100S. 
487 
FARM NOTES BY WOODWARD. 
TREATING POTATOES FOR SCAB.-In treat¬ 
ing potatoes for scab, as in all other operations, we 
use that way which, while most effective, costs least 
in labor and money. For that reason we use corrosive 
sublimate instead of formalin; its costs less and is 
more effective. We use two ounces to 15 gallons of 
water; this we dissolve in some wooden vessel and 
have it ready for use. We have found no way for 
treating the potatoes that will handle them so rapidly 
and with as little expenditure of muscle as to have 
some light, strong barrels—old sugar barrels we use— 
placed on a platform high enough to have pails set 
under to draw the solution from a plug in the bottom. 
We fill the barrels with potatoes so that when solu¬ 
tion is put in it will cover every one; we let them 
soak from an hour and a half to two hours; then 
draw the solution, pouring it into other barrels of 
potatoes or back into the stock. In 15 or 20 minutes 
the potatoes will be sufficiently drained to pour out, 
so as to refill the barrel with potatoes and solution. 
With about three barrels one can treat a big lot of 
potatoes in a half day. If ready to plant we cut the 
potatoes as fast as treated, and no one need fear ill 
effects from having the solution come in contact with 
any sore or cut, as it is one of the most 
effectual antiseptics known. If not ready 
to use the potatoes when treated it is a 
good plan to spread them thinly so that 
air and light can reach every potato, 
and if they turn green it will do no harm. 
In fact the exposure to light and air 
causes the eyes to start a strong, solid 
growth, which is not easily broken 
when planting. 
BALL LIGHTNING.—The only way 
that it can be ascertained that electricity 
is in the form of ball lightning is by 
seeing it or its effects. Several years 
ago our barns, five of them in a group, 
were struck and destroyed by ball light¬ 
ning. Our neighbor, less than a half 
mile away sat in his doorway and saw 
the stroke. He said the ball appeared to 
him as about four feet in diameter and 
went sailing along, not very rapidly and 
not very far above the ground, and 
struck the spire on cupola of one of the 
barns, where it burst, and in less than 
10 seconds the whole barn was on fire. 
I could well believe his statements of the 
explosion, for the spire was of pine 
and splinters like matches, but many of 
them a foot or more long, were scattered 
over full a quarter of an acre around the 
building. Fortunately ball lightning is 
very uncommon and there is not always 
destruction. It may pass quietly into 
the ground, or even go bounding along 
like a ball gradually growing less each 
time it touches the surface. But when 
it strikes and explodes no rod would 
afford the needed amount of conducting 
power to protect the building. 
A SMOOTHING HARROW FOR 
CORN.—I don’t know of any imple¬ 
ment that will produce such good re¬ 
sults with so little manual labor in a 
cornfield as a proper smoothing harrow. 
Any harrow is better than no harrow, 
but a proper one should be light and 
have the teeth not more than a half inch 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
weeds will be killed and the cornfield will be carried 
through the Summer much cleaner than with two or 
three times as much hand labor. With corn in drills 
and four or five harrowings and once over with riding 
cultivator so rigged as to throw a little soil up to 
the row from both sides at once a field can be kept 
entirely clean from everything but the most persistent 
perennial pests. By having light smoothing harrows 
m sections of four or five feet each, a good pair 
of horses will with three of these sections easily har¬ 
row 20 acres in a day, so that if gone over as many 
as five times and then followed once with riding cul¬ 
tivator the cost of cultivation will be reduced to a very 
little sum, as compared to the methods of my boy¬ 
hood of three times hoeing by hand. j. s. woodward. 
SOILING CROPS FOR DAIRY FARMERS. 
In many issues of The R. N.-Y. the subject of 
soiling crops receives much attention. In looking about 
me and on my own farm, I realize that something is 
wrong with dairy farming at this particular season. 
For April our milk contracts called for 40 cents per 
100 pounds less than Winter prices, and feed was 
advanced a dollar a ton or more. May finds us getting 
70 cents a hundred less, and feed up a couple dollars 
ago 
TWO PLANTS OF GLADIOLUS QUEEN WILIIELMINA. 
See Ruralisms, Page 490. 
in diameter and be adjustable so the teeth can be 
slanted sufficiently back so they will not catch any 
grass, weeds, clods or stones to drag them along over 
the corn. Some use a weeder on corn, but if the soil 
is at all heavy or if the weather is not just right for 
using the weeder just as the weeds are starting, a 
smoothing harrow will be many times as effectual in 
killing weeds and mellowing up the soil. 
Where the harrow is to be used, it is better to plant 
the corn in drills, for the reason that under the best 
conditions the harrow will occasionaly take out a 
little corn and where it is in hills, a whole hill may 
be taken and this leaves by far too much space for 
profit. Now if in drills the same amount may be 
taken, or many times as much, but it will only thin 
the corn and really be a benefit, so by all means plant 
the corn in drills. Also the harrow should be used 
once at least before the corn conies up; for no 
matter how it is planted there will be a little depres¬ 
sion just over the corn; if the harrow is not used 
until the corn has come up these depressions will be 
filled and more or less of the corn will be covered, but 
if harrowed over once before the corn conies up. all 
these depressions will be filled and no corn be covered. 
By harrowing once before coming up and two or 
three times after at proper intervals the surface of 
ground will -be kept fine and mellow and all annual 
more. Now I would like to ask, where docs the 
producer come in? At this writing, May 20, the 
pastures are still brown in places. Soiling is out of 
the question, as there is nothing to soil with; rye 
still needs two weeks, and wheat is badly winter¬ 
killed. In the meantime, the machine is supposed to 
run smoothly, lubricated with a mixture of higher 
cost of production and lower receipts. Again I ask, 
how is it to be done? Notice should be taken of the 
shortening of the growing season each year, and the 
plain fact that milk production cannot be cheapened 
until June 1 impressed on the price makers. I can 
remember as a boy seeing the buttercups in full bloom 
and grass up to the cows’ eyes in the barn pasture, 
where to-day the growth of grass is hardly discern¬ 
ible and the buttercups barely through the ground. 
I have doubled the feed throughout the Summer on 
portions of my pasture, commencing as soon as the 
corn land is covered, and top-dressing with all the 
manure made up to the time the cattle are turned 
out June 1. The cattle avoid this part of the pasture 
during the Spring, but as Summer comes on they 
spend a lot of time on it, not feeding down close 
until late in the Fall. I believe on short hauls manure 
from the city spread on cleared pasture land would 
make a cheap and easily produced soiling crop. 
Speaking of cleared land, calls to mind the opera¬ 
tions of an energetic tiller of the soil whose few 
stony acres lie along the road I traverse on my visits 
to town. During my three years’ stay here, I have 
seen him plowing out stone and turning into garden 
patches and fruit orchards, some of the most uninvit¬ 
ing and least attractive land that lies in Orange County 
to-day. Our fathers drew the stone from the land 
and built fences with them, but the boys plow around 
the large lumps and roll the small ones in. Each 
year I promise myself I will increase the acreage of 
my pasture by drawing off the thin flat stones, which 
cover from a half to a square foot of good grass 
land, only needing a pick or bar and a team of horses, 
coupled with the needed ambition to start the job. 
When I look over my mowing land with its annual 
Winter top-dressing growing rank and green, then 
notice the pasture land brown and bare, I feel that 
equalization is somewhat necessary; that I am filling 
my barns for Winter at the expense of my pocketbook 
during the Summer. g. e. h. 
Orange Co., N. Y. 
VALUE OF THE WEEDER. 
1 he advent of the weeder is not so very many years 
I am not quite sure as to whom belongs the 
name pioneer in the introduction of one 
of the most important tools to the so- 
called hoed crop, but whoever he was, 
deserves the praise of all who are for¬ 
tunate to possess a good one, and use it 
as it should and is intended to be used. 
[The late Z. Breed, of North Weare, 
N. H., invented the weeder. His first one 
was a piece of scantling with holes bored 
in it and limber sticks run through it.— 
Ed.] There is one place that the weeder 
is of no earthly use, and that is lying in 
the corner of the fence. It will not kill 
the weeds out of your cornfield while 
lying in the fence corner any more than 
a scarecrow will kill the crows that 
light on your field; for the corn and 
potato field I consider the weeder one 
of my best friends. There is but one 
pest in the weed line in the cornfield 
that the weeder will not exterminate. 
Quack will thrive under its treatment, 
and for everything but quack, if I could 
have but one tool in a cornfield, I would 
say, “Give me a weeder.” The trouble 
with a good many owners of weeders is 
that they wait too long after the crop 
is planted before they begin to use it. As 
soon as the corn is planted, and before 
it is up, I start the weeder, first one 
way, then the other, and keep this treat¬ 
ment up until the corn is four to six 
inches high, when the ground needs 
stirring deeper. Before the weeder 
came I sometimes used the smoothing 
harrow. It did practically the same 
work the weeder does, but took two 
horses to operate it, and did more dam¬ 
age at the ends of the field in the turn¬ 
ing. One not accustomed to the use 
of this treatment for corn would at 
first think it would surely tear the corn 
all up, but just shut your eyes to this 
notion and go ahead, and you will be 
surprised how much good it will do, 
and how little corn it will tear up. The 
small teeth get in between the spears of 
corn, something no other tool can do, and by its per¬ 
sistent use, until corn is six inches high, you can keep 
the weeds in check better, easier, and with less expense 
than with any other tool. One man and horse will 
cover 10 to 15 acres per day. The kind with flat teeth 
rounded at the ends are much better than those with 
the round teeth the whole length like a rake tooth. 
The fiat ones have more spring and dig harder. The 
weeder can be used to advantage on top-dressed mead¬ 
ows to pulverize the manure. f. d. squiers. 
A isiiors in the South have noticed the immense 
vines of Scuppernong grapes on many plantations. The 
vines grow to enormous size, sometimes when properly 
trained on an arbor, covering a quarter of an acre. 
A bulletin from the South Carolina Station gives 
some interesting facts about these vines. Experiments 
in pruning showed how heavily such vines may 
“bleed.” When pruning was done in the Fall there 
was no damage from this source. The vines healed 
and no bleeding occurred. With Spring pruning a great 
loss of sap occurred. One vine one inch in diameter 
was cut off March 20. It at once began to bleed and 
continued up to May 25. The sap was collected and 
weighed. During the 66 days the vine discharged 33 
pounds six ounces of sap. When the vine was cut a 
rubber tube was fastened on the end so that the 
sap was carried into a glass jug for weighing. An¬ 
other half-inch vine bled 23 pounds five ounces. Of 
course this loss of sap affected the entire vine and 
checked its growth. 
Fig. 222 
