1912. 
GOl 
SINGLETREE FOR ORCHARD. 
In response to inquiry of C. E. L. in 
recent issue, regarding singletree for 
use in cultivating young trees, I will 
endeavor to describe one I have seen 
used to good advantage in this section. 
The whiffletree is flat instead of rounded 
and each end is rounded from the back 
edge. A heavy strap, usually a piece 
of trace, is then bolted, or securely 
fastened, along the back edge and 
around the rounded end, leaving an end 
to the strap of about 18 inches or two 
feet, in which an iron ring is fastened, 
in which to hook the trace. I give a 
rough sketch of one end, Fig. 221, shcw- 
STRAP FOR ORCHARD SINGLETREE. 
Fig. 221. 
ing how strap is fastened to whiffletree. 
i his strap should be made long enough 
to hook directly on the hame, if de¬ 
sired, leaving nothing but smooth 
leather to come in contact with the 
trees. EDWIN S. HAIGHT. 
New York. 
NOTES AND COMMENTS. 
Your correspondent It. M. (page 544), 
would have succeeded in Michigan with 
the Soy beans if instead of the Mammoth 
1 el low he had planted the Ito San, also 
•ailed Medium Early Yellow. The Mam¬ 
moth is too late anywhere north of Mary¬ 
land. I had from a grower in Michigan 
seed of what he called the Michigan Favor¬ 
ite cow pea, and he said that be had rip¬ 
ened 50 bushels. This is a broad pea of 
the class know n as “crowders” in the South, 
and its earliness seems to commend it to 
northern growers. It would seem that 
either this variety or the New Era would 
be far better than Whippoorwill for R. O. S 
in northern Nebraska. 
What Mr. Ilotaling says (page 54G) about 
ignorance of yellows, reminds me of an 
old experience. In the early days of the 
yellows on the Eastern Shore of Maryland 
the growers did not realize the seriousness 
of the premature ripening of the fruit, 
as the inferior early specimens sold well. I 
had a nursery in Kent County at that 
time, and one Fall an old gentleman came 
to buy peach trees. 1 gave him my list 
from which to select his varieties. "I see 
no prematures in your list. I want to 
plant a good many prematures as they sell 
well.” 1 had great difficulty in convinc¬ 
ing him that there was no such variety, and 
that the premature ripening of the fruit 
was simply an evidence of disease. 1 be¬ 
lieve he went away thinking that I would 
not sell him the prematures because I did 
not have them. 
The idea of cover crops for asparagus 
is new to me, and I cannot see the benefit 
of allowing weeds or clover or any growth 
but asparagus on the land. The best thing 
in my experience is clean cultivation after 
the cutting ceases, aided by renewed appli¬ 
cations of manure and fertilizer, for in this 
way we encourage a stronger growth of the 
crowns that are to give us the crop next 
Spring. A moderate growth of Crimson 
clover from seed sown in September would 
do no harm, but during the Summer 1 
prefer to keep the crop clean and well cul¬ 
tivated. 
An intelligent farmer near Milford, Del., 
had a tree of the so-called English walnut 
which gave him fine crops, and he con¬ 
cluded that if one tree did so well there 
was no reason why hundreds should not 
do as well. So he planted a walnut or¬ 
chard. and when I saw it last Fall it was 
several years old, and had a very thrifty 
appearance, and will no doubt prove pro¬ 
ductive. There is certainly a great increase 
<>f interest in nut growing, and the many 
thousands of pecan trees that have been 
planted in the South do not seem to have 
had any cheapening influence on the nuts 
offered for sale at retail, but the size 
and quality of the pecans in the stores has 
greatly improved. 
If Mr. Crooker wishes to disfigure his 
garden with a lot of brush of course he 
has a perfect right to do so. Rut I pre¬ 
fer something more neat. I plant toma¬ 
toes close and train to single stems on 
stakes. Then I have a fence around the 
garden of wire netting to keep the neigh¬ 
bors’ chickens out. Along part of this 
fence 1 sow my early peas and they catch 
the wires. Then in another place I sow 
tomato seed in the open ground for the 
late crop. As the peas are oft’ in May the 
tomato plants are set along the same 'fence 
and the pea vines taken off. These plants 
are not trimmed to single stems but the 
branches are tied out to the wire netting 
‘ aD shaped as Mr. Crooker says, and a 
! ow along that fence 150 feet in length 
gives a wonderful growth of fruit. I never 
disfigure my garden with brush for peas 
nor poles for running beans, but use the 
chicken wire netting of various widths, 
and it is not only better and neater but 
cheaper than hunting up brush even if 
one has a wood lot to go into, for the 
netting is rolled up and put away after 
use. and will last a lifetime. 
there is no doubt that the strawberry 
thrives best in a soil that is somewhat acid, 
■iears ago I had them on land of a very 
fertile quality that had been limed anil 
sweetened, but the crop was not near what 
it was with the same variety on land in 
the same section of far less' fertility but in 
f n ac id state. The universal experience 
:n the strawberry growing sections of the 
houth Atlantic coast is that it will not 
THE RURAI* 
do to lime soil that is to be planted to 
strawberries. 
The Southern Congressmen line up in 
favor of oleo because they have a notion 
that in that way they are favoring the 
farmers who sell cotton seed and the 
oil mills that make the oil. They fail 
to understand that the growing dairy in¬ 
terest of the Southern farmers is a hundred 
times more important than the amount of 
cotton-seed oil sold. And the daily news¬ 
papers of the South have the same false 
notion and seem ready to persuade the 
farmers that oleo would be to their ad¬ 
vantage. It comes from the a 11-prevailing 
idea that the cotton crop is the sole inter¬ 
est of the South. 
Why the hogs would not eat the rape 
cannot be explained except on the ground 
than these particular hogs had not learned 
to do so. Years ago I had a field sown in 
Norfolk kale. In the Spring kale was so 
low that it did not pay to cut and ship 
it. and I turned my cows into the field. 
They went all around the fences picking 
the Blue grass and clover and would not 
bite the kale at all, and never did take 
to it. and I had to take them out and put 
them on the grass. They simply knew Blue 
grass and clover and did not know kale. 
Maryland. w. r. massey. 
“ THE HALF HAS NOT BEEN TOLD.” 
It is against our practice to tell big 
stories, yet what can we do when the stories 
are true? There are many reports .of apple 
culture on the Pacific coast and in Virginia. 
Here comes one from plain Wayne Co., 
N. Y. It was written by F. W. Cornell to 
the Wayne Democratic Press, and is a fair 
statement: 
“Times have certainly changed in the last 
25 years, and men have altered too. Then 
the shore of the lake was bordered with 
grain farms and the voice of the churn 
was heard in the land. Cows grazed peace¬ 
fully on acres which arc now netting .$500 
in a single season. The few fruit trees 
were allowed to grow according to nature 
and their own ideas. If there was a crop, 
well and good ; if not. it was regrettable, 
of course, but could not be helped. Two 
hundred and fifty barrels on eight acres 
was a bumper crop and sold for a dollar 
a barrel, barrel and all. 
Our fathers little realized that they were 
living over a gold mine, if they had only 
known how' to dig. In looking over some 
old account books I find the following net 
returns from an SO-acre farm : 
1889— $180.39 
1890— 279.63 
1891— 189.41 
$049.43 Total for three years. 
“In 1911 an acre of peaches on this same 
farm netted $697.23, or more than the en¬ 
tire farm did in three years 20 years ago. 
A five-year-old Wealthy orchard of 500 
trees planted in the old cornfield yielded on 
an average three pecks to a tree, some 
individual trees producing a bushel and 
a half. Again a 12-year-old Wealthy had 
its fifth consecutive crop, amounting this 
year to 4% bushels. A 12-year-old Baldwin 
produced 9 1 /> bushels, contrary to all no- I 
tions of the past. A Greening tree 11 years j 
old produced 8% bushels. A 35-year-old 
Greening and Baldwin orchard on this same 
farm, containing 5(4 acres produced 1,448 
barrels of apples and 533 bushels of drops 
and culls. Many of us listen in awed 
wonder to tales of the Hood River and the 
Wenatchee Valley, lands of magic fertility 
and productivity, where apples grow in as¬ 
sorted sizes and there are no culls and 
drops; where the sun shines brighter and 
fruit colors more beautifully than in less 
favored climes and where this mvstic land 
sells for $500 to $2,000 an acre. Yet 
President Brown of the New York Central, 
is quoted as saying last Fall that five sta¬ 
tions on the Ontario Division. N. Y. C. 
R. It., not far from here, annually ship 
more apples than are shipped, not from the 
two valleys named, but from the entire 
States of Washington and Oregon combined. 
And. there is orchard land in Wayne County 
along the lake tier at a conservative esti¬ 
mate. worth more than this land in the 
West. The young orchards of Wealthy, Mc¬ 
Intosh and Jonathan in this section, pro¬ 
duce fruit which rivals that of tiic West in 
color and far surpasses it in flavor. The 
most up-to-date methods, the result of ex¬ 
perience and scientific investigation, are in 
use. it will be but a few years before we 
will see horses replaced by trucks and 
tractors, and fruit-growing run by machin¬ 
ery will become as well organized as the 
most complicated industrial plants. Then, 
the marketable value of orchards will be 
based on the net proceeds which represent 
the interest on the investment.” 
Black Root in Cauliflower. 
1 am seeking some information in re¬ 
gard to black roots in cauliflower plants. 
Hot manure and new dirt which we pro¬ 
cure in woods brought home in Fall was 
used ; next we put a little fertilizer, also a 
small quantity of lime raked in, then seeds 
are sown. j. M . j. 
Wlutestone, L. I. 
I have never thought much of wild soil 
tc t bed for domesticated vegetables. 
J* M- J; will make a compost of three- 
lourths soil or clean soil to one-fourth 
stable manure this Fall, cutting over two 
or three times before Spring, he will not 
have any black root in his cauliflower 
plants, grown from seed sown in it. k. 
The Indiana Weed Book, by W. S. 
RIatchley. Prof. Blatchley is widely known 
as a botanist and naturalist, and was for 
16 years Indiana State Geologist. He gives 
here a full description of 150 of the worst 
weeds of Indiana, with notes on 77 others, 
with methods of eradication, notes on 
habits, seed distribution, folk-lore and 
poetry of woods, keys to families of weeds, 
ote., etc. Prepared especially for farmers 
and schools. The book is written in an 
unusually interesting style, and the infor¬ 
mation given is full and complete. The 
botanical descriptions will stimulate inter¬ 
est among those unfamiliar with scientific 
plant study, and the glossary, though brief, 
is a useful one. There is a good d°al of 
helpful advice as to weed control. Pub¬ 
lished by the Nature Publishing Co.. In¬ 
dianapolis. Ind. ; 180 pages, heavy paper 
cover, more than 100 illustrations. Price 
$ 1 , postpaid. 
NEW-YORKER 
Mr. A. Treadwell's farm buildings. Strawberry Point, Iowa, stained with Cabot's Creosote 
Stains. Roofs, moss-green; walls, bark-brown and red. The job cost only half as much as 
paint, and the colors are handsomer and the wood is much more thoroughly preserved. 
Beautify Your Buildings—Save Half Your Paint Cost 
Preserve Your Woodwork—Save Half Your Labor Cost 
The high cost of linseed oil and other ingredients makes the price 
of paint higher than ever before or the quality poorer. Cabot's 
Creosote Stains are better than paint, especially for farm build¬ 
ings, and much cheaper. They cost less than half as much as 
paint, and they can be applied twice as fast, so that the labor 
cost is only half as much as painting. Anyone can put them on, 
with a wide flat brush that covers the surface very rapidly. They 
are made of the finest and strongest colors—all natural pigments 
that will wear as long as colors can — thoroughly ground in lin¬ 
seed oil. Their liquid is refined Creosote, “the best wood pre¬ 
servative known,’’ and this penetrates the wood and protects it 
against decay. Paint is a surface coating and has no i dal pene¬ 
trating preservative quality, but the Creosote in Cabci’s Stains 
.goes into the wood and tans it like leather. The handsome colors 
used on the above buildings cost 60c and 75c a gallon in Boston, 
with a few cents more for freight, and the owner put them on 
at half the labor cost of painting. He got fine, durable colors, 
much softer and richer than paint, and thoroughly preserved his 
woodwork, and every building that he stained was sterilized by 
the Creosote, which also destroys insects and bacteria and makes 
the premises wholesome and healthful. Cabot's Stains are ideal 
for farm buildings — cheap, lasting, preservative and sanitary. 
They are used on all kinds of wood : shingles, siding, boarding, 
fencing, etc. 
We will send you free a package of stained wood samples, showing the colors, 
and catalogue giving full information. Send your address. 
Samuel Cabot, Inc., Chemists' 21 Batterymarch St. 
BOSTON, MASS. 
Agents all over the country. A Iso. Conservo Wood Preservative, for Posts, Sills, Planking, etc . 
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Ier W g 
