1896 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
575 
form a crust or whitewash over the foliage and fruit, 
and the lime will render the arsenic so inert that 
there is not the slightest danger of its becoming 
soluble. I would have no hesitancy in using this 
prescription. wm. b. alwood. 
Virginia Experiment Station. 
Bordeaux Mixture for the Beetles. 
I am unable to suggest any satisfactory remedy for 
potato beetles on tomato vines during the period 
when the fruit is maturing. If earlier in the growth 
of the plant, arsenites could safely be used. If it 
were a case of a few plants in the garden, I would 
try a thorough application of Bordeaux Mixture. 
This has a decided value as a deterrent against nearly 
all insects—including flea beetles and Colorado potato 
beetles—when applied to potato plants, and, I am 
confident, would help, at least, in protecting these 
tomato plants. This mixture is not an active poison, 
and if the fruit is stained, it can easily be cleaned by 
immersing in dilute vinegar. I am of the opinion, 
however, that the expense of the application, and of 
this subsequent cleansing of the fruit, would make 
the use oi this mixture impracticable in the case cited. 
Vermont Ex. Station. u. r. jones. 
Give Them Hellebore. 
To destroy potato beetles on tomato vines, I would 
spray them with a strong mixture of white hellebore 
and water, using four ounces of hellebore to 10 gal¬ 
lons of water. First wet the hellebore with a little 
boiling water, then thoroughly mix with the cold 
water, and apply at once. I believe that this will 
prove an effectual remedy, and there is no risk from 
poisoning the tomatoes. m. h. beckwith. 
Chemung County, N. Y. 
ONION SEEDS AND SETS. 
A GBEAT BUSINESS AT CHILLICOTHE, OHIO. 
A few years ago, the great bulk of the onion sets 
sold in this country were grown at four points, viz. : 
Philadelphia, Pa., Louisville, Ky., St. Louis, Mo. and 
Chillicothe, 0. The soil at the latter place is well 
adapted to this business. On July 1, while the har¬ 
vest was in progress, I visited some of the onion 
fields. Mr. Thomas N. Mansfield, the largest grower 
at Chillicothe, made this statement: 
“ I found that I could not employ help and make it 
pay. Now I have them grown on shares, letting the 
land to families where there are children. I furnish 
the land, seed and teams to haul the manure, and 
plow the land. The tenants do all the work, and I 
get half the crop ready to crate and store away. 
The past spring, I seeded 15 acres, but when the 
wet weather came on, I abandoned five acres, 
because two families had taken more than they 
could keep clean. The five acres were plowed 
and planted to sweet corn, and I hope to realize 
enough from the sweet corn to pay for the onion 
seed lost. A man with a family of three or four 
children, will take two or three acres. Some 
families will succeed well, where others fail; it all 
depends on the diligence and skill of the family. 
The children do the weeding, when if they did not 
have the onions to care for, they would be idle. In 
the fall, when the crop is sold, a nice sum of money 
comes in that they look upon as clear gain. If grown 
help had to be employed at regular, stipulated wages, 
the wage bill would take the money. 
“ We plant from 40 to 60 pounds of seed per acre. 
For a yellow variety, the Strasburg is a favorite, 
and for white, the Silver Skin. For growing seed, 
we plant in March, ‘ pictures,’ a small onion between 
a set and a grown onion. The first year we get a fair 
yield of seed, but the large crop the second year. 
The yield of seed is from 100 to 300 pounds per acre. 
Four or five years ago, seed sold at $2.50 per pound ; 
this year, seed sold as low as 20 cents. There is not 
much difference in profit whether sets or seed are 
grown. 
“One farmer that I know sowed eight acres with 
seed this spring. When the rains came on, the weeds 
took them. He found it impossible to weed them by 
hand, but is keeping the weeds mowed, and will get 
sets of fair size. Had I thought of this plan, I would 
have tried it, instead of plowing under the five acres 
that my tenants could not handle.” 
Schilder Brothers are large dealers as well as grow¬ 
ers, and this is their story : “We grow seed sets and 
large onions. Seed-growing pays better. We plant 
large onions for seed growing, get two crops from 
one planting, from 100 pounds to 400 pounds per acre. 
Seed sold as low as 30 cents per pound this year. Of 
large onions, we grow 300 bushels per acre, but it re¬ 
quires a good season to make this yield. We furnish 
the seed and land, and get one-half the crop. We let 
one-half acre to each man, and have five acres planted 
this year. For fertilizer, we use only barnyard ma¬ 
nure, which must be thoroughly composted. We 
haul the manure from the city, and pay 25 cents 
per load for it. We think that bag manure would be 
the cheapest, but the men do not know how to 
apply it. 
“ We grow onions on the same land for 10 to 15 
years in succession. When once clean of weeds, it is 
less trouble to keep the weeds down. The stable 
manure reseeds with weeds to some extent. 
“For growing sets, we p ant 40 pounds of seed per 
acre. This is heavy seeding; some use less. For 
growing large onions, we plant 10 bushels of sets per 
acre in rows two feet apart, that they may be cul¬ 
tivated with a horse. We get one-half the crop 
ready to store away. The seed must be cleaned by 
hand, rubbing through a screen. Then the wind¬ 
mill is used, after which the seed is thrown into 
water, the good seed settling to the bottom. For 
tools, we use the Planet Jr. cultivator. Last year 
about 200 acres were grown about here; this year, 
about 150 acres have been sown, next year the aver¬ 
age will be still less.” 
Anent these stories, I give that of the Miller Bros., 
12 miles west of Chillicothe. They have their onion 
field of 3^ acres in a reclaimed swamp, bordering on 
the north fork of Paint Creek. Their soil is a black 
loam, about four feet deep lying on gravel. Last 
year, they had this same plot in onion sets, and used 
AN ENGLISH CURRANT, “THE COMET.” Fig. 179. 
See Ruralisjis, Page 579. 
about 100 pounds of bag manure per acre; but on 
account of the extreme drought, harvested only 100 
bushels of sets. This year, without any fertilizer, 
they planted 50 pounds of seed per acre. The cost 
of preparing the land for the seed was a little more 
than it would have been for corn. The crop required 
weeding three times. The expense account aside 
from the preparation of the land, is as follows : 
175 pounds seed at 60 cents. 
Drilling seed. 
.$105.00 
Three weedings. 
To pull and pile. 
Rent of land. 
Cleaning and crating. 
Total expense. 
Estimated crop, 700 bushels, at $1.25 per bushel..$875.00 
Total expense. 319.00 
Profit.$556.00 
They are drilled in rows 15 inches apart, and weeds 
kept out. When harvesting, they are pulled and placed 
in hand piles, two rows in a pile. After wilting for a 
day or two, four of these first-pile rows are put in one, 
making eight rows in a pile as they grow. They are 
piled with the bulbs next the ground, and in such a 
manner as to protect the bulbs from the sun’s rays 
and weather changes to prevent bleaching. When 
the tops are thoroughly decayed, the bulbs are rubbed 
over a sieve or screen with meshes the required size, 
till all the tops and particles of adhering soil are 
removed, when they are ready to crate and store. 
JOB* W- JAYSON, 
WHAT THEY SAY. 
Bye for a Soil Overcoat. 
A French florist told a customer who wished plants 
that would produce all varieties on one root, that it 
was hardly to be expected any more than it would be 
expected that one woman should possess all varieties 
of moral, physical and intellectual attractiveness. It 
is equally true, probably, that no plant possesses all 
desirable requirements for a winter overcoat to pre¬ 
vent washing of the soil. In our market gardening 
on sandy soils, something seems absolutely essential. 
We are too far north to double-crop all of our land, 
and I am very confident that it is not wise to have it 
bare, or give it up to weeds. Crimson clover is too 
uncertain with us, and I prefer something that will 
not “ die in winter.” When we raise potatoes, beets, 
late peas, sweet corn, etc., we cannot get off the 
crops in time to use the land for another profitable 
crop, and, in a small way, we have found it wise to 
sow rye in preference to anything else. With us, 
oats and peas sowed during the hot months, do not do 
well. If the rye gets too big, we feed it down or 
mow it for fodder. If mowed before it is too mature, 
it will keep on growing. 
For very early planting, green crops plowed in 
might not be beneficial; but I am not at all sure 
about this. For melons, squashes and like crops, a 
crop of rye plowed in two or three weeks before 
planting is, I think, very beneficial. The unsightli¬ 
ness of land left bare or covered with weeds, is not 
pleasant, and this practice of fall plowing, furnish¬ 
ing a “ winter overcoat,” etc., seems to destroy many 
weeds and insects. While a fall crop of turnips or 
kindred crops left to rot on the ground may be bene¬ 
ficial, I am inclined to think that rye is better, be¬ 
cause it lives through the winter, and that the crop 
plowed in, and the roots as well, serve to furnish 
humus; the mechanical action in keeping the soil 
loose, is also useful. 
On page 529, H. Q. Manchester suggests raising tur¬ 
nips as a winter food supply for pigs. I have never 
had pigs hungry enough to eat turnips, to any ex¬ 
tent, and, with corn at 40 cents, I do not believe that 
the turnips would be worth harvesting for any pur¬ 
pose. I think that Mr. Morse will find it profitable 
to sow rye at any time that he can between July 15 
and October 1. On good soil, l l 4 bushel to the acre 
is enough, I think, while on poor ground, I would 
use two bushels or more. b. t. w. 
Rochester, Mass. 
An Authority on Gooseberries Talks. 
Aside from the effects of mildew, I do not know but 
one variety of gooseberries can be grown as cheaply 
as another. I may have a gooseberry which always 
mildews with me and seldom mildews anywhere else, 
or I may have one which never mildews with me and 
generally mildews in other localities. No amount of 
advertising, pushing or booming will, nowadays, 
make any variety of new fruit successful unless it has 
real merit, and the success with which it meets, de¬ 
pends entirely upon its merits among fruit growers, 
etc. Aside from observing the merits of different 
varieties, I have no taste for the details of fruit gath¬ 
ering and marketing, and when this work is going on, 
is the time I like best to leave home ; so we try to 
avoid fruit growing as much as possible, and thereby, 
don’t get wild over a big crop, or despondent over a 
small crop of our own. 
We don’t grow gooseberry plants for fun. We ob¬ 
serve the demands from fruit growers in other locali¬ 
ties. To supply this demand, we have several acres 
of Red Jacket which we now need most. After these, 
Downing is in most demand, and next comes Hough¬ 
ton. Our increase of stock plants the coming season 
will be mostly Red Jacket. For some of the much- 
advertised varieties, one or two rows or a part of a 
row of stock plants, is all we need, simply because 
their product is all we can sell. 
We have been to a good deal of expense in spray¬ 
ing gooseberry plants (before and after mildew ap¬ 
peared) with liver of sulphur and Bordeaux Mixture, 
and have not seen the slightest good effect from 
either. Gooseberry mildew seems to be different 
from grape mildew. I do not judge the Industry a 
humbug because it mildews always with me, but be¬ 
cause I have never yet met the plant grower who 
could grow the plants from the beginning. If there 
is a man on this side of the ocean who can do this suc¬ 
cessfully, I have not yet found him ; so all the Indus¬ 
try plants I have ever seen on the market, were 
started in Europe. If they are so valuable for America, 
why cannot the small plants be grown here ? 
I have never seen any difference between Columbus 
and Triumph, but the originator of Columbus once 
told me that there is a difference. When Columbus 
and Triumph do not mildew, they are immense bearers 
of the most elegant quality of fruit. The Carman 
gooseberry I have never seen. 
The Downing fruit has to he picked quick, The Red 
