70 
the very best of care. On our grass land the hay 
has always been removed, and the land top-dressed 
with stable manure, ashes, and chemical fertilizers; 
muriate of potash, acid phosphate, nitrate of soda, 
and bone meal were used. We do not have scale 
here, hut spray with Bordeaux and arsenate of lead. 
Our apples this season were remarkably fair, large 
and highly colored, only a very small per cent of 
them being wormy, and most of them would be rated 
as fancy. We sold all the Winter apples we could 
spare at from $5 to $7.50 per barrel here in our local 
market, and our apples have sold on the counters 
here at 10 cents each. A. a. halladay. 
Vermont. 
In regard to prize-winning R. I. Greenings, the trees 
were sprayed with the following mixture: arsenate of 
lead three pounds, bluestonc three pounds, lime five 
pounds, to 50 gallons of water, as soon as blossoms 
dropped. On account of rush of business in other 
lines I only sprayed once last year, but would recom¬ 
mend spraying before blossoms open, for a worm 
that begins to bite the apple as soon as it sets, and 
in some orchards I noted this worm had bitten some 
apples five times before they had set a week, and 
did immense damage before the orchard could be 
sprayed on account of wind and rain after blossoms 
fell. The second spraying should come as soon as 
convenient after blossoms drop, and the third about 
10 days later to insure a good clean crop of apples, 
and it would have paid to spray August 1 last year, 
for the Brown-tail and the Apple worm, or what is 
known best as the “Side worm.” The Spring spraying 
if done as above will take care of the insects up to 
August 1, but we get a new crop of worms on the 
new growth of the tree that do not seem to be much 
affected by the Spring spraying, and enough Side- 
worm apples have to be thrown out to pay well for 
one spraying, as well as taking care of the Brown- 
tails, which are on new wood, and feed on leaves that 
were not there in June. The above spraying is for 
worms and leaf-eating insects only, and does not 
affect the bark lice at all, as this insect sucks and 
does not eat the leaf. To clear the orchard of the 
lice whale-oil soap and potash with kerosene seems 
to be quite the thing, when the leaves are opening 
in the Spring; I used two pounds soap and potash as 
prepared and 10 gallons kerosene to 50 gallons water. 
The color of the apples was due to wood ashes, 
about one peck to a tree. The Greenings, where wood 
ashes were not used, whether cultivated or in sod, 
were quite green, and refused to put on the “red 
blush cheek.” If left too long on the tree they turned 
yellow instead of red. I have done a lot of experi¬ 
menting, and have fenced hogs in sections, hens in 
other sections; applied stable manure, grass (sod), 
sheep and mulch, and have come to the conclusion 
that cultivation pays best. The tree must be fed 
some way, and with the hens, hogs or sheep droppings 
a little at a time seem to give better results than 
a load of manure dumped near a tree, as I saw one 
farmer do it. Chip dirt and sawdust seem to do more 
good than I would have believed, but with sawdust 
and cultivation even the Baldwins are green as cu¬ 
cumbers unless wood ashes are used. 
I note in one of your recent issues that some one 
says “no one has said sheep—everybody is either 
mulch or cultivation.” Well, I know a farmer who 
has used his orchard (400 trees) for a sheep pasture 
for several years (about 10 to my knowledge) and 
it is going out of business; trees are now about 25 
years set, very little new wood and leaves turn yellow 
early. Sheep are a good thing in an orchard if trees 
are headed high enough and are set five years, but 
the orchard needs cultivation, and something more 
than the sheep droppings to induce the trees to grow 
and produce an average of three barrels of apples 
per year per tree. My orchard (the bearing trees) is 
now practically all under cultivation, though some of 
the apples in the prize barrel were raised in sod, and 
some on trees in garden, but all were treated to 
wood ashes—in fact we couldn’t get any prize apples 
from trees which were not ashed, as they were green 
or yellow and not so firm or hard. The ashes seem 
to have a tendency to make the Greenings as hard 
as Baldwins, and give them red cheeks. Notwith¬ 
standing the many conflicting stories about the easy 
road to wealth raising apples let me say that “farm¬ 
ing is a fine art,” but anyone who sets an orchard on 
reasonably level land in this section, cultivates, ma¬ 
nures and sprays will be on a safer road to success 
than with other methods recommended 'by many. Of 
course mulching is better than nothing, but most of 
the farmers need the hay and use it, and put nothing 
back around the tree; in sections where there is an 
abundance of mulching material and too rocky, to 
cultivate mulching is no doubt the proper thing. Most 
of the farmers cut what hay they can get around the 
apple trees and apply the manure to some other section 
of the farm; yet the old Baldwins—being robbed of 
THE KUKAL NEW-YORKER 
the grass, neither sprayed, cultivated nor pruned, con¬ 
tinue to bear a full crop every few years, but this was 
a “buggy” year, and only the sprayed orchards are 
of any account. When I began to spray, three years 
ago, I had to stand a lot of “jollying,” but I have 
turned the' laugh, and a few others followed suit last 
year and some more this. There are now five spray 
pumps in town. Spraying in this section saves one- 
third to two-thirds of the crop, and improves the 
whole crop—that is the apples are more uniform in 
size, freer from bites and worms, and very many 
apples mature that would otherwise have dropped 
early in the season. john T. mooke. 
New Hampshire. 
DRAINING SWAMP LAND. 
In your article entitled “Asking the Swamp Land,” 
I suggest that the writer place his log tiling quite 
deep, for the swamp will be very likely to settle more 
than he would think after draining. I have some land 
very similar to what he describes drained with open 
ditches, the mud and peat varying in depth from four 
to 20 feet. 1 should judge mine was once the bottom 
of a pond, which had gradually filled in, as I can find 
cranberry vines and cat-tail flags in the peat down 10 
feet deep, and above which one or two generations of 
large pines have been removed, the stumps remaining 
sound to-day. He will find the land will produce good 
crops, but the chief trouble with me lies in the cost 
of working. It being a very favorable season, I have 
plowed mine, using a light pair of oxen. I cannot 
use a horse without boots, and even then I should 
hesitate about putting a good one there. After it is 
drained animals sink into it as they would in meal, 
and come out almost as dry. Most animals are afraid 
of the continual going down and to those that arc not 
the strain of lifting themselves out at every step is 
very trying to the muscles. I have had several years’ 
experience with hay and garden crops on this land, 
and if there is anything I can tell about it I will gladly 
do so. S. w. B. 
Oneco, Conn. 
On page 1086 W. V. Howard gives his plan for 
ditching 25 acres of swamp land. I have had some 
experience, so I will give him and others my plan 
and reasons. All muck land is lower than the sur¬ 
rounding land, and some time, years ago, was a lake. 
We find in Michigan in most cases high hills on 
every side, and very heavy rains will flood the swamp 
in an hour or two. I took a spirit level and found how 
deep I had to go with my outlet to tap the lowest 
place two and a half feet deep. Then I laid out an 
open ditch, so as to touch the hard land on each 
corner that would get the most swamp inside and 
cut off the water. I ran this open ditch clear around, 
emptying both ends into the outlet. The size of this 
ditch you will find by the amount of land that drains 
on to the swamp. The open ditch on my muck is 
four feet on top and two and a half to three feet 
deep; there are about 30 acres that drain on to it. 
There are three acres of muck, and the water has 
never stood on it; I have seen the outlet run half 
full. I have been putting in tile where it needs it, run¬ 
ning them into the open ditch. I don’t put tile mo«e 
than two and a half or three feet deep, as one may 
get the water table too low. If there are springs, take 
a barrel with both ends out, sink down over the 
spring, deep enough to plow over, run tile into the 
barrel, put a plank over the top; that will dry it if 
you can get over the spring. All muck will settle after 
the water is taken off, so you may have to take up 
the tile .in five or six years and lower them. 
Lapeer Co., Mich. t. a. mott. 
I would give an item of experience in a peat bed 
from a few inches to seven feet in depth, where a 
team could not go on and the swale grass was carried 
off on poles. First, I located and opened a ditch upon 
one side, sufficiently deep to drain to the bottom of 
the peat. This was 100 rods in length; this to take 
the water in heavy rains and from snow, and an out¬ 
let for the ditches to run through the peat mold. 
These cross ditches were put in’as often as the con¬ 
ditions required. I have used stone tilage and 
boards six to seven inches wide nailed together in 
the form.of a V, with slats nailed across to keep from 
spreading, but prefer the pole tilage. Take pole from 
five to six inches to the foot that hold their dimen¬ 
sions well, and place each side of the ditch, and 
cover with flat stones. With a hand stone hammer a 
man can make good joints. This gives satisfactory 
and lasting drainage, for these poles will never rot 
w-here there is a flow of water between them. In dig¬ 
ging through this peat mold I found limbs and trunks 
of trees two feet beneath the surface; the bark and 
wood looked as bright as when first cut, but exposed 
to the air its freshness would rapidly decay, thus indi¬ 
cating that timber buried in a moist peat mold will 
last for ages. It takes time for the water to drain 
out of a peat bed, and to settle to a density that it 
January 22, 
can be worked by a team. Sections of this land grow 
immense crops of corn, oats and grass, where 1 have 
succeeded in plowing in dry times. Sow on ashes or 
grass phosphates and seed to clover and Timothy; two 
heavy crops are taken every season, and when the 
wild grass begins to come in plow and reseed and 
you have a fertile grass meadow. I have used dried 
peat as a mulch with ashes upon grass land, which 
gave large cutting of grass. a Vermonter. 
THE SCHOOL QUESTION IN NEW YORK. 
I recently met a man who lives somewhat back from 
town, and he told me that the telephone and the rural 
free delivery were doing a vast amount of damage to 
the hill country farmers. Of course I was greatly 
surprised, but he put up quite a good argument to 
back his assertions. He claimed that a big majority 
of these farmers only learn by observation, and that 
■when they stay at home they keep sinking deeper into 
the ruts of shiftlessness and poor farm methods. 
He said that when these men drove often to town 
coming down through the better farming sections, 
and seeing what the better class of farmers were 
doing, they went home and did a little better them¬ 
selves. But now the telephone and the rural free 
delivery greatly lessen the necessity of leaving the 
farm, and they are drifting back to the methods 
of the long ago, and without the old-time vigor of 
their forefathers to help them along. Not one farmer 
in five belongs to the Grange, and not one in five who 
does belong is in the habit of attending the meetings 
regularly and taking part in the work. Not half of 
the farmers subscribe for a farm paper, and more 
than half who do, take some cheap thing that prints 
stuff “inspired” by the advertisers. Not one farmer 
in 10 attends the institute held in his town, and not 
one in 1,000 attends the State Dairymen’s Association, 
the State Breeders’ Association and kindred meetings. 
Then how are we going to get at these farmers who 
mind their own business so closely that the business 
dies from over care? 
The answer is the public school. There is another 
generation growing up, and we can start these in the 
right way if we will. But we are not doing it now. 
New York State boasts of her school advantages. 
She gives the rural scholar free tuition at the high 
school after he has passed the eighth grade of the 
district school, but what does he get to help him at 
the high school? My boy, in his third year at high 
school, is high in Latin but low in English. He 
wanted to take chemistry this year as the only possible 
course in the curriculum that could benefit a fanner, 
but there were not enough pupils who cared for 
chemistry, so he studies German instead. When he is 
graduated he will be prepared to hold a confab with 
Caesar’s ghost or that of the Iron Chancellor, but he 
will not know that ashes and hen manure do not mix 
well for fertilizer. At present just a little bit is being 
done along these lines in the district schools, but 
the trouble is that the teachers of these district schools 
are the Latin-German product of the high schools, 
and utterly # unfitted to teach the rudiments of agricul- 
ure. 
It only takes a little effort to get the little folk 
interested in this work; I took a bottle and placed 
kernels of corn inside close to the glass, and filled 
it up with clean moist sand; then another bottle with 
the corn and rich earth. The children watched those 
kernels swell and first send out the root downwards 
and then the sprout upwards, and how they wondered 
why the root knew how to go down and the sprout to 
come up. Then the sand-planted corn grow slim and 
light-colored, while the soil-planted corn grew rank 
and dark green. Of course the children wanted to 
know why there was a difference, and we found them 
eagerly searching after knowledge instead of having 
it stuffed into them as it usually is. 
In our home town we are told that it is all right; 
to teach farming out in the little red school house, 
but in the village high school this would be wrong, 
because the village people are not interested in farm¬ 
ing. Talk about snobbery! If a little village com¬ 
munity of 1,000 or 2,000 people situated in the heart 
of the hills, and these people mostly retired farmers, 
are not interested in farming, who in the world should 
be? And if these village high schools keep turning 
out Latin-German school teachers with a fine contempt 
for farmers, how in the world are we going to have 
intelligent agricultural knowledge engrafted in the 
minds of our children? j. grant morse. 
Madison Co., N. Y. 
My advice to G. G. S., page 1082 is to keep the berries 
out of the peach orchard. Put the ground in good condition 
with plenty of barnyard manure and cultivate for three 
years. Cut back two-thirds each year's growth, then seed 
to Orchard grass and clover. Spray well ; prune by cutting 
out top and center; mulch with about, half the grass that 
grows in the orchard. He may not pick as many baskets 
but he will take more pleasure in picking one basket of 
$1 peaches than two baskets of 50 cent ones. w. a. b. 
Slate Hill, N. Y. 
