232 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
All Sorts. 
RECENT STATION BULLETINS. 
Crab Grabs, Sorghum, Clover, Etc.— 
Bulletin 1, Volume 5, Tennessee Station 
(Knoxville), treats of a vaiiety of matters. 
Crab Grass has been generally regarded as 
a bad weed, to be fought and Rilled. As a 
matter of fact it makes excellent hay or 
pasture, sweet, soft and nutritious. It 
does not yield a heavy crop of hay, but it 
is a tough, active plant, “ doing well ” 
where some other hay plants would die. 
Some Southern farmers say that “sorghum 
will kill cows.” Instead of killing ani¬ 
mals at the station, it did them good. 
Most animals like sweet foods. Mules and 
cows prefer sorghum to clover hay. Store 
cattle eat it up clean when fed whole. 
Hogs merely chew the stalks and suck out 
the juice. In fact, for all feeding pur¬ 
poses, the stalks of sorghum are preferred 
to those of corn. Sorghum is a more ex¬ 
haustive crop than corn. In comparing 
the values of the first and second crops of 
clover a great difference was found in favor 
of the first. The first crop was more palat¬ 
able to the stock, “ went further,” and 
was more easily eaten. Other matters 
treated in this bulletin are : “ Black Rot 
of Plum and Cherry.” “Pruning Fruit 
Trees, and Glassy Winged Soldier Bug.” 
Sugar on a Small Scale.— The Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture at Washington issues 
a leaflet fully describing the process of 
making sugar from sorghum in a small 
way. The whole process from planting the 
seed to evaporating the juice is described. 
The Louisiana Sugar Station (Audubon 
Park, La.) issues Bulletins 5 and 6, one 
giving an excellent account of the opera¬ 
tions necessary in making cane sugar on 
small plantations, and the other detailing 
some field experiments with sugar cane to 
determine best varieties and best manures. 
Flax Culture.— Bulletin 13 of the Min¬ 
nesota Station (St. Anthony Park) gives a 
very complete account of the culture of 
flax, also an interesting article on the 
“ Structure of the Flax Stem.” Mr. Lug¬ 
ger, the author of this bulletin, has had 
practical experience with flax growing in 
Westphalia. To the hundreds who hope to 
see a revival of the linen interests of this 
country this bulletin will be specially in¬ 
teresting. 
Fertilizers, Cotton, Vegetables.— 
Bulletin 3, Georgia Station (Experiment 
P. O.) contains an account of experiments 
conducted to determine what the soil of 
the station farm needed to produce a good 
crop of cotton and also what form of nitro¬ 
gen was most effective. The substances 
used were kainit, superphosphate, nitrate 
of soda, cotton-seed meal, nitrate of potasb, 
sulphate of ammonia, dried blood, crushed 
cotton seed and stable manure. These 
were made into 28 different combinations. 
The soil was apparently well “ worn out; ” 
It needed both potash and phosphoric acid 
and did little or nothing without nitrogen. 
Stable manure gave excellent results and 
nitrate of soda gave best results of any of 
the forms of nitrogen. It was also found 
that it paid better to apply the fertilizer at 
different times during the growing season 
of the crop than to apply it all at once. 
The sweet potato is highly prized as being 
perhaps the most useful vegetable crop for 
Southern farmers. It will produce a 
greater amount of food suitable for man 
and beast per acre than any other plant, 
while the vines are second only to cow 
peas as a material for green manuring. 
Tests have been begun for determining the 
best fertilizers and methods of culture. It 
is concluded that plants set two by four 
feet apart gave the best yields and that the 
yield is largely governed by the amount of 
potash in the fertilizer—the most effective 
for that soil containing eight per cent 
of phosphoric acid, three per cent of am¬ 
monia and 10 per cent of potash. 
Brown Grape Rot, Corn Smut.— These 
vegetable diseases are exhaustively treated 
in Bulletin 10, Volume 3, Ohio Station 
(Columbus). All who are interested in 
spraying trees and vines should read this 
bulletin, as it gives clear and full direc¬ 
tions with good illustrations. The Downy 
Mildew or Brown Rot of the grape can be 
checked or destroyed by spraying with Eau 
Celeste—sulphate of copper and ammonia 
dissolved in water. The treatise on Corn 
Smut by Prof. Bessey contains a summary 
of what has been discovered regarding this 
disease. 
Black Knot of Plum and Cherry.— 
Bulletin 78 of the New Jersey Station (New 
Brunswick) is an appeal to the public to 
destroy black knot. Dr. Halsted is con¬ 
vinced that the time Is ripe for something 
systematic and thorough to be done in 
eradicating this fatal disease. In order 
that the public may know just what they 
are trying to destroy, he gives a life history 
of the disease and the efforts made to 
eradicate it. Complete illustrations of the 
various stages of the disease are given so 
that the reader cannot help understanding 
the matter. The only way to drive it out 
of the State is for farmers to make a con¬ 
certed action and absolutely destroy all 
infected trees. When a tree is badly in¬ 
fested it is safer to chop it right down and 
burn it up than to try to prune the knots 
away or paint with turpentine or oil. It 
makes little difference how hard the intel¬ 
ligent fruit grower may work if his lazy 
and thoughtless neighbor persists in letting 
the knots remain. Down with the black 
knot! 
Forestry.— Bulletin 20 of the South 
Dakota Station (Brookings) details the 
experiments made to determine the best 
trees and tree cultivation needed in the 
production of Dakota groves and wind¬ 
breaks. The best trees for quick growth 
and dense shade are the Box Elder and 
Silver Maple. For slower growth and yet 
more value, Ash (Fraxinus veridis and 
F. Americana), White Elm and Black 
Wild Cherry are recommended, and for 
deep soils in the southern part of the State 
Black Walnut and Butternut. The hints 
on planting and culture are such that 
every one interested in Western tree plant¬ 
ing should read the bulletin. 
Canadian Barley For England.— Bul¬ 
letin 9 of the Canadian Experiment Farm 
(Ottawa, Canada), gives an account of the 
efforts made to grow a two rowed barley 
suitable for the English trade. In Febru¬ 
ary 1890 it was decided by the Canadian 
Government to appropriate $25,000 for the 
purchase of two-rowed barley in England to 
be disposed of for seed to Canadian farm¬ 
ers. It was then concluded that the Mc¬ 
Kinley Bill would, when in force, exclude 
most of the Canadian barley from the 
United States, and the Canadians decided 
to try to grow the barley called for by Eng¬ 
lish brewers. At least 10,000 bushels of a 
two-rowed variety known as Prize Prolific, 
were purchased in England and sold to 
farmers at cost—an effort being made to 
send it to all parts of the Dominion. Re¬ 
ports were obtained from 1,052 farmers lo¬ 
cated in all the provinces, and 320 of them 
are printed in this bulletin. They are gen¬ 
erally good and a conservative estimate 
seems to warrant the conclusion that the 
new barley will prove a success, increasing 
the yield per acre and providing a grain 
that will find favor in the English market. 
While the bulletin is prepared particularly 
for Canadian readers, it will be interesting 
and instructive to all barley growers. 
Director Saunders says that the prevailing 
impression that two-rowed barley must 
weigh 56 pounds to the bushel In order to 
sell in England, is an error. Any barley 
will sell there; but the worse the grade 
the lower the price. Inferior Canadian 
barley must compete in the English mar¬ 
ket with the inferior grain from Russia 
and other European countries. It costs as 
much to ship a bushel of Inferior barley to 
England as it does to ship one that is of 
high grade. In speaking of the possibil¬ 
ities of Canadian-grown barley in the 
English market he says: 
As a rule, the heavier and plumper the 
barley the better figure it will bring, the 
malting barleys varying In weight from 52 
to 56, and in some cases to 57 pounds per 
bushel. There are, however, other points 
besides weight which influence buyers in 
the choice of barley for malting, such as 
mellowness and thinness of skin : but the 
full value of barley from any new source 
can be determined best by the character of 
the beer which results from the brewing. 
Chemical analyses have shown that barley 
of high quality is uniformly low in the 
proportion it contains of albuminoids or 
nitrogenous products; aud as it has been 
shown that the six-rowed barleys grown in 
Ontario have a low proportion of nitrogen, 
and hence are higher in quality than the 
same class of barleys grown in the United 
States or Russia, and as it is altogether 
probable that this condition of the grain is 
brought about by climatic influences, 
there are good grounds for hope that two- 
rowed barleys grown under the same favor¬ 
able conditions will possess that low pro¬ 
portion of nitrogen which will eventually 
prove an important factor in determining 
their value. 
Florida Tobacco, Weeds, Etc.— Bulle¬ 
tin 12 of the Florida Station (Lake City, 
Fla.) gives a long argument in favor of 
growing tobacco in that State. There 
seems no reason why Florida tobacco 
should not equal the Cuban article. It is 
probable that a good deal of Florida to¬ 
bacco is now sold as “pure Havana.” 
Several pages of this bulletin are occupied 
by the agent of the F. C. & P. R. R. in 
telling how to plant, cultivate, cure and 
sell tobacco, and the facts given are prob¬ 
ably more complete than the Station could 
obtain in a single year’s experiments. The 
advantage of the tobacco crop will be that 
a vegetable grower can make a paying crop 
of tobacco after his vegetables are gathered 
and shipped, thus making his land do 
double work. One curious fact is that the 
tobacco plants are attacked by the flea 
beetle, while in the North we are urged to 
use the tobacco decoction for fighting this 
pest. Rice promises to be a valuable crop 
for Florida. The station concludes that 
on the flat lands found on most Florida 
farms, rice will pay better than cotton. 
The chemist of the station has been an¬ 
alyzing weeds to learn what their ashes 
contain. He finds the common Beggar- 
weed and Rag-weed very rich in potash and 
phosphoric acid. It is surprising to learn 
that the ash of the latter contains 9J^ per 
cent of phosphoric acid and 31 per cent of 
potash—a ton of such ashes giving a valua¬ 
tion of $34 95. The trouble is that it will 
take about 30 tons of green Rag-weed to 
make one ton of ash, but something might 
be done with this crop as a green manure 
if plowed under before the seeds are ripe. 
“ When we find a paper that has back¬ 
bone enough to tell the truth, let us 
have backbone enough to help it along."— 
L. W. LIGHTLY. 
MARCH 21 
Advertisers treat all correspondents 
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