1882 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
315 
country, but it is certain that three or four times 
the quantity of grass may be cut from them than 
will grow 7 without the use of the water. 
The width of the ditches should ordinarily be 
considerable, not to carry the water only, but be¬ 
cause the sides are likely to slip down, and gradually 
fill up the channel. For this reason, it is well to 
slope the sides of the principal ditches at an angle 
of 45, or even of 30 degrees. These sides will sod 
over after a while, aud it is only thus that open 
ditches can be permanently held in shape, without 
the aid of stone walls. Lateral ditches, often at 
once, and almost always after a few years, may 
be tiled, and so only the main ditches remain open. 
Preparation of I lie Wheat Ground. 
Wheat demands for its perfect development, 
among other favorable conditions, besides showers 
and sunshine, depth and richness of soil, thorough 
tilth, and freedom from excess of moisture. Soil 
that will yield good clover will bear good wheat. 
Wheat follows corn very well, but this involves 
rather late sowing. Where there is a market for 
new potatoes, which, as they are intended for im¬ 
mediate use, may be 
freely manured, the po¬ 
tato ground—well plow¬ 
ed and harrowed with a 
dressing of bone-dust, 
superphosphate, or, if 
there is much organic 
matter in the soil, with 
a dressing of lime— 
forms au admirable 
seed-bed for wheat. 
One of the best rota¬ 
tions, including winter wheat, is corn on sod, 
early potatoes, wheat, clover, and timothy, the 
grass to be mowed as long as it is profitable— 
the manure being applied in the hill for corn, and 
put on broadcast very liberally for the potatoes. 
Winter wheat follows none of the usual root crops 
well, for it ought to be sowed and up before the 
middle of September, although it often does well 
sowed nearly a month later. 
When wheat follows clover, a crop of clover-hav 
is often taken off early, and a second crop allowed 
to grow, which is turned under about the first of 
August for wheat. In ease we have very dry 
weather in July, the growth of clover will be mea¬ 
gre. If, however, the clover stubble be top-dressed 
at once, as soon as the early crop is cut, with a 
muck and manure compost, or any fine compost, 
“dragged in” with a smoothing harrow 7 , the sec¬ 
ond crop will be sure to start well, while none of 
the manure will be lost. Lime, or ashes, if they 
can be obtained, are to be spread after plowing 
under the clover and manure, and thoroughly har¬ 
rowed in. Forty bushels of ashes to the acre is 
about right, and where hearths of old charcoal 
pits are accessible—ashes, charcoal-dust, and baked 
earth, all excellent—they form a good substitute 
for ashes and for lime. Sixty to one hundred 
bushels of evenly dry-slaked lime, which, if it 
could have been mixed with an equal quantity of 
6oil or sods during the slaking, would be all the 
better, is a usual application. 
The soil, and particularly wheat ground, is not 
well enough tilled in this country. We plow 
14 to 16-inch furrows, and use a skim-plow ; this 
leaves the surface so mellow, and covers the sod 
so perfectly, that we think it hardly needs har¬ 
rowing at all, and only smooth it over with a 
harrow, and let it go. The skim-plow is a great 
advantage, but we should take narrow furrows. 
The Scotch and English plows are a great deal bet¬ 
ter than ours for this sort of w 7 ork, for they turn 
deep narrow furrows, and give much more thor¬ 
ough tillage. 
The following practice, on heavy land especially, 
is excellent: Turn under the first crop of clover as 
deep as possible, just before it is in full blossom ; 
cross-plow the first or second week in August; 
then put on 75 bushels of lime or more, and har¬ 
row it in lightly. Sow early after a soaking rain, 
and apply at the time of sowiug 250 pounds or 
more of superphosphate to the acre. 
Peat stud Jlnclc for Manure. 
When one has peat or muck in any form upon his 
own farm, it is criminal almost not to make use of 
it, and if it can be bought at any reasonable rate— 
say at twenty-five cents a load—it will always be 
well to buy it. It should of course be dug when 
the water is low in the swamps, and the task of 
getting out muck may aid essentially the work of 
reclaiming the swamps. Thus the main ditch may 
be dug the width of a cart track. By making a 
narrow preliminary ditch to carry off the water aud 
dry the ground, a horse and cart may be brought 
into the ditch and the muck carted directly off to 
dry ground, where it can dry and perhaps be ex¬ 
posed to a winter’s freezing and thawing before 
using in the compost heaps or barn-yard. In all 
such ditching we must begin at the lowest end of 
the ditch, so that there shall always be a free outlet 
for the water. A boat, to be used in removing 
muck from the bed through a water channel to a 
hillside, is shown herewith. It is of pine boards 
nailed firmly to side planks braced by a cross plank 
at the middle. If made 9 feet long, 4 feet wide, 
and 16 inches deep, it will float a ton of muck. A 
BOAT FOE GETTING OUT MUCK. 
runner is placed under each side, so that the boat 
can be drawn upon the land. A hook or eye 
should be placed on each side, and others at one 
end, by which the boat may be drawn. While 
floating, the boat is moved by handspikes. The 
place where the muck is heaped to dry should be 
as near as possible to the bed from which it is dug. 
The muck may be very peaty, or the material 
really may be peat —that is, consisting almost en¬ 
tirely of vegetable matter and ash—whereas muck, 
as the word is applied in the United States, is used 
to mean such as would be of little or no value as 
fuel, from the amount of soil or sand or calcareous 
matter in it; but is useful as manure. The peaty 
mucks are greatly benefited by being treated with 
lime—in fact it is only by acting upon them with 
lime or ashes that they can be made rapidly fit for 
use in composts or for application to the land. The 
old rule to slake stone-lime with strong brine, add¬ 
ing only brine enough to dry-slake the lime, is a 
very good one. Such lime may be depended upon 
for the best results when composted with muck. 
Live Stock iu Midsummer. 
The latter part of summer is often very trying to 
live stock. Pastures are short, old grain is high, 
the new not yet fit to feed. Milk may be in great 
demand and the farmer loath to cut in upon his 
corn fodder, intended for curing, to feed off the 
aftermath ; he is lucky who can turn his young 
6tock of cattle and horses into mountain or high 
wooded pastures, where they will have water and 
may make at least half a living upon underbrush, 
etc. Early sowed fodder corn comes in well now 
for milch cows, and there is really no other good 
use for it. If cut for curing it is hard to dry with¬ 
out molding and decaying, aud if left to stand until 
after the middle of September, when it will cure 
well, it will be as woody and tough as “corn stalks.” 
When fed to milch cows, fodder corn ought to be 
cut short and sprinkled with two to four quarts of 
corn meal per cow each day. There will then be 
no complaint of the quality or the quantity of 
the milk. If these are fed without the meal, the 
milk will surely be thin, and the cows are exhaust¬ 
ed by the increased flow, and soon fall off in yield. 
Horses in pasture are often extremely annoyed 
by flies. If they can stand when not in use in dark 
sweet stables, by all means turn them into the 
pasture only at night. Gnats and mosquitoes are of 
little annoyance to horses, but the larger day-flies, 
and the CEstrus, or Bot-fly, set them almost crazy. 
Ewes and lambs are usually separated in August, 
and while none of our domestic animals is more 
often used as a type of maternal affection than the 
ewe, yet the agony of separation will be of short 
duration, and not especially painful if the two 
flocks, dams and lambs, can be pastured so far 
apart as not to hear each others calls. It is well to 
put with the lambs a few wethers as flock leaders,, 
or a ram or two if there is danger of annoyance by 
passing dogs. The ewes should be penned and 
their milk drawn enough to relieve their udders 
several evenings in succession after taking the 
lambs away. Wounds on any kind of animals are 
liable to be fly-blown and very annoying. The best 
treatment that we know of is an application of 
strong carbolic soap. That which is sold as sheep 
dip is very good ; but be careful not to use the 
arsenical sheep dips or any thing of that kind. Soft 
soap or semi-solid soap strongly impregnated with 
crude carbolic acid is good, and any one can make 
it. It will be found good for allkinds of raw sores, 
galls, bites, scratches and the like on man or beast. 
The place for pigs at this season is in the apple 
orchard; the falling fruit is wormy, unless indeed 
a gale shakes off sound fruit, and the pigs uncon¬ 
sciously slay thousands of injurious insects. 
r lTIie Manure Harvest. 
In the midst of the harvest of grain, and grass, 
and tubers, we must not forget the compost heap, 
in which we garner and store the uusowed crops of 
a future season. The saying that “ anything that 
grows iu one summer, will rot before the next,” is 
a safe guide in collecting vegetable matter for the 
compost heap. When sods, muck, and weeds form 
a part of the heap, it is not alone the material which 
we are assiduous in collecting, and put into the 
heap, that constitutes its whole value. The fer¬ 
mentation induced by the dung and liquid manure, 
and the action of the lime or ashes added, work 
upon the earth, adhering to the roots ol the w 7 eeds,. 
and forming a considerable part of both sods and 
muck, and develop an admirable quality of plant 
food. Hence this element of the compost heap, 
which is generally over-looked as possessing any 
special value, should never be wanting. It has, 
moreover, its own offices to perform, in promoting 7 
decay, in the formation of humus, and in preserv¬ 
ing, locking up, and holding on to valuable ingre¬ 
dients of plant food. 
The compost heap should always be laid in even 
layers, and each layer should go over the entire 
heap, for thus only can final uniformity be had. 
We do not mean special-purpose composts, but 
those made for general farm crops. It would be 
well if every particle of duug, liquid manure, straw, 
litter, leaves, weeds, etc., could be worked together 
into uniform fine compost, and there is really no 
substantial reason why this should not be done. 
The gardener W'ould plead for certain special com¬ 
posts. It might perhaps be well to make a special 
hen-manure compost for com in the hill, and tak^ 
ing the general compost as a basis, to make one for 
turnips, by the addition of a large percentage of 
bone-dust. All this may be done—establish once 
the rule to compost everything of manurial value, 
and we have in prospect an abundance of farm- 
made fertilizers at all times, and for all crops— 
victory over weeds, a good place for decomposable 
trash of all kinds, a sacred burial ground for all 
minor animals and poultry, whose precincts need 
never be invaded. There will besides be no stagnat¬ 
ing pool iu the barn-yard, for all liquids will go to 
the tank, to be pumped over the compost heaps— 
no nasty, slumpy barn-yard, for everything will be 
daily gathered for the growing compost heap, and 
the harvesting of the manure crop, and its increase 
day by day, all the year round, will be a source of 
constant pleasure to master aud men. 
Frnit Ladders. 
The number of fruit ladders that we have from 
time to time figured, is very large. As a rule, the 
ladder should be self-supporting, and not lean 
