VOLUME III. NO. 16. 
ROCHESTER, N. Y.—THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 1852. 
Jlgrirultnral Dqiarttnmt. 
PUOGKESS AND SMPJSO VENtKNT. 
—.. —---*Y 
CORN CULTURE - PREMIUM CROPS. 
. - 
Large crops of corn are grown only on 
naturally fertilo soils, or on those artificially 
Jj enriched by the plentiful application of ma- 
J nures. “The very structure and size of the 
I plants — their habits and rapid growth— 
! would tell us such is the fact, if costly expe- 
I ricnce had not long since convinced all ob- 
Ji serving corn growers of this truth. Unless 
| | one’s soil is really rich in organic as well as 
inorganic manures—in the elements of which 
| to form the grain—to sustain the stalk in its 
wholeness, and enable it to elaborate and 
perfect its seed, disappointment must neces- 
I sarily follow every attempt to grow large, or 
| even comparatively profitable crops of corn.” 
KI If this bo true, and we beliovo every candid 
11 farmer will admit it, it is then the duty and 
interest of every one who desires to raise 
j corn to make the accumulation of manure a 
! chief principle in his system of farming. 
YVe havo again and again referred our 
| readers to the subject of making, saving and 
I; applying manures, as the great means of 
j | drawing profitable returns from their farms 
| in the shape of large crops—and we propose 
j in our present article, to give the mode of 
preparation and culture pursued by those 
I most successful in growing corn,—condens- 
j ing it from the statements of thoso who havo 
• taken premiums at our State and County 
i Fairs on this crop. 
In 1850, the State Ag. Society awarded the 
first premium to 1 *. Crispel, Jr., of Ulster 
[ Co., on two acres of corn yielding a fraction 
I over one hundred bushels per acre, and af- 
j fording a profit of $53,27 per acre. The 
i condition ot the soil on which this crop was 
| raised, and the method of its cultivation, is 
j given as follows :—It was a meadow lot 
j which had not been plowed since 1837, and 
been mowed every year since that'time. It 
was manured with about fifteen loads of ma- 
! nuro (from horse stable, and dry manure 
from the barn yard.) to the acre; the grass, 
which was mostly clover, (the Timothy hav- 
I ing been taken out by the grub-wonn two 
j years before,) was permitted to grow without 
being pastured until the 28th of May, when 
it was plowed in with the manure. The 
plowing was about eight inches deep, witli 
a lapped furrow neatly turned over. It was 
harrowed down and marked for planting on 
the 29th, and planted on the 30th day of May. 
It was marked about two feet eight inch¬ 
es distant both ways; planted in hills. The 
corn camo up in about five days aflor plant¬ 
ing, and before cultivating, there was about 
two hundred bushels of leached ashes put 
on, sown broadcast over the land. The num¬ 
ber of kernels dropped in each hill was three 
to four,. When the corn was large enough 
to be seen through the rows, it was worked 
with a cultivator both ways, which cleared 
out the land without any booing, and when 
the corn got about a foot high it was plowed 
and then hoed and thinned out. The variety 
of corn planted was the small eight-rowed 
yellow,—a little less than half a bushel 
planted on the two acres. This statement, 
with farther particulars, may be found by 
reference to page 142 of the Society’s Transd¬ 
uctions for 1850. 
At the same time, the second premium 
was awarded to Robert Eels, of Oneida Co., 
on two acres which yielded 84£ bushels per 
acre, and gave a profit of $30,7.9 per acre. 
Ilis statement of soil and cultivation is sub¬ 
stantially as follows:—The soil is a gravelly 
loam, in good condition; with a previous 
crop of hay for six successive years, without 
manure. The land was plowed early in 
April, soon after the frost was out, (and it 
froze up again after plowing;) it was plowed 
eight inches deep, twelve wide, furrows lap¬ 
ped. The land was harrowed and cultivated 
previous to planting, marked one way, threo 
foot four inches apart, except three-fourths 
of an aero, which was furrowed with a plow, 
deep as possible without tearing up the turf. 
Hills two feet six inches apart, five to seven 
kernels to each hill, the number of stalks 
left, four. The corn was planted the 15th, 
16th and 17th of May, and appeared above 
ground in six days. The variety is (he 
twelve and sixteen rowed Dutton corn.— 
There was eight loads of hog manure used 
on the three-fourths of an acre furrowed 
with the plow—put in the hills; no other 
manure used. Hoed twice, cultivated twice 
in each row, before hoeing. 
Mr. E. M. Bradley, of East Bloomfield, 
Ontario Co., who took the second premium 
for farm management in 1850, has been very 
successful in raising corn as in every thing 
else, so we will give a condensed statement 
of his method, which we find pp. 193-4 of the 
Transactions for 1850. His crop is from 
seventy to one hundred bushels per acre.— 
Corn is planted upon highly manured greon- 
sward, plowed six or eight inches deep, thor¬ 
oughly harrowed, marked in straight lines 
three feet apart each way. Five kernels 
are planted in each hill, care being taken 
that they are not all thrown together, but 
separated a few inches apart, and covered 
with nothing but mellow dirt, ono and a half 
inches deep. The usual time of planting is 
about the 10 th of May. When the corn first 
appears, a tablespoonful of common wood 
ashes is put upon each hill. When the com 
is about two inches high it is cultivated both 
ways of tho field, and hoed, care being taken 
that the grass is perfectly cut up, and the 
dirt loosoned about the stalks of corn. When 
the first hoeing is completed, a teaspoonful 
of plaster is put upon each hill. In about 
two weeks from the first hoeing, and before 
it needs it, it is cultivated and hoed again._ 
In two or threo weeks more it is cultivated 
and hoed the third and last time, and plas¬ 
tered as after tho first hoeing. 
All these statements go to show tho ne¬ 
cessity of high manuring and thorough cul¬ 
ture in tho production of the corn crop.— 
Our agricultural friends will see how pre¬ 
mium crops are raised, and how profitable 
farming is carried on when, as in theso cases, 
from $30 to $50 is realized as clear profit 
from a single acre. 
In this county as in most other parts of i 
the State, the farmer regards the soil as his j 
capital, upon which to do business. No I 
error could be more fatal. The best farm 
in the county, if constantly crapped without 
being thoroughly manured, will year by 
year becoino impoverished, till at length it 
will not pay for tillage. Tho manure pro¬ 
duced on a farm is the true investment upon 
which money is to be made, if made at all, 
in farming. It is true that to raise crops 
requires a soil, but it bears a closer relation 
to the store house occupied by the merchant, 
than to the goods upon which tho money is 
to be made. Gurdon Evans. 
BROAD “HINTS” IN SEASON. 
THE POTATO CROP. 
NOTES ON MADISON COUNTY. 
Like most hilly regions Madison County 
as a whole presents to tho farmer a diversi¬ 
ty of soils, often varying considerably in 
short distances. On a single farm is often 
found a portion of alluvial mould—gravel, 
formed from a deep bed of transported, 
worn and rounded pebbles, and tho close, 
clayey hard pan intermixed with fragments 
from the subjacent rocks. These three va¬ 
rieties in fact, will embrace the greater part 
of the tillable surface of tho county. 
Thus provided with so great a variety of 
soils, tho farmer of this county is able to 
cultivate successfully a greater .variety of 
crops, and adapt his produce to tho de¬ 
mands of a varying market, more success¬ 
fully than in regions where a more uniform 
soil prevails. 
A few items from the report of the last 
census, will give an idea of the principal 
crops cultivated, and also show conclusively 
that the soil and climate is adapted to a 
wide range of staplo produce. 
Oats produced in 1849, 553,435 bushels. 
Corn, “ “ 402,816 “ 
Barley, “ “ 262,914 « 
Wheat, “ “ 117,549 “ 
Cheese, “ “ 2,309,076 pounds. 
Butter, “ “ 1,621,888 “ 
Wool, « “ 306,003 “ 
Hops, “ “ 639,915 “ 
Population, 43,081 
Tho wheat produced gives a little less 
than three bushels apiece to man, woman 
and child, which, with the corn and buck¬ 
wheat consumed, probably very nearly sup¬ 
plies the homo demand. 
1 l ie surplus product for market is prin¬ 
cipally oats, corn, barley, cheese, butter, 
wool and hops. Though a large part of the 
corn is converted into boef and pork before 
it is sold, and it will doubtless be greatly 
to the advantage of the farmer when a 
still larger portion is fed on the farm, 
for by this means a cash return nearly or 
quite equal will bo realized, while the in¬ 
crease of valuable manure gives the feeding 
of coarse grain a decided advantage ovor 
selling it. 
The failure of the potato crop is now very 
seriously felt in this part of the county, and 
although I cannot hope to throw any light on 
its causes, yet I will say a word or two on the 
important subject. 
1 st. It does not seem to result from tho 
deterioration of tho soil, or the absence of 
any of the chemical ingredients in the soil. 
We have an abundance of illustrations bo- 
fore the public on this subject, but it may 
not be amiss if I add another. My neigh¬ 
bor, Gen. R., informs mo that he recently 
prepared an aero of new virgin soil, of ex¬ 
traordinary richness, and placed it in fine 
condition, and last spring made a selection 
of six of tho best kinds of potatoes, so as to 
be certain of a good crop in some part of 
the field. After planting them in fine order 
and hoeing them in the best manner, at last 
he harvested them; and lo from the whole 
acre ho obtained less than 25 bushels. An 
almost total failure, and yet multitudes of 
crops resulted in precisely the same way in 
old and new soils. Tho soil was new and 
full of every element to insure success, and 
yet it failed. 
2 nd. It does not seem to be tho potato 
rot, but the potato blight which now injures 
tho crop. Very few potatoes have rotted 
in the field or in the cellar during tho past 
season in this vicinity. So that when we 
are advertised of a new kind of potatoes 
for seed that will not rot, we see it does not 
reach our case. Most all of our potatoes 
harvested last season, and now on hand, are 
sound—often not a single rotten one. 
About tho time that the early potatoes 
mado their appearance on our tables, our 
whole potato crop was struck with a sudden 
blight on tho leaf, and soon tho whole top 
became dead and dry, and of course only a 
very small number of small potatoes, in the 
hill when the blight struck tho tops, were in 
tho hill at harvest. Some of the Early 
Shaws, and a similar kind, produced about 
here, 200 to 250 bushels of potatoes to the 
acre. Even a tew” Mercers, cultivated and 
hurried forward in the garden also bore well, 
but I cannot learn of a single potato of 
which tho tops did not die on the appear¬ 
ance of this fatal blight. 
L hose early potatoes are now in mv cel¬ 
lar in fino condition, and havo been in no 
wise affected by tho rot. If the tops of any 
variety escaped it has not come to my no¬ 
tice. From all this I fear new or good kinds 
will not reach our case, unless they are early, 
and so escape; but it is known that those 
early potatoes are not equal in quality to the 
Carters, Mercers, &c. 
Now a word as to reported remedies. One 
man says lime prevented, what: the blight ? 
No, the rot. But tho rot did not this sea¬ 
son seriously trouble us. Another used 
ashes, and had a good crop. Another used 
old tan bark, with the like success;‘and 
another used a super phosphate of lime 
compost, and doubled his crop. But was 
not all theso successes measurably owing to 
better care and special attention hurrying 
tho crop to maturity before the blight struck 
tho vines ? That is the question. 
Having thus opened the subject I will 
leave it where I found it, for I am unable to 
proceed farther. Who can give us moro 
light ?—not theories but facts. r. g. p. 
Palmyra, N. Y., March, 1852. 
Eds. Rural :—As tho season for spring- 
operations is at hand, I would like to state 
to your readers some of the practices in 
vogue in some parts of the country, and rec¬ 
ommend their adoption as a matter of or¬ 
nament and refined taste, calculated to im¬ 
press the traveler and stranger with a favor¬ 
able opinion of the state of improvement 
in society where such practices prevail. 
The spring of tho year is the time for a 
general clearing out and cleaning up, and in 
doing so, I would recommend to your read¬ 
ers, as a most beautiful thing, that in clean¬ 
ing out cellars, they carry all the old cab¬ 
bage, onions, potatoes, rotten apples, and 
our failures, quite as well as wo do of our 
other refuse vegetables, into the public high- j success, for if we did, that would show too 
way, immediately before their dwellings._! P lainl y that our scientific agriculturists, tho 
It is ornamental; and that is not all. people 
will know you have had an abundance of 
such things, and some to spare. And to let 
your neighbors know that you have cleaned 
up, empty the straw beds into, or at least 
beside the road, and to let them know that 
you have had some meat, and that your gar¬ 
den needs no manuring, throw all the bris¬ 
tles, hair, bones, hogs’ feet and ears, into the 
road, and if there is a mud hole in the road, 
fill it with old boots and shoes'and chip ma¬ 
nure. 
1 rim your orchards and throw the brush 
into the road to season two or three years 
before you burn it, and in the meantime it 
will be a fine place for weeds to grow and 
seed; and if you have any screenings of 
grain, foul seeds, &c., about your barn, in¬ 
stead ol grinding or boiling it for feed, throw | 
that into tho road also, and your neighbors ! 
will stand a chance to get some if they drive i 
through it with their teams and wagons. As ' 
soon as the snow is fairly gone, put the hog 
trough in the road ; and turn tho hogs there, ' n a n ^cely ridged up, old fashion, and 
and by no means be so foolish as to put wires rat ^ er dry at the time. Mr. F-was an 
j in their noses; if you do they cannot work °* d Connecticut man, and had been learned 
their part of the highway tax. And. fur- I ^ rea, d the earth on tho corn after plant- 
ther along in the season, carefully avoid cut- ’ n g to keep the crows from pulling it up, 
ting any foul or noxious weeds, if they are i ^ ut ^ a ^ wa y s lived where there were no 
only on the road side of the fence. 1 crows > aru l h a d been taught differently. So 
And now, kind reader, the summing up of j * to ^ ^im to keep his big feet off the hills, 
the whole matter is simply this :—Any old l 50011 so long accustomed to that 
rubbish you can get into the road, (provid¬ 
ed you do not interfere with the carriage 
track,) is out of your way, and it is nobody’s 
way of planting that the moro ho tried to 
keep off', tho moro he would tread it. So 
after scolding for awhile to no purpose, I 
business but your own. And if any of the j £ ave ^ U P anc l called it an experiment, confi- 
mushroom, fancy farmers, call you to an ac- I dent at tho time, that tho result would be, 
count for your slovenishness, tell them you ! tdie ^ oss oi nearly one-half of the crop, aiuf 
care more about dollars and cents than vou 
do for morals, fino tasto, and improvement. 
B—ville, April, 1852. g, 3 . 
WINTERING STOCK ON CARROTS. 
The first drawn milk contains only 5, the 
second 8, and tho fifth 17 per cent, of cream. 
Messrs. Editors:— Mr. L. A. Sanford, 
of Gaines has wintered his cattle and horses 
in a manner which I think well worth the 
attention of farmers in general. He raised 
a fine crop of carrots, and secured them in 
a cellar near his barn, and saved also all the 
chaff from his wheat and other grain. IIo 
has one of Emory’s railroad horse powers on 
his barn floor, with which he runs an apple 
grater (such as is used in cider mills) placed 
over a box of suitable size to hold the amount 
of chaff and grated carrots wanted at one j 
time, which are mixed well together before 
feeding. 1 Iis horses and cattle are very fond 
of it, and do well on it, I am told. His 
stock looks exceedingly well this spring. 
I see no good reason why the same course 
may not be pursued profitably with other 
kinds of roots. In this way a considerable 
stock of cattle may bo wintered with the 
produce of a small piece of ground. Mr. A. 
Sanford, of Barre, informed mo that ho had 
raised, of tho long orange carrot, twelve 
hundred bushels on one acre, which, if fed 
as above described, would winter quite a 
stock of horses and cattle. He informed 
me also, that some of the carrots that grew 
on that acre, were eighteen inches in cir¬ 
cumference. Perhaps there are many, far¬ 
mers who pay moro for mill-feed than it 
would cost to raise all the roots thoy would 
need to feed their stock in the winter. 
J. Sibley. 
Eagle Harbor, March 27th, 1852. 
Necessity never makes a good bargain. 
that proved to bo the case. But unoxpect- 
j edly to me, the corn that he planted came 
j U P well, grew finely, and produced a good 
j crop. Of that planted by myself, only a 
, part came up at all, and that not until sev- 
1 eral weeks afterwards. It was backward and 
! feeble during the season, and finally was a 
j subject for Jack Frost in the fall. Since 
; that time I have never told Mr. F_or 
| anybody else to keep their feet off tho hills 
when planting, and think I never shall, 
especially if the ground is dry. 
Experiment Second. —Ono field of ten 
acres and one ot three acres, were to bo put 
into wheat. The large field was plowed with 
a long team, but as it would bo inconvenient 
to plow the small field with the long team, 
a short one was tried by way of experiment. 
The result was the wet weather, Hessian fly, 
winter and rust, owed the field plowed with 
the short team, such a spite that they claim¬ 
ed nearly all the wheat, leaving only four or 
five bushels to the acre ; whilst at the same 
time, they were so liberal as to leavo the 
larger field untouched, yielding nearly forty 
bushels per acre. Since that time the long 
team has been used, no matter how small 
the field, and Messrs. Wet Weather, Winter, 
11} and Rust, have kept on their own side 
of the fence, where thoy could do some dain- 
ago if they made an effort. 
Experiment Third.—I once read in tho 
papers that tho best way to set fruit troes 
was to dig a largo deep hole, and fill it near¬ 
ly full with all manner of rich stuff; and then 
set tho troes over it. So I purchased about 
a dozen fine peach trees and set them as di¬ 
rected. By tho way, however, the soil was 
shallow and the subsoil ivouldhold water like 
a jug. The trees nearly all died. Since 
then, I have set many trees in tho same way, 
WHOLE NO. 120. 
UNSUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS OP A “BOCK 
FARMER.” 
A farmer of the old school says,—“You 
book farmers are all tho time reading and 
experimenting and telling about your great 
crops and your wonderful success. Now 
don't you sometimes fail, and then keep that 
matter to yourselves To this question we 
must give an affirmative answer, but we gen¬ 
erally gain lull as much knowledge by our 
unsuccessful experiments as we should if 
they had proved successful, for there is noth¬ 
ing in this “dollar” community that will fix 
facts in ones mind like relieving the pocket 
a little. And still we do not like to toll of 
editors of our agricultural journals, and our 
practical farmers (I claim to be ono of the 
latter,) do not know quite as much as they 
pretend to, or at least, that they do not know 
it all yet. 
I havo been experimenting a great many 
years, and on the whole have had good suc¬ 
cess. hut still tho list ot those experiments 
that have terminated rather unfavorably is 
quito large. From that list, a low selections 
will be taken. As I began to read the pa¬ 
pers early, of course I had a little to do with 
the “ Chinese Tree Corn” and tho “ Rohan 
Potato,” and beloro trial, believed in part, 
that the corn was “ a good prolific variety,” 
and that tho potato was “a good table po¬ 
tato, hut on trial, found that our best agri¬ 
culturists, and those that were doing most 
for the cause, would sometimes recommend 
that which was not first rate. But to the 
regular experiments. 
Experiment First.— Many years ago old 
My. I'-and myself went to planting corn 
n 
Sl 
igi 
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III 
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