52 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 22 
use hot water ; ordinary spring or well water is warm 
enough. Don’t fail to keep plenty of grit before them, 
and with a good, vigorous cockerel to each 20 hens, all 
good, bright, healthy birds, their eggs should be not 
less than 80 per cent fertile, and good strong hatch- 
able eggs. J. E. STEVENSON. 
New Jersey. 
Great Value of Leghorn Cocks. 
I have not raised broilers for a number of years, but 
I then found that clover hay and green feed improved 
the fertility. I found that a White Leghorn cock gave 
twice as many fertile eggs as any other breed during 
the winter, and every one with any experience knows 
that Leghorn eggs or their crosses hatch much better 
in a machine than any other breed. For broilers of 
1 14 pound each, I would just as lief have them as some 
larger breed. If I were raising broilers and had pure¬ 
bred P. Rocks or Wyandottes, 1 would breed them to 
W. Leghorns during the winter, and remove the Leg¬ 
horns and mate them with cocks of their own breed 
when spring fairly came, as the Leghorns seem to im¬ 
part a vitality to the egg that will stand a good deal 
of abuse in hatching. The whole secret is in getting 
good, strong germs ; if we ean sueceed in getting 
germs strong enough, the poorest machine on the 
market will bring out an A No. 1 hatch ; but if the 
germs are weak, the best hen that ever sat will make 
a poor job of it. So don’t, at every poor hatch, send 
off a letter with a special delivery stamp to the manu¬ 
facturer of your particular incubator, cussing him up 
hill and down, as, nine chances out of ten, the whole 
fault is with the eggs. We all make a mistake, I fear, 
in crowding our breeders so as to get the greatest 
number of eggs out of them when we are after germs. 
Would it not be far better to have each breeder lay 
only 80 eggs, 75 of which would hatch, than to get 150 
eggs and hatch only 50 of them ? I think, in time, we 
will find our many failures due to working more for a 
large number of eggs, when we should disregard the 
number of eggs and work entirely for strong germs. 
Pennsylvania. wm. h. truslow. 
Keep Eggs from Being Chilled. 
Hens can be kept housed and have fertile eggs, if 
they are well cared for, and kept in perfect health. To 
keep them in perfect health, they must be kept busy, 
and as they can get nothing but what is given to them, 
they must have a variety of food. I feed a mash in 
the morning, and small grain thrown in wheat chaff 
to keep them busy, with a full ration at night. I am 
feeding buckwheat, wheat, oats and corn, but more 
corn than of any other grain. They, also, need green 
food ; cabbage is excellent for them, if it can be had. 
Fertile eggs can be had, but it means work. The 
broiler men buy their eggs mostly, I think. The fer¬ 
tility in January, when hens are housed, should not 
be below 50 per cent, and ought to be 75 percent. One 
of the drawbacks is that the eggs get chilled in very 
severe weather, as it is hard to get them picked up 
often enough when one has so many to look after. To 
get the greatest possible number of fertile eggs from 
a pen of fowls, keep them in perfect health, not over¬ 
crowded or overfed ; then keep them busy, make them 
scratch for all they get through the day, and still 
see that they have enough to eat at night. 
New Jersey. _ n. a. mount. 
A MEETING OF STRAWBERRY MEN. 
WHAT OSWEGO GROWERS TAI,K ABOUT. 
Strawberries from Oswego County, N. Y., are 
famous in all the large markets during their season. 
The following condensed extracts from some of the 
papers read at the December meeting of the Oswego 
Fruit Growers’ Association, will interest all who love 
a strawberry: 
How / Grow Fancy Marshalls. 
F. G. Tiee said : “ The berries were grown by the 
ordinary matted-row system. After taking out plants 
for resetting, we left a row about 10 inches wide, and 
mulched this well with marsh hay. Last year, we 
bedded in runners and mulched in the spring. This 
year, we are using the narrow-row system. We set 
plants with a spade, and cut the roots to about three 
inches in length. A man uses the spade, and a boy 
follows with a basket of plants, and puts each plant 
in back of the spade, spreading the roots fan-shaped. 
We use a small handful (about 400 pounds to the acre) 
of commercial fertilizer costing about $38 to $40 per 
ton, about 10 days after the plants are set. We use a 
tool made by ourselves especially for putting on the 
fertilizer. It consists of a long tube and two funnels, 
one within the other. The inner funnel sets over the 
plant, and when the fertilizer is dropped through the 
tube, it falls in a rim around the plant, and none of 
it touches the foliage. In the Fall, we use 500 pounds 
of ground bone, and 250 pounds of sulphate of potash 
to the acre. We don’t use muriate ; it will burn them. 
“ After the plants are set, we use a garden rake 
about them to stir the soil, and Breed’s weeder till 
July 1. I set berries this year 2 % x 3 feet apart. I 
use a marker made of flexible board, with shoes under¬ 
neath. If the surface is uneven, the thin ash board 
will bend and reach every depression. I set plants at 
the intersections of the marks, keep off all runners till 
the middle of July, and cultivate both ways till the 
runners are rooted. I allow four runners to root from 
each parent plant, and place them at regular intervals 
between the old plants. It costs about $10 to keep the 
runners off, and I think that it pays well. I put on 
nearly four tons of straw to the acre this winter ; I 
put it on early, not covering the plants, but between 
them. On the approaeh of the coldest weather, I place 
part of it directly over the plants. Of varieties, I pre¬ 
fer the Marshall. It did better on upland than on the 
flats this year. I also grow the Brandywine and Wm. 
Belt. The latter is liable to blight, but I am not 
troubled much that way. Marshall yielded at the rate 
of over 10,000 quarts to the acre. I put many of them 
up in fancy packages, and sell six quarts for $1.50.” 
Growing Large Crops of Atlantics. 
Mr. R. Quonce stated that we must have dry land 
for Atlantic berries; they are very liable to rust, and 
wet soil enhances this. He plows the land thoroughly, 
fits it till so mellow that one can thrust the hand in 
all over, marks the rows with a peg-tooth corn-marker, 
scatters in the mark about 000 pounds of commercial 
fertilizer to the acre before setting ; the brand usually 
used analyzes 1 to 2 per cent ammonia, 9 to 11 per 
cent phosphoric acid, and 2 to 3 per cent potash. He 
believes that phosphoric acid derived from bone is bet¬ 
ter than that from rock. After the fertilizer is drop¬ 
ped, he covers it by leveling off the mark, and sets the 
plants right on the mark ; gives clean culture, what is 
known as the matted row, and gets good results. He 
applies one ton of the same grade of fertilizer to the 
acre in the spring of the bearing year ; puts it on very 
early in the spring, scatters it on the plants, and it 
never has burned them. He sets his berries on the 
same ground, year after year. After a bed fruits, he 
plows it up and summer-fallows the ground the rest of 
the season. The next Spring, he sets it to berries 
again. He has picked 103 crates of Atlantics from a 
half acre, and knows that over 50 crates went to waste 
because of the dry weather. They were not mulched, 
the season was dry, and the berries never came to 
maturity. His yields run from 185 to 200 crates per 
acre. The price received is from $5 to $7 per crate of 
30 quarts. 
Strawberries on a Large Scale. 
Dr. Geo. P. Johnson (known as the Strawberry King) 
said : “As early as possible in the Spring, I thoroughly 
prepare my ground. After it is well plowed and 
dragged, I roll it to make it level and smooth, mark 
the rows straight, at once begin setting plants, and 
continue until the 50 acres are planted. I am a posi¬ 
tive believer in early setting. My experience is that 
early-set plants do by far the best. 1 am, also, a firm 
believer in not digging the plants until ready to set 
them. Often the poor grub gets lots of curses for 
destroying the plants when, in fact, no grubs have 
been there, but the plants die out because they have 
been dug too long. I have met with great loss by set¬ 
ting plants that were partly dried up. 
“ After I am done setting, I at once go through the 
straight rows with a two-horse cultivator, and it is 
wonderful how near an experienced hand can run to 
the row of plants. As soon as I am through, I start 
the cultivator and go through them again, and have 
a gang of men follow with hoes. I keep this up all 
through the Summer. My rule is to cultivate 16 times, 
and hoe them eight times during the season. My ex¬ 
perience has been that the more we cultivate and hoe, 
the less the grand total expense. We also have a cleaner 
bed, and more and better fruit. If possible, I put a 
small dressing of unleached hard wood ashes on after 
every alternate hoeing. At the end of the hoeing 
season, I go through with the large hind tooth on my 
Planet Jr. cultivator. This throws all the runners 
from the center of the row ; at the same time, it cov¬ 
ers them, and also prevents water from standing on 
them. 
“ About the middle of October, I put on the rows a 
moderate coat of horse manure. This, I believe, is 
very important. It prevents the early freezing weather 
from destroying the small fibers or roots. These roots 
may not appear to some to be of any value, but as God 
gave to man the small capillaries in his anatomy, so 
He gave these tiny feeding rootlets to the strawberry 
plant; therefoi'e, they should be protected and saved. 
Early in December, I again apply a coat of manure to 
the beds. While these two coats protect the plants 
from heaving in the early Spring, they at the same 
time, help to nourish and make the plants more fruit¬ 
ful. The result is more and better fruit, because of 
the manure. 
“ In early spring, I roll my bed with an iron roller. 
This, in my mind, does a deal of good in many ways. 
It presses the plant down to just where it belongs, 
packs the soil firmly about it, and leaves the ground 
perfectly level. It tends, also, to help out in a drought. 
As to the expense of this kind of treatment of the 50 
acres, I will say that the season of 1897 was an ex¬ 
pensive one, but the plowing, dragging, rolling, mark¬ 
ing, digging, trimming, dropping and setting of the 
plants cost $7.53)6 per acre. Cultivating and hoeing 
the entire season cost $14.92 1-9, milking a total of 
$22.45 4-9 per acre.” 
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GRAFTING IMPROVED CHESTNUTS ON 
SPROUTS. 
V. E., Crons Keys, N. •/.—1. Are chestnut sprouts six inches thick 
and 12 feet high too large to graft? 2. How high should they be 
grafted from the ground ? 3. What kind of chestnuts would be 
the most profitable ? 4. Would $400 be too much for 40 acres of 
chestnut timber three to five years old ? 
Japan Type Most Promising. 
1. No, though grafts inserted on such large stocks 
frequently make such rapid growth that they are some¬ 
times blown off at the union, unless the grafts are 
topped back after they start to grow, thus checking 
their growth until the union becomes complete. Or 
stakes could be used to protect them against the 
storms, in the early stages of growth. 2. We usually 
graft them about five feet from the ground, using the 
central part of the tree, if but one stock is used, the 
lower limbs to be sawed off after the graft becomes 
safely established, though we sometimes insert a num¬ 
ber of scions, if the tree is inclined to be of a spi*ead- 
ing habit, which is often the condition where the trees 
are not very close together. 3. Of the 14 varieties 
that we had in bearing the past season, I think the 
Japan type the most promising, for in that type, we 
have the earliest; it ripens without frost by Septem¬ 
ber 3 (Extra Early Japan), is productive, good quality, 
and bears young. This is about a month earlier than 
any of our European types. Killen, the largest of the 
chestnuts, opened up September 18, without frost. 
These varieties also possess edible qualities almost 
equal to our native sweet American. Following these 
were a number of varieties that ripened with Par¬ 
agon, Numbo, Ridgely, and others of the European 
type. With us, the Paragon is the most promising of 
the European type. We are now preparing for a 
commercial orchard of Extra Early and Killen, be¬ 
lieving that they are more promising than any others 
known to us. These two are not yet introduced to 
the public. 4. I would think $400 very reasonable ; at 
least it would be here in Delaware. J. w. KILLEN. 
Trim to One Inch and Graft. 
1. Chestnut trees of that size can be grafted, but it 
would require considerable time. We do not know 
what these trees or sprouts are like. If they are not 
growing close together, and have branching heads, 
we would cut the branches off when they are 1 to 1 
inch in diameter, and graft. 2. If they are straight 
shoots, with few or no side branches, we could cut 
them down, and graft the young shoots a year later. 
They would have to be grafted too high up to make 
good trees. 3. This is not so easy to answer. We have 
pinned our faith to Paragon so far, but some of the 
newer ones may be equally valuable. The improved 
Japans are very large and somewhat earlier than 
Paragon, but lack quality. 4. The price named is not 
too high for the land, if not too rough and rocky. It 
is difficult to keep clean in that case. The underbrush 
must be kept down. H. m. engle & sons. 
Pennsylvania. 
One-Inch Sprouts Are Best. 
1. Chestnut sprouts six inches thick and 12 feet high, 
are not too large to graft, and we recommend cleft¬ 
grafting on a sprout six inches thick. On a one-inch 
sprout, which we consider the most desirable size, 
we recommend tongue grafting. 2. It is much more 
convenient to graft when the shoots have been cut off 
to about four to five feet from the ground ; they can 
then be grafted without the aid of a ladder, and grafts 
are not so easily blown out by high winds. 3. As to 
the most profitable variety of chestnut to plant, would 
say any of the Japan varieties, as they ripen earlier 
in the season, are large and attractive, and bring the 
highest prices. The Japan Giant, Parry, Early Reli¬ 
ance, Alpha, and Superb are all very good varieties. 
We anticipate, great things from Burbank’s Extra 
Early. 4. Four hundred dollars would not be too much 
