THU CULTIVATOR: 
A MONTHLY PUBLICATION, DEVOTED TO AGRICULTURE 
KNOW OF NO PURSUIT IN WHICH MORE REAL AND IMPORTANT SERVICES CAN BE RENDERED TO A NY C O UNTRY, THAN BY IMPROVING ITS AGRICULTURE Wash. 
VOL. V. 
NO. 3, WASHINGTON-ST. ALBANY, N. Y. JULY, 1838. 
NO. 5. 
Conducted by J. BUEL, of Albany. 
TERMS.— One Dollar per annum, to be paid in advance. 
Subscriptions to commence with a volume. 
Special Agents.— L. &. R. Hill, Richmond, Va.; Bell &. 
Enxvvisle, Alexandria, D. C.; Gideon B. Smith, Baltimore, 
Md.; Judah Dobson, bookseller, and D. Landreith, seeds¬ 
man, Philadelphia; Israel Post, booksellers, 88 Bowery, 
Alex. Smith, seedsman, P. Wakeman, office of the Ameri¬ 
can Institute, Broadway, N. York; E. M. Hovey, Mer¬ 
chants’s Itow, Boston; Alex. Walsh, Lar* > h, and 
Wm, Thorburn, Albany, gratuitous A 
list of agents see No. 12, vol. iv. 
The Cultivator is subject to common nevvoi -‘-la, 
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the four volumes bound together, $2.75—bounded in two volumes, 
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THE CULTIVATOR. 
TO IMPROVE THE SOIL AND THE MIN'D. 
Hints for July. 
From a belief of its utility, confirmed by several 
years’ practice, we earnestly recommend a trial, to 
those who have not adopted the practice, of curing 
their clover hay, and such as abounds in clover, in 
grass COCKS, instead of spreading and curing it in 
the old way. It will save labor, save hay, and add 
much to the value of that which is housed. As soon 
as the grass has become wilted in the swath, and the 
external moisture evaporated, and by all means be¬ 
fore any of the leaves become dry and crumble, put 
the grass in grass cocks, as small at the base as pos¬ 
sible, not to exceed a yard in diameter, and taper 
them off, by adding forkfulls, to the apex, whidj may 
be four to five feet from the ground. Leave them 
undisturbed at least 48 hours, and until you are pret¬ 
ty certain of sun or a drying wind; then open the 
cocks, and if once turned, the curing will be com¬ 
plete in three or four hours, scarcely a leaf will be 
wasted, and the hay will be bright, fragrant, and will 
keep well. 
Cut small grain before it becomes dead ripe, for the 
following reasons: 1. If omitted, had weather may 
intervene and delay the harvest too long. 2. Dead 
ripe grain wastes much in harvesting. 3. Early cut 
grain makes the best flour. 4. When any portion of 
the culm or straw has ripened, or become dry, there 
is no further supply of nourishment from the soil; and 
the grain then gets as much food from the cut as it 
could get from the standing straw. Hence, when 
the straw turns yellow under the ear, however green 
the rest part of it may be, the grain should be cut. 
And when the straw becomes badly affected with 
rust or mildew, the sooner it is cut the better. 
Do not put the plough into your corn, if you have, 
as you may have for a trifle, a cultivator or horse- 
hoe. It severs the roots, which are the mouths of 
the plants, turns up and wastes the manure, which 
should always be applied to this crop, and deprives the 
plants of more than half their pasture. HillPyour corn 
but slightly. Hilling renders it more liable to suffer 
from drought, and induces it to throw out a new set 
of roots, the old ones being in a manner useless, by 
being buried too deep, and beyond the reach of the 
influence of heat and air, the indispensable agents of 
nutrition and vegetable growth. 
Rural Embellishment. 
There are few things better calculated to attach us 
to our homes, —where the social virtues love to con¬ 
gregate, and to dispense their blessings—than rural 
embellishments. This is true whether we apply the 
term to our neighborhood or individual abode.— 
The public grounds about the great cities of the old 
continent, some of which comprise an area of five 
hundred acres, are the theme of general admiration, 
the theatres of healthful exercise and recreation, and 
the sources of high intellectual enjoyment. The les¬ 
ser towns and villages, even of our own country, owe 
more of their charm and interest to the trees and 
plants which embellish their squares, streets and 
grounds, in the eye of a man of taste, than to any os¬ 
tentatious show of brick and mortar—more to the 
beauties of nature than to the works of man. Nay, 
the highest efforts of the human intellect are in vain 
put in requisition to imitate the handy-works of the 
Creator. And when we come down to the suburban 
residence, and even to the unostentatious abode of 
the farmer, how are their beauties heightened, and 
their value enhanced, by a screen of ornamental trees, 
and a well kept garden. 
Loudon tells us, that in travelling from Strasburgh 
to Munich, he passed through a continued avenue of 
fruit and forest trees, planted on both sides of the 
highway, for more than one hundred miles. Who 
that has passed through New-England, in summer, 
has not admired, in some of the villages, the beauti¬ 
ful trees with which they are in a measure enshroud¬ 
ed. The great objection, to planting is, that one may 
not live to enjoy -the fruit or the shade of the trees 
which he plants. Such an objection is unworthy of 
- :f n rinpR r, 0 t. have regard to 
* > 
and is, oesides, affecting to flola a shorier tenure of 
life than all of us hope for, and most of us expect.— 
Twenty years ago, at forty years of age, we com¬ 
menced the cultivation of what was termed a barren 
untameable common, not an acre of which had been 
cultivated, and on which neither a tree nor shrub had 
ever been planted by the hand of man. We have 
now growing in our court yard, comprising about half 
an acre, and in the highway in front of it, fifty spe¬ 
cies of forest and ornamental trees, many of them for¬ 
ty and fifty feet high, more than fifty speices of orna¬ 
mental shrubs, not including the rose, besides a vast 
number of bulbous and herbaceous ornamental and 
flowering perennial plants—the greatest number of 
which, in all their variety and hue of foliage, flowers 
and fruit, may be embraced in a single view from the 
piazza. Most of our fruits have been raised by us 
from the seed, or propagated by grafting or budding. 
Yet we can enumerate more than two hundred kinds, 
including varieties, which we are now in the habit of 
gathering annually from trees, vines, &c. of our own 
planting. We feel grateful to God for these rich and 
abundant blessings, and for the impulse which prompt¬ 
ed our labor. We have adduced our own example, 
not in a spirit of vaunting, but to convince the young 
and the middle aged, that there is abundant reason 
for them to plant, with the hope of enjoying the fruits 
of their labor. The old should plant, as an obligation 
they owe to society, and for the requital of which 
they have but a short period allowed them. 
Our attention has been particularly drawn to this 
subject at the present inapposite season, by reading 
the report and constitution of the Bangor association, 
termed the Ornamental Tree Society, which has been 
recently formed, and whose object is the embellish¬ 
ment of their city by planting out forest trees. The 
constitution requires, that “ every member shall him¬ 
self set out, or cause to be set out, one or more or¬ 
namental trees, on such of the public streets or squares 
of the city as he may elect”—the kind of tree, and 
distance of planting, to be determined by the direc¬ 
tors. Accompanying the report, in the New-England 
Farmer, are two letters from Gen. Dearborn, on orna¬ 
mental planting, evincing much experience and good 
taste in the matter. 
The General considers the planting of only one kind 
of tree as evincing a bad taste. 
“ The monotony of appearance, which lines, or clumps, 
of the same tree produce, is to be avoided, and a pic¬ 
turesque and agreeable aspect obtained, by increasing 
the varieties; for as the periods of their foliation are so 
very different, as well as the tints of green when in ve¬ 
getation, and the remarkable autumnal changes quite 
as dissimilar, they are presenting an ever varying, yet 
always pleasing and interesting scene. Besides, we 
have so many magnificent species of native trees, which 
flourish luxuriantly, even in the most exposed situations, 
that I have never been able to divine, why one particu¬ 
lar tree should be so universally selected, as shades, or 
for ornament, not only around private dwellings, but 
for all public places.'- As well might all flowers be ex¬ 
cluded from our gardens, but the rose, or the lilac, and 
all fruits from our orchards but the apple.” 
“For your streets I recommend the alternate plant¬ 
ing out of rock maples, elms, white ash, white maple, 
basswood, beech, and red, white and other oaks. [We 
will add to the list of native trees the button wood, tu¬ 
lip tree, or whitewood, and cucumber tree, ( magnolia 
accuminata,) for the city and village, and the black 
walnut, butternut and honey locust for the country.]— 
The rock maple is certainly one of our most superb 
trees, and in my own estimation superior to the elm— 
Its form and foliage, with the splendid changes of its 
autumnal aspect, are of surpassing beauty. The bass¬ 
wood, (Tillia Americana,) is the American linden, or 
lime, and much superior, for its size, graceful form, 
and large leaves, to the much' celebrated and favorite 
European species. It is easy to transplant, and of ra¬ 
pid growth. The oaks are of rapid growth, and one 
renowned as the name of England, and have been the 
choice trees of all the celebrated nations of antiquity. 
The occidental plane, or American buttonwood, is also 
a finer tree than the oriential variety, which was so 
much admired and cultivated by the Asiatics and Ro¬ 
mans. 
For public grounds and squares, the General recom¬ 
mends, also, the white pine, cedar, hemlock, spruce, 
and we would add the fir, the larch, and a sprinlking 
of foreign trees, as the English and Scotch elms, lar’ K 
abeel, horse chesnut, mountain ash, &c. wl 
be obtained at the nurseries. He reform 
9 tiicU, tllL 
IcLivt ii Up U.O tJilUiG 8-b jlOS 1 * 
sible; that the trees be not more than two inches in 
diameter; that the tops be not cut or mutilated.— 
“Do not,” says he, “ cut off a single twig, save such 
as may be within four or five feet of the ground.”— 
He also directs that large and deep holes be made for 
the reception of the trees, and tnat these holes be 
filled with the best mould, to be well trod down and 
watered after the tree is planted. In regard to coni¬ 
ferous and other evergreens, Gen. Dearborn recom¬ 
mends, that they be taken from open grounds—(nur¬ 
series are the best,)—all the limbs carefully preserv¬ 
ed, and as much of the dirt about the roots retained 
as possible. “The best time,” he continues, “to 
transplant all the evergreen trees is later than that 
for the decideous, and is just before they commence ve- 
galion.” These directions are all good; yet we 
would amend, or rather add, to the one which regards 
the time for transplanting evergreens. We trans¬ 
plant themyws^ after vegetation has commenced —have 
transplanted in July, with entire success—and our 
friend Michael Floy, of New-York, a professional nur¬ 
seryman, prefers the month of August. He showed 
us the other day, several large firs, which had been 
planted at that season, in front of his grounds at Har¬ 
lem, all of which lived and did well. We think ever¬ 
greens should he planted when the tree is growing — 
as the foliage requires a constant supply of nourish¬ 
ment through the roots; and if the functions of 
these are dormant, as they are likely to be when 
evergreens are transplanted when vegetation is at 
rest, the foliage is apt to wither, and the plant to 
die: and the only danger to be feared from trans¬ 
planting these trees at midsummer, is that which ari¬ 
ses from excessive evaporation. To guard against 
this, as much earth should he lifted with the roots as 
is practicable,—the holes for their reception should 
be large and deep, filled to the proper height for the 
roots of the tree with loose mould, and well saturated 
with water; the surface around the tree should be well 
mulched with litter, and this well wet, and superfici¬ 
ally covered with earth, and the plants occasionally 
watered if the weather is hot and dry. 
As to the effect of planting, upon the beauty of the 
landscape, Mr. A. J. Downing, in a well written arti¬ 
cle upon this subject, justly remarks— 
“ Many a dreary and barren prospect maybe render¬ 
ed interesting—many a natural or artificial deformity 
hidden, and the effects of almost every landscape may 
be improved, simply by the judicious employment of 
trees. The most fertile countries would appear but a 
desert.without them, and the most picturesque scenery 
in every part of the globe has owed to them its highest 
charm. Added to this, by recent improvements in the 
art of transplanting, the ornamental planter of the pre¬ 
sent day may realize, almost immediately, what was 
formerly the slow and regular production of years.” 
■ Mr. Downing is about to publish a work on our fo¬ 
rest trees, and ornamental planting, a task for which 
he is eminently qualified, by good taste, science and 
practical knowledge. 
As to the effect of planting and gardening, upon 
the body and mind of those who eng’age in these pur¬ 
suits, we offer the following extracts from Loudon’s 
Suburban Gardener, and we recommend them to the 
special notice of all gentlemen who are troubled with 
dyspeptic or hypochondriac affections. 
“There is,” says our author, “a great deal of enjoy¬ 
ment to be derived, from performing the different ope¬ 
rations of gardening, independently of the health result¬ 
ing from this kind of exercise. To labor for the sake 
of arriving at a result, and to be successful in attaining 
it, are, as cause and effect, attended by a certain degree of 
satisfaction to the mind, however simple or rude the 
labor may be, and however unimportant the result ob¬ 
tained. To he convinced of this, rve have only to ima¬ 
gine ourselves to be employed in any labor from which 
no result ensues, hut that of fatiguing the body, or 
wearying the mind : the turning of a wheel, for exam¬ 
ple, that is connected with no machinery ; or, if con 
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