SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR 
81 
to have sheds warmed up with s^ood fires, no doubt. But 
as they cannot gel both, they would compro- 
mised by accepting the sheds. And if I live and prosper 
they shall have the latter. But oh! the curse of cotton! 
How many comforts it cuts off from man and brute ! 
Horses, cows, and sheep should all have shelter. As 
to hogs, it is doubtful policy to give it to them, from the 
fact that, asleep or awake, they always have their snouts 
in the dirt. And when the dirt is dry, it gets into their 
nostrils and lungs, and gives them coughs and consump- 
tions. Under shelter the dirt is always dry, and there is 
nothing like hogs to “kick up a dust.” Perhaps, then, 
the/ should not have shelter. lam sorry for them, but 
they “had no !>usiness to be hogs.” They might put up 
with a good thick skirt of woods, and this is protection 
enough from the weather for them. Or if they have sheds, 
the roofs should be suffered to leak a little occasionally. 
But, Messrs, Editors, I must close this salmagundi let- 
ter, leaving it to you to print or burn. 
J. A. Turner. 
Timiwnld, Putnam Co., Ga., 18.57. 
CUETUKE OF BASKET AVIEEOW. 
The cultivation of Willows is not difficult nor expen- 
sive if properly understood. The first thing necessary, is 
to choose a proper piece of land, which should be rich 
and moist, but not wet. Many suppose that willows re- 
quire a wet place or they will not thrive, but it is not so. 
If you will notice where native willows thrive best, you 
will find it is not in wet places, but close to the banks of 
some stream, where the land is always well drained, but 
never suffers from drouth Consequently, we find the 
best land for a willow plantation is rich allavial interval 
that is flowed constantly; or a mucky swamp, naturally 
moist, but well drained. If the land is not naturally rich, 
it should be plowed under as deep as possible, then har- 
row and fit it as you would a garden. There is no danger 
of doing it too well, as you have it to do but once and it 
will aft’ect the crop for several years. 
When the land is prepared, mark it off as you would 
for corn, or use a line to set by and set the cuttings in 
rovs’s feet apart and about 1 foot apart in the 
rows; stick them perpendicular and leave but one or two 
buds above the ground. If it is green sward use an iron 
spindle to make a hole for them. On mellow land, it is 
no more work to set an acre of willows than to plant an 
acre of potatoes, but it is very important that it be done 
well, as they are not set every spring, and if badly started 
they will never produce a full crop. 
They should be cultivated the first year so as to pre- 
vent all grass and weeds from growing among them and 
keep the ground loose, and the second year until they get 
up so as to shade the ground and be injured by working 
among them. 
Cuttings should be procured in the winter and set as 
early in the spring as the ground can be prepared. 
CUTTING, BINDING, &C. 
The cutting is a very important of their cultivation. It 
may be done as soon as the leaves are off, or at any time 
before the buds begin to start in the spring. 
But it must be well done, they must be cut close and 
clean, othefwise the stools will form in bad shape and 
will not prodi.ice good willows. The best way to be sure 
of having it done well, is to cut them as close as you can 
— say within an inch of the old stock — and then in the 
spring go over them again, and cut all small ones that may 
have been missed, and cut dov/n many stubs that may 
have been left too long. This is but little labor and will 
insure a good crop. 
The best instrument to cut them with is a small hook, 
similar to a corn-cutter, with a blade two or three inches 
long, and the handle about two feet ; the blade should be 
narrow and thin similar to a jack-knife. 
They should be bound in small bundles as soon 
as cut, and lie careful to get the lower ends even. To keep 
them from drying up until the water is ready in the spring 
they may be set in a damp cellar, or set up in a solid pile 
on some moist piece of ground, and straw piled around 
them to keep them moist. As soon as it begins to be 
warm in the spring set them in water sufficiently deep to 
touch the lower ends of all and let them stand until they 
peel which will be in May or June in this latitude. If 
you have a brook running through your land, you can 
easily fix a place to set them, by building a dam so as to 
flow a level piece, and then put up poles, once in a few 
feet, for them to lean against, so that the sun may shine 
on them and the air circulate freely through them. Or in 
case there is not a brook convenient, a small piece of 
ground in some low place, can be levelled, and after mak- 
ing it as tight as possible, bring a stream of water into it 
with spouts or pipes. 
PEELING AND PREPARING FOR MARKET. 
In peeling willows by hand, as they always have been 
peeled, it was necessary to handle them all over twice, 
one at a time, which made it very slow business, requir- 
ing the labor of a man and boy to peel one hundred lbs. a 
day: but as there is no longer a necessity of peeling them 
in that way, it would be needless to describe the opera- 
tion. With the machine the peeling is very easily and 
quickly done ; the operator takes a bundle of willows and 
feeds them into the machine as he would a bundle of grain 
into a threshing machine and they are passed through and 
come out peeled at the rate of one to two tons per day. 
There should be a trough or vat of water so placed that 
the rods will fall into it as they come out of the machine, 
and as often as the trough is full, rinse them in the water 
and spread them out to dry. When they are sufficiently 
dry so that they will not mildew, they may be tied in bun- 
dles and are ready for market. In binding them put some 
of the thick ends both ways so that the bundles will be as 
large at one end as at the other, and to get them tight use 
a strap with a buckle at one end, and draw them together 
as tight as possible, then tie with strong twine three or 
four bands to a bundle. They are very slippery things 
and if not well bound are liable to work loose and thus be 
scattered and lost. The object of having them fall into 
the water as they come out of the machine is to remove 
the slime, thus preventing them from turning color, as it 
very desirable to have them white. 
THE AMOUNT PRODUCED PER ACRE. 
This, of course, varies, as with every other crop, accord- 
ing to the richness of the ground and the cultivation. The 
amount will range from one to three tons, and sometimes 
higher, even to five or six tons, but two or three tons may 
be considered as a fair average yield. The first year’s 
crop will be comparatively light — depending much upon 
the cultivation which they receive — the second year they 
will produce a middling crop, and the third year a full 
crop, and every year thereafter. 
ENEMIES 
The Willow is subject to no disease and has very few 
enemies. The bark and leaves are so extremely bitter 
that cattle will not eat them, and there is no need of fenc- 
ing them in if they are in a lot where cattle run only in 
fall and spring, but it will not do to let cattle run among 
them through the summer. 
There is a caterpillar similar to an apple-tree-worra, 
which eats their leaves, and thus stops their growing, but 
they are not numerous and do but very little injury. But 
to prevent their spreading it^ well to go through the field 
two or three times in the coffse of the summer and des- 
troy all that can befound, and by so dong but very few 
will make their appearance another year. 
