THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
8i7 
1902 
EVERYBODY’S GARDEN. 
Garden Waste. —There is one source 
of waste in the garden operations, far 
greater than most gardeners have any 
thought of. I know of men extensively 
engaged in hotbed work, which requires 
great quantities of manure. The great¬ 
er portion of this is gathered up at liv¬ 
ery, hotel and private barns, and costs 
but little above the hauling. In order to 
get a sufficient quantity, however, it is 
necessary that a team make at least one 
trip every day in the year, Sundays not 
excepted in many instances. The ma¬ 
nure is hauled home and piled upon the 
ground without shelter, and the leach¬ 
ing process goes on from month to 
month. I believe it no exaggeration to 
say that hundreds of barrels of liquid 
manure go to waste every year on many 
of the truck farms in my immediate lo¬ 
cality. I have wondered too, many 
times what the actual saving would be 
if only a covering of boards were put 
over the heap. I have never been able 
to estimate very closely, but I believe 
the results would be an eye-opener if 
the actual loss were once clearly shown. 
There are also other leaks, in some gar¬ 
dens at least, that sorely need repairs. 
One gardener not far away with 12 to 15 
acres under cultivation, keeps nothing 
in the shape of live stock save a team of 
horses; not a cow, pig or chicken, yet 
every year enough roughage to keep a 
cow or fatten pork enough for the fam¬ 
ily, or poultry enough more than to pay 
the grocery bills, goes to waste. Yet 
they buy milk the year around, and 
quantities of meat at retail, and if eggs 
are not used to considerable extent, it 
is an exception to most families. An¬ 
other strange thing is that in many in¬ 
stances no baking is done at home. Near 
the market places are many bakeries 
which do a rush of business with the 
garden and truck farmers. As soon as 
his load is disposed of, or the hour for 
closing (12 M.) comes, the gardener 
rushes to the bake shop, usually emerg¬ 
ing with at least a bushel basket full of 
rye bread and various paper bags of 
cheap cakes. He pays tribute to the 
butcher too, buying great quantities of 
sausages, blood puddings, etc. Then a 
glass of beer and a cigar fortify him for 
the homeward drive. This of course 
does not apply to the American garden¬ 
er; he is the exception. The point is 
how do they work on the trash they eat. 
The baker’s goods are an abomination, 
and I would starve to death on them in 
three months’ time. The Various kinds 
of sausages are usually made from the 
most inferior parts of meat, and plenty 
of it in such a state that a self-respect¬ 
ing dog would hesitate to eat it. But 
plenty of pepper and garlic cover a mul¬ 
titude of sins in sausage making. And 
it is ready for the table without the 
trouble of cooking. To be sure it takes 
time to prepare and cook the various 
vegetables, also to hake bread and roast 
a piece of meat, but the cost would be 
much less, and the food would be more 
nutritious and appetizing, giving the 
laborers more strength to perform their 
work. I have seen him sell corn fodder 
enough to winter a cow at a price which 
would not pay his milk bill for three 
months. Even the horses would have 
made good use of the stalks, hut they 
were sold and hay purchased by the 
single bale. 
Well, there are different points from 
which to view the same object, and we 
do not all look through the same 
glasses. It is fortunate I suppose that 
we do not, but my experience has been 
that in every garden of any consider¬ 
able size there is much refuse that if 
not fed out at home goes to waste. I 
have considered hens one of the most 
profitable factors of the garden busi¬ 
ness. True, they must be kept under 
control, for they scatter consternation 
For the land’s sake, use Bowker’s Fer¬ 
tilizers. They enrich the earth.—Adi;. 
when left to roam at will. I may be 
away off in my arithmetic, but I have 
figured that every wideawake business 
hen, if allowed free range whenever the 
crop conditions will allow, is worth her 
price every year in destroying insects 
and weed seed. And I have never seen 
the time when the fresh eggs were not 
eagerly sought by customers, and sold 
from the wagon at a price well above 
the candled trash sold by the grocers. 
Then, too, I have grown pigs and fat¬ 
tened pork on the otherwise waste with 
a little grain at the last. The pork, 
lard, home-cured hams and bacon were 
far more satisfactory than that pur¬ 
chased over the counter. I know it was 
far cheaper also. We have always kept 
at least one cow and sometimes more, 
and found it profitable from a money 
point of view, as well as the satisfaction 
gained in always having all the clean, 
pure milk and cream we desired. These 
are some of the garden wastes as I have 
discovered them, and the remedies as I 
have applied them. 
Handy Manure Hook. —For handling 
manure easily and rapidly I have never 
seen anything else quite equal to the 
manure hook. Take any ordinary ma¬ 
nure fork and bend the shank at a little 
more than right angles with the tines. 
Do not bend too much, as it will be 
troublesome to free the hook from its 
load. A perfectly straight handle 2 
or three feet long is best. I was skep¬ 
tical about this hook when first intro¬ 
duced to it and thought it would be very 
awkward for loading on to a wagon. 
The man for whom I was working in¬ 
sisted that it worked much easier than 
a fork, and I thought him mistaken, but 
on trying it I found the motion for set¬ 
ting the fork into and raising the ma¬ 
nure to the wagon was a perfectly nat¬ 
ural one, and the work, especially in 
wet manure, was easier by half. It is 
also equally convenient for unloading, 
when the manure is left in heaps. I 
have never liked loading with the ordi¬ 
nary fork since using the hook. 
Muck for Celery and Onions. —In a 
recent number I spoke of the fertility of 
some of the swamp lands. While those 
conditions are true in many instances, 
they are by no means universally so. 
Disappointments have often resulted in 
reclaiming these swamps, from seeming 
lack of fertility; which doubtless result¬ 
ed from lack of available plant food in 
the form of potash and phosphoric acid. 
In such cases great benefit often results 
from a liberal use of stable manure and 
wood ashes. In some localities here it 
is advantageously composted with barn¬ 
yard manure, the practice being to mix 
the muck when the manure is hauled to 
the pile, by alternating layers of each. 
To mix the two thoroughly, of course, 
involves much hard labor in handling. 
Most of these soils make ideal celery 
and onion ground, when thoroughly 
seasoned over, exposing it to the action 
of the weather. When such lines fail 
to respond to the ordinary work of sub¬ 
duing, the stable manure and ashes, or 
lime, are usually sufficient to bring the 
best of crops From another point of 
view, much of the light sandy soil is 
adjacent to these muck swamps, Nature 
seemingly having compensated for the 
lack of fertility in the former by the 
mines of wealth stored away in the lat¬ 
ter. Some gardeners, and farmers too, 
have taken advantage of these circum¬ 
stances by bringing the two together 
with very gratifying results. A conven¬ 
ient way of doing this, and practiced to 
considerable extent, is to take advan¬ 
tage of the dry condition of the swamp 
for removing the muck. This is some¬ 
times left in small, low heaps right in 
the land where it is intended to be 
spread. The lime or ashes are scattered 
upon the heaps and the piles are then 
left through the Winter, being spread 
and plowed under the following Spring. 
Some prefer piling all in one large heap, 
mixing with the manure as above noted. 
This involves much labor. I think that 
much better results are obtained by 
using the muck in connection with the 
stable manure, than by using it alone. 
I may be in error, but I fully believe the 
muck swamps were not created in vain, 
but that they will prove sources of 
wealth to the owners, when rightly ap¬ 
preciated and utilized; either as they 
now lie, or are removed to the higher 
and poorer soils. These jottings will not 
be taken as altogether fanciful when one 
recalls that in all the original surveys, 
Michigan was put down upon the maps 
as a frog pond, wholly unfit for settle¬ 
ment or improvement. The same con¬ 
ditions, of course, prevail in many other 
States, but better methods are develop¬ 
ing vast sources of wealth. 
Michigan. J. e. morse. 
PUMPKINS AND THEIR SEEDS. 
Good Results.— The remarks on pump¬ 
kin seed on page 765 interest me, because 
they recall some experience I had about 
25 years ago in New Jersey. My farm 
was used as a dairy, and I was feeding 
cows chiefly. I grew one year one acre of 
pumpkins in hills nine feet apart, plowing 
strips three feet wide each way, so as to 
plant the seeds nine feet apart, leaving 
the intermediate spaces unplowed, but 
cultivated until the ground was covered 
by the vines. I got 30 full loads of pump¬ 
kins off the acre, and fed them to the 
cows twice a day for nearly six months 
steadily. I had them chopped in a large 
shallow box by a sharp-edged spade, and 
fed the whole of them, seeds, stringy 
matter, flesh and rind. The result was 
very satisfactory, especially, in the in¬ 
crease of butter in the milk. This after 
reading a most interesting article on this 
subject in the Bulletin of the Bussey In¬ 
stitute I concluded came from the seeds 
and stringy matter, to which they were 
attached in the center. I forget the pre¬ 
cise composition of this part of the gourds, 
but I think the fat contained in it was 
about 13 per cent. The experience was very 
satisfactory and had I not left the farm 
the next year, I should have grown still 
more pumpkins for the cows. As to the 
medicinal reputation of the seeds of the 
pumpkin, it may be said that, like much 
of the old pharmacopoeia, there was a 
good deal of old-fashioned popular error 
about it, and these seeds have been dropped 
from the list of vermifuges generally. 
They act as diuretics, but not in any de¬ 
gree injuriously; indeed, they are doubt¬ 
less quite useful, as the urinary function 
of animals is quite injuriously disregard¬ 
ed, and much mischief results, especially 
among cows by this neglect of attention 
to this function. The fact is that the 
pumpkin deserves a regular place among 
the Winter feeding crops for cows, for its 
nutritiveness, as well as for this medicinal 
effect. H. STEWART. 
Every reader of The R. N.-Y. is en¬ 
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issued by Martin Wahl, Rochester, N. Y. 
Write him a postal to-day. He offers 
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