1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
531 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Strawberry Culture.— The following 
questions came the latter part of June 
and are not very timely now. I refer to 
them here so as to bring out what I be¬ 
lieve to be an old story about strawberry 
culture: 
“Suppose strawberry plants in matted 
rows loaded with fruit, and large numbers 
of small green berries yet to ripen; be¬ 
tween the rows deep mulch, so that suf- 
licient moisture is assured, what will be 
the effect of nitrate of soda applied now 
(June 27)? Will it help,indirectly, to ma¬ 
ture the berries by increasing the strength 
of I he plant, or will it simply cause more 
runners and luxuriant foliage? Would 
potash or phosphoric acid have any effect 
on the fruit, if applied at the present 
stage? If so, what would be the best 
form of fertilizer to use?” a. p. c. 
Massachusetts. 
From my own experience T should say 
that the nitrate of soda would have little 
If any effect upon this season’s fruit. I 
think it would stimulate the vine to make 
a vigorous growth and throw out strong 
runners, but I do not believe it would help 
the fruit. Nitrate applied at time of 
blooming might increase the size of the 
fruit of some varieties, but I do not be¬ 
lieve that any fertilizer used in Spring 
will increase the number of berries. 
How do you explain that Belief? 
It must be an old story to most readers 
that I believe the fruit buds which pro¬ 
duce fruit for the following season are 
formed late in the Summer or early in the 
Fall. This is no guess work of mine, but 
the conclusions drawn from long and pa¬ 
tient work by the late Prof. E. S. Goff 
and others. The fruit buds are formed 
late in the season and stored away in the 
crown of the plant—not unlike a fact or 
a well-ordered principle stored away in 
a man’s brain. The feeding needed to 
produce the bud or the fact must be given 
before It is stored away, according to my 
theory. In the Spring we must have food 
enough close at hand to give the plant a 
vigorous start and growth, but we must 
not expect to increase the crop greatly by 
using fertilizers in Spring. 
Do you mean to say that if the crop 
has been neglected during the Summer 
and Fall you cannot save it by heavy feed¬ 
ing in Spring? 
That is hardly what I claim. Of course 
you would have better fruit on a neglected 
field if you used fertilizer freely in Spring, 
but you would never have a full yield by 
waiting until that time. It would be like 
a man trying to cram his head in a few 
short weeks with information which ought 
to be slowly assimilated through long 
years of hard study. 
How do you work out your theory? 
When we set plants in the Spring we 
use most of the manure and fertilizer at 
the time of planting. A little more is 
applied in late August. Our object is to 
get the largest possible growth of vine 
during the first year. When a bed is to 
be cropped the second year our plan is to 
plow both ways from the old row so as to 
leave a narrow strip of plants. Down in 
the furrows thus made we drop our fer¬ 
tilizer and work the ground clean with 
the cultivator. As the new plants run 
out they are “placed,” that is, set here 
and there so as to stand at least a foot 
apart, and kept well cleaned. We can 
generally tell by the looks of the plant 
when it has food enough. If it does not 
make the growth it should, more fertilizer 
is added. 
What fertilizer is best? 
The fruit and vine mixtures are good. 
If I were to mix the chemicals myself I 
would use 400 pounds nitrate of soda, 400 
pounds muriate of potash, 400 pounds fine 
ground bone and 800 pounds dissolved 
phosphate rock. The whole ton on an 
acre of Spring-set plants would pay if a 
man would steel his heart to the task of 
keeping them clean. I would not broad¬ 
cast an ounce of this fertilizer, but put 
1,500 pounds on in strips about two feet 
wide, where the plants are to be set, 
working it in well with cultivator or har¬ 
row. I would use the other 500 pounds 
about the middle of August alongside the 
rows and well worked in. To fertilize for 
the second fruiting I would use 800 pounds 
per acre in the furrows. If no chemicals 
were on hand 1 would use dried and 
crushed hen manure in the furrows as the 
best of the farm manures for straw¬ 
berries. 
Of course your own berries are as clean 
as a whistle! 
I regret to say that a whistle no cleaner 
than our best bed of Marshalls would 
give a very foul note! During haying and 
harvest the weeds got away from us. I 
now agree that it was a mistake to plant 
peas between the rows of Fall-set plants. 
Had the peas been left out we could have 
worked the fruit with the cultivator and 
Hms saved much hand work. We shall 
have to clean these weeds out now by the 
finger and thumb method. 
How are those wild strawberries doing? 
Those transplanted and cultivated have 
made a fine showing. The plants are 
larger than those left in the field and 
seem to be making more runners. The 
few fruits left on the vines this year were 
larger than those in the field. We took 
most of the plants from a wild patch cov¬ 
ering a space about as large aa a good- 
sized house. I hope to plow out this wild 
patch and treat it about as we do our 
beds for a second picking, and see what 
will come from it! The natural fruit is 
much larger than the ordinary wild berry, 
and of exquisite flavor. 
Pruning Trees.—T his is what an Ohio 
man says: 
“When I planted my fruit trees this 
Spring I left on all branches, on account 
of being locust year. The locust has not 
as yet made his appearance. When shall 
I prune my trees?” w. l. e. 
That’s about my situation. I expected 
the locusts and prepared for them as best 
we knew how. We left all the head we 
dared to on the trees we set, as I thought 
the locusts would slit the young wood and 
we could, if need be, cut below it next 
Spring. Thus far not a single locust has 
been heard from. I Imported some egg 
clusters of Praying mantis and hung them 
about on low shrubs and twigs. I can’t 
find a single one hatched out! The young 
trees have made a larger top than I like, 
but I intend to let them alone until next 
Spring, and then cut them back to where 
I want them. This seems to me better 
than hacking at them now. 1 am about 
satisfied anyway that most fruit growers 
prune too much. 
Farm Notes.— It has been a job to keep 
the sugar beets clean. Much finger work 
is needed—so much so that I begin to 
doubt the wisdom of trying to grow them 
on a weedy farm. Yellow turnips grow 
faster, are easier to keep clean and give 
a large crop late in the season. Are the 
sugar beets so much better for feeding 
that they will pay for the extra labor? 
I want to find out—at present I doubt it. 
. . . . The fertilizer went on the corn 
July 16, just after a thorough cultivation. 
Do you expect to get your money back 
from this late fertilizing? 
Yes. The corn was far behind. It evi¬ 
dently lacked food. Within four days 
after the fertilizer went on the stalks 
took a darker color and began to pick up. 
Of course the fertilizer should have been 
used when the corn was planted. That 
was my mistake, for I thought the soil 
strong enough to make the corn. I expect 
to follow the corn with rye and grass and 
intended to use fertilizer with this seed¬ 
ing. What we did was to add more fer¬ 
tilizer and put all on the corn. I shall 
not use any more on the rye. 
But if late fertilizing will not help the 
strawberry, how can you expect it to help 
the corn? 
The formation of the ear of corn is not 
unlike the making of the fruit bud on the 
plant. This is made in the Fall, and we 
often use a fertilizer rich in potash and 
phosphoric acid to help produce it. I do 
not pretend to say that this late fertiliz 
ing will give us a full corn crop. We 
shall lack stalk. June is the best month 
of the year for corn to grow in, and if 
it has not made a heavy growth by July 
4 it will rarely make up for the delay. I 
do not expect that this fertilizer will fully 
make up for my blunder in planting corn 
on poor soil. I do expect, however, to get 
my money back by raising better corn 
than I could have without using it, and 
have the soil in fair shape to start the 
rye and grass. 
But why do you sow rye? 
I have become convinced that on our 
soli and witn our facilities for fitting the 
land it pays us to use some grain when 
seeding down. I have not yet thrashed 
the wheat or made any effort to sell the 
straw, but I believe that rye pays better. 
The straw will sell for $20 per ton in 
bundles. With a ton and a half to two 
tons of straw per acre and the grain in 
addition no crop of wheat that we can 
raise can compare with it. I think also 
that our grass and clover show up better 
after rye than after wheat. I hope that 
this year’s grain seeding will be the last 
I shall do for many years. If it proves 
successful 1 shall then have about all of 
the back farm in grass. We intend to set 
trees all over this part of the farm, in 
sod and then keep the plow out. , 
Home Notes.— We had our first sweet 
corn July 20. It was Cory, and remark¬ 
ably good for that variety. Farmers on 
the light soil of the valley began hauling 
sweet corn to market shortly after July 
4, which is a little later than usual. This 
corn brings a big price this year. . . . 
Apple-sauce time has come again! That 
is an event In our family, when the 
Astrachans color up and the Nyack Pip¬ 
pins begin to shake themselves. A farmer 
ought to have impudence enough to talk 
back at fate with a good plate of apple 
sauce before him. Baked apple and cream 
is another dish that makes Hope Farm 
laugh at the beef trust. . . . The house 
seems pretty silent these days. The 
Madame has worked and worried pretty 
hard for two years without much let up. 
Some friends were going to spend a few 
weeks at a quiet place on Cape Cod. So, 
afetr her school closed and the fruit was 
all canned she took the four little folks 
and went off for a vacation. Aunt Jennie, 
Grandmother’s sister, and her son, the 
Chunk, are here, and we are all comfort¬ 
able enough physically. Still there is 
something about the place that isn’t just 
right. The Madame and the four little 
people wouldn’t, altogether, weigh as much 
as some people I know, but they make a 
big hole in a home when they pass out. 
I went down to see them off. The little 
Bud cried hard when the boat started. 
The other children looked very serious, 
and the Madame was very busy shaking 
out something that was wrong with the 
Bud’s dress. T may go down to bring 
them home—in fact, the Madame says she 
intends to stay till I do come. I was born 
and raised close to Cape Cod, and T 
haven't been back to the old place for 
years. 
Fruit and Garden.— Our early apples 
look well, and we shall begin to pick 
next week. Spraying seems to have paid 
us well. Our apples hang to the tree bet¬ 
ter, and there are very few wormy ones 
as compared with last year. “Why don’t 
you count the wormy ones and give us the 
exact proportion from each tree? That’s 
the way to conduct an experiment—the 
experiment station people do it!” 
I know they do—that’s what they are 
paid for. A farmer with weedy corn, cab¬ 
bage unplanted, and a dozen things at him 
all at once can't stop to count wormy 
apples. He can take the experiment sta¬ 
tion figures and use his judgment regard¬ 
ing his own crop.We are grow¬ 
ing quite a crop of bush Dima beans this 
year, and It is interesting to see how Tew 
“rogues” now appear. By “rogue” I 
mean a plant which persists in climbing 
far above the bush form—going back to 
the pole Dima type. In former years 
these climbers were quite numerous, but 
now they seem pretty well subdued and 
only now and then do we tfnd one in the 
row. I wish there were as few humans 
who decline to drop their “high notions.” 
. . . . Philip is working in celery as a 
second crop—following lettuce, spinach, 
turnips and string beans. He has given 
up digging trenches for celery—planting 
on a level surface, intending to blanch 
with boards or tile.I intended 
to set out a large crop of late cabbage, 
but the other crops are so weedy that It 
seemed better to tackle what we have in 
rather than block out more work. There¬ 
fore, we shall set not over 2,500 late cab¬ 
bage and raise fewer weeds. These are 
awful days for weed fighters, but the 
battle must go on. h. w. c. 
Enough Potash 
in the fertilizer is as necessary 
as the use of the plow to in¬ 
sure a full crop 
Our books tell how much plant food 
each crop removes from the soil, also 
how best to replace it. They are free. 
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In regard to setting apple trees, 50 years 
experience favors setting native trees and 
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grow you can graft again. n. h. k. 
Grasshopper Poisons.— On page 433 J. E. 
Morse advises an arsenical bran mash for 
grasshoppers. The Ottawa authorities In 
the Dominion report for 1901, recommend 
a poison mixture: one part Paris-green, 
two parts common salt, 35 parts horse 
droppings. Mix thoroughly, adding enough 
water to make soft without being sloppy. 
The smell will attract locusts within a ra¬ 
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