258 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
April 13- 
rows, that by fall you will have to hoe a pathway 
through. 
Good ground that will raise big corn is rich enough 
to grow good strawberries all right, and the finer it is 
pulverized the better. Rich garden soil is all the bet¬ 
ter, but where there are many weeds, it will make 
more work ; no weeds must be allowed to grow. A 
location as conveniently near to both house and barn 
as possible, is desirable, but try to have it where the 
hens cannot trouble it. 
What To Do With the Soil. 
Do not, under any circumstances, put any coarse, 
fresh manure into the soil this spring. It should be 
well enriched and cultivated in other crops the pre¬ 
vious year ; but if you have not such a place already, 
and must needs add manure, use only the finest well 
rotted old manure you can get. Rut select another 
place and put all of the best fresh manure into it that 
you wish and plant to potatoes or corn, cultivate well, 
and kill every weed that starts there; don’t let a 
single weed go to seed, and you are preparing the 
best kind of a place for another strawberry bed an¬ 
other year. 1 plant a new strawberry bed every year, 
and am making my plans ahead all the time, where it 
shall be next year and the year after, and try to ha*ve 
a better one than ever each succeeding year. Just as 
early as that piece of ground is dry enough to work 
up well, plow deeply and thoroughly, and get it just 
as finely pulverized as possible, if it takes two or three 
times plowing to do it. I spade for mine two or three 
times over, and make it finer than any plowing could. 
Wood ashes are cf great benefit to all fruits. Scatter 
a few bushels evenly over the ground after the last 
plowing and harrow or rake in thoroughly.—[If wood 
ashes are not obtainable, three parts fine bone to one 
of muriate of potash will do.— Eds.] Try, if possible, 
to have the ground all ready in anticipation of the 
time of receiving the plants. Then when the plants 
are at hand, go over the ground again with harrow or 
rake, make it fine and smooth, and level it well. 
Stretch a line to set each row by to get them straight; 
lay down on one side of the line a pole or lath marked 
off into 18-inch spaces to set the plant by. Carry the 
plants in a pail with water enough to wet the roots ; 
take out only one plant at a time and set on the other 
side of the line from the measuring stick, using a 
trowel and the hands. Set the roots straight down in 
the ground, spread out fan-shaped, just right so that 
the crown of the plant will come just level with the 
surface, pressing the soil tightly around the roots 
with the hands. I usually have a board to walk on 
while doing this so as not to tramp the ground so 
much. Alternate pistillate and staminate varieties, 
and set stakes between kinds. Make a plan of the bed 
on paper, writing down the name of each kind in its 
location, and paste this record into a book where it 
may be as safe from being lost as the family record in 
the Bible. Believing it is surely true that a bed con¬ 
taining quite a number of varieties will bear better 
than one of only one or two kinds, and for my love of 
experimenting with them, the new bed which I shall 
plant this year will contain, besides the above men¬ 
tioned five kinds, Pearl, Jucunda Improved, Van 
Deman, Shuckless, Timbrell, Greenville, Belle, Beverly 
and Barton’s Eclipse. WM. G. DREW. 
WHAT SOME CATCH CROPS CAUGHT 
In the spring of 1891, desiring to set an acre to cur¬ 
rants, we chose an old strawberry bed, a clay loam, 
with a very stiff subsoil. Setting the plow with 
jointer, to run nine inches deep, we started a man 
with a light team on the old bed, giving another man 
a heavy team and subsoil plow l-unning 1(5 inches deep 
to follow. The ground was in excellent condition for 
such work, the subsoiler breaking up the subsoil 
thoroughly, leaving the furrow almost full of bright, 
finely divided yellow clay, which before had been al¬ 
most impenetrable ; this made quite a reservoir to 
hold water for dry weather, and afforded a means for 
conveying the surplus water away in wet seasons. 
After thoroughly preparing the surface, we marked 
the ground with a hand marker in checks 4x5 feet, 
setting currants on the checks, making this the per¬ 
manent crop. 
For the catch crops, we run a small plow on a row 
between the five-foot rows, planted whole Rose pota¬ 
toes, the size of hen eggs, 15 inches apart in the row, 
covering each potato with a single hoeful of loose 
earth. We then applied 500 pounds of potato fer¬ 
tilizer in the row, and covered with a small plow. We 
let this alone until a day or so before the potatoes 
would begin to peep through the ground, then run the 
weeder through, leaving the surface smooth and very 
mellow, tearing out all the small weeds, but not in¬ 
juring the potatoes or currants. In a week, we run 
the weeder over it again ; this time the potatoes were 
up nicely, the weeder tearing out but few of them, 
not enough to injure the stand. In another week, we 
cultivated with the Planet Jr., with 1%-inch shovels 
cutting as close as possible to the potatoes without 
injuring them. After this, the cultivator was run 
through every 10 days, tearing out the small weeds 
and keeping the ground loose, as long as it was pos¬ 
sible to get through without injury to the tops. The 
hoe played but a very small part in cultivating the 
entire crop—two hours would cover all. 
We had 189% bushels of the finest potatoes raised 
in the county that season. We have no doubt that 
some who read this will think that such a crop 
of potatoes taken from the ground, would be very 
injurious to the permanent crop, but let us consider 
the figures. Amount of fertilizer applied, 1,000 
pounds, value $16.42; value of the fertility taken 
from the soil in the potato crop, $5.97, leaving the 
neat little sum of $10.45 in favor of the currants, 
which responded very keenly by their luxuriant 
growth. 
During the season of 1892 we applied 400 pounds of 
bone meal and 400 pounds of muriate of potash, keep¬ 
ing the ground well cultivated throughout the season. 
No catch crop was taken off. 
In the spring of 1893, the currants were cultivated 
thoroughly, and 400 pounds of bone meal and 400 
pounds of muriate of potash, were applied. The 
surface was kept well stirred until August 1 ; then we 
sowed to Purple-Globe turnips In the fall we gath¬ 
ered 150 bushels of fine turnips which were worth 25 
cents per bushel, amounting to $37.50 for the catch 
crop. Being short of feed for stock, we fed the most 
of them, thinking that we would get better returns 
from them in this way than if we sold them and 
bought feed. 
In 1894, we treated the ground the same as during 
the season of 1893, excepting that we harrowed the 
turnip seed in; the season being so dry, we thought 
this the only way to get them started ; even then, not 
more than one in twenty germinated, but those that 
did start reached their tap-roots down to the reser¬ 
voir that we prepared three years before with the 
subsoiler. Every one who saw them, wondered why 
we had such fine turnips, and no one else had any. 
The subsoil reservoir is the only reason we can give, 
for we sowed turnips on other ground and got noth¬ 
ing. We gathered 72 bushels of the finest turnips 
ever raised in this part of the country, the largest 
weighing 7% pounds. We had several bushels with 
but 20 in each. We received 40 cents per bushel, two 
cents each, a pretty good price for turnips! The 
grocers retailed them by the single turnip, receiving 
five cents for the largest. 
Now let us look at the figures and see the value of 
the fertilizers applied and the amount extracted by 
the catch crops : 
rOUNDS PER TON. 
Nitrogen. Phos. acid. Potash. 
Potato fertilizer. 90.0 240.0 90.0 
Muriate of potash. .... — 1,020.0 
Bone meal. 105.0 320.0 — 
Potatoes. 4.2 1.4 5.8 
Turnips. 3.6 2.0 7.8 
VALUE PER TON. 
Nitrogen. Phos. acid. Potash. Total. 
Potato fertilizers. $14.40 $14.40 $4.05 $32.85 
Muriate of potash. — — 45.90 45.90 
Bone meal. 16.80 19.20 _ 36.00 
Potatoes. 0.67 0.08 0.26 1.01 
Turnips. 0.58 0.12 0.35 1.05 
From the above table, it will be easy to figure the 
values of the fertilizers applied and extracted : 
1891, applied 500 pounds potato fertilizer.$16.42 
1891, received 189*4 bushels potatoes at 40 cents. $75.80 
1892, applied 400 pounds bone meal. 7.20 
1892, applied 400 pounds muriate of potash. 9.18 
1893, applied 400 pounds bone meal. 7.20 
1893, applied 400 pounds muriate of potash. 9.18 
1893, received 150 bushels of turnips at 25 cents. 37.50 
1894, applied 400 pounds bone meal. 7.20 
1894, applied 400 pounds muriate of potash. 9.18 
1894, received 72 bushels turnips at 40 cents. 28.80 
Totals.$65.56 $142.10 
Balance for work for four years, $76.54. 
We applied $43.14 more fertilizers than were ab¬ 
stracted by the three crops, saying nothing about the 
two crops of currants received in 1893 and 1894, as 
we are only considering catch crops. The currants 
are in excellent condition for a fine crop next year. 
Holliday’s Cove, AV. Va. T. s. c. & son. 
A PECAN GROVE IN LOUISIANA. 
A Promising Nut Industry. 
The R. N.-Y. has expressed an interest in pecan cul¬ 
ture second only to its interest in the culture of 
the chestnut. I planted my first pecan trees 17 years 
ago, 10 seedling trees in our yard, eight of which are 
still living, and are now large trees. Ten years ago, 
I planted my large grove of over 1,000 trees, and this 
grove is justcoming into bearing. Will a grove planted 
from lai*ge, soft-shell Louisiana pecans produce trees 
that will bear nuts approximating in size and quality 
those that w*ere planted ? One 3 *ear ago, I said un¬ 
hesitatingly that they would. Now I am not so cer¬ 
tain that they will. Several parties of undoubted 
honesty have denied this statement, and, after some 
experience with the affairs of this world, 1 do not like 
to be too certain on any point. In two years from 
now, I shall have it in my power to write with abso¬ 
lute certainty on this point, and until then I can afford 
to wait. By that time several of my trees will have 
borne nuts, told their own story, and proved the case 
more strongly than any man’s assertion. 
The question has been asked, why do nurserymen 
graft and bud all their trees if seedlings will do as 
well ? They do not bud or graft all their trees; some 
varieties of white peaches and native plums (besides 
many other trees), reproduce themselves with absolute 
certainty. I have never claimed that the pecan would 
reproduce itself with any degree of absolute certainty. 
I have simply claimed that where large, soft-shell 
Louisiana pecans were planted, a large number of 
trees would be secured that would bear fine, large 
pecans that would meet a ready sale at good prices in 
the market. 
The results obtained from planting Texas pecans 
have not been so satisfactory. The Texas pecan dif¬ 
fers very materially from the Louisiana nut; it is 
rough-shelled, requires to be polished, and different 
sizes grow on the same tree. The Louisiana pecan is 
smooth-shelled, and the pecans from the same tree 
are identical in size and shape. The Texas pecan is 
more like a hickory nut ; while the Louisiana pecan 
has no resemblance to that nut. I notice that, in a 
large grove of Texas pecans planted 10 years ago, I am 
getting nuts of all sizes and grades; many of them 
will prove valuable while others will not. 
What Are the Results ? 
The eight trees planted in 1878, are now large and 
have proved what they could do. Unluckily I did 
not see the nuts from which the trees were grown, 
having bought them from a nurseryman. Four of 
these trees bear large, handsome, well-filled-out nuts 
that are far above the a verage sold in commerce ; one 
of them has nuts well filled out but too small for sale, 
while the remaining three bear large, handsome nuts, 
but not sufficiently well filled to be marketable. From 
this lot of eight, I have four trees that are all that 
could be desired, and four that bear inferior nuts. In 
my large grove, about 20 trees have borne, but here 
the testimony is conflicting. Some of them are bear¬ 
ing large, perfect nuts, while a few are defective. I 
think that fully one-half the trees will bear nuts much 
superior to those found in general commerce. Those 
who read the article last April in The R. N.-Y. will 
remember that my trees stand 30 feet apart in the 
row, and that the rows are 60 feet apart. As the trees 
should stand at least 60 feet apart each way, I can cut 
out half of mine and still have a good stand. 
Of course pecan trees could be budded or grafted, 
but here we have a different problem. By budding or 
grafting we would get exact results, but the hickory 
family (which includes the pecan), is the most difficult 
of all to graft or bud successfully. In a letter received 
from Px^esident Berckmans, he says that out of 3,000 
grafts from a fine Louisiana tree, only two per cent 
lived, and that it was rarely the case that over 20 per 
cent grew, thus making it necessary to sell them as 
high as $1 apiece. Pecans cannot be budded success¬ 
fully the old way—the buds will not grow. One nur¬ 
seryman has adopted the plan of annular budding 
with great success. The fact is, many persons could 
obtain a fine grove of pecans by planting the seed, 
who would not take the trouble or go to the expense 
of having a grafted or budded one. 
How Should a Man Start ? 
A man, to whom expense is no drawback, should 
buy budded or grafted trees from a nurseryman of 
high standing, and plant them in rich soil 60 feet 
apart each way, being very careful to see that they 
receive good cultivation for the first 10 or 12 years. A 
man of moderate means should either learn the annu¬ 
lar method of budding, or buy the best grade of 
Louisiana soft-shell pecans and plant them. In the 
latter case, it will be best to plant them 30 feet apart 
in the row, so as to be able to cut out all that bear in¬ 
ferior nuts. In any case it will be well to give them 
all the manure or fertilizer one can afford for the first 
five years. Anything that has fertility in it will do. 
I used guano from our pigeon houses, and stable ma¬ 
nure on mine, and I found that they responded very 
quickly to applications of either manure. Then by 
no means neglect to plant the land to some cultivated 
crop, and give good cultivation for the first 10 years. 
I have already cultivated my grove with coim and 
cotton for 10 years, and I think I can use the land for 
this purpose for at least two more years. Above all 
other things, let the man who plants pecans (or any 
other tree), beware of planting them in inclosures 
near the house, in which stock is allowed to run. 
When the trees get large and tough, stock pasturing 
among them will not harm them, or will stock injure 
them when planted in a large open field. It is only 
in an inclosure that they are in danger. 
Where Will the Pecan Grow? 
Pecans will grow in almost every State in the Union, 
though I have my doubts whether they will prove 
profitable for marketing save on the rich riparian 
lands of the Southern States. A gentleman in Con- 
