440 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
JULY 42 
without a loss, in one way or another, even if 
he moves but a short distance. Remember the 
old proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss,’ 
and stay where you are, on the old homestead, 
or near it, and take an interest in the Grange, 
or Farmers’ Club, try to build it up, improve 
and beautify your farm, and try to have your 
neighbors do the same. Cultivate sociability 
among neighboring farmers, and try In every 
way practicable to elevate your occupation, 
and you may, if you will, be happier and bet¬ 
ter off than if you change for some new loca¬ 
tion. F - n - D - 
Steuben Co., N. Y. 
HINTS. 
Raise Your Own Seed.—I n your vegetable 
garden reserve room for a row of .seed plants. 
Every gardener or farmer should raise his own 
onion, parsnip, turnip, cabbage, salsify and 
beet seed as well as save seed from his choicest 
encumbers, squashes, tomatoes and melons. 
Gather them in paper bags of a size to suit the 
quantity desired, and then at once label before 
storing them. The room for seeds enough to 
supply the needs of a large garden, will hardly 
be missed, and the culture is not at all trouble¬ 
some. In this way au annual outlay of five or 
ten dollars is saved and good, fresh seed made 
a certainty. 
Hardiness.—A great mistake is made by 
many persons in plautiug their tender shrubs 
and trees with a southern exposure. All pains 
should be taken to protect teuder trees from 
the winter sun. Give them, if possible, a 
northern exposure, especially to the north of 
a hedge. The Apricot thrives with me under 
the above condition. The Rhododendron, also, 
and the Quince, the Peach and a few of the 
deciduous trees that are generally pronouuccd 
not-hardy, do well. The Persimmon, grown 
from seed, has stood six winters. Peaches 
bear well occasionally, which is all we can ex¬ 
pect for this latitude. It must be borne in 
mind, at the same time, that a shelter from 
both the north wind and the southern sun is a 
still better protection, especially for Quioces. 
A goodBupply of arbor-viue or hemlock hedges 
will furnish the needed screens. A few 
choice trees can be saved by bindiug hemlock 
boughs around them in October or November- 
In addition, keep weak shoots cut out in sum¬ 
mer ; force all the vigor of the tree into a few 
well ripened limbs, and winter will not be like¬ 
ly to do much damage. E. P. Powell. 
Oneida Co., Co. 
Jitllr (Crops. 
along the row and chops out the intermediate 
plants, leaving bunches or single plants about 
12 or 18 inches apart. The rows appear as at 
Fig. 4. After the hoeing a boy follows and 
takes out all the plants except the most thrifty 
one at each place left. Some talk of trans¬ 
planting beets or mangels. I never found one 
transplanted to be wovth the trouble. I would 
rather prepare a bed of cabbage plants in 
season and put one of these in every vacant 
place, thau take the trouble to transplant a 
beet; or I would drop a few seeds of rut baga 
or Gray-stone turnip, and let these occupy the 
MANAGEMENT OF ROOT CROPS. 
A WESTERN FARMER. 
Many farmers may have been induced, from 
he favorable reports in your columns regard¬ 
ing root crops, to plant an acre or two, or 
some may have made the common error of 
jumping into this, as a new thing, over their 
ears, and are now floundcriug in an abyss of 
difficulty. The difficulty will be weeds. These 
are the bugbear of the root-grower ; aud if they 
are once permitted to get the upper hand, the 
outlook for a crop is disheartening. But weeds 
must not be permitted to grow; and if they 
have beeu allowed to get ahead of the plants, 
he finger and thumb and a crooked back are 
the only resource. And these must not he used 
grudgingly, but perseveringly until the crop is 
cleaned. Beets and maugels start slowly, and 
at first the growth is slow. The common 
danger, hard to avoid, is the planting too 
deep, and if the seed is down more than one 
inch below the surface, or the soil is cloddy, 
many plants do not come up in the rows for a 
month after the sowing. By that time the 
weeds are well started. 
The first precaution, which is still timely for 
the Bowing of sugar beets, ruta-bagas and 
turnips, is to run the rows in conspicuously 
rounded beds, as shown at Fig. 1. These are 
made by running back furrows, thirty inches 
apart, and plowing other furrows to these, or 
by dragging the ground with a plank ten feet 
long, divided, as shown at Fig. 2, into rouuded 
hollows, each thirty inches apart from eenter 
to center. Then the Beed furrow, or the drill, 
may be run on the crest of each ridge, leaving 
the row very distinct. Then there is no need 
to wait until the plants are above the ground 
to use the cultivator. Otherwise a good plan 
is to harrow the ground repeatedly, having 
plowed it in time to do this, and have the final 
harrowing made crosswise of the direction in 
which it is intended to make the rows. Then, 
in using a hand or a horse planter, the rows arc 
made very conspicuously across the harrow 
marks, and the spaces between can be culti¬ 
vated at any time close up to the rows, and the 
young weeds killed. As soon as the plants are 
above ground, I run a plow as near to the rows 
as possible, throwing the land away from them, 
as shown at Fig. 3, 
This is the best time to thin out the plants, 
and it is done very rapidly by a man who walks 
Fi fi.'B. 
I now take the opportunity to throw a 
little fertilizer, two hundred pounds of blood 
guano, or of finest ground bone flour, in 
the furrow; and as soon as this has been 
done, the soil is thrown back again. To 
scatter the soil and make it fall loosely in the 
row, I tie a piece of rope about Ibe mold-board 
above the heel of the share, and the earth 
caught by this is broken up and scattered, and 
docs not turn over in a compact mass. The 
rows then appear as at Fig. 5. After this a 
commou cultivator, or one with scrapers, 
may be advantageously used to loosen up 
the soil and keep it clean until the rapidly 
growing leaves cover the ground or shade it 
sufficiently. The crop is then safe until the 
time comes to gather it, and this work is suffi¬ 
ciently important to be treated of by-and-by 
specially. 
HUstxUantotts. 
THE WORK FOR AGRICULTURAL 
COLLEGES 
PROFESSOR S. M. TRACY. 
In a recent number of the Rural an article 
urged that agricultural colleges should be 
made experimental stations, and that tests for 
the best method of culture for various crops, 
the best method of feeding and breeding stock, 
the culture of fruits, etc., should be made a 
part of the college work. The idea is an ex¬ 
cellent one, aud one tbat ought to be carried 
out much more fully than it is; but, until 
farmers as a class cau be made to see and feel 
the necessity for such work more clearly than 
they have ever yet done, there is little hope of 
S-ery much being accomplished in this direc¬ 
tion. Strange as it may be, tbe greatest oppo¬ 
sition to agricultural colleges aud experiment 
stations comes from the farmers, and not from 
the lawyers, brokers, merchants aud other 
non-farmers, who, as a rule, are men of more 
education than are the farmers. 
Properly managed, agricultural colleges 
might be of incalculable benefit to the farmer 
in at least two ways: one is by giving him 
an education, the general culture of which 
will do much to make him respected aud influ¬ 
ential among his neighbors, while the technical 
part will benefit him financially by enabling 
him to conduct his farm scientifically, and 
therefore successfully—for successful farming 
is scientific farming; the other way In which 
the agricultural colleges may benefit agricul¬ 
turists is, as suggested by the article referred 
to, by making them experiment stations. The 
science of fanning is based almost entirely 
upon experiment, and experimental work is 
both difficult and expensive, and must be con¬ 
tinued for years before it can be of much real 
value. Experimental work, as it is too often 
conducted, is worse than useless. The experi¬ 
ment is usually closed within a few months, or 
a year at most, and the results are announced 
as definitely settling the question at issue, aud 
by far too many accept these results and act 
upon them without knowing anything of the 
peculiar circumstances under which the ex¬ 
periment was made. The culture which is 
most successful iu particular seasons, ou cer¬ 
tain soils, and under a certain amount of rain¬ 
fall, may be an entire failure when any one of 
these three circumstances varies. Reports of 
farm experiments should uever be accepted as 
being of any value whatever, excepting so far 
as the circumstances under which they were 
made are given; the reliability and ability of 
the party making the experiment should also 
be considered, and the greater the length of 
time the experiment was continued and the 
more widely varying the circumstances under 
which it was made, the more valuable aud re¬ 
liable does it become. 
Very few farmers have the means, and still 
fewer of those who have the means have the 
inclination for long-contiuued experimental 
work. Those connected with the agricultural 
colleges ought to have tbe ability to do this 
work, aud it is only by doing such work that 
they cau, to any great extent, benefit the 
thousands of farmers who are unable to cuter 
the class-room. The endowment given by 
Congress was “for the benefit of the industrial 
classes," and the comparatively small number 
of students in the colleges is a very small pro¬ 
portion of these classes. Some of the agricul¬ 
tural colleges are doing good work in this 
direction, but most of them are laboring under 
the disadvantages of insufficient or unavaila¬ 
ble endowments and meager appropriations. 
Or.e wbo has never tried it has no idea of the 
expeuse and labor necessary for experimental 
work which will really be of any actual value. 
To give a single example: Suppose it is 
desired to test different varieties of wheat, the 
ground must be selected carefully, to have it 
as even as possible ; the whole grouud should 
be plowed without rain, and the whole crop 
sowed ou the same day, and several strips or 
plots of some one variety should be sowed in 
different parts of the field to furnish means 
of correcting any inequalities arising from 
differences in the soil. When harvested, the 
crop must all be weighed, aud in thrashing, 
great care is uecessary to keep each variety by 
itself. A report of the trial should include : 
the character of the soil; the crops raised on 
it in previous years; the manures used aud the 
mode of applying them; the method of pre¬ 
paring the ground; the date and manner of 
sowing, and the amount of seed ; the ability of 
each variety to withstand frost, drought and 
rain; the date of ripening; the weight of straw 
aud grain; the weight of grain per bushel; 
the character of grain, yield per acre aud 
character of the season. To make the report 
complete, the graiu should go to tbe chemist, 
that w'e may know which varieties are of the 
most value for flour. The work will then be 
tmly commenced, for it should be continued 
for years, and the true experimenter will not 
be satisfied without selecting and hybridizing 
seed, aud endeavoring to obtain new varieties 
of still greater value. 
This is work which, from its very nature, 
cauuot be directly profitable, aud which we 
cauuot expect to have conducted without gov¬ 
ernmental aid. At the agricultural colleges 
are men fitted for the work, many of whom 
have been fitted for it by years of training in 
colleges and on the farm, and the State and 
National governments cannot devote tbe neces¬ 
sary money to any other work which will be 
so advantageous to the whole country as by 
supporting an experiment station at each agri¬ 
cultural college. 
Columbia, Mo, 
•-» - 
ABOUT BARNS. 
It seems to me that your correspondents 
have succeeded in knocking all preconceived 
notions of the average barn-builder into “pi,” 
with high barns and low barns aud so-called 
axioms. It seems to me that some of us who 
use barns and understand our needs Bhould 
briefly state our requirements, and the kind of 
barns we have built, arc building or hope to 
build, thereby throwing some practical light 
upon the subject. 
Now in regard to the size of the barn : my 
preference, for mixed farming, is a large 
building, with basement, if the site is suitable ; 
if not, then a two-story structure, with a drive¬ 
way graded as wide as the floor, protected ny 
walls which curve outward as they reach the 
level ground. The bank or graded drive-way 
should be connected with the barn floor by a 
bridge. The basement, or lower story, as the 
case may be, is to be. used for stabling, tool- 
storage, root-cellar, etc., etc. With proper 
elevation, no floor is needed in this part of the 
building. Stables for sheep or horses are much 
better without floors ; aud for cattle, with 
proper care In paving or groutiug, or, what i6 
perhaps better, by using a mixture of clay and 
gravel tamped hard, there will be no need of 
wooden floors. The upper part of the building 
is so largely varied to meet the ueeds of the 
owner that I will not particularize, only saying 
that it should be at least 20 feel from sill to 
plane, and not to exceed 30 feet under ordinary 
circumstances. 
The talk about the necessity that the timbers 
for buildings should increase in proportion to 
their hight is true, but not practical; nor 
will it apply to barn-building at all until the 
bights I have mentioned are exceeded. The 
expense of framing is the same, excepting a 
few dollars’ worth of labor in framing girths 
and braces. The expeuse is but little for tim¬ 
ber until this hight is exceeded. The expense 
for outside covering is easily computed, and is 
but a small part of the cost of the building, 
while the Bavlng in foundation (which should 
be, in all buildings thoroughly built, sunk be¬ 
low frost, raised above the action of damp, 
protected by drains, etc.,) is large; so also is 
that of the roof, as has been estimated. If a 
larger building is needed than can be conveni¬ 
ently placed under one roof, add wings, or 
build another bam, but do not build a number 
of small barns to annoy you while you live to 
use them. L. M. 
-- 
COAL ASHES AND CURRANT-WORMS. 
In looking through your issue of Juue 14th, 
under the heading “The Garden," I find two 
articles disconnected, viz., “ Death to the Cur¬ 
rant-Worms,” and “Coal Ashes." Let me con¬ 
nect the articles. 
First, my currant bush or bushes arc not 
planted under a fence, hut ten feet from it. 
Second, early in the spring, i. e. before the 
leaves start, I cut out all old 6talks ; clean all 
dirt and grass from the roots, throw the refuse 
away as far as I can with a shovel, cover the 
roots with fresh dirt, and the dirt with mauure, 
and the manure with from two to four inches 
of coal ashes. 
I have followed this plan for years, and when 
the woikmenobey orders, I am never troubled 
with currant-worms. When they “slight the 
job” I get a few currant worms, otherwise my 
currants are very fine. 1 don’t mean to advise 
a little pile of coal ashes close to tbe bush, but 
I do advise that the ashes should be spread all 
over the ground as far as the bush will extend. 
Every family that uses coal cau save enough 
ashes for their own bushes, but to those who 
have, say, twenty acres of Currants, more or 
less, I say put on the coal ashes, if you can get 
them. Plow under the old ashes and you kill 
th j eggs. It may take two or three years to 
kill all the eggs, but stick to it and you will 
conquer. D. K. Barker. 
- * * ♦ 
WHAT OTHERS SAY. 
Budding Roses. —The editor of the Garden¬ 
ers’ Monthly says that the rose season remiuds 
him to say that he is almost 6orry they are so 
generally grown on their own roots, for it was 
such a nice employment for many people, not 
professional gardeuers, to bud them on the 
Manetti stock. But the suckers from these 
wild stocks came up, and in time so weakened 
the grafted part that it soon died. Florists 
would say that amateurs should keep the 
suckerB cut away; but it is not easy for ama¬ 
teurs to distinguish one from the other. Yet 
we hope the pleasant practice of budding Rose6 
will uot fall iuto disuse, Any hardy kind cau 
be used for a stock, and oue may have a dozen 
or more kinds on one plant iu this way. In 
budding Roses, or indeed in budding any kiud 
of plant, strong, healthy stocks 6bould be se¬ 
lected, and above all, strong, healthy buds. It 
is chiefly when weak stocks or weak buds are 
used, that failure follows. Ou a recent visit 
to Boston, he saw especial reason to refer 
to this matter of budding Roses. A person 
was complaining that his tine English im¬ 
ported Rosea—beautiful a few years ago—were 
“ running out,” aud he doubted if the Bostou 
climate was good for the Rose; but the editor 
tound the “running out "merely meant that 
one-half the plants were now nothing but the 
Manetti, on which the English now bud ex¬ 
tensively. The stocks had outgrown the grafts. 
To Df.stroy tee Camjage-Worm. —Mr. O. S. 
Bliss tells the N. Y. Tribune that the best thing 
he has ever found for the cabbage-worm Is to 
dose it with pepper from the little four-ounce 
boxes so common in the stores nowadays. It 
seems not to be a sure cure, hut he lias some¬ 
times saved a crop by it. Instead of hellebore for 
curraut-worms he uses the root of the false 
hellebore (Vcratrum viride), a plant found in 
all our low meadows aud fields aud commonly 
known here as Indian Poke, sometimes as wild 
hellebore or black hellebore. He gathers in a 
few minutes roots enough for the year, and 
throws them upon some high shelf to dry. 
When the worms put in an appearance ou 
the currant bushes or rose bushes, he puts a 
root or two into an old three-quart fruit can 
and sets it on the hack of the stove for a few 
hours, wheu with a wiBp of hay or au old 
whisk broom, he sprinkles the bushes on a dry 
day. It is a little trouble, but no work, aud 
does uot cost over a cent a bush to keep the 
whole crowd of leaf-eaters in subjection. 
Best Varieties of Fowls.— Professor A. 
J. Cook says we do uot know wbat pub¬ 
lication is entitled to the credit—that he 
has decided that for both meat aud eggs no 
variety ranks higher than the Light Brahma. 
Possibly the Plymouth Rock ranks nearly as 
high. The Brown Leghorns he has found to be 
perfect non-sitters. They are admirable layers, 
except iu cold weather, when lie found them 
inferior to tbe Light Brahmas. The Leghorns 
mature quickly, when they weigh three to four 
pounds, and are, he thinks, almost useless for 
the table. They are wild and intractable. A. 
fence five feet high iB Brahma-proof. As much 
cannot he said of one three times as high 
if the word Brahma be replaced by Leghorn. 
I He cannot recommend the Brown Leghorns, 
| though he haa a flock for sale. 
