time before the first of Slay, or even later. 
liiglat vs. Heavy Soils. — A young farm- 
er in Ohio writes : " Would it pay better to buy 50 acres 
of sandy loam at $100 per acre, or 100 acres of good clay 
soil at $S0 per acre?"'— It depends a good deal on the 
crops to be raised. As a general rule, a warm, sandy 
loam gives the largest immediate profit ; but a good clay 
is the more enduring. It contains a large amount of 
latent plant-food, which can be developed by cultivation. 
If you bought GO acres of the clay land and spent $50 an 
acre in underdraiuing, cultivating, manuring, etc., you 
would probably have a much more productive farm, 
especially for grass and wheat, than the sandy loam. 
But before buying, ascertain whether there is fall enough 
to drain it three or four feet deep; and furthermore, do 
not buy the 100 acres unless you have capital enough to 
make all needed improvements. As a rule, the high- 
priced farms arc the cheapest, and especially so at the pres- 
ent time, when improvements of all kinds arc very costly. 
6 * I£ow Crops Carow." — The knowledge 
of the principal facts which underlie the science and art 
of agriculture is much more general than it was a few 
years ago, but after all, it is vague and indefinite in the 
minds of most of even the best informed farmers. This 
valuable work of Prof. Johnson is intended to give ex- 
actly that important definiteness to general knowlcdgo 
of agricultural principles which we need for accurate 
reasoning. It is impossible in such articles as we pre- 
pare for the Agriculturist, to go largely into the details of 
science, and were we to do so they would not be read 
except by the few. Such works, by authors of the most 
thorough scientific, attainments, having a practical knowl- 
edge of the details of farm practice, and of the conditions 
of successful culture, are exactly adapted to amplify, 
explain, and prove these general principles which we 
are obliged to assert dogmatically. 
What i« the best Variety of Spring 
Wheat ?— We cannot answer this question. The- 
China or Black Tea is a very handsomo spring wheat, 
and yields well on good soil. The Fife is a favorito 
Canadian wheat, especially for rather low soils, and we 
believe it gives good satisfaction in the Western States, 
although it is not so extensively sown as the Canada 
Club variety. The latter ripens earlier, but does not yield 
as much per acre. Where the midge injures the crop, 
the Fife isu useful variety to sow late. Sown the first 
week in June, it has prodnceda good crop, when early 
sown wheat was nearly all destroyed by the midge. 
