1914. 
r JH fcC RURAL N K W-VORKEK 
U 51 
SOY BEANS AND VETCH FOR ORCHARDS. 
About 15 men a day are writing in to us to learn 
how to handle Soy beans and Winter vetch. Per¬ 
haps half of them are orchardists who wish to use 
one or the other plant, sometimes both. The Soy 
beans are sown about May 20 to June 1. in drills 28 
inches apart, and are cultivated all Summer. At 
the last cultivation vetch is sown broadcast, and 
covered by the cultivator. At least part of these 
orchardists expect to remove the beans themselves, 
either for grain or for seed, leaving the vines for 
mulch; that is, spreading them back on the ground. 
After thrashing, the vetch comes on as a cover crop, 
and by the 10th of May the ground would be simply 
a mass of vetch plants, when they will be plowed 
under giving their great store of nitrogen and hu¬ 
mus to the trees, the ground being then fitted and 
again planted with the Soy beans. 
About the only thing that would lack in this pro- 
gramme would be a proper application of phos¬ 
phorus; then if the ideas of our orclmrdist friends 
amount to anything the orchard would be receiving 
just what it needed, cultivation during the Summer, 
the Winter cover crops, and the application of nitro¬ 
gen and humus when the vetch is plowed under in 
May. If we were going on our estimate, the Soy 
beans would not remove more than 20 or 25 pounds 
of nitrogen, and the vetch would all probably add as 
high as 90 pounds per acre. 
A few things have to be learned about growing 
these two crops. For the Soy beans prepare a 
real good seed bed; do not sow until the ground is 
warm, putting them in with a grain drill, stopping 
what holes you do not need. Apply innoculation 
with soil sown at the same time through the fertil¬ 
izer box, using about .‘>0 pounds of seed per acre, 
cover it very shallow, just barely covering it and no 
more. Cultivate them three or four times, but do 
not cultivate after the bloom appears. For New 
York State use Jet, Mongol, Ito San, or Medium 
Early Green varieties, our preference being in or¬ 
der named. Inoculation is decidedly important. 
The beans do not usually find then' bacteria, and if 
they do find them, they will remove as high as 125 
pounds of nitrogen from the soil. 
Then for the vetches, simply sow in broadcast, or 
with a one-horse drill, the former being our own 
method, using 45 pounds seed per acre, sowing not 
earlier than July 1, and not later than August 20. 
We prefer to cover this seed half or three-fourths 
of an inch, and our experience has been that inocula¬ 
tion was very necessary. Some men tell us that they 
succeeded without inoculation, but we have failed 
two or three times, until we got the inoculation. 
Where you do not intend to use these plants in or¬ 
charding, the vetch works up nicely sown at the 
last cultivation of corn, and may be followed with 
Soy the next year, or may be plowed under in time 
to sow Alfalfa, or some catch crop, like Sorghum. 
Some few farmers contemplate growing corn after 
corn with the vetch plowed under each year. There 
is worse soil abuse going on than this, but we do not 
approve of the idea. ciias. b. wing. 
Ohio. 
TREES AS “SCAVENGERS OF THE AIR.” 
The following clipping, cut from a newspaper, 
sounds to me a little strange. Will you state 
whether it is true or false? 
"If we cross one of our avenues on a hot day when 
the temperature is 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and pass 
into the shade of a tree, we are refreshed by the cool 
air. What makes the change? Not in the shade alone, 
but chiefly because we are in the presence of a body 
that has a fixed temperature much cooler than the 
street. If on a cold Winter’s day we pass from the 
temperature of the street, at zero, into a group of 
trees, we are surprised at the warmth. This is not 
only due to the shelter they afford, but more largely 
to the warmth of the tree, which at 54 degrees Fah¬ 
renheit, is 54 degrees warmer than the street. These 
facts suggest that if our streets are well supplied with 
vigorous trees we should have much cooler Summers 
and warmer Winters, as the temperature of the tree 
never varies from 54 degrees Fahrenheit in Summer’s 
heat or Winter's cold. The tree has the power of 
absorbing and thus removing from the air the malarial 
emanations from the street, and from putrefying waste 
matter, so abundant in cities. In this respect they are 
tin* scavengers of the air and protect people from a 
large number of what are known by sanitarians as 
‘filth diseases’.” C. D. c. 
New York. 
The clipping you enclose is largely false. Like 
almost all matter that appears on scientific and 
technical subjects in the daily press and in many 
journals, it has a basis of truth. In the first place, 
it is true that the trees absorb a vast quantity of 
carbon dioxide from the air during their growth, 
but, so far as I am aware, this does not prevent 
any disease, nor is there any disease directly trace¬ 
able to carbon dioxide alone when taken into the 
body from the atmosphere as we are doing con¬ 
tinually. In no other way are the trees "scaven¬ 
gers of the air.” It is also true that when the 
life processes of the tree are going on during the 
Summer months, the tree gives off large quantities 
of water vapor, which possibly you may have no¬ 
ticed descending beneath the trees in the form of 
a slight mist. I think it is true that this makes 
the shade of the tree somewhat cooler than would 
be the shade of a house or an awning. Trees do 
not, however, warm up the space beneath them, nor 
is the temperature of a tree at all constant. Those 
who have had any experience in chopping down 
trees in the Winter will know that often they are 
frozen right through the lieartwood. In the Winter 
they are dead to all intents and purposes, and even 
the absorption of carbon dioxide does not go on, 
while the Winter is, of course, the time of year 
when the air contains most of this gas. r. p. c. 
“FARMING ON SHARES”—THE OTHER SIDE. 
The article on farming on shares on page 2, is an 
excellent one and very well written. The trouble 
with E. D.’s farming was not at all in the method, 
but in the kind and size of the business, and in the 
condition of the land and stock when he took the 
place. Owing to the condition of the farm, a large 
ORANGE RIVER, FLORIDA, IN FEBRUARY. 
part of his labor went toward bringing it up. For 
this he will receive no reward unless he stays a 
term of years. Even so, a farm carrying only 12 
cows and having no other source of income: is not 
capable of supporting two families in any style. 
They could exist on the income, but they would not 
be buying many motor cars. In a case like that of 
E. D. one should not depend on 12 cull cows for an 
income. The labor income is not large in dairying, 
even where one has the whole of it. He put his 
finger on the sore spot when he said: “Lack of capi¬ 
tal prevented my raising paying crops, such as 
potatoes.” 
In an agricultural survey of Tompkins County, 
N. Y., it was found that out of over GOO farms, every 
one of the large producers, had two or more main 
sources of income, and usually several minor ones. 
In almost every case, one of the main sources was 
dairying, and in addition one or more of the follow¬ 
ing—hay, potatoes, apples, truck, or purebred stock. 
WINTER SCENE IN PENNSYLVANIA. 
The minor sources included everything else raised 
in the county. Besides this diversity of products on 
the successful farms, it was found that these aver¬ 
aged much larger than the average of all the farms 
in the survey. From 2(X) to 400 acres was found to 
be the most efficient and profitably, size for the class 
of farms found in that county. Where these condi¬ 
tions were complied with, the income was satis¬ 
factory. In a number of cases where they were not 
the net result of the farming operations was a 
loss. Of course more capital is needed to run these 
profitable farms than the ordinary ones. In the case 
of E. D. we have a tenant, lacking in capital, who 
would like to run a farm in an efficient up to date 
manner. I will now give two instances which show 
the other side. 
Eight years ago I took this place, and from about 
the condition of the place E. D. was on, I have 
brought it to a state where it yielded an income of 
$2,S00 and now. having rented more land, I expect 
to bring the income up to .$4,000 or more. The stock, 
tools and crops, now inventory about $3,600. Be¬ 
sides this, there has been invested $1,000 or more 
in improving buildings and $500 in tiling. In bring¬ 
ing up the farm, I have had to use good methods of 
farming. The fact that they were good methods is 
proved by their working. Having now got the farm 
on a paying basis, I would like to get some man 
who could carry the farm on without me, either 
hiring him or letting it to him. That would leave 
me free to go to college. What I wanted was to 
have the man work for me a year or two, to learn 
my methods and to try him out. I also talked with 
some tenants, about letting them tne farm. I gath¬ 
ered from what talks I had that the consensus of 
opinion was that it was too hard work to raise my 
money crop (potatoes) in any quantity, even with 
my improved machinery, and that it was too much 
trouble to weigh each cow’s milk once a week and 
put it down for future reference, and also that there 
was too much red tape in graining cows according to 
the milk flow. I am still personally conducting the 
farm. 
That this is not an isolated instance is proven by 
the other case mentioned. There is another farm 
near here, one of the best in the neighborhood, on 
which considerably over $1,000 has recently been 
spent in improvements. The owner would be glad 
to spend a great deal more if a tenant could be 
found who would be up to date. So far, however, 
he has not been found. albert h. de gbaff. 
Jefferson Co., N. Y. 
OMIT THE 90 PER CENT CLAUSE. 
A resolution was passed by the Western New 
York Fruit Growers’ Association at Rochester, Jan¬ 
uary 30, advocating a law, to the effect that “in any 
barrel of apples packed for market in this State, 
90 per cent of the contents shall be as good, in all 
respects, as those on the face end of the barrel.” In 
other words it shall contain 90 quarts of apples like 
the face and 10 quarts of something else—it may 
be cider apples, or stones, or pumpkins. The act "of 
Congress, approved August 3, 1912, and known as 
the Sulzer law. was a 90 per cent law, and the State 
act, known as the Wilson bill, was another. The 90 
per cent clause makes them all ridiculous. It was 
probably intended to provide for unavoidable errors, 
but no apple packer ever put 10 quarts of unavoid¬ 
able errors in a barrel, and no court would ever fine 
him for a reasonable amount of such errors, which 
would be much less than one per cent We have 
already too many 90 per cent laws. If we are going 
to make all apple packers honest by law, let’s aim a 
little higher and make them 100 per cent honest. 
With our statute books full of 90 per cent laws, 
the Teators, the Morrells, the Kings and the Cases, 
who pack 100 per cent apples, would still be in a 
class by themselves, and the bulk of the crop would 
be more poorly packed than now. Small growers can 
only obtain the higher prices by combining, and 
having their apples packed and sold by the manager 
of a central packing house, uninfluenced by either 
tlie grower or the buyer, and unhampered by any 
90 per cent. law. The proposed law would benefit 
both growers and consumers if the 90 per cent 
clause were omitted and the different qualities were 
packed separately, with the apples in any one barrel 
all alike from top to bottom. harry g. chapin. 
Quite a remarkable development is going on in 
parts of Virginia along Chesapeake Bay. Here in 
old days many "first families” lived in memorial 
style. With the passing of slavery and the ruin of 
the Civil War sad days came to these farms. The 
land went back to nature or, what was worse, back 
to tenants, and the proud old houses became feeble 
and shabby. We hear of one such estate in Mary¬ 
land which was held for 200 years by one of the 
proudest families, only to pass into the hands of a 
colony of Jewish farmers. Some of these estates 
are now being taken by wealthy Western men. They 
buy shiploads of lime and train loads of phosphate 
rock, use cover crops and will in time restore these 
old farms and make them productive. But those 
old Virginia houses! What stories could they tell 
from beneath their new paint and pictures. 
