©18 
present season with the intention of plowing it under 
as a humus producer. Being belated in accomplishing 
this the crop matured sufficiently to show plainly that 
if allowed to mature fully a good yield would have 
been the result. The area is now well stocked with 
the ripened seed, and is beginning to bloom. 
1 Buckwheat is sometimes used to subdue tough 
lands, but here is a conundrum. No other plant is 
so superficially rooted, as the strongest plant can be 
easily uprooted by the foot. Whence then its power 
to mellow stubborn soils? In nutritive value it stands 
high in comparison with any other grain. A prom¬ 
inent agricultural paper recently published the asser¬ 
tion that its nutritive value is twice as great as that 
of oats, and three times that of corn. This the writer 
is unable to re-assert or intelligently question, having 
no data upon which to found an opinion. It is often 
charged with poisoning the soil, and is always barred 
from any place in rotation. I am fully convinced 
that this is in part the popular misjudgment of its 
value. Corn will follow it successfully, and from my 
own experience grass finds no objection to it as a 
precedent. But it neither asks nor demands a place in 
rotation, for it is capable of succeeding itself for an 
indefinite term of years. My memory recalls the fact 
that a certain field had been cropped with this grain 
for 26 years without being fertilized except by fallow¬ 
ing and that the crop there growing was a fairly 
good one. During the recent long-continued and 
severe drought, while all other crops find growth 
and even life difficult to maintain, my buckwheat, 
even when the driver and his team were almost 
blinded by the clouds of dust, germinated readily and 
seems to be indifferent to the intense heat of the past 
or the forecast for the future, and at harvest time it 
promises a full reward for the small cost of its pro¬ 
duction. L. p. c. 
Rocky Hill, Conn. 
THE FIRST EGG. 
One of my March pullets laid her first egg this week. 
She is a beauty, the kind that makes the heart of the 
hen man glad—pure white, bright red in comb and 
wattle, just ripe for the harvest and singing the sweet¬ 
est little laying song ever. “Some build to her, too,” 
as the fellows say of creatures feminine. Certainly, I 
am in love with her, as every year I always am and 
always will be with my first pullet. But to the hen 
man on the job, though the first egg may mean pleas¬ 
ure, it surely does mean business. It is the end of the 
Summer breathing space and the opening gun in the 
Fall campaign when eggs are eggs. It means that the 
first of my pullets are ready for Winter quarters, and 
that the rest will soon follow. They should be gath¬ 
ered in from their coops and the trees where they 
roost some little time before they are ready to lay. 
This gives them a chance to get used to their new 
home and give their undivided attention to an early 
slart in laying. Nothing, I think, sets them back more 
than leaving them out until frost comes, and then some 
dark night catching them and carrying them any old 
way to cover. When they are just getting ready to 
lay is a time of all others when they ought to be han¬ 
dled gently. If they have already started to lay the 
chances are that they will be very slow getting started 
again, and the hen man wonders why they don't lay. 
Getting them under cover, too, lessens the chance of 
loss from thieves and other beasts. My experience 
has been that in the early Fall a good lock and a 
roof is a heap sight better protection for dollar pul¬ 
lets than a tree limb and the open sky. As our cook 
said only yesterday, “Yest, suh, dere’s plent eroun’ 
awaiting to pick them up.” 
When they are about to lay, too, is the time whefi 
they should be getting used to the feed and the de¬ 
gree of confinement they will be subjected to during 
the coming months. It is well to remember that any 
change in their surroundings after they have once 
begun to lay will seriously lessen the egg yield and 
the profits. It is best, too, not to begin heavy feed¬ 
ing all at once. Have them where you can gradually 
increase the amount of meat and protein giving feeds 
and there is less chance of their overdoing at the 
start and going stale just when eggs are highest. 
The old hens need attention now as well. Get them 
through the moult early. The chances are against 
heavy Winter laying, if you don’t get them on the 
job early in the Fall. If they are on free range, be 
sure they have plenty of feed just the same. Linseed 
meal in a dry mash, fed them in a hopper so they can 
get to it at any time, will hasten the change and leave 
them in good shape. A good mash where corn is 
fed for grain, is two pounds wheat bran, one pound 
wheat middlings, half pound beef scraps, half pound 
linseed meal. If you can grow and feed sunflower 
seed, you will save on the linseed, which costs about 
$1.85 per hundred, and can be got from any large 
September 16, 
RAPID METHOD OF ORCHARD PLANTING 
The accompanying diagram, Fig. 359, shows a rapid 
and efficient method of orchard planting which the 
writer has seen used several times of late in mak¬ 
ing large plantings. It works out admirably in prac¬ 
tice even where the ground is quite rolling. By re¬ 
ferring, to the diagram, let A B C D E represent the 
field to be planted, the road being along B C. It is 
desirable then that the rows be parallel with the road. 
The first step is to measure out from D C the dis- 
PLANTJNG TRIANGLE. Fig. 358. 
tance it is desired to have the trees from the fence, 
and set stakes at D and C. Next with a carpenter’s 
square or a larger triangle made of three pieces of 
board, six, eight and 10 feet long respectively, as 
shown in Fig. 358, lay out the line D X at right angles 
to D C and set stakes along it at the distance apart 
the trees are to be planted, beginning at D. In the 
same manner the line H B B is run at right angles 
to D C, and stakes set as at D X. Now beginning 
at D, or at a point on D C, at a point the desired 
distance from the side D E of the field stakes are set 
along D C, where the trees are to be planted. At B 
the line B Y is laid out at right angles to B B, and 
stakes are set along it corresponding to those along 
D C, having number 1 the same distance from D X 
as number 1 on the line DC. If possible to see the 
entire distance of the field no more stakes are set. If 
not, another row is set one way through the middle 
of the field. 
The stakes having been set, a man with a good 
team lays out furrows along the rows the long way 
of the field, as at M N. When this is done two 
heavy wires long enough to reach across the narrow 
way of the field are taken and stretched across for 
the first two rows at D C and I J. To operate at the 
best advantage four men do the planting, one begin¬ 
ning at either end of the wire, and each of the others 
just one-fourth of the way across from either end. 
The trees having been previously distributed, each 
man begins planting toward the center, setting the 
tree at the intersection of the wire and the furrow, 
and sighting so as to get it in as exact a line as pos¬ 
sible. When all the trees in that row are planted, 
two men have met at the center and the other two 
are at the position the first two occupied at the be¬ 
ginning. They now cross over to the second wire 
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PLAN FOR ORCHARD. Fig. 359. 
and plant toward the outside. When all the trees are 
planted in this row the men have reached their first 
positions. Both wires are now moved to the next 
rows and the operation repeated. The advantages of 
this system are: First, that a part of the earth is 
removed by the plow; second, that if the furrow is 
straight the trees must almost surely be in line if 
planted with care, and third, that the planters do no 
extra walking to set the wires when two wires are 
used. Like every other method of laying out an or¬ 
chard, accuracy depends largely on the laying out of 
the base lines at exactly right angles. 
Pennsylvania. W. j. wright. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
feed dealer. If you neglected to get rid of some of 
the old stagers last Spring, don’t put it off. Do it 
now. You cannot afford to keep them over Winter. 
Give those that can lay a chance to show what they 
can do. 
And another thing, plenty of green feed means 
eggs, both in the Winter and early Spring. If you 
haven’t enough to carry you through, plow up or 
disk the land your chickens have been running on, 
and seed it to rye. It will help wonderfully beside 
sweetening the ground and putting the droppings to 
use before any are wasted. In the South, it is still 
worth while to plant turnips—Cow-horn are best, I 
think—since they grow fast and keep well. Also have 
an eye to your early hatched chickens next Spring- 
Set aside three or four garden rows and plant to 
kale. It will come on early and will prove a saving 
in feed and make the juiciest of broilers. One word 
more; if your first egg has been laid, be moving. 
Maryland. R. b. 
THE PEANUT IN INDIANA. 
This plant, long thought to be available only in 
southern sections, is found to be as much at home on 
our soils as in the South. In fact I believe that with 
careful culture I could produce more per acre here 
than can be done in the South. It is a plant that 
stands drought almost to an extreme. My plants 
at this writing (July 14) are as green and thrifty as 
though no drought was prevailing, while potatoes and 
corn, yes, even weeds, are suffering. They are now 
blooming, and in working this morning among them 
I unearthed nuts one-third grown. No insect of any 
INDIANA PEANUTS. Fig. 357. 
kind will molest the plant, and I know of no disease 
that it is subject to. For stock uses it is much 
grown in the South, and I feel sure the same can be 
done here. 
Planted in rows three feet apart and 18 inches be¬ 
tween hills one can have 10,000 hills of nuts, and 
allowing the small average of only one-half a pint 
to the hill, the yield would be near 90 bushels per 
acre. Two beans to the hill will give better returns 
than that. I purpose measuring off sections to prove 
the yield of each of the several kinds I grow. The 
top growth makes most excellent hay, and for green 
forage for stock when the nuts are about mature, it 
is excellent. The Virginia is a standard sort, large 
nut and vigorous grower. The Jumbo or New Or¬ 
leans Mammoth is the largest nut grown. It is of a 
bushy growth, and yields large crops. The Carolina 
Red is a nut of fine quality, trailing growth, and 
quite productive. The belief that the bloom must be 
covered to produce the nut is erroneous. From the 
bloom when matured a spikelet or thorn-like stem 
comes, and this enters the ground and produces the 
peanut. If the ground is loose this spikelet will go- 
down three inches before the nut is produced. The 
domestic use of the peanut is becoming extensive and 
I predict that before many years its cultivation will 
be very extensive in this section and throughout the 
Northwest; Iowa and Nebraska furnish large quan¬ 
tities now. J- H. HAYNES. 
Indiana. 
The latest is a man travelling in North Carolina claim¬ 
ing to sell maps for the U. S. Government. He picks up 
$2.50 when he finds people green enough to believe his 
story. Let him alone. The U. S. Government employs 
no map sellers. 
