1909 . 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
230 
Hope Farm Notes 
If Washington had been as mild as 
as the weather around his birthday 
was King George would have had us 
in short order. On Sunday the mer¬ 
cury stood at 50 in our coldest corner. 
There was no frost in the ground—in 
fact, you would have thought it was 
April. It seemed exactly like Spring as 
I walked over the hills, and I could 
hardly believe that only one j’ear ago 
we were deep in the snow with the 
mercury chasing for the lower part of 
the thermometer. It was not at all 
like February—there was that feeling 
of life in the air; the gentle spirit of 
growing things which we all know who 
spend our time around the buds when 
they are ready to open. We shall pay for 
all this later, I fear, but such weather 
starts your mind toward the garden. I 
hope it may stir people up to order 
their seeds and tools and fertilizers 
early and avoid the rush. Most of us 
wait too long and then have a double 
dose of trouble. 
I buy my seeds usually from sev¬ 
eral different seedsmen. As we live 
near New York I buy many things 
there to save freight and to be close by 
in case of mistakes so that I can go 
to headquarters. I find, or think I 
find, that some seedsmen make a 
specialty of certain kinds of seeds and 
are surer than others to have good 
quality. I should judge that more peo¬ 
ple are buying plants of tomatoes, cab¬ 
bage, peppers, celery, etc., than ever 
before. They think they are surer of 
the plant than of the seed, for some 
of them can tell the plants, while all 
seeds look alike. We grow our own 
seed corn and have grown a few others, 
but as a rule we buy. 
The Crops. —As I have stated, our 
work this year will be determined 
by our fruit crops. We seem sure 
of a good apple crop. If the peach 
buds are not caught we shall have 
about all we want to handle after the 
first week in August. Several pieces 
of rich soil that, under other conditions 
would go into peppers and onions, will 
be seeded to oats and peas—to be fol¬ 
lowed by fodder corn. A young or¬ 
chard at the back of the farm is now 
in rye. If the peach crop fails I shall 
cut the rye, plow the stubble and plant 
flint corn. If the buds arc safe early 
in April I shall seed to Alsike clover. 
In like manner, if Jack Frost gets 
us we shall plant a reasonable space 
in tomatoes and potatoes. If he lets 
us alone it means Soy beans and field 
beans. We are planning to plant about 
10,000 strawberry plants in hills, and 
we know what is ahead of us in sweat 
and toil. The blackberries and rasp¬ 
berries are on the lower farm, with 
peach and plums trees 16 feet apart in 
between the rows. Those berry vines 
will be cut back in March, and stakes 
driven at each one with the vines tied 
up. This gives us a chance to work 
with the horse. The trees are planted 
in every other row, and in the vacant 
rows we grow early sweet corn or 
tomatoes trained on stakes. Having 
heard some of those great stories about 
what people grow on an acre we shall 
try to see this year what an acre more 
or less of Hope Farm ca’n produce by 
heavy manuring and close planting. 
The Garden. —This is always the 
most popular and profitable part of the 
farm. It is a failure if, when the season 
is fit, we cannot pick a dozen or more 
vegetables at any time. If we were 
growing onions this year our Prizetaker 
seedlings would be up in the hotbed 
by this time. We sow the seed in the 
bed in drills about four inches apart, 
and water and air the plants. They run 
to top when forced in this way, and 
must be sheared off down to about two 
inches from the bulb. We like to trans¬ 
plant when the bulbs are about the 
size of a lead pencil. We get the soil 
like an ashheap and set the little plants 
in drills two feet or 18 inches apart, 
and four inches in drill. With two feet 
a small horse can be used to cultivate. 
At 18 inches you must do it by hand, 
but you get more onions. Our peas are 
usually grown by themselves in wide 
rdleys between young trees. Nott’s 
Excelsior gives us an early mess and 
as soon as possible after picking is 
done the pea ground is plowed and 
planted to. fodder corn grown thickly in 
drills. At the last cultivation of the 
corn we sow rye. Another plan that 
does quite as we’l is to sow some of 
the large-vined garden peas with oats 
instead of Canada peas. You can pick 
what you want to eat and cut the bal¬ 
ance for hay or forage. Asparagus we 
grow in the acre fieVl and cut as we 
need it. Lettuce, beets and early tur¬ 
nips are grown in the garden. They 
can all be started ahead in boxes, and 
transplanted when the soil is fit, so as 
to gain a little. Where one has time 
for it there is fun and satisfaction in 
starting such things as potatoes, sweet 
corn, melons and Lima beans .in little 
pots or boxes, and transplanting them 
later. The little paper pots are ex¬ 
cellent for this. A piece of potato 
started in one of these pots will, if kept 
well watered, make a plant five inches 
high by the middle of April. This can 
also be done with sweet corn or Lima 
beans. You can gain some days in 
earliness, but it docs not pay us as a 
market proposition. Potatoes are grown 
in field culture, but the boys often 
grow a small patch under straw for our 
own eating. A rich piece of ground is 
plowed or spaded and made very fine. 
We use potato fertilizer freely and 
rake it in. Drills about four inches 
deep and 18 inches apart are made and 
seed pieces dropped one foot apart in, 
the drills. The patch is leveled and 
covered about four inches deep with 
straw or coarse hay. The potato plants 
grow up through the straw. ' A few 
weeds start, but they are easily pulled 
out, and the potatoes require neither 
hoeing nor cultivating. In a very wet 
season there is some danger of rot, 
and I think these straw potatoes need 
spraying more than others. If they 
are properly cared for the yield is 
enormous, for you will find the soil 
alive with potatoes. 
Most of our early sweet corn and 
tomatoes are grown among young trees 
or in the blackberry patches. The 
larger corn, like Evergreen, we grow 
in field culture. There is no doubt that 
for garden culture it pays to stake up 
the tomatoes. When we grow them 
among trees we tie them up to stakes 
so as to get them out of the way • of 
the cultivator. They can be run up a 
grape trellis, and fastened so as to give 
a heavy yield of fruit. I hear of mar¬ 
ket gardeners who provide 20,000 stakes 
for tomatoes. and find that it pays to 
do it. We have a few melons and 
squashes in the garden, but most of our 
crop this year will be grown at the 
top of the hill along the rows of trees. 
There seems to be less trouble from 
mildew and blight on the hill than on 
the lower farm. 
We use bush Lima beans freely— 
the objection being that in a wet season 
the pods get on the damp soil and 
rot badly. The bush varieties are a 
little earlier than the pole. At one time 
we grew pole Limas quite heavily for 
sale, but as the fruit makes more of 
a showing we drop the truck crops one 
by one. When we get into the real 
swing I want asparagus, strawberries, 
peaches and apples—a fine garden and 
feed for the stock. But of all these 
things the garden is the most import¬ 
ant. If I were to try to detail all 
the work you might think it too much 
labor. Once get interested in it and 
learn by experience how to work it, 
and you will be surprised to see how 
easily a man can supply his family with 
vegetables. There is not a piece of 
ground on the farm that will teach you 
better farming or more careful culture 
than a good garden will. h. w. c. 
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