1898 
499 
R U R A LIS MS. 
(CONTINUED.) 
Michigan was sent to us during 1895 as 
10 days later than Gandy and of higher 
quality. We find that the peduncles are 
too short. The berry is of medium size 
and of fine quality. The vines are not 
vigorous and we cannot recommend it. 
Star. —From E. W. Reid, Bridgeport, 
O.—Plants received during April, 1897. 
They are vigorous, hut we have not been 
able to see anything in it so far to sup¬ 
port the high claims made for this 
variety. See Fig. 224, page 494. 
Carrie. —From Jos. H. Black, Son & 
Co. Plants received during September, 
1895. This a long-lived, vigorous variety 
of considerable merit. It begins to ripen 
early in June, and continues until June 
27. It is an extremely productive variety, 
the berries being of medium size, round 
and regular, of fair quality, not very 
firm. 
Joe. —From Jos. II. Black, Son & Co., 
September, 1895.—Perfect flower. June 
10, 1898. It is a hardy, long-lived variety 
just beginning to ripen. June 17, at its 
height. Berries round, fair quality, 
medium firmness and medium size. Pe¬ 
duncle stout, holding the berries up well. 
We have never seen cleaner, thriftier 
foliage, though we have seen more pro¬ 
ductive varieties. Stella, from the same 
firm, was at its best June 17. It is un¬ 
usually productive, from large to very 
large, varying from round to broadly 
heart-shaped and irregular. Scarlet 
color, quite firm, red flesh of mild quality. 
Free Silver. —T. C. Kevitt, Athenia, 
N. J., September 5,1896.—Potted plants. 
Medium vigor, peduncles too short. June 
8, berries firm, of medium size and fair 
quality. 
Chair’s Early.— Not remarkable in 
any way. 
Robbie. —From J. H. Black, Son & Co., 
September, 1895 —June 17, beginning to 
ripen. Vines highly vigorous and clean, 
very productive, medium firmness, good 
quality, heart-shaped, generally regular, 
large to very large, color between crim¬ 
son and scarlet, solid, pink flesh. Pe¬ 
duncles strong. It is a valuable late 
variety. 
Clyde. —This does not thrive at the 
Rural Grounds. 
Columbian does not thrive at the Rural 
Grounds. 
Vera. — E. B. Stevenson, Freeman, 
Ont., April, 1897.—June 13, 1898. Re¬ 
markably prolific ! Berries medium size, 
heart-shaped and of good flavor. Soft, 
not well held up. 
Glen Mary. —We have had this variety 
for four years. Its season is from 
medium to late, berries from medium to 
largest size, varying in shape, often re¬ 
sembling Sharpless. Some of the berries 
have white, seedy tips. Crimson in color 
and of medium quality. 
Annie Laurie has not proved a success 
at the Rural Grounds. The vines are low 
and unproductive. The quality is fine. 
Hall’s Favorite, from John W. Hall, 
Marion Station, Md., April, 1897. 
Flowers perfect, June 10, 1898. Berries 
round, crimson, of medium firmness, 
medium size, red flesh, fair to medium 
quality, vines fairly vigorous and pro¬ 
ductive. 
The following newcomers were re¬ 
ceived last Spring, and have not devel¬ 
oped to an extent that enables us to pass 
any opinion upon them : 
Up to Date, (Perfect). — From J. E. 
Bever, Keithsburg, Ill. 
Patrick. — From Edward W. Cone, 
Menominie, Wis. Perfect. 
Diamond’s Pilgrim —Fred A. Diamond, 
Rochester, N. Y. 
Mapimus. —J. H. Hale, South Glaston¬ 
bury, Conn. 
Nick Ohmer.—M. Crawford, Cuyahoga 
Falls, Ohio. 
No Name.— From Amos Ragle, Ragles- 
ville, Ind. 
Seedling of L. II. Osborne, North 
Weare, N. H. Perfect. 
Bittner’s Early. — George Bittner, 
Milan, O. Plants of Bittner’s Late died. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
Blistering AVeatlier.—A “ warm wave ” rolled 
In upon us the last day of June, and helped cele¬ 
brate the “Glorious Fourth ”. It was a blisterer 
and no mistake. The air was like the breath of 
an oven, and whenever it moved in the form of a 
breeze, it seemed to get hotter. To the west of 
our old stone house, is a. steep ridge with quite a 
thick wood at the top. The air seemed to cool off 
under these trees, and roll downhill to the house 
so that we kept quite comfortable at night. Out 
in the fields, though, the heat was awful. The 
hot, dry wind curled up the corn leaves on the 
higher soil, and the potato vines drooped and 
pulled in their edges Cow peas enjoy hot 
weather, but they began to wrinkle before the 
afternoon was over. The children suffered at 
night, and needed drink after drink of water. 
The raspberries and blackberries began to ripen 
too early and too small. Take it all in all, it was 
a scorcher—a time for ice-cold switchell and 
lemonade. 
Hot Weather Work.—The old-fashioned rag¬ 
weed is having its inning just now at Hope Farm, 
and how that stuff did grow during that blazing 
weather! The late-planted sweet corn is small 
for the season, and we kept the weeder going up 
and down through it day after day. This killed 
millions of little weeds, for nothing could live 
that once turned its roots up to that blazing sun. 
What an object lesson it was to show the value 
of an “earth mulch”. Kick your foot down into 
the soil where the weeder had been running, and 
you would find it dark with moisture. Go into 
the potato field where no cultivating could be 
done, and the earth around the vines was as dry 
as dust, and so hot that you could hardly hold a 
hand in it. No use talking, this constant scratch¬ 
ing of the upper surface soil does act to retain 
moisture where the plant roots can find it. We 
stopped cultivating the early potatoes when they 
came in bloom, and left the ground nearly level. 
Many good farmers kept right on cultivating, 
and hill or ridge up quite a little. In a season 
like the present—hot and dry—while the tubers 
are forming, this strikes me as about the worst 
thing one can do. 
Irrigation Needed.—Such a season as we are 
now having proves anew the great value of irri¬ 
gation for a farm like ours. The greater part of 
it is an open, sandy loam so situated that the 
prevailing winds blow down the valley directly 
across it. Three or four days of this wind will 
take the moisture right out of the upper soil, 
even after a heavy rain. This loss is much greater 
if we leave the surface of the soil untouched. By 
means of a light weeding or cultivating, we can 
hold a fair share of the moisture in the soil; but 
this is impossible with fruiting strawberries or 
potatoes that are “ laid by.” The soil around 
such crops dries up like an ash heap, and they 
cannot mature properly. On the Fourth of July, 
the Parker Earle strawberries had plenty of 
small, green berries which could not possibly 
mature. In fact, with all crops, one may work 
the upper soil all he can, yet there will be times 
when evaporation is too rapid, so that the soil 
cannot possibly provide a drink for the plants. 
Most of us who live on soil containing a good pro¬ 
portion of sand must, l think, sooner or later, 
study out some plan for lifting the water from our 
wells, springs, ponds or streams, so that it will 
run over the higher ground. On the Fourth of 
July, a heavy thunderstorm formed in the East. 
Rain fell up to within two miles of us, but we 
were as dry as dust. We used to think that plow¬ 
ing under good crops of cow peas, clover or rye 
would supply that moisture. That is a mistake. 
These crops are to hold the moisture after it has 
been supplied from other sources. You might as 
well put a bucket under the pump and then ex¬ 
pect it to pump up the water. It simply holds 
what others pump. 
Tile New Crowds the Old.—On the old New 
England farms, you will find, running through 
tne wood lots, the old-time stone walls that grand¬ 
father worked so hard to build. The old gentle¬ 
man thought he did a great thing when he dulled 
his fingers and sharpened his back over those 
stones! How useless that work seems to us now 
that these fields have been given back to the 
woods. They serve no useful purpose in out¬ 
age. Lost labor—that is what they represent to 
us. I wonder sometimes if the best of our thought 
and planning will seem as useless and barren of 
results to our grandchildren! Very likely. No 
doubt, there will be wonderful discoveries in 
agriculture during the next 100 years. It won’t 
do for us to get too far in advance of our age, 
though. The time for us to work is right now. 
Hard on the Stock.—The hot weather is torture 
for the animals unless they are well cared for. 
How the little chickens do hunt for shade in this 
blistering heat. How a hen does appreciate cool 
water. Don’t let the water pans stay out in the 
sun. Young roosters are a perfect nuisance at 
this time. We have them shut up by themselves. 
Our black houses—covered with paper and coal 
tar—are fearfully hot in this broiling sun. The 
horses need plenty of water this weather. It 
doesn’t take them long to get dry, and how they 
suffer working in the dust with mouth and tongue 
parched. No farm animal suffers worse than a 
hog in such weather as this when he has no re¬ 
fuge from a pile of hot and fermenting manure. 
It does a hog good to get out in a field and fill 
himself up on green food of some sort. No use 
talking, most of us suffer more from hot weather 
than we do from cold. Among the stock that suffer 
worst on some farms, are the women folks who 
do duty in a hot kitchen. Eat more cool food. 
That’s the way we do it at Hope Farm. 
We Like the Weeder better the more we use 
it. It was a problem with us as to whether, it 
should be run with the rows or across them when 
corn or potatoes are planted in drills. I believe 
that we do better work by running it across the 
drills when the plants are small. Especially 
with potatoes, in this way we are less likely to 
do damage. When potatoes like the R. N.-Y. No. 
2 are growing on a ridge, a careless man might 
do quite a little damage by ripping right along 
the row with a weeder tooth. It will not do to say 
that the weeder never scratches up corn or pota¬ 
toes, because it does when you hold it hard 
enough to do any damage to the weeds. As most 
of us plant corn or potatoes, we are likely to leave 
too many stalks anyway. For drilled crops, I 
think the best plan is to use the weeder across 
the rows as soon as the plants are well out of 
the ground, and begin with the cultivator along 
the rows as soon as they can be readily seen. 
Foul Strawberry Heds.—When we came to 
Hope Farm last year, we set strawberries on 
what seemed to be the best soil for them. It 
turned out to be just about the weediest place in 
New Jersey. In spite of .all our back-achey work 
last Summer and Fall, the field was a forest of 
weeds before the berries were picked. Our plan 
is to cut weeds, vines and all right off with the 
mower, let them dry, and then burn the whole 
thing off. If we decide to give the berries another 
trial, we shall tak6 a sharp plow and throw a 
furrow away from each side of a narrow row of 
plants. This will pretty well cover the space be¬ 
tween the rows. The fertilizer will go in the fur¬ 
rows near the plants, and after a week or so, we 
can keep the light cultivator running between 
the rows. If we decide not to give the fruit an¬ 
other year, we shall cut and burn and then plow 
everything under, and set out late cabbage. We 
expect now to plow the whole piece and try a 
late crop. We must have a good soaking rain, 
though, before we can get a plow in the soil. I 
doubt whether it pays to try to save a strawberry 
Held as weedy as this one is. 
Fruit Notes.—We picked the last Parker Earle 
strawberries on July -4. They were small, but of 
good quality. This gives us 29 days of straw¬ 
berries this year. The currants are only fair, 
though the Wilders are quite well loaded with 
fine fruit. The blackcap raspberries have 
suffered from the dry weather, but are bringing 
good prices, and sell well. Kansas is a fine 
variety with us—large, showy and sweet. Gregg 
did not winter well, and is dry and seedy. 
Certainly no one would plant more Greggs after 
testing the Kansas as grown beside it. The 
blackberries promise a fair crop, but the dry 
weather cuts down their size, and it takes a good 
many more to make a quart. The strawberry 
prices disgusted a good many growers, and many 
beds in our part of the country have been plowed 
under. Many people think that the small fruit 
business has been overdone, but the trouble this 
year was more with the season than with the 
heavy crop. The berries all seemed to ripen at 
once, and the market was swamped. u. w. c. 
FRAZER AXLE 
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outlasting three boxes of any other brand. Not 
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LANE’S CARRIAGE JACK 
Beat in the world. All 
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LANE BROTHERS CO., Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 
Potash 
is as necessary to plants as 
bread is to man. Some crops 
need more Potash than others, 
but none can do without it. 
The character of soils must 
also be considered, some soils 
being more deficient in plant 
food (Potash, phosphoric acid 
and nitrogen) than others. 
Every farmer should read 
our pamphlets containing full 
particulars of the large number 
of experiments made by Experi¬ 
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different soils and crops. 
These pamphlets can be had free on application. 
OERHAN KALI WORKS, 93 Nassau St., N. Y. 
Profits 
of Farming 
Gardening and Fruit Culture 
depend upon Good Crops and 
they in turn upon Good Fer¬ 
tilizers. The uniformly best 
fertilizer for all Crops and all 
soils is made by 
THE CLEVELAND DRYER CO., 
CLEVELAND, O. 
Materials supplied for “Home Mixing 
$20 Phosphate for Wheat and Grass 
Sold to farmers direct. We have no agents. Send }or 
Circular. Low prices for car-load lots. 
YORK CHEMICAL WORKS, YORK, PA. 
Rememberthe Main 
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will stand the test. The only twelve year* old 
standby Is built by the 
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