246 
THE RURAL HEW-YORKER. 
APRIL 20 
ground or while they are yet too small to attract 
attention. Many times the farmer begins in the 
spring with good oourage and determination to 
keep the weeds down. ThiB ho succeeds in 
doing for a time while the weeds are small and 
few and grow slowly, and the land is soft and 
easily worked, but haying ana harvesting and 
other work or sickness crowd upon him and bo- 
fore he knows it, tho weeds have got the start of 
him. The increasing heat of summer brings on 
a reinforcement of woods. The grouud becomes 
harder, and the surface matted over. The 
farmer rallies again to his work of extermina¬ 
tion ; but many of tho weeds have, to a great 
extent, accomplished the object for which they 
grew. They have ripened seeds which will dll 
the ground for othor plants in future years. 
These weeds are usually left on the ground to 
decay and drop their seeds. Let any one ex¬ 
amine carefully a pig-weed or an amaranth, and 
no doubt ho will be surprised at the immense 
number of little black or brown seeds concealed 
along the stem whoro he supposed there were 
no signs of seeds, nor even yet of blossoms 
which precede the seeds. By estimate, a good- 
sized plant of purslane produces a million and 
a quarter of seeds. In this way the soil soon 
becomes filled with them. 
A few years ago, I took in baud a garden 
which had boon very weedy for sevoral years 
previous. I cultivated well and often, and for 
three yoars took great paius to remove all weeds 
which had been overlooked or missed by tho cul¬ 
tivator. In hot weather and late in the season 
we went over the ground each time before the 
land was cultivated and pi cited up any weeds 
containing seeds. These wero carried off the 
garden and kept out of the pig-pen and compost 
heap. Another point was rigidly adhered to 
where many fall. The soil was cultivated often 
till late in antmnn, as long aB there was any 
chance for the weeds to grow, lu this way, wo 
kept the seed from the ground, and kept stirring 
the soil to encourage all the seeds to germinate. 
Near the close of the third year, we found that 
boys needed no baskets to carry weeds from the 
garden, as they could carry in one hand all they 
found in three rows of onions, twenty-five rods 
long. 
Considering the abundance of foul stuff in the 
manure purchased, and the ease of keeping 
down annual weeds by frequent cultivation, I 
doubt whether it is profitable to be so nice in 
takiDg out every weed and in removing it from 
the ground. 
Somewhere 1 have read, that Joseph Harris 
of Rochester, said three-fourths of the farmers 
of New York lose one-half of their profits 
annually by weeds, equaling §50,000,000. Ho 
added, “It is easier to hoe four times where 
there are very few or no weeds, than to hoe ouoo 
where the soil is weedy.” 
J. J. Thomas is ever making apt contrasts 
between the best way and the poorest way of 
doing things. By his watoh, a bed of flowers 
containing eighty Bquare feet is raked once a 
week in four minutes, for each raking, and for 
May, June and July, forty-eight minutes. In 
another bed of equal bizo it required over an 
hour to clear all out by boe and hand. This 
must be repeated every three weeks for three or 
four months, and even then the plants will not 
do nearly so well as by frequent raking over. 
By the watch and aotual testing, it takes only 
one-fifth of Vie lime to rake every few daya that 
it does to weed onoe in two or three or four 
weeks during the entire season. By carefully 
watching the work, I am confident that tho 
above statement is near the truth. No atrougor 
argument, Llieu, can bo drawn for frequent cul¬ 
tivation. It is much the easiest way as woll as 
the best. It is often hard to make tho hoys fully 
understand this. If no weeds are prominent, 
they will not always go over all the ground well 
but skip now and then a patch which very soon 
tells of alighted work. The practice of cultiva¬ 
ting every throe to six days is common with 
many of our best gardeners, but it is not the 
practice in all gardens, especially in the gardens 
of farmers. It ia hard to tell how much this old 
truth would bo worth to our farmers if they 
would only act accordingly. 
Weeding gardens once in two to four weeks is 
up-hill work, especially if done by hand when it 
takes during the season five times as long as it 
would to cultivate every few days. Then, 
destroy tho weeds just as they are germinating 
in th'i Boil. Let us all try by example and pre¬ 
cept to do work in the easiest as well as in tho 
most economical manner. We hope every reader 
whether satisfied or not satisfied with tho evi¬ 
dence given, will try Borne experiments on this 
subject tho coming season. 
In closing I must tell how I have several 
times killed patches of quack-grass. It was not 
by digging it all out root and branch. I failed 
when I attempted that mode. There is no secret 
about it. I kept the land cultivated every three 
or four days (never more than that) when I 
killed the grass quickest. The loaves wero not 
allowed to show themselves. 1 gave it no peace 
in its bed, but kept it turning over and over. 
A small piece growing on black, rich soil rather 
inclined to be moist, was plowed very late one 
autumn. It was cultivated as above mentioned 
till time to sow rutabagas, when no quack-grass 
was to be found. None has since appeared. 
Agricultural College, Lansing, Mich. 
---— 
JOTTINGS AT KIRBY HOMESTEAD. 
COL. F. D. CURTIS. 
_ { 
We have been looking at the different kinds of 
feed to see which was the cheapest. Wheat ' 
bran without a particle of flour in it, ooats §18 
a ton; buckwheat bran at loast half of it flour, 
wo cau buy for §16 a ton ; oil-eako meal $2.25 
per hundred; corn meal §25 a ton ; and oats 
30 cents for 32 pounds. Barley is tho best feed 
for a sow with a litter of pigs. It is healthy 
and will make more milk than any other grain. 
As soon as the barley meal is gone we shall 
give the sows oats, as this grain is next to 
barley as a good grain for animals suckling. 
The lambs are growing finely, showing that the 
quart of oats each one gets daily is making milk. 
A ton of oat-meal will oust §20 ns we mast add 
one-tenth to the price of tho grain, §18.75, to 
pay the miller. This with an allowance for 
waste will make §2. We save this by feeding 
tho grain whole to the hogs and the young pigs 
will thrive nicely on the oats. Most farmers 
would say " Buy corn-meal at §25 a ton and feed 
that.” Corn meal is well enough in its place 
when you want to fatten an animal; but when 
you want bone, muscle, ftud tissue, you require 
kiuds of food which will produce thorn: com meal 
is not the feed for young animals. Wheat bran 
being so high and so poor, we are giving the 
young calves buckw heat bran and oil meal, twice 
the quantity of the former to one of the latter. 
As soon as wo got some oats grouud we shall 
add one quart of oat-meal. A pook of buck¬ 
wheat bran is fed to each cow daily and they are 
doing well. The old hair iB comiug off, and the 
milk makes fine butter. On the whole, the 
buckwheat bran is the cheapest. The big oolt 
has got fat on his four quarts a day, arid his 
coat shines,showing that bis stomach and bowels 
are in good order and that he has got rid of the 
worms. Good wheat bran with one-third of its 
weight flour, ia excellent feed for young animals. 
It should be scalded for pigs, and be mixed with 
a little oil-meal for oalves. We have wintered 
two calves, born at the beginning of December, 
on this foed, with part of the milk of one cow' 
divided between them. They look no_Wl that 
we are jiroud of them. 
The barloy ground is dry enough to sow, but 
this grain should never be put in until the 
ground is warm and it is fine growing iveather. 
Barley, unlike oats, is tropical in its nature, and 
does best when the temperature is well up— 
hence, it should bo sowed late. The land must 
be mellow for barley, and ft sprinkle of manure 
on the surface harrowed in with the seed, will 
greatly improve tho crop. It is very useful 
grain on tho farm and barley cakes made from 
the flour are nutritious and very palatable. Two 
bushels and a half of seed will sow an acre. 
Last year we raised a crop at the rato of forty 
bushels an acre. The straw cured good ia ex¬ 
cellent fodder. It should be cut as soon as the 
berry is out of the milk. It grows quickly and 
may be harvested early ouongh to raise a 
crop of turnips on the Baum laud. It is an ex¬ 
cellent crop to seed with, being next to wheat 
and rye in this roapoct. It is not exhausting to 
the land for other crops, but will exhaust the 
soit for producing ita own kind. This was prov¬ 
en so effectually yoars ago in all this section of 
the country that its culture had to be abandoned, 
and no barley of any account was raised for 
twenty-five years. After this long rest the same 
fields now produce well. The two-rowed is the 
favorite sort grown. 
Berkshire hogs are not so liable te got mange, 
which is caused iu nil animals by an insect bur¬ 
rowing under the skin, but they are more liable 
to get lousy than white ones. We saw a stock 
boar, awhile ago, alive with lice, big fellows 
like Hhoep ticks. We recommended that ho be 
washed with brine; no use, they wore as lively 
as ever afterwards—next soft-soap—and this 
finishod them. After three or four days tho 
hog was rubbed over with grease. We once 
saw, at a fair of the N, Y. State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, the Berkshires of a noted breeder very 
lousy. We never saw ono on a white hog. 
Like the reBt of mankind, wo are inclined to 
do as “ father did." Fathers were sometimes 
mistaken, and never more so than when they 
told us that “ a lamb must have but a very little 
milk." Following this advice wo have been 
starving lambs: we have been obliged to raise by 
hand all our lives, and they did too. No wonder 
under this rule two-thirds of the poor little crea¬ 
tures died. It grieves us, aud>lways will, that 
we were so blind and bliudly cruel. A lamb we 
were trying to feed died tho other day. It got 
weak and one morning its jaws were Bet and it 1 
would not swallow. We knew it had not been i 
sick; what made it die ? As this [important query | 
went through our mind, we happened to look at < 
another lamb born at the same time—a big fat 1 
rollicking follow so full of life that he could not 1 
keep still, but had to skip and play, while one 1 
lamb was stiff and cold in death and had not i 
grown a bit. What made the difference '< Milk. 
This big fat lamb, judging by the size of tho 
ewe's bag, had at least two quarts of milk and 
maybe three every tweuty-four hours, while tho 
dying one had never been givon a pint. A few 
days afterwards we had three lambs to raise by 
hand, and, our fathers to the contrary, they 
were allowed to suck through a rubber nipple 
all the Jersey milk they wanted. These lambs 
grow and are a convincing argument that in- 
Btinct is a better guide than old notions, at 
least for lambs. Another thing, a lamb from a 
large breed requires a great deal more milk than 
from a small one: so of any animal, we must 
feed according to the size. 
ifarm OSconomy. 
GETTING OtfT MANURE, 
W. J. FOWLEB. 
Every spring and fall muoh time and team- 
labor are wasted iu badly contrived methods for 
drawing out manure. The most common sight 
is a man with team and wagon, which last ia 
loaded, drawn out and unloaded by the same 
person. It is slow work at tbo best. Fully half 
of the time tho team iB idle while the wagon is 
being loaded, and this too when team work is 
worth at loast two dollars per day. But this is 
not the only or chief loss. Not one half of the 
farmers in this soetiou clean their barn-yards so 
thoroughly as they should. The loss of the use 
of manure from spring until fall or even from 
fall until spring iB twice what it should cost to 
get every load on tho growing crops. Manure 
left in the barn-yard through tbo summer is 
usually more than half wasted by faU from 
evaporation or washing by rains. What shall 
wo say then of tho practice of some of leaving 
manure from year to year from inability to get 
it on the laud ? Talk about the necessity for 
buying commercial fertilizers ! I believe in this, 
but it is a fact that fully one-half the farmers 
don't uso what rnanuro they have, to sav nothing 
of at leant two-thirds of the remainder vlio do 
not feed so much stock and don't therefore make 
so much manure as they should. 
It is posable to make laud poorer by purchas¬ 
ing commercial fertilizers and removing all the 
crop without making any other return. A light 
dressing, ouo or two hundred pounds of guano 
or superphosphate, will sometimes nearly double 
the crop of wheat or other grain. The small 
quantity of concentrated manure in close con¬ 
tact with the seed enables the plant root to ex¬ 
tend rapidly and draw a larger amount from the 
soil than would otherwise be possible. Now if 
none of this crop is returned to the soil as man¬ 
ure, it must result in an absolute decrease of 
fertility. But there need be no fear of this if 
the farmer makes, saves and uses all tho manure 
tliat he cau. Iu such case larger crops, howover 
obtained, moan an inerease of the produetive 
capacity of the soil. It is not possible to grow ft 
crop without either making the soil richer after 
the crop is taken off or giving the farmer the 
means of making it so. Hence tbero need bo no 
hesitancy in using all the fertilizers that can be 
procured, first from the farm itself, and after¬ 
wards by the purchase of such commercial fer¬ 
tilizers, gypsum, phosphate or guano as experi¬ 
ence has proved to produce good results. 
GOOD TOOLS. 
“ Good tools are half the battle in farming," 
some one has said, and I am inclined to think 
, there is more truth than poetry iu it; I know It 
is a great deal easier to work with good tools 
than with poor ones. I have tried both aud am 
‘ decidedly in favor of the former. Good tools 
, are far cheaper in the end than poor ouob. It is 
, true poor ones usually coat loss to begin with, 
, but the purchaser cannot do so much work with 
, them as with good ones, and tbeu again, there 
are many more repairs to bo made on them, so 
J that in tho end they arc the most expensive. For 
instance, a farmer wants a wagon ; hia neighbor 
has two which he must sell, therefore he offers 
) them cheap. One ia nearly as goo! aB new, 
s while the other has been run many years and is 
f W eak in mauy parts. He doesn't know which to 
i buy, but finally concludes to take the old one, 
i as it is a few dollars cheaper and he thinks it 
Y will do for his business as well as the other. So 
r he takes it home and goes to work. It does very 
- well for a few days, but finally he gets on too 
t heavy a load, drives over a littlo Btone, and 
s whoa I his wagon has broken down. Now he is 
t in a sad fix ; hia team must lie still a day or two, 
his work must be neglected (perhaps it is plant¬ 
ing time, or he has a lot of hay out) and ho must 
go off right in tho rush of work and get his wag¬ 
on repaired, costing him more than it would to 
have got tho best ouo which his neighbor offered 
him. Now, wouldn’t he have been better off if 
he had got a good wagon m the first place P So 
it is in regard to plows, mowing-machines, 
horse-rakes, and indeed all other tools which a 
farmer uses. It is my opinion, and that of 
many other farmers that “ the best is the cheap¬ 
est.” Therefore, when yon want any tools, first 
find where you can “get the best,” and then 
bnythem. f. h. d. 
Jfifllr Crop. 
ARTICHOKES AGAIN. 
In a uoto I sent the Rural, printed in issue 
March, 30 I Baid: “There is nothing easier 
to eradicate than artichokes if you try the 
right way,” and added. “ Keep the tops of any 
plant out iu and the plants mnst die." 
The Rural takes exceptions to this and says : 
“ Killing plants by cutting off tho tops is a pleas¬ 
ant sort of theory * * but there are hun¬ 
dreds of plants that are not appreciably harmed 
thereby.” 
Now, one of us is evidently wrong unless wo 
do not understand alike what cutting off tbo 
tops means. I well know that pinching in, prun¬ 
ing, or in any way removing a part of the top 
or a plant often strengthens it, and this is not 
what I meant at all. I divide the plant into 
top and root and still inBist the root cannot live 
without a top. Not even a Canada thistle. It 
or any other plant will undoubtedly eudoavor 
to form a new top from the stub, but lot the de¬ 
capitation of these be attended to, and I am 
confident the desired result will be obtained. 
If tbo Rural will name one or more of the ‘ ‘ hun¬ 
dreds of plants that are not appreciably harmed 
thereby,” I shall be glad to give them a trial. 
But so far as the artichokes arc concerned I 
can give you instances whore thoy have been 
destroyed unintentionally by cutting the tops 
for fodder. Consequently I cannot agree with 
you that “ artichokes are troublesome to 
get rid of.” l. a. b. 
Remarks. —We did aud.do admit the efiicaoy 
of the rule, hut there are exceptions and 
in many instances tho destruction of weeds 
iu this way is impracticable. Just the same 
as it is impracticable to exterminate Thistles, 
Dandelions, Plantains etc., by applying oil of 
vitriol to every one. 
The antichoko forms many tubers a considera¬ 
ble distance from the stem, say three feet. 
From these, scores of plants will appear tho 
next year and hundreds the next. Hence wo 
say “ when established," the antichoke ia “ hard 
to get rid of. ” Now, if anybody knew just tho 
time that the tubers had exhausted them¬ 
selves and before new ones were formed and 
wero to cut off every leaf close to tho root at 
that time, probably the crop would receive a 
death-blow. But we submit that the method 
involves some “trouble.” 
As to uamiug “ ono or more" of tho huudreds 
of plants that aro not appreciably harmed by 
decapitation; Crab Grass (Paniomn sanguinale) 
Bermuda and many other grasses the stems of 
which will root at every joint; Purslane (PortU- 
laca oleraoea); Dooka, such as Rumex orispus, 
R. obtusifolius, R. acetocella; Asparagus; Clero- 
dondrutn fmtidum. It soema moderately plain 
that any plant if persistently deprived of every 
leaf as Boon as it appears, munt die. Plants de¬ 
rive nearly all of their sustenance from the air 
aud it in not to bo supposed that ft root buried 
iu the ground cau survive boyaud the time wbeu 
its store of nutriment is exhausted in vain at¬ 
tempts to develop buds and leaves. But there 
are hundreds of plants whose stems seem for 
periods to take the place of leaves and whose 
roots will, if cut into small hits, push bills as 
readily as seeds germinate.— [Eds. 
----- 
PRICKLY COMFREY. 
I keep a few cows, and have for years sowed 
sweet corn in drills for fodder—when pasture 
begins to grow short. Last spring T bought 
some of the Prickly Comfrcy. The pieces of 
roots wero so small I put them in moist flirt, 
kept thorn whore it was warm, aud when they 
had made a few leaves, set thorn throe feet 
apart, placing the piece of root about two Inches 
below tho surfaoo. The ground was rich. 1 out 
tho oomfroy three times iu the course of the 
season. Judging from one hill the product o 
which I weighed at each cutting, the yield P or 
acre would be over thirty-three tons. My cows 
willi one exception ate it readily, and a Jersey 
bull which I had to keep confined, ate it in pre¬ 
ference to the com fodder. I have been taking 
up roots to increase it, and find some aie 'oiy 
badly eaten below tho orown, and tho roots ho- 
