142 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 
A Picked=Up Dinner. 
No Guess-Work About Potato Scab. —In my mind 
the cause of scab on potatoes is not a matter of dis¬ 
pute. I have found the worms at work, not once only, 
but several times. They are hard, yellowish creatures 
such as C. H., of Pennsylvania speaks of, from one- 
half to three-quarters of an inch in length, and about 
as large around as a coarse sewing needle, not the 
black and white corn wire worms, but things all of 
one color. They eat through the skin of the potato a 
hole just large enough to enter, and then eat out a 
cavity as large as a small pea, more or less, and then 
back out and enter a new place. I have never seen 
one over half its length in the potato, neither have I 
ever seen them at work on ripe potatoes, but always 
on those about three-quarters grown. These are the 
causes of the scab. As the potato is still growing, the 
skin over the cavity becomes dead, breaks and caves 
in, and naturally a new rough skin forms over the 
eaten surface, and becomes more or less scabby, 
according to the number of punctures; if near together, 
the scab is solid, if scattering, less so, as we often see 
a spot or two in a place. The above is no guess-work. 
I know of no sure remedy, but commercial fertilizers 
are almost one, in place of stable manures. j. s. c. 
Commercial Fertilizers on Wheat.—The Rural 
quotes .Prof. Morrow’s statements that the result of 
fertilizer experiments at various stations show that 
they have not given a profitable return for the money 
invested from 1880 to 1890. Does he not leave out of 
view that in the old cultivated soils of the East these 
fertilizers were used by good farmers as much for the 
benefit of the succeeding crop of clover as for the 
wheat itself, and that in such cases it would be 
incorrect to charge the whole cost of the fertilizer 
against the wheat crop. It seems to me that a man 
endeavoring to bring up a run-down wheat farm can¬ 
not afford to dispense with these fertilizers, at least 
with those furnishing simply potash and phosphoric 
acid, even if the increased crop of wheat did not more 
than pay the cost of their application. On such land 
he cannot hope to grow clover without supplying 
these elements of food, and without clover or peas the 
process of bringing the land up to a productive con¬ 
dition will be slow and costly. The first step in 
improving a worn soil should be to supply the mineral 
elements which clover needs and set it at work catch¬ 
ing the nitrogen. It certainly will not pay to use the 
high-priced ammoniated fertilizers on wheat at present 
prices, but it will pay to put the same amount of 
money per acre in the cheaper mineral phosphates and 
potash to get a big growth of clover, w. f, massey. 
Manure Ferment and Weed Seeds. —Probably the 
reason why Joseph Harris (page 83) did not allude to 
the so-called useful effect of fermenting manure in the 
sprouting and destroying of the seeds of weeds in it, 
was that he did not believe in any such effect. The 
heat of a fermenting heap of manure is rarely as much 
as 100 degrees, and that will not destroy seeds, and 
the seeds will not sprout while deeply buried in the 
manure. The proper business of a farmer is to keep 
the manure free from these seeds, and not to depend 
on the vain and futile hope that they will be killed by 
the heat of the fermentation. I have tested the heat 
of the manure in hot-beds in which the effort is to get 
as much as possible, and I never found it much over 83 
degrees, and never in any case as much as 100. The 
seeds will sprout and thus be killed if the manure is 
turned over so often and so completely as to bring all 
of them into contact with the air, but this is wholly 
impracticable. I have seen land well seeded with 
clover by manure that had been thoroughly fermented, 
and as my effort is mostly to get my land into clover 
as soon and as often as I can, I try to get as much of 
the seed in the manure as possible, and every time the 
clover thus sown appears. The garden is especially 
well sown with it, but the young plants are easily 
killed by the use of the hand plow or cultivator and 
give no trouble, and the garden manure is most care¬ 
fully turned and fermented to get it fine and well de¬ 
composed. I have heard Mr. Harris repeatedly say 
that there was not heat enough in the manure to kill 
the seeds of weeds. h. stewart. 
An Illinois Hog Farm Without Hay. 
I was somewhat surprised and pained on learning 
by the article of L C., of Odell, Ill., page 69, that a 
farm in the great State of Illinois was only paying six 
per cent on its valuation at $65 per acre. Now, I am 
at as much of a loss as the editor of The R. N.-Y. to 
give L. C., a sure plan for doubling his income, but 
perhaps a young man 27 years old who has spent the 
first 19 years of his life in town, could give L. C. a few 
pointers how he has made farming pay. Three years 
ago I bought 80 acres of land alongside of 80 that I 
already had clear, paying $37.50 per acre—times were 
hard then and the land has advanced to $70 now. 
As I keep track of everything sold I will give you as 
briefly as possible what I have sold from these 160 acres 
in the past three years. My rotation has been corn, 
oats and pasture, sowing clover in February on the 
land intended for oats and if the clover is not wanted 
the next year for pasture, I let it go until about the 
middle of May, when I plow under, using a Ilapgood 
gang, and plant to corn. I don’t raise a pound of hay; 
it doesn’t pay I can buy it in the fall generally at 
from $4 to $5 per ton. I have 40 acres of hog-tight 
pasture and next fall will fence 40 more. These two 
fields I will change alternately every three years, the 
first two to corn, sowing rye the first year at the last 
working of the corn which will make good winter and 
early spring pasture for hogs, etc., and will make a 
splendid mulch to plow under in the late spring for 
corn. The third year I will sow to oats and clover. 
My expenses are not heavy as I generally hire a 
neighbor’s boy whom I know to be a good worker, for 
six months at from $12 to $18 per month. 
1890. 
Hogs sold. 49 head. *424 15 
Corn sold, 3.014 bushels. 966 72 
Oats sold, 1,400 bushels. 490 00 
Total for year. 11,890 87 
1891. 
Corn sold, 4,315 bushels. $2,038 41 
Oats sold, 2,718 bushels. 1,813 52 
Total for year. $2,851 93 
1892. 
Hogs sold, 48 head. $455 20 
Horses sold, 8 head. 320 00 
Total. $775 20 
Crop of 1892 on hand yet: Oats, 2,300 bushels ; corn, 
2,000 bushels—feeding the corn to steers and hogs. 
Kept no hand last year. G. h 
A Pecan Tree in Connecticut. 
I have noticed several allusions to the pecan and its 
ability to withstand a cold climate. Ten years ago my 
father brought from Franklin, La., some pecan nuts 
that grew on a tree in my aunt’s yard. Either myself or 
one of the children planted a few of them. Four came 
up and grew to about 18 inches in height the first 
season. They were killed back to the ground the 
first winter, and the field in which the roots were 
C Fulda Stoke Pogis 2nd. Fig. 67. See Page 157. 
was planted to corn he following season. No signs 
of life or growth were noticed, and no attention was 
paid to them after the first examination in the spring. 
The third year, or after remaining dormant one year, 
two of the roqts threw up strong shoots. These 
survived the winter without losing a bud, and one of 
the trees is still standing where I set it the following 
spring. It is of fair size, and has never lost any wood 
from freezing. The other was given to a friend, and 
it grew so rapidly that it was injured the third win¬ 
ter after he had planted it out, and died during a very 
dry spell the following summer. My tree is not at 
all protected from the weather, but stands in the turf 
where it makes slow growth. I believe the pecan to 
be hardy here if slowly grown, so that its wood will 
thoroughly ripen. C. P. A. 
New Haven County, Conn. 
The Best of a Bad Celery Job. 
We are now enjoying an abundance of the nicest 
crisp celery just at a time when it can hardly be had 
in our market at any price, and we enjoy it so much I 
thought I would tell the Rural family about how it 
grew. A great many think it a very difficult task or 
too much trouble to raise celery, but mine was not 
so much trouble, and is excellent in flavor. I set out 
my plants at the usual time, and all started to grow 
nicely, but we had no rain of any consequence till the 
middle of September, and, as I was not prepared to 
irrigate, my plants did not grow much while it was so 
dry, and, when the rains did come, I was so very busy 
with my main crops and help was so hard to get, that 
the ground about the celery was not stirred a single 
time. When winter came, I had a lot of plants from 
three to four inches high and I determined to give them 
another trial, so I made a bed in one corner of my cel¬ 
lar and dug up the plants, leaving a good amount of 
dirt on the roots, pruned the tops severely, and then 
reset them as closely as possible, watered them occa¬ 
sionally, and now we have as nice, crisp celery as one 
could desire. This is the best way of storing celery 
for family use through the winter I have found. Of 
course I do not advocate this shiftless way of raising 
celery, for one'must wait too long for it. j. c. 
Indiana. 
A Country Bone Mill. 
G. S. P., Winslow, Me., on page 35, asks whether the 
stamp mill or a modification of it has ever been tried 
to crush bones ? I have a neighbor who built a bone 
mill about 12 or 14 years ago. He put in a good-sized 
engine and boiler, for it takes lots of power to run one. 
The building is 35-x40 or 45, two stories with a base¬ 
ment. In the latter he has a solid foundation for a 
trip hammer, built of a large hard-wood timber ; then 
four timbers stand on end long enough to reach up 
through to the upper story ; these hold up a heavy 
grate, and a trip hammer rises and falls on it, crush¬ 
ing the bones through it and they fall through to the 
next floor. The four upright timbers are inclosed 
with boards to within about two feet of the floor to 
keep the pieces of bone from scattering too much. 1 
have helped to run this mill some in winter, and took 
bone meal in payment for my work, and it is quite a 
trick to throw bones under that hammer and get them 
there before the hammer does, for the hammer gets 
“there every time.” Throw under a bullock’s skull, 
and three or four blows will drive it through the grate 
fine enough to shovel into the mill. There are two 
mills—one of steel plates and one of French burr 
stones. The ground bone goes through into the base¬ 
ment and drops on a long sieve in motion with bins 
under. The sieve is on an incline so that the bone 
works to the lower end ; the coarsest pieces drop off 
at the end. The sieve is made of four or five different 
sizes of mesh, the first fine, the last about the size of 
wheat kernels. What goes off the end is elevated and 
put through again. When run on shin or large joint 
bones, it is a slow, laborious process, and the proprie¬ 
tor cannot grind bone and sell it as cheap as bone meal 
is quoted in the markets, but there are no oyster shells 
in his. When he first started up,ihe asked $40 per ton. 
I do not think he ever sold a ton for less than $35, and 
that not the finest grade. 1 generally get the stuff 
about as large as wheat, then mix with ashes and wet 
with urine, and in three or four weeks I could pul¬ 
verize it with thumb and finger, but I do not do it any 
more, for it does not make a good mixture. For a 
choice lot, I take the two finest grades and mix and 
use them dry, sometimes with hen manure, sometimes 
with superphosphate, sometimes alone. 
Hillsborough County, N. H. porter colby. 
Stable Manure and Peach Orchards. 
In a recent issue of The Rural J. H. Hale advocates 
a rich soil for peaches. Now, peaches may do best on 
rich soil in his locality, but here in northern Ohio, on 
the shores of Lake Erie, both on the peninsula and 
Catawba Island (the largest peach and fruit-growing 
section in this State) soils moderately fertile, or very 
poor, that is, too poor to produce ordina T y farm crops, 
have produced some of the largest and finest peaches. 
I have an orchard ten years old which previously had 
been in Catawba grapes for about twenty years, but 
during the last years when grapes continued to rot, 
and the Bordeaux Mixture had not been thoroughly 
tested, I decided to take out every alternate row and 
set peach trees, allowing the remaining grapes ta 
grow until .the trees were four years old. This 
orchard has made a steady but healthy growth every 
year and, except in 1890, the trees have been over¬ 
loaded, and have borne six good paying crops in suc¬ 
cession. Last year peaches in this section were al¬ 
most a complete failure. During the 30 years this 
land has been occupied with grapes and peaches, it has 
received but one application of barnyard manure and 
no fertilizer. The soil is a stiff heavy clay, and natur¬ 
ally drained. Furthermore, I would never apply 
manure to a peach orchard, for it has been my ex¬ 
perience that it induces a rank growth and impairs 
rather than improves the appearance and quality of 
the fruit. In all my orchards I practice clean and 
frequent cultivation by means of the plow and Cuta¬ 
way harrow. The peach requires vigorous and often 
severe pruning in order to produce large marketable 
fruit. A sandy soil with a good clay subsoil or a hard 
clay soil is the best for peaches. It must be well 
drained either naturally or artificially, for the trees 
will not thrive on wet land. The buds now—January 
27—are in good condition. The thermometer has 
registered as low as 10 and 12 degrees below zero. 
Ottawa County, 0. w. G. miller. 
R. N.-Y.—Why does our friend assume that his soil 
is not rich or, at any rate, what is generally considered 
infertile ? Mr. Hale does not, as we remember, ad¬ 
vocate the use of manure for peach orchards; in fact 
he says he would “prosecute a man who hauled 
manure into his peach orchard.” Bone and potash are 
the only fertilizers he uses. 
A Living On Ten Apple Acres. 
“Can a man make a living out of 10 acres of apples- 
well cared for ?” is asked in Brevities of The Rural 
of January 7. This subject had been occupying my 
mind for some time, and hence I have done consider¬ 
able calculating and figuring for my own benefit, 
