1913. 
INTENSIVE METHODS OF PROPAGATION. 
Noting what you say in regard to grow¬ 
ing potatoes from cuttings on page 1016, 
I would like to give my experience in 
special propagation. It sometimes pays, 
when a product is new and high priced, 
to use special effort to increase the stock. 
When the late B. K. Bliss sent out the 
Early Rose potato he advertised it at $1 
a pound, and afterwards raised the price 
to $3 a pound. I got a pound for $1, 
cut them to single eyes and planted them 
in my garden ; raised 35 pounds. As the 
potatoes were still selling for high prices 
I determined to increase mine more rap- 
idly. I put the potatoes into the pro¬ 
pagating bed in a greenhouse early in 
January and made cuttings and rooted 
them as fast as they grew. By Spring 
I had a thrifty greenhouse full of plants 
•in four-inch pots, enough to plant an 
acre, and I made a fine crop from them. 
Of course such a method is too costly 
for ordinary potato crops, but it paid well 
when the product was still worth $15 a 
barrel. 
When Col. Waring sent out the 
Trophy tomato, the first real advance in 
solid tomatoes, he charged $5 for 20 
seeds. I invested $5 and planted the 
seed in my greenhouse early in January 
and potted off 17 plants. From these 1 
made cuttings and rooted them, and by 
Spring I had 150 plants, and sold 18 of 
them for 50 cents each, and from the re¬ 
mainder grew a fine lot of seed to make 
a large plantation and sold some for 
good prices. This, too, is only prac¬ 
ticable when the product is high priced. 
IV lieu Mr. Parry, of New Jersey, sent 
out the Herstine raspberry I got in the 
Fall two very strongly-rooted field-grown 
plants. Now if I had planted these it 
would have taken them another season to 
make good fruiting canes, and knowing 
that the roots of the red raspberry are 
full of dormant buds I determined to do 
some intense propagation with these. I 
cut the roots into pieces about an inch 
long, and had hundreds of these little cut¬ 
tings. They were planted in light soil 
in flats in the greenhouse where they had 
a bottom heat, and they sprouted fast. 
As each made au inch or .more of top 
growth they were carefully lifted on the 
point of a knife blade and potted in two- 
inch pots. By Spring I had more than 
250 plants in pots with tops a foot tall, 
and when planted out they kept growing 
and made strong canes that bore a fine 
crop the following season, though some 
of them were sold at good prices "in the 
Fall. I got the fruit just as soon as I 
would have got it on two plants had I 
simply planted the two received from Mr. 
Parry. Like everything else, these in¬ 
tensive methods are only applicable to 
high-priced products, and it would not 
pay to increase raspberries in this way 
when they can be had from the open 
ground at low prices by the thousand, but 
it is well to know how to do these things 
at times. A man in Now Jersey near 
Mr. Parry built a greenhouse 100 feet 
long for the purpose of growing these 
raspberries. He filled the benches with' 
cuttings of the canes in the Fall and 
failed to grow a single plant, simply be¬ 
cause he did not understand methods of 
propagation. lie was so disgusted that 
he sold me his greenhouse and I moved 
it to Maryland, where it answered a very 
good purpose in general plant growing. 
Salisbury, Md. w. p. M . 
the RURAL NEW-YORKER 
birds mentioned as often guilty of punc¬ 
turing the grapes and inviting further 
depredations from bees are the Cape May 
warbler, the Baltimore oriole, the spar 
row, and sometimes the robin, yellow- 
hammers, and woodpeckers. The only 
suggestion that I can make as to pro 
tection of ripening grapes is that they be 
covered with some light netting which 
will keep the birds from them. This 
would not be a difficult or expensive mat¬ 
ter where only a few vines needed pro¬ 
tection, but would be rather difficult in a 
vineyard. m. b. d 
Street Sweepings from the City. 
During the year we frequently have 
letters from readers who want to know 
what is done with street sweepings of 
New York City. Some of our people 
have the idea that these sweepings are 
of great value, and that they are sold 
much the same way as stable manure. In 
order to make sure about this, we have 
interviewed the Department of Street 
Cleaning here in New York, and obtained 
the following statement: 
This Department does not sell the 
sweepings for this purpose, and under its 
present system it does not collect them 
separately, but they are mixed with the 
ashes in the collection. We have had a 
number of inquiries in this regard, and 
have always offered these sweepings to 
anyone who would collect them as an off¬ 
set to any charge which might be made, 
but so far no one has thought them of 
sufficient value. I question the value un¬ 
der the present circumstances, but if 
anyone feels that they are of sufficient 
value, this Department would be glad to 
make arrangements with him for their 
disposition. EDWARD D. VERY, 
Sanitary Engineer. 
The Department of Agriculture at 
IV ashington has issued a pamphlet giv¬ 
ing some analyses of these sweepings, 
and they vary considerably in value, as 
some of them contain considerable 
amounts of mud, waste paper and other 
materials which reduce their value. On 
the whole, it is not likely that they would 
prove valuable enough to pay for long 
shipment. If the city could transport 
them at a low price to some of the 
waste and barren land on Long Island, 
and there use them to produce a sod. or 
to grow cover crops for plowing under 
the sweepings would probably pay, but 
for individual shipment it is doubtful if 
they would prove profitable. 
Insects Gaining Strength. 
Now comes the theory that in our fight 
against insect pests we are “evolving’ 
hardier strains or varieties' For exam 
pie, the potato beetle and San Jos6 scale. 
It is said that what were standard mix¬ 
tures of poison will not destroy the 
beetles as they did 10 years ago. This, 
it is claimed, means that hardier strains 
ot the beetles have been bred. They can 
stand more arsenic. They represent a 
sort of “survival of the fittest.” In the 
same way it is claimed that some.of the 
standard sprays are not as effective 
against the scale a's they formerly were. 
This theory has gone so far that we 
find the following credited to Prof. 
Mel under: 
“If the biological theory is true, that 
we are breeding up scales that are re¬ 
sistant to this or that spray, it may be 
that we shall have to switch our methods 
of fighting the pests, we will say every 
20 years. We will spray with sulphur- 
lime; that will be the best for 20 years, 
and then we will switch over and take 
Thrashing Beans. 
IV 11 , ^ on state the best and quickest 
method of seperating beans (navy) from 
the pods without the use of the beau 
thrasher? n t -a 
Lombard, Ill. 
We have seen beans thrashed by put- 
'ing a large pile of vines on the barn 
floor and driving a pair of light horses 
around and around to shell the beans out. 
Dr a smaller quantity of vines may be 
pul on the floor and beaten out with a 
'fail or by striking with the back of a 
loi ’k. Either method is crude and will 
break many beans. 
up the oil emulsion and spray with that 
for 20 years until we get a scale that is 
resistant to oil emulsion, and then come 
back and switch to the other. Biologi 
cully it is possible to rear up a breed that 
would be resistant.” 
Bees and Grapes. 
Will you state how to get rid of bees 
u a grape arbor? We lost most of our 
nop by vjsjts ,,f swarms of bees. c. b. 
Highland Falls, N. Y. 
The. editor of “Gleanings in Bee Cul- 
" lte is authority for the statement that 
l " M ‘ s ^ c> u °t touch sound grapes, but visit 
;mly those that have been punctured by 
" r,is or otherwise damaged. Among the 
Inoculating for Vetch. 
I noticed in an article on page 90-4 
by G. A., entitled, “Wlmt Ailed the 
\ otoii. 1 have had a similar experience 
with 10 acres of vetch sown in Sep¬ 
tember, 1012, and was in a quandary to 
know what was tin* trouble and watched 
your columns closely; but after getting 
Bulletin 520, “Vetch in the South Atlan¬ 
tic States,” I was convinced that it was 
due to the seed and soil not being inocu¬ 
lated. Since being •convinced of this 
tact I have noticed others had a similar 
experience the year previous, but the fol¬ 
lowing year had a bountiful crop. We 
had enough seed mature, we think, to 
reseed our ground and we are under the 
impression this is G. A.’s trouble. 
Crozet, Va. b. b. c. 
Officer (to recruit who has missed 
every shot) : “Good heavens, man, where 
are your shots going?” Recruit (ner¬ 
vously) : “I don’t know, sir; they left 
here all right.”—Credit Lost. 
1129 
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15,000 Girls and Women 
How to Make Money 
This Year 
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The Laches' Home Journal\ but in 
scores of ways unknown to the 
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The Laches' Home Journal's edi¬ 
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and don’t know how, and then 
tell them what they can do and 
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tial and helpful letters by mail. 
For years we have been finding out how 
clever girls and women have made money 
in unusual ways, and this information, 
bought and paid for, we pass on to others 
without charge. A booklet, “The Story 
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