168 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
the earlier the better. The Long White French, 
Ashcroft, and others, may be sown in June or 
July. A little seed, a little hoeing or weeding, 
and a little soil, will turn out several loads of 
nice turnips about the time frosts come on. (If 
you can not get seed elsewhere, look at the Pub¬ 
lisher’s Premiums on page 188.) 
AM) NOW FOIt THE GARDEN. 
So much for the field. There is scarcely a 
garden vegetable that may not yet be planted or 
sown. Many of them do better put in now 
than earlier. Turnips, beets, carrots, pars- 
neps, Lima and other beans, lettuce, spinage, 
sweet corn, cucumbers, squashes, cabbages, egg 
plants, peas, tomatoes, etc., may all be sown or 
6et out at any time before the middle of the 
month, and several of them until late in July, 
so that not an inch of ground need be idle. 
Again, much may be done by way of ar¬ 
ranging to secure the most from a little space. 
Cucumbers and squashes can be put by the side 
of early potatoes or peas, which will be out of 
the way by the time the vines begin to run. 
Late cabbages may be set among potatoes, corn 
planted among early turnips, pumpkins and 
squashes grown in the potato patch, etc., to 
economize the space as much as possible. After 
haying, even, the sward may be turned over for 
a crop of turnips. In the vicinity of cities, 
where there is a large market for garden pro¬ 
duce, gardeners should not be satisfied short of 
two crops from each plot of ground, but to do 
his they must manure liberally and till well. 
--— --aO«---- 
For the American Agriculturist . 
Home-made Bone Manure. 
Bones make one of the best fertilizers accessible 
to fanners and fruit-growers. The great objec¬ 
tion to their use is the cost of reducing them. 
The ground or sawed dust is expensive. The 
super-phosphate prepared with sulphuric acid, is 
still more costly. To break them up withham- 
mers is a laborious job, and the bones are still 
in quite too large fragments. 
A correspondent wishes to know if it will pay 
to carry them to his market town and have 
them ground in a plaster mill. That will de¬ 
pend somewhat upon the charge for grinding. 
Those in the immediate vicinity of a good bone- 
mill should have all the bones ground that they 
can command, if the toll is reasonable. 
The best method for reducing bones at home, 
is that first introduced to the agricultural pub¬ 
lic by Prof. Pusey, of England, and since re¬ 
commended by Prof. Johnson, of NewTIaven. 
The process, in brief, is to put the bones into a 
pile, filling the interstices with sand, ashes, loam, 
muck, or any fine material, and to saturate the 
pile with stale urine or dung heap liquor. About 
one third of the weight of bones is composed of 
cartilage and animal matter, which heats in the 
heap and breaks down the whole structure of 
the bone, making it a fine mass. It is better 
that the bones should be crushed with a sledge 
hammer, as the finer they are made, the more 
completely they will be reduced by the ferment¬ 
ing process. In forming a heap, a layer of 
muck, or good loam a foot thick, should be put 
at the bottom. Then scatter on a layer of bones 
a few inches in thickness, and put on just enough 
of the ashes, saw-dust, or other fine matter to 
fill all the interstices. The object is to bring the 
bones as closely together as possible, and to 
make the pile compact. When this is done, 
wet the whole with urine, or barn-yard liquor, 
and cover a foot thick with muck or loam, to 
absorb the ammonia that will escape from the 
fermenting mass. In warm weather the fermen¬ 
tation goes on rapidly, and the bones will be 
decomposed in from two to six weeks. Such 
fragments of bone upon the outside, as are not 
reduced by the first operation, may be put up 
in a second heap. The bones in the center of 
the heap will be most perfectly decomposed, 
and the larger the heap, the more complete the 
disintegration. The process of fermentation 
may be ascertained by thrusting a bar into the 
heap. If the ammonia escapes, which will be 
indicated by the smell, add more muck. 
—---—a<9— — -- 
Dead Animals for Manure. 
In Spring and early Summer, farmers not sel¬ 
dom have carcasses of dead animals to dispose 
of, and which are often thrown away and wast¬ 
ed. Rightly managed, they would make excel¬ 
lent manure. The expediency of the common 
practice of burying them in a crude state among 
the roots of grape-vines and other gross-feeding 
trees, may be questioned. Rather, let them be 
cut up into small pieces, then stacked in the cor¬ 
ner of some field or back-yard, scattering on a 
little lime and muck, or charcoal if at hand, as 
the pile goes up, filling all the spaces between 
with some absorbent material, and covering 
each piece before another is thrown on. The 
offal will slowly decompose, and the gases, in¬ 
stead of passing off into the air, a nuisance to 
all the neighborhood, will be absorbed and 
saved. In the Autumn, this heap may be bro¬ 
ken down, shoveled over and mixed; it will 
then be a very valuable fertilizer. * 
The Potato-Rot—Three Proposed “Sure 
Remedies.” 
The thousand and one “new and infallible” 
remedies proposed, from time to time, for the 
cure of this disease, have done so little to arrest 
it, that every one has come to feel suspicious of 
anything new. Among the older remedies, we 
know of none better than the use of ashes. A suc¬ 
cessful farmer, near the writer’s residence, states 
that he has tried ashes for several years and with 
almost complete success, and he w r ants to speak 
of them to the readers of the Am. Agriculturist. 
His method is this: Shortly after the second hoe¬ 
ing, sow upon the vines a dressing of unleached 
ashes, using from two and a half to three bushels 
per acre. Repeat the application once in six 
weeks, until the crop is matured. Our friend, it 
would seem, considers the disease of atmospher¬ 
ic origin, or as caused by an insect in the leaf, 
and not at the root. But whatever the origin, 
he keeps the tubers sound by treating the leaf. 
John B. Austine, residing near Warren Depot, 
Worcester Co., Mass., asserts that he has a posi¬ 
tive remedy for the potato rot, and claims a 
right of discovery. He sent a box of seedlings, 
in good order, to the office of the American Ag¬ 
riculturist , on the 18th of April, and wrote: 
“ They were planted the first week in May last 
year. Aug. 18,1 put my feet on each side of the 
hill, and pulled the tops off. Pressing the soil 
down, the tops were thrown upon the hills, and 
not a rotton one was found in the 24 bushels 
gathered.” He thinks the disease begins on the 
vine, and extends down to the bulbs, and that 
by stripping off the tops as soon as there is the 
least sign of rot, or black spots, the potatoes 
may be left in the ground any length of time, or 
until convenient to dig and store for Winter, 
without the slightest danger of rot. Mr. Aus¬ 
tine says he has proved the utility of his process 
by five years of successful experiment. But 
perhaps the exemption of his crop has been 
due to other causes. If he will further test his 
remedy by pulling up only alternate rows, and 
if he then finds the rows left undisturbed, to be 
affected with the rot, while those treated by his 
method remains sound, the result will be some 
what conclusive. There is some plausibility in 
it, and it may be well for others to experiment 
with a few hills at least. If the vines are 
stripped off too early, it must lessen the yield. 
A few hills might be pulled at successive in¬ 
tervals of a week, and the results noted. 
We find in the English “ Mark-lane Express,” 
of March 10, a communication from a farmer 
whose theory is somewhat similar to that of 
Mr. Austine. The English farmer concludes 
from microscopic examinations, verified by ex¬ 
periment, that the potato disease is a sort of mi¬ 
nute fungus deposited at first upon the leaves 
and haulm, (vines,) which spreads with remark¬ 
able rapidity over both tops and roots, and final¬ 
ly destroys them. Last season, when the haulm 
had reached its full growth, early in July, he 
bent the tops over and placed earth upon them 
to keep them down. This was to prevent the 
rain from descending the vines to the roots, car¬ 
rying the fungus with it. The portion of the 
field so treated, although a heavy clay soil, pro¬ 
duced a good crop of potatoes, not one in fifty 
rotting, while those allowed to grow in the usuai 
upright manner were a complete failure. The 
same thing waa confirmed by his neighbors. In 
one case a neighbor, having no room for some 
planks, threw them upon his potato patch, and 
found, contrary to his expectations, at digging 
time, that those so covered were in excellent 
condition, while the others -were badly diseased. 
As in the former case, the thousands of minute 
fungi or parasitical plants were washed into the 
soil at a distance from, instead of directly 
among the potatoes. 
--«- 9 ^ ■ - 
A Mole-Drain Plow. 
G. McWhick, Franklin Co., O., communicates 
to the Agriculturist a description of a mole-drain 
plow, constructed by one of his neighbors, as 
follows: A strong steel bar runs down from a 
plow beam, to the lower end of which is strong¬ 
ly welded a tapering nose-piece, followed by a 
succession of cast-iron balls attached to each 
other and to the nose-piece by links These 
balls increase in size to 3 or 4 inches, and leave 
an opening after them of the size of the largest 
ball, with the soil firmly pressed. It is run 20 
to 24 inches deep, and .is moved about 100 rods 
per day, with a horse and capstan. The mole- 
drains run into an open ditch. On a wet bot¬ 
tom-land, with a black pitchy muck subsoil, 
this implement has produced good results. Mr. 
M. proposes to use a similar implement, running 
it every two or three rods for cross drains, pre¬ 
vious to laying down tiles in the natural water 
courses, and will communicate from time to 
time the results. He proposes leveling and grad¬ 
ing the surface a little, before using the mole- 
plow, so as to secure a uniform depth of drain. 
The success and permanence of these mole- 
drains now being used in different parts of the 
country, will be matters of interest. We do 
not see the advantage of the series of balls over 
a single piece of steel or iron tapering at the 
point and enlarged at the rear end to the re¬ 
quired size. It would seem that a continuous 
piece of metal would leave a smoother opening 
than the disconnected balls. 
