THE CULTIVATOR. 
353 
DESTRUCTION OF NUT GRASS. 
Bermuda, West Indies. 4th Sept. 1844. 
L. Tucker, Esq.— I have been one of your subscri¬ 
bers for some time. I have seen in the Cultivator for 
May last, information requested to extirpate “ Nut 
Grass,” and some person has recommended salt. We are 
much infested with it here, and I have tried every way 
to get rid of it. Salt did kill it where it came immedi¬ 
ately in contact with the nut, but it does not kill them 
any distance in the soil, and is very expensive. The 
more you plow or spade, the worse it is, as you cut the 
fibres and make a dozen plants for one. I got at last, 
strong four prong forks, like potatoe forks, and after it 
was well grown in the spring, I made my men fork it up. 
In doing this, great care should be taken not to break the 
fibres, but as they throw up the soil, break the lumps, and 
take it out gently, throw it forward on the ground that is 
dug. You will sometimes follow a string of nuts two or 
three feet long. After it is all dug over, remove it from 
the field and burn it, or you may put it in casks, press it 
down well, and saturate it with strong pickle; let it stand 
for some time, and it will rot the nuts and the grass, and 
make good manure. This may be considered a tedious 
and expensive job, but it is the only way I can find out to 
get rid of it. A good piece of ground maybe redeemed, 
and the forking pulverizes the ground so well that it will 
pay the expense, particularly in this Island, where we 
have no good ground to spare. 
The first year will not clear it altogether. It must be 
followed up every year. Wherever a bit is seen, fork it 
up, and take it away, for if you leave it on the ground, it 
will take root again directly. Your correspondent in 
Alabama can try a few rods first, and he will be able to 
see if it is worth the expense. 
As we are much put to it here for manure, we are obli¬ 
ged to grow green crops, say oats, buckwheat, and rape, 
and turn them in as manure, but the difficulty is to get a 
good plow for that purpose; can you recommend me to 
one of the best ? Our soil is mellow, cuts easy, but ad¬ 
heres very much to the plow. F. P. 
Prouty’s Centre-draft Plow is highly recommend¬ 
ed for turning in green crops. At a late meeting of the 
Philadelphia Ag. Society, Dr. Emerson stated that he, in 
company with several other gentlemen, had recently seen 
a trial of the capacity of this plow for this purpose, and 
that its performance was highly satisfactory. The grass 
and weeds—the latter of which were from three to four 
feet high, were completely covered, six or seven inches 
deep; the ground afterwards presenting a fine, well bro¬ 
ken, clean surface, requiring but little application of the 
harrow. The soil was a mellow, sandy loam. Will our 
correspondent favor us with an article on the Agriculture 
of Bermuda, embracing notices of the crops cultivated, 
manner of tillage, &c. ? —Ed. 
CULTIVATE YOUR FRUIT TREES. 
The influence of the cultivation of the soil on fruit 
trees, appears to be less known and appreciated, than any 
thing else of the kind equally important, which has been 
practiced since the time of Hesiod and Homer. Persons 
who purchase fine fruit trees, appear to have more or 
less of five different objects in view, which are the fol¬ 
lowing, to wit: 
1. To kill the trees at once—2. To kill them by inches; 
3. To keep them alive, with the hope that they may 
bear small and imperfect fruit in ten or twenty years; 
4. To make them grow vigorously for a year or two, 
and afterwards neglect them, reducing the fruit to one- 
third in quantity and one-tenth in quality of what it 
should and might be. 
5. To keep them well cultivated constantly during the 
term of their natural lives, and as a consequence recei¬ 
ving full crops, and of the most delicious quality. 
1. Although many appear to pursue the first of the 
above named objects, they probably do not really intend 
it. They are however much more successful than they 
intend to be in killing their trees, by drying them in the 
sun, freezing them in the cold, bruising them, or other¬ 
wise treating them as already dead while life yet re¬ 
mains. A large number pursue this course. 
2. Others avoid these attempts to produce death, but 
practice another kind, which is, to crowd the roots of the 
trees when setting them out, into very small holes dug in 
hard soil, and then to suffer them to perish gradually from 
such careless transplanting and subsequent lack of care 
and culture. A much larger number follow l.h # is practice. 
3. Others again transplant well —but that is all. This 
done, they consider the whole work as finished. The 
trees are suffered to become choked with grass, weeds, 
or crops of grain—some live and linger, and others die 
from discouragement. An intelligent friend purchased 
fifty very fine fruit trees, handsomely rooted, and of vig¬ 
orous growth; they were well set out in a field occupied 
with a heavy crop of clover and timothy. The follow¬ 
ing summer was very dry, and the grass crop crowded 
them hard on every side—most of them necessarily per¬ 
ished. The browsing of cattle the next winter comple¬ 
ted the work for the rest—it would have been cheaper to 
have thrown them away at once. Another person, a 
neighbor to the first, bought sixty trees, of much worse 
quality in growth; he set them out well, and kept them 
well cultivated with a crop of potatoes. He lost but one 
in the sixty, and by pursuing the same course of raising 
among them, low hoed crops, his trees now promise to 
give him loads of rich peaches, before the dead stubs of 
the trees of his neighbor have disappeared from the 
grounds. Another neighbor last spring bought fifty fine 
trees. A few days sine# I passed his house, and he said 
to me, “ I thought a crop of wheat was one of the best 
for young peach trees ?” 
“ O no,” sa'd I, “ it is one of the very worst; avoid all 
sown crops, and occupy the ground only with low, hoed 
crops, as potatoes, ruta-bagas. carrots, and the like.” 
“Well,” answered he, “I have found it so—mv fifty 
peach trees all lived, but I have lost one year of their 
growth by my want of knowledge.” 
I examined his trees—they had been well set out, in a 
fine soil, all the rows but one, had stood in a field of 
wheat, but the one excepted was hoed with a crop of po¬ 
tatoes. The result was very striking. Of the trees that 
! stood among the wheat, some had made shoots the pre- 
jsent summer an inch long, some two inches, and a very 
few jive or six inches. On nearly every one that grew 
with the potatoes, new shoots a foot and a half could be 
found, and on some, the growth had been two feet, two 
and a half, and three feet. Other cases have furnished 
nearly as decisive contrasts. 
4 and 5. An eminent cultivator of fine fruit, whose 
trees have borne for many years, says in a late letter, 
“ My fruit garden would be worth twice as much as it is, 
if the trees had been planted in thick rows* two rods 
apart, so that I could have cultivated them with the plow. 
Unless fruit grows on thrifty trees, we can form no pro¬ 
per judgment of it. Some that we have cultivated this 
season, after a long neglect, seem like new kinds, and the 
flavor is in proportion to the size.” Large trees often 
stand in thick grass, and poor crops and poor fruit can 
hardly fail to result; and the nurseryman who sold them 
is sometimes pronounced a scoundrel for having furnish¬ 
ed such despicable stuff. 
“ But,” exclaims some one, “ are we always to be 
troubled with cultivating and taking care of our trees as 
long as we live ?” Exactly. This is the condition of 
living and enjoying the fruits of the earth, which has ex¬ 
isted these last six thousand years. Besides, if this labor 
gives a return of a hundred fold, who ought to regret it? 
If my orchard, yielding a hundred bushels now, of poor 
fruit, will, by putting a hoed crop and some manure into 
it, more than double its products, and greatly improve 
them in quality, where is my loss? Would it be grate¬ 
ful in me to complain of a little care and attention with 
so great a gain ? Labor cannot be avoided, but it brings 
its reward. J. J. Thomas 
Macedon, 9 mo., 1844. 
* The “ thick rows” here spoken of, are meant to contain fruit trees 
standing six to ten feet apart in the row, so that the plow may be pass¬ 
ed on each side parallel with the rows, the last few furrows in imme¬ 
diate coKtact with the trees to be plowed with two horses, one before 
the other, a boy riding the forward one. A very short whipple-tree 
should be used on the plow, and long traces attached to admit the 
plowman steering far u the right or left as necessity may require. 
