694 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
September IS, 
emasculation, but it is far safer to enclose them in 
bags of strong netting.” 
“What is the highest per cent of crosses that you 
have had take on a large scale?” 
“From 30 to 50 per cent of crosses should take, 
even when the operations are carried on on a large 
scale. If all the fruits in the cluster aro crossed and 
only one reaches maturity, this loss will greatly re¬ 
duce the average of success. Probably in this case 10 
per cent of the pollinations will be good results when 
counting mature fruits.” 
WHEAT CULTURE CONDENSED. 
I will give you a summary of my method in wheat 
growing. I had a very fine appearing crop of wheat 
this year, in fact a perfect stand. My plowing from 
oats and wheat stubble is done ready to work down 
for seeding; I really began it before the oats were dry 
enough for mowing. I do not grow wheat commer¬ 
cially, only as a rotation crop, either putting in oat 
stubble or wheat stubble sown the season before on 
cornstalks, the corn ground having been clover the 
year before and heavily manured. I do not consider 
it pays to put clover down for a wheat crop, but much 
better for corn, then to wheat mostly, sometimes to 
oats in the Spring, then to wheat in the Fall. It pays 
best to plow early, not late, and then work the soil 
occasionally to pulverize and conserve moisture. We 
have long since dropped out on the plan of top-dress¬ 
ing for wheat and using the manure on clover turf for 
corn. This plan decreases the crop of annoying weeds, 
as the cultivation of the corn destroys a very large 
percentage of them after germination. Two hundred 
pounds commercial fertilizer is used, 100 pounds of 
2: 8: 2 with' 100 pounds steamed bone containing 28 per 
cent phosphorus mixed and drilled with wheat. I 
always get best results with this formula, and shall 
continue it this season. The soil is disked and fined 
with smoothing harrow before drilling. About six 
quarts of Timothy is also seeded with the wheat, wheat 
seven pecks per acre. I have never used a disk drill, 
likely never will; s£ed about September 20, seldom 
sooner. I raise fine crops of wheat in corn stubble after 
October 1 from plain drilling without other prepara¬ 
tion, but double-drill with half quantity of seed for 
each round. geo. e. scctt. 
Ohio. __ 
SILO INSIDE OR OUTSIDE OF BARN. 
As to putting silo inside or outside of barn, 1 would 
say by all means put it inside if you have the room. 
When two years ago, we made up our minds to build 
a silo, we hesitated a long time as to whether to put 
it inside or outside the barn. We had plenty of room 
inside the barn in one corner, and no one ever had 
better or more convenient place for outside silo than 
we had at one end of barn. We finally cut out the 
floors required size and put the silo inside, and have 
always been mighty glad that we did so. To everyone 
who is thinking of building a silo I would say, if you 
have the room, by all means put the silo in the barn, 
and not outside. It means that you will save roof, 
chute between silo and barn, painting, and as a general 
thing a good deal on the foundation—in fact, you will 
get your silo up for about half of the same silo out¬ 
side, and it is where it will always be protected from 
weather, there will be little or no freezing in cold 
weather, and feeding will be much more convenient. 
If corn is in right condition when put up there will be 
no bad odor from silage—rather it will have a good 
fragrant smell. We have had many visitors in our 
barn, both farmers and city people, and when they 
have happened around near feeding time, their first 
question has always been: “What is it that smells 
so good here?” Of course, the sellers of the patent 
silos who want to sell roof, etc., will all tell you to 
put a silo outside. By buying our own lumber and 
hoops we saved one-third on cost of the silo itself. 
Our silo is 10 feet in diameter and 24 feet deep, built 
of good dry selected spruce flooring 2x6 inches x 24 
feet long, tongued and grooved, and planed both sides. 
We did not have the staves beveled, although the dealer 
offered to have it done for about $2 per 1,000 extra, 
as we thought it unnecessary. The inside of the silo 
is perfectly smooth and tight, and for inside silo the 
slight openings between staves on outside do no harm. 
Of course, for an outside silo the staves should be 
beveled so as to fit tightly as possible on outside to keep 
out weather. Our staves being all full length it was 
much easier to put up silo than with staves of two or 
more pieces. Big saving on amount of scaffolding re¬ 
quired for erection of inside silo over one outside is 
also worth considering. 
Our silo has 12 hoops, with two lugs on each hoop, 
so that it is easily kept up together. Each hoop goes 
all around the silo, and door frames are necessary. A 
door four staves wide is sawed out between every 
other pair of hoops, and sawed * on a bevel, so that 
when the silo is filled they are set in and the silage 
holds them tightly in place. We have never lost a bit 
of silage around these doors. This silo was filled full 
as possible at one cutting with good corn just past the 
roasting stage, and covered with about eight or 10 
inches of swale grass run through the cutter. We cut 
the corn into one-quarter-inch lengths. The silo does 
not fill so fast, but we get in a great deal more, and it 
packs more tightly and keeps better than when cut 
longer. This silage has always kept perfectly, not a 
handful of the corn crop thus handled has been lost, 
NO CAUSE FOR COMPLAINT. Fig. 293. 
but every scrap has been greedily eaten. I have never 
seen anything that cattle are so fond of as of good 
silage. Of course, a silo filled at one cutting settles 
considerably—nearly a third—but we had enough in 
our silo to feed 17 head all they would eat once a day 
from the middle of December to the middle of May. 
Westchester Co., N. Y. merritt m. clark. 
PLOWING DOWN OR ACROSS A HILL. 
Almost all of the land on the hill farms in this section 
is more or less sloping or sidling; it is the general 
practice to plow across or sideways of the hill. Where 
a field is steep enough to be called a “sidehill” it is 
too steep for a team to draw a plow up and down the 
hill, or for a flatland plow to turn a furrow up the hill; 
those fields are plowed with a sidehill plow, turning 
the furrow down the hill. Sometimes a wet field that 
is not too steep will be plowed in narrow lands up and 
down the hill, so that it will dry off quicker; a field 
plowed in the Fall this way will be fit to work in the 
Spring sooner than if plowed across the hill, but the 
dead furrows are always liable to wash out badly 
where they run up and down the hill. So as far as 
washing is concerned it is always better to have the 
dead furrows run crossways of the hill. I have seen 
a sidehill planted to potatoes and cultivated across the 
hill that was badly washed by an unusually heavy rain; 
the water had followed the rows across until coming 
to a depression running up and down the hill. Here 
THE END OF AN OLD VETERAN. Fig. 294. 
a large volume of water gathered from both sides, broke 
over the rows, and running down the hill washed out 
a large ditch. I have seen two or three of those ditches 
running down across the field, the rest of the field re¬ 
maining uninjured. I have also seen a field where 
the potatoes had been cultivated up and down the hill 
just before a heavy rain, and every row was washed 
almost into a ditch, taking large quantities' of dirt to 
the field below, and washing out a large number of 
the potatoes, almost ruining the crop and field. Here 
people planting on sidehill take care to cultivate side¬ 
ways of the hill the last time before leaving it. The 
philosophy of this I think would be that swift running 
water will wash out a ditch, while thg same volume 
of water in slow motion will not. Where the furrows 
or rows run crossways the hill they retard the flow, 
letting the water down the hill more slowly, also de¬ 
creasing its volume by giving more of it time to soak 
into the ground. Where there is a depression run¬ 
ning up and down the hill that the water will run into 
from both ways during a very heavy rain, nothing will 
prevent a ditch being washed but down through that 
depression, no matter which way it is plowed, or 
which way the rows may run. 
A few years ago I saw a steep sidehill from which 
a crop of oats had been taken. They had set the oats 
up in rows of shocks running up and down the hill. 
In drawing them off they started the wagon at the top 
of the hill, put a rough lock on both hind wheels and 
drove straight down the hill along each row of shocks 
loading as they went down, the locked wheels leaving 
tracks half as large as a furrow that a plow would 
have made. Some time afterwards came a heavy rain; 
that hill looked as if it might have been a cloudburst. 
Every one of those tracks, and there were between 20 
and 30 of them, was washed into a ditch from a foot 
and a half to two feet deep, and about the same width. 
No other part of the field was washed at all. M. w. 
Steuben Co., N. Y. 
WINTERING CABBAGE PLANTS. 
I wish to Winter over several thousand cabbage plants. 
Where should the seed be planted so as to have fair-sized 
plants by April 1 next? Should they he transplanted or 
wintered in seedbed? Is it necessary to cover with glass, 
or will hoards alone answer? e. s. 
Ohio. 
When early cabbage plants are to be wintered over 
the seed should be sown about September 15 in the 
open ground. Sow in rows five or six inches apart. 
As cabbage usually germinates freely they should 
therefore be sown not very thick in the rows. Three 
or four weeks from the time of planting seed, or about 
the time the character leaves begin to form, they should 
be transplanted to the cold frames. These frames are 
made 514 feet wide, and at any desired length to suit 
the grower’s convenience. For Winter use it is best 
to have them run east and west, slightly sloping to 
the south. No cross-bars are used in such beds, as 
they are very inconvenient to work around. Enrich 
the soil with well-rotted manure, spade and rake level. 
When setting the plants it is best to use a large wide 
board for the workmen to stand on; these boards 
should be about two by four feet, and placed on the 
freshly-prepared ground from a sitting position on 
these boards the workmen can set the plants with con¬ 
siderable ease and great rapidity, moving the board 
along as space is required. The plants should be set 
in rows about three inches apart; planted in this way 
the regular-sized sash will cover about 350 plants. It 
is the general tendency with gardeners to plant too 
thickly, and this is a prolific cause of poor plants. Care 
should be taken to set the plants quite deep in the 
soil; where this is neglected the slight freezing and 
thawing that the plants will undergo during the Win¬ 
ter will gradually raise them out of the ground, ren¬ 
dering them entirely useless for Spring planting. The 
writer well remembers his first experience in growing 
cold frame cabbage plants; it was in 1875. I planted 
the seed on September 23, a little late to start with. 
After having finished the tedious job of transplanting 
all the plants nicely a large flock of turkeys found 
their way into the garden, and relieved me of all fur¬ 
ther care of those plants during that year. I was not, 
however, discouraged. I have grown such plants every 
year since that time, and on many occasions in large 
quantities. In the year 1889, we wintered 30,000 plants, 
setting every one myself, a task I would not care to 
undertake again. We should bear in mind that the 
object is not to try to grow the plants during the 
Winter, but to keep them dormant, or at a standstill. 
For this reason a moderately low, not a warm tempera¬ 
ture, is required in the frames. The sash should not 
be put on the plants until the weather becomes cool 
After they are covered with glass, they will require 
considerable attention and good judgment; on clear 
days and moderate weather the beds should be ven¬ 
tilated by raising every other sash alternately on either 
side of the frame. On cold, dark days they should re¬ 
main closed. It does not affect the plants to allow the 
snow to lie on the glass for a few days when the 
weather is cold, but an early removal is the safer 
treatment. Constant watching every day will secure 
good, hard plants. About the first week in March the 
sash can be taken entirely off the plants, and used 
for other crops. The plants can be set in the open 
ground as soon as the soil is in working condition, 
about the last of March, and they will usually be about 
two weeks in advance of the plants grown by any 
other method of treatment. t. m. white, 
Monmouth Co., N. J. 
