1913. 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
ITS 
Strawboard for Fertilizer, 
J. IF. M., New Haven, Conn .—One of 
my neighbors has used strawboard clip¬ 
pings and cuttings in his soil, claiming he 
gets the same (and quicker) results as 
the adding of humus in other forms. He 
planted some walnut trees last Spring, 
putting a quantity of the straw board in 
the bottom of each hole. The roots made 
a fine growth; some of them 18 inches. 
The fibrous roots had grown into, and 
around the board so it was impossible to 
clean it off the roots. The tops of the 
trees made growths of from six to nine 
inches. Is this a good thing to use in 
planting apple, and other fruit trees? 
Wouldn’t it make a good surface mulch? 
Ans. —Anything that will prevent the 
evaporation of moisture and is not too 
sour will make a good mulch. We have 
put paper on the ground around trees, 
putting soil over to hold it down and 
obtained good results. Lay a board on 
the ground and you will find the soil 
moist and well filled with insects. The 
straw board clippings contain little fer¬ 
tilizer, but they will help to hold mois¬ 
ture. We have not found it an advan¬ 
tage to put anything into the tree hole 
except the soil, well firmed and pounded 
solid. 
Kiln-dried Sweet Potatoes. 
J. S., Grand Bay, A la .—There is a man 
who wishes to put up a kiln to dry sweet 
potatoes. He wants us farmers to pledge 
to plant a certain amount. We don’t know 
anything about kiln-dried sweet potatoes, 
and I would like to have you give me some 
information. Is there a demand for them 
and do they sell as well as those not dried? 
Are most "all the sweet potatoes grown 
North and East kiln-dried. In fact tell me 
all about them and if it pays. 
Ans. —I do not know anything about 
kiln-dried sweet potatoes and have never 
heard of a kiln being put up for that 
purpose. Large potato houses are often 
put up here for the purpose of storing 
sweets and holding them over Winter. 
Some of these houses are erected by 
individual growers, and are large enough 
to hold their own crop. Other very 
large houses are put up by dealers who 
either buy the potatoes from the grow¬ 
ers at market price in the Fall, or else 
rent space to growers who wish to store, 
but who do not have a sufficiently large 
acreage to warrant them building a 
house of their own. These houses are 
usually heated by hot water, and when 
the potatoes are first put in a high 
temperature of 80 to 90 degrees Fahren¬ 
heit is maintained and plenty of ventil¬ 
ation given. This high temperature and 
ventilation is required to dry out the 
sweets while they are going through 
their sweat. After sweating is over the 
temperature is allowed to drop to about 
55 degrees Fahrenheit, where it is main¬ 
tained until potatoes are removed. Stor¬ 
ing potatoes in this way keeps the mar¬ 
ket supplied with sweets during the 
Winter months, is a great aid in pre¬ 
venting heavy market gluts at digging 
time, and is generally quite satisfactory. 
Growers who stored last Fall are now 
selling them at practically twice as much 
as they could have received at the time 
they put them in the houses. These 
houses are not put up for the purpose 
of drying sweets, they are merely in¬ 
tended to hold the crop for better prices, 
and to supply the demand for sweets 
during the Winter months. 
TRUCKER, JR. 
Potatoes on Raw Land. 
J. A. D., Eastport, Me .—I have about 
two acres of nice level land in the pasture 
that has come up in moss; it has not been 
plowed up for 30 years. Would it be all 
right for me to plow up in the Spring and 
plant potatoes, using barn manure and 
fish to plant on? 
Ans. —Your correspondent from East- 
port fails to give me a clear idea of the 
surface conditions of his two acres. If 
it is covered with hardhacks, sweet 
fern or lambkill as it might easily be, 
not having been plowed for 30 years, 
I would suggest that he mow it off and 
pile and burn, then plow and sow to 
buckwheat, after harrowing it thorough¬ 
ly at intervals, allowing a week to in¬ 
tervene between each harrowing. Sow 
from the 15th to the 20th of June. Then 
plow again in the Fall after the buck¬ 
wheat is harvested and it is ready for 
potatoes. If, however, there is nothing 
in the shape of brush or the roots of 
brush on this piece of land to interfere 
with the working of the tools used in 
planting, hoeing and digging of the 
potatoes I should venture a nice crop 
could be raised this season. If it were 
under my management I would plow it 
as early in the Spring as I could work 
it; that is, if clay not too early, if 
gravelly or sandy loam, there will be 
little danger of working too early. I 
would see that every foot of every fur¬ 
row was conscientiously turned, apply¬ 
ing whatever barn manure is at hand. 
Land that has not been tilled for 30 
years will be absolutely ravenous for 
manure, and you will see little of the 
bad effects of manure in the crop on this 
old field that you would if it had been 
dressed with manure more recently. But 
it will hardly be safe to depend upon 
manure alone to produce a crop even if 
it is used in large quantities. The 
fish mentioned I presume is commercial 
fish tankage from the canneries; if this 
is what it is it would be the part of 
good business to use this as the basis 
of a homemade complete fertilizer, using 
per acre 650 pounds fish tankage, 220 
pounds nitrate of soda, 850 pounds acid 
phosphate, 280 pounds sulphate of pot¬ 
ash. This would be a very rich fertil¬ 
izer and not very expensive if the fish 
could be obtained cheaply, as it un¬ 
doubtedly can at this point. The aver¬ 
age farmer will say the manure will be 
enough; the potato grower will say the 
fertilizer will be enough, away with the 
manure. As a matter of fact, however, 
the manure when worked into this old 
field will, if properly harrowed, just 
make the ground alive in possibility and 
then the addition of the plant food in 
the chemicals makes a big crop a cer¬ 
tainty. w. T. GUPTILL. 
Field Mice. 
I?. C. II., New Windsor, Mo .—Can you 
tell me what I can do to keep mice or 
moles out of my cold frames? Three 
months or so ago I planted lettuce, beets, 
pansies and violets, and to-day there is 
not a plant left. I have set mouse traps, 
but have caught nothing. Can you sug¬ 
gest some way of getting rid of these pests? 
Ans. —Field mice are perhaps the 
most difficult of all the rodent family 
to exterminate, as they are strictly herb¬ 
ivorous in their manner of sustenance, 
very rarely, if ever eating such food as 
rats and the house mice usually eat, 
hence it is impossible to succeed in trap¬ 
ping them in the usual manner em¬ 
ployed in the taking of the common 
rats or house mice. I have had some 
success trapping them in the common 
wire rat trap by baiting with fresh let¬ 
tuce or cabbage and setting the trap in 
the frame where they have cleaned up 
the plants. Poisoning can also be made 
quite successful by dissolving a small 
teaspoonful of strychnine in a quart of 
water, and soaking fresh lettuce or cab¬ 
bage leaves in this solution, placing it 
here and there in the frame where the 
plants have been destroyed. This, as 
every one knows, is a deadly poison and 
great care must be exercised in the 
handling that a serious accident does 
not occur. Of course these methods 
of exterminating these pests cannot be 
employed with any degree of success 
when there are growing plants for them 
to feed upon. The common back-break¬ 
er traps can often be used quite suc¬ 
cessfully by setting it at the hole where 
they pass in and out. K. 
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