1898 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
119 
SOUTH JERSEY FARMING THAT PAYS. 
PLANT-FOOD IN A BAG. 
Asparagus, Potatoes, Hay, Hogs and Lambs. 
[editorial correspondence.] 
Part I. 
Mr. Warren Atkinson is a farmer who makes farm¬ 
ing 1 pay. He has 120 acres in cultivation, and sold 
last year, in two items alone, 24,000 hunches of aspar¬ 
agus and 4,800 bushels of early potatoes. His farming 
pays, and pays every year—some years more than 
others—but on the average, pays a better dividend on 
the money invested than almost any Wall Street busi¬ 
ness that you can trot out. 
Now, of course, you will ask, “ Where does this 
man live ? It must be mighty strong soil that will 
send out such crops ! ” 
Mr. Atkinson lives in Gloucester County, N. J.; 
“ poor Jersey ” as some benighted people call her. 
The soil in that section is naturally light and sandy, 
with some curious streaks of clay running through it. 
Mr. A.’s farm is mostly level, and inclined to a light 
loam. There is nothing “new” about it. Mr. A.’s 
father, who died about three years ago, was born on 
the farm, and lived his life of 83 good years there, a 
farmer. So, after nearly 100 years of almost con¬ 
stant tillage, the farm turned off, last year, 24,000 
hunches of asparagus, 4,800 bushels of white potatoes, 
450 bushels of sweets, 11 acres of field corn, 30 tons of 
pumpkins, 147 bushels of rye, and 100 tons of hay ! 
Any man who ever grew a crop, knows that such 
an immense output 
means a vast amount of 
plant food. Where did 
it come from ? What 
stock does this farm 
carry ? Six horses and 
mules, three cows, 50 
ewes, and 50 hogs and 
shotes ! That is really 
a light stock outfit for 
a 160-acre farm, and the 
manure from that bunch 
would quickly he lost 
sight of on 12 acres of 
asparagus and 20 acres 
of potatoes. This is a 
fertilizer farm, and Mr. 
Atkinson uses, each 
year, nearly 60 tons of 
fertilizer. 
“ Pretty w a s t e f u 1 
practice ”, you will say, 
but on it goes without 
letting the right hand 
know what the left 
hand is throwing out. 
The right hand is kept 
so busy broadcasting 
that it has no time to 
compare notes. Now 
then, says friend Stable 
Manure, here comes an¬ 
other of those fertilizer 
fairy tales. This story 
is true—a plain state¬ 
ment of facts. There are some new points about it, too. 
Mr. Atkinson has studied the fertilizer question 
with some care, for a good many years. He began to 
experiment with one formula and another, adding 
nitrogen in various forms to try to find out just what 
his soil needed. He soon made up his mind that the 
potash and phosphoric acid problems are compara¬ 
tively simple. Hone, dissolved rock and muriate of 
potash were easy to combine. Nitrogen proved to be 
the keynote of the fertilizer problem. The trouble 
was to know what you were getting when you bought 
a bag of fertilizer. When a dealer thought farmers 
felt poor, he made up a mixture of tankage, dissolved 
rock and kainit, which gave a fair analysis and sold at 
a low price. When this was used, the potato crop 
dawdled along in its growth until really hot weather 
set in. The tankage gave only one form of nitrogen— 
the organic—which was too slow in its action for the 
early crop. Another thing about these cheap ferti¬ 
lizers was the fact that no one knew that they were 
uniform from year to year. They might give the 
same analysis of nitrogen, but it might be fish, cotton¬ 
seed meal, tankage, with a little leather thrown in to 
color it up—whichever cost the least money. 
Organic nitrogen alone in a fertilizer will never 
produce a crop of early potatoes on that light soil of 
southern New .Jersey. The crop must have soluble 
food rirjht there from the time its first little roots start 
out. You might just as well give a week-old baby a 
beef bone to get its dinner from. Mr. Atkinson began 
using nitrate of soda with organic nitrogen. That 
pushed the crop along fast in the early part of the 
season, yet it seemed to stand still for a time. There 
was something needed between the quick-acting nitrate 
and the slow-acting organic. Sulphate of ammonia 
filled this link exactly, and after much experiment, 
Mr. Atkinson decided that the nitrogen that did best 
on his soil was a standard mixture of nitrate of soda, 
sulphate of ammonia, ground fish and bone. 
Some farmers study out a fertilizer formula that 
seems to suit their soil, and then try home mixing. It 
would be a big job to mix 60 tons of fertilizer on the 
barn floor, and Mr. A. did better than that. He went 
right to a manufacturer, and got figures on 100 tons 
or more of a guaranteed formula. The manufacturer 
can do the mixing better than a farmer can, for he 
has the machinery and the power to do it with. Of 
course, the chemicals must be sampled and analyzed 
before and after they are mixed, but that can be done 
when a man learns how to do it. 
It is on fertilizers made in this way that Mr. Atkin¬ 
son’s farm has made its record. They did so well on 
his soil that he took pride in talking about them. 
First thing he knew, this neighbor or that wanted 
some, and he became a fertilizer dealer in a small 
way, having his goods put together by a manufacturer 
just as anybody else might, and selling them for just 
what they contained. He has not tried to compete 
with the low-grade mixtures of tankage, rock and 
potash, for he says that he will not sell what he would 
not use on his own farm. 
“ But I don’t quite understand why there is all this 
difference in nitrogen,” says one. 
Well, I will try to take that up next week. In order 
to have something to think over, let us consider liquid 
manure or urine, well x-otted compost and fresh stable 
manure. There are three forms of plant food that we 
all recognize. See how they differ. We will take 
them for our text next week. h. w. c. 
WHAT THEY SAY. 
Plows and Plowing. —Here in winter the ground 
freezes about two feet deep. Those who have dug a 
post hole as soon as the frost is out of the ground, 
know how loose and moist the ground is as deep as 
the frost has been. I try to keep it as the frost left it, 
by following the plan The R. N.-Y. has often told was 
the best. As soon as the ground is fit to work in the 
Spring, with either a plow, disk, Acme harrow or drag, 
I work the surface loose and mellow. I don’t let it 
bake and crack open. If The R. N.-Y. plan is followed, 
there is no plow that can create a hard bottom. 
Traer, Iowa. p. s. 
Seeding to Clover and Timothy. —Although the 
mode of seeding one year may be successful, another 
year it might fail on account of lack of moisture or ex¬ 
cess of moisture. The past few years, where we have 
suffered from lack of moisture through the Summer, 
and often in the Fall months, I have had the best suc¬ 
cess by giving the grass seed all the covering I would 
give the grain with which I sow it, whether wheat, 
oats or barley. These are generally sown on stalk 
ground plowed once with a corn cultivator, and har¬ 
rowed twice, but I consider it best to plow once cross¬ 
wise of the way the corn was laid by; it levels the 
ground much more thoroughly, pulverizes the soil, 
and puts the seed in the ground at a more even depth. 
In fact, one need not fear putting too much labor on 
any seed-bed. Seeding to grass alone, I do not con¬ 
sider advisable, as the year has to be extremely favor¬ 
able to get even a crop of weedy hay. When the land 
is sown to Winter wheat or rye, I prefer seeding in the 
early morning in February or March, when the ground 
is bare and the nights freezing ; the frost leaves little 
crevices for the seed to fall into, and the first thaw 
will close these and cover the seed. j. m. 
Eveland, Towa. 
Certain Potato Points. —In Ruralisms of Decem¬ 
ber 25. I note the remarks of J. II. Van Der Vort, of 
Michigan, in regard to late-planted potatoes. Late 
planting may be all right for Michigan, but for south¬ 
ern New England and places of similar latitude, I be¬ 
lieve that it is, as a rule, a failure. If we could con¬ 
trol the planting of potatoes in Michigan. thej r would 
be planted at such a time as would insure a sufficiently 
long season in which to grow that there would be 
plenty of time to mature the crop fully, in order that 
the potatoes might have the largest possible content 
of starch. Michigan potatoes have been shipped into 
our eastern markets for some time, but this is the first 
season during my experience that they have anywhere 
approached our native potatoes in quality. I have 
talked with a number of Michigan growers, and as one 
told me, “ This is the first year in some time that our 
potatoes have got fully ripe, and they are nice.” One 
of Michigan’s largest shippers told me, “ We don’t 
claim our potatoes to be as good as those grown in 
western New York,” while New England deservedly, 
I think, says that western New York is not up to 
Maine and Vermont stock. We want starch and lots 
of it when we want quality, and quality influences any 
market after a while. 
If you don’t believe 
this, follow the potato 
market a while. Find 
where they grow 
starchy potatoes, take 
care in sorting, and you 
will find there the best 
prices prevail. 
Science tells us that 
there is more flesh-form- 
ing food in early pota¬ 
toes than in late ; that 
the late varieties con¬ 
tain more starch which 
is foi-med during longer 
growth, yet in Connec¬ 
ticut, early and medium 
potatoes are best, sim¬ 
ply because the late 
varieties seldom have a 
chance to mature fully, 
but blight at the same 
time as the early varie¬ 
ties. I should like to 
enter a strong protest 
against the craze which 
seems to be on in many 
potato sections for 
growing almost entirely 
the Rural New-Yorker 
No. 2. They say that 
the New York and Bos¬ 
ton markets are calling 
for them. If your lo¬ 
cality is to get or hold a reputation for No. 1 pota¬ 
toes, you would better grow some other varieties. 
The R. N.-Y. No. 2 has some good points, such as 
large yield, smoothness and late-keeping qualities, 
but its almost general poor quality, large, hollow and 
black-hearted specimens, condemn it where one wishes 
to grow a really fine article. The reason why it is 
liked as well as it is in New York and Boston, is be¬ 
cause there so many hotels, restaurants and boarding¬ 
house keepers want a potato that, either boiled or 
baked, will hold together. It will not break open and 
have that white, floury appearance that marks the 
good potato. Besides, and it’s quite a point when pota¬ 
toes are high, nowhere near so many will be eaten. 
No one takes a second poor potato. The wet, soggy, 
hold-together potato can be used the second time for 
frying, salads, etc., when not eaten as first cooked. 
Connecticut. h. g. Manchester. 
Mixed Farming Again. —I can hardly agree with 
the suggestion of R. S. B., given to T. R. on page 82. 
While the advice to keep out of debt is good, I should 
not be afraid to add a little more to T. R.’s debt for 
the purchase of a few good dairy cows, with a market 
at 20 cents per pound for butter the year ’round. By 
starting with a few good cows, and using a good pure¬ 
bred bull of one of the butter breeds, and raising his 
best calves, he could soon have a dairy of good cows 
without being much money out. With the skim-milk, 
a few acres of clover pasture, and a very little grain, 
he would be able to turn off quite a number of hogs in 
a year. We have found that the poultry business is 
not a bad adjunct to the dairy business and mixed 
farming, when properly managed, as the skim-milk 
the hens will consume is one of the best of foods for 
egg production. I think quite likely, if the eggs were 
