1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
4,19 
plants of greatly needed nourishment. Every 
blade of oats growing in a crop of fall wheat is 
a weed which exhausts the soil and smothers 
out the crop. The apparent gain (if any) is 
only secured by a fatal weakening of the wheat. 
A weak stand will inevitably suffer by winter- 
ikilling, when a vigorous one would survive per- 
fectly. Thus the practice brings about the 
very conditions it is intended to prevent. We 
'Strive to clean our soil, and enrich it in prepara- 
tion for a crop, and then undo our work or de- 
stroy its effect by crowding that crop with rank- 
growing weeds. For oats grow much ranker 
than wheat, and the crowding and smothering 
effect is in fact a greater injury than the ab- 
straction of nutriment from the soil. A few 
tons of straw or swamp hay scattered over the 
field would be a mulch without doubt. But we 
■do not care to mulch our wheat. We would 
prepare the ground well, sow early in drills, let 
■the drills run across the line of prevalent severe 
winds, which will prevent exposure by drifting 
of soil from the roots, and let the crop have 
the advantage of all the light and air possible 
without covering it with any mulch. If a mulch 
is used, let it be wheu danger is apprehended 
from severe weather on bare ground in the win- 
ter, and when the wheat is dormant. But not 
when it needs all the strength it can gather 
from manure, air, and light to prepare its forces 
to resist the severity of winter. 
Fall Plowing of Corn-Stubble. 
There are more good reasons than one, why 
a corn-stubble should be turned over before 
winter. Having been in grass the previous year, 
there was a sod turned down in the spring. 
That sod is very unevenly mixed in the soil. If 
it was a good heavy clover sod, with strong roots, 
there will be a large amount of vegetable matter 
still left in the soil that was unappropriated by 
the corn crop. This should now be thoroughly 
mixed up by a fall plowing, that whatever solu- 
ble matter remains may be absorbed with more 
facility by the soil; besides, the intimate mix- 
ture will render the soil more open and amena- 
ble to the influences of frost, air, and moisture. 
Then the refuse of the corn crop, the large 
amount of stalks and roots turned under now, 
while they still contain some portion of sap, 
that will cause them to rot when buried in the 
moist soil, will add considerably to the store of 
nutriment for the following crop of either oats 
or barley. Left standing exposed during a whole 
winter, corn-stubs become dried up and diffi- 
cult to rot, and are found, after a plowing and 
"harrowing, scattered over the surface in an un- 
comfortable manner. This may be prevented 
by fall plowing, and a benefit snatched from 
what would be otherwise a nuisance. Then one 
■more but chief advantage is the forwarding of 
the spring work, enabling the spring sowing to 
be done in good season, that the corn-ground 
may be attacked in time. It is not your fore- 
handed farmer who gets bad crops because of 
bad seasons, late springs, and late plantings, but 
lie who is always driven by his work, and has 
always two things waiting to be done, and he 
knows not which to do first. Such a farmer is 
always in a quandary, works hardest, and has 
most trouble, most anxiety, most losses, and, 
alas 1 smallest crops and least profit. 
■•-. »o — ■ ■ — 
Topping and Tailing Turnips. — With 
-proper care, a large amount of extra feed can 
'be gathered in the process of taking up turnips 
or mangels. As soon as the time has arrived 
for taking up the roots, a man provided with a 
sharp, heavy hoe walks along the rows and 
strikes off the tops. These are gathered up, 
and carried either to the barn or feeding sheds, 
or to the fields, where they will supply sheep 
or horned stock with a large amount of addi- 
tional feed. A plow is then run along the rows 
by a steady hand, which removes the soil from 
one side of the roots. They can now be gath- 
ered and thrown into heaps with a pronged 
hoe. The hoe should be struck into the earth 
just beneath or on one side of the root, and a 
sharp jerk will throw it to the heap. If it is 
desired to tail the turnips, the sharp hoe should 
be used to cut them from the tap and fibrous 
roots ; and, at the same stroke, as the hoe is with- 
drawn, the turnip is thrown out and jerked on 
to the heap. This process, however, leaves in 
the ground a large amount of feeding material, 
and though the turnips require less room to 
store them when neatly trimmed, we do not 
think the gain adequate to the price paid for it. 
As they may be stored in the field, room is not 
so much an object as amount of feed secured. 
»-• — — »♦» i ■ 
Making a Fish-Pond. 
F. I. N. writes that "he has good facilities 
for making fish-ponds, with abundant springs 
and swamp or waste land, and that many 
farmers in his vicinity are in like condition." 
There is no difficulty whatever in his having 
fish-ponds, well stocked, in a few years, if he 
will make the ponds and put in the fish. It is 
not expensive to make a pond, wherever there 
is a permanent brook flowing through a hollow 
or swamp. Of course, the size of the pond will 
depend somewhat upon the lay of the land and 
the quantity of water in the stream. Sometimes 
fifty dollars spent on a dam will flow fifty 
acres or more. Often the ponds are already 
made for reservoirs or milling purposes, and 
are just as good for raising fish as if they were 
constructed expressly for that purpose. If a 
brook is already stocked with trout, they will 
multiply much faster with the aid of a pond. 
Nothing need be done but to stop fishing in the 
brook, and let the trout multiply for three or 
four years. They will increase faster if you 
supplement natural by artificial breeding. Ten 
thousand young fry put into the brook every 
spring, will help the stock very much. You 
can raise the fry yourself, or buy them, as suits 
your means and convenience. It is merely a 
question of dollars and cents. In brooks and 
ponds, stocked with other fish than trout, we 
have no hesitation in recommending the Black 
Bass (Qrystes nigricans) for all northern waters. 
This fish has been thoroughly tested, in many 
experiments, for over twenty years, and is ad- 
mitted by all sportsmen to be unsurpassed as 
a game-fish. It is many times more prolific 
than the trout, and will make fine fishing in less 
than half the time. It grows much more 
rapidly, and in three years from the egg you 
get one and two pound fish. In old ponds, 
where feed is abundant, they are frequently 
taken weighing from four to six pounds. They 
will hold their own amid the most destructive 
fresh-water fishes. Many claim that the flesh 
is quite as good as that of the trout and salmon. 
All we claim for it is, that it is an excellent 
table fish, good enough for anybody. In any 
well-stocked water it requires no feeding. The 
owner has only to put iu his adult Black Bass, 
and they will take care of themselves, aud make 
money for him while he sleeps. Scores of ponds 
in the Northern aud Eastern States have been 
stocked with this fish, aud we have yet to hear 
of any dissatisfaction. We know of one forty- 
acre pond, stocked two years ago, that is now 
valued at .$10,000, and it will probably pay the 
interest on that sum as long as fish run. 
Couch or Quack Grass, and a Properly 
Managed Summer-Fallow. 
A correspondent desires us to give our views 
on the best methods of destroying Couch grass, 
and also on what a properly managed summer- 
fallow should be. First, as to the C«uch grass. 
We know of no way of destroying this but 
plowing, harrowing, and bringing the roots to 
the surface, and gathering them up and burning 
them. They are then effectually disposed of. 
Let this be done persistently and thoroughly, 
and the pest will be got rid of. If a common 
harrow does not bring the roots to the surface, 
make some teeth slightly curved forwards at 
the bottom, aud use them in the harrow, and 
all the roots will be torn up in time. Second, 
our ideas of a properly managed fallow are 
that it should consist of plowing, harrowing, 
rolling (if necessary), picking up aud destroying 
weeds that can not be killed by any other 
means, and by the use of all the devices known 
to agriculture to reduce the soil to a proper 
tilth and destroy all weeds. If these two things 
are done by any means— and whatever they 
may be we do not care, so that the ends are ac- 
complished — we should then say that we had a 
properly managed summer- fallow. But a fallow 
that presents a green surface is not properly 
managed, nor is one iu which roots that are 
tenacious of life are permitted to lie on the sur- 
face iu the vain hope that the heat of the sun 
will kill them, but which revive and sprout 
with the first shower. Work on a summer-fal- 
low must be constant and judicious to be effec- 
tual. On page 341, vol. 24, American Agricul- 
turist, is a drawing of a couch-grass rake, well 
adapted to tear up the roots, bring them to the 
surface, and gather them in rows. 
Making Cut Shingles. 
Producing shingles by hand is a now nearly- 
unused method, for the shingle-machine has 
been found to shape them much better, and 
more cheaply. In some parts of the country, 
far from steam-mills and pine timber, cut 
shingles are still manufactured. 
The work from which these sketches were 
taken was being carried on at Guyandotte, a 
town in West Virginia, at the confluence of the 
Guyandotte River with the Ohio, where some 
primitive ways of doing things are still in vogue. 
To commence at the beginning, we should go 
up the river to where the gigantic Tulip-Poplars 
grow, see them cut down and trimmed, divested 
of their bark, and hauled to some low-lying, 
convenient spot near the river, where the rafts- 
men can take advantage of the spring floods to 
float them on that beautiful, hurrying stream 
down towards its mouth, near which point our 
shingle-makers happen to be located for a season. 
But few of the many noble trunks, rafted every 
year from their mountain fastnesses, are detain- 
ed by the shingle-makers. Only the shorter ones, 
unfit for other uses, are doomed to become roof- 
ing material in their hands, they have first to be 
hauled up the steep bank by an ordinary horse- 
windlass, and so wound up to the level, as we 
