<3'I-1 LC RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 10, 
Hope Farm Notes 
W ILL you advise me regarding the 
Fall planting of peaches and other 
fruit trees? F. R. a. 
Allendale, N. J. 
As the result of our experience we 
plant in the Spring. One year we planted 
both apple and peach in the Fall and had 
a fine showing as the result of it. En¬ 
couraged by this we made heavy plant¬ 
ings the next Fall and lost about <5 per 
cent, of the trees. Investigation showed 
that the first lot of trees were fully ma¬ 
tured, with the wood solid and firm. The 
Winter, while cold, was steady, without 
great changes. In the second case the 
trees were soft and tender. The nursery¬ 
man had evidently stripped off the leaves 
by hand to make them appear dormant. 
The Winter was variable—severe cold 
spoils alternating with warm thaws in 
February. Those unripe trees were 
frozen and did not recover. With trees 
fully mature and sound I think Fall 
planting in our section would be safe. 
The work would be out of the way, and 
in case of a very late Spring this would 
help. After our experience, however, we 
stand by Spring planting. 
Why was it that my strawberry bed, 
15x30 feet in dimensions, yielded me less 
than half a dozen quarts of berries this 
season? J- F. 
Vermont. 
Not having seen the strawberry bed I 
do not know. All I can do is to name 
some of the things which might be re¬ 
sponsible. The plants may be “imperfect. 
Most varieties carry both male and fe¬ 
male flower parts and are thus self-fertile. 
Others have only the female parts, and 
cannot set or produce good berries unless 
the pollen is supplied from other plants. 
Bees will do this to some extent, but usu¬ 
ally such varieties give little or no fruit 
unless male plants are nearby. There 
may be white grubs working a the roots, 
or borers at the fruit buds. The plants 
may have been fed too much nitrogen last 
year. In that case they would make a 
rank, heavy growth of vine and leaf, but 
very few fruit buds. Remember that the 
buds from which next year’s crop will 
grow are now made or now being made. 
If you force the plants into a rank 
growth now you may have no fruit next 
year! The soil may not suit the berries 
—you may have used lime or wood ashes 
freely, in which case the strawberry 
plants will not do their best. How old 
are these plants? If they are potted 
plants set last Fall you could hardly 
expect a larger crop. As you give us no 
particulars I cannot do more than men¬ 
tion these general causes. 
Farm Notb;s. —Our mangel crop will 
not be a “wonder” by any means. There 
are no great roots such as we read about, 
but we shall evidently have a good lot of 
medium-sized mangels. As we expect to 
sell part of the crop to chicken men these 
smaller roots will be more suitable than 
the giants. The carrots have done better 
this year than the mangels. In fact the 
carrot seems to me better able to take 
care of itself than any farm crop I know 
of.There are still several varieties 
of late peaches to pick—Salway and Iron 
Mountain and several of the clings are 
slow to mature this year. A light frost 
will not hurt these tough citizens. On 
the whole, in spite of rather low prices, 
our peach season has been the best we 
ever had. Some of the large growers 
have been obliged to sacrifice some of 
their crop, but we have so many varieties 
that there has been no great surplus of 
any one. From Alexander to Salway and 
Iron Mountain with us means 75 days at 
least of continuous peach picking. 
By October 1 all the Wealthy, Twenty 
Ounce and Wolf River apples had been 
sold. The McIntosh had been picked and 
all delivered except about 50 packages. 
Then will come Greening and Northern 
Spy—the latter a Fall apple with us. 
Most of these earlier apples sold in peach 
baskets at 40 cents each for No. 1. The 
Baldwins will be left on the trees as long 
as we think safe and then picked and 
sold at once. I shall make no effort to 
store fruit this year—except enough for 
our own use.Corn cutting started 
September 23, and we hope to get the 
entire crop cut before frost. Our corn 
is all grown in the orchards between the 
rows of trees. Many of the trees are now 
so vigorous and large that the corn does 
not have a fair chance, and thus makes 
a poor crop. In the younger orchards our 
flint corn does well, and is the best va¬ 
riety or strain I have yet found for such 
planting. The stalks are slender and full 
of leaf, so that the stock will eat the fod¬ 
der up clean—as they do hay. The ears 
are full of kernels, and well set on the 
stalk. I feel sure that selected strains of 
Canada flint corn will produce more grain 
in orchards or on rough hillside culture 
than any other grain plant that can be 
found. Last year we lost much of our 
seed through the wet Fall, but this year 
we shall make a business of saving it. 
Classic Cover Crops. —We surely 
have all sorts of people who are interested 
in farming, and they look at the subject 
from many different angles. Take this 
cover crop proposition. Not many of 
us can see any classic literature or poetry 
in plowing rye or turnips or vetch into 
the ground. It seems a very practical 
operation—though we know it is profit¬ 
able. Men come and tell me to read 
in old Greek and Latin classics about this 
very process. They also toll me that the 
poets have plowed a few cover crops into 
literature. These classics are beyond me. 
I can root-prune a tree, but Greek and 
Latin roots are too much for me. As for 
the poets no doubt many of you are al¬ 
ready familiar with the following from 
“In Memoriam.” 
Flow many a father have I seen. 
A sober man among his boys 
Whose youth was full of foolish noise, 
Who wears his manhood hale and green. 
And dare we to this fancy give, 
That had the wild oat not been sown 
The soil, left barren, had not grown, 
The grain by which a man may live? 
You might, with much truth, call that 
a moral cover crop—plowing under a crop 
of young wild oats and putting on a 
good dressing of character to represent 
the lime. Some minister, familiar with 
farming, might make a good sermon out 
of this. You will have to count me out 
of sermons and classics, but if I could 
have my way this matter of cover crops 
would be driven home to farmers every¬ 
where and at all times. Having seen 
what rye and lime have done for our 
hard and barren soil, I try to spread the 
glad tidings—especially to those farmers 
who are situated so that they can grow 
vetch, clover, beans and the oth-r crops 
which are so much better than rye. 
Hope Farm Hens. —There has been 
some objection to “scrubs” as a name for 
the hens at the egg-laying contest. It is 
suggested that “culls” would be a better 
name. I do not care what they are called 
—suppose we call them “hens.” That 
ought to suit all hands. Whatever you 
see fit to call them here is their August 
record : 
No. 
1 . 
HOPE FARM 
Slay 
. 21 
“HENS.” 
June July 
7 18 
August 
13 
No. 
2 
•>*> 
19 
21 
20 
No. 
3. . 
. 23 
*>*> 
20 
17 
No. 
4. . 
. 21 
To 
18 
8 
No. 
5. . 
.28 
21 
12 
10 
No. 
6. . 
.25 
39 
15 
10 
No. 
7. . 
. 13 
11 
4 
15 
No. 
8.. 
. 19 
18 
10 
20 
No. 
9. . 
o*> 
23 
25 
20 
No. 
10. . 
. 19 
19 
22 
21 
As they laid four eggs outside the nest 
they are credited with 170 eggs. Sup¬ 
pose we make some comparisons, as fol¬ 
lows : 
EGGS IN AUGUST. 
Hope Farm “hens”. 170 
Best Rock (3 breeds). 177 
Poorest Rock (3 breeds). 130 
Average Rock, 13 pens. 153 
Best Wyandotte (3 breeds). 187 
Poorest Wyandotte (3 breeds) .... 122 
Average Wyandotte (10 pens).... 154 
Best R. I. Red . 11)0 
Poorest R. I. Red. 102 
Average R. I. Red (15 pens). 132 
Best Leghorn . 238 
Poorest Leghorn . 104 
Average of all (82 pens). 150 
Thus my “hens” beat the average of ail 
the pure breeds and the average of all by 
11 eggs. Up to September 1 they laid 
1,158 eggs. I had figured on 1.100. Judg¬ 
ing from their past week’s record I think 
they are now about done, and I expect to 
see them quit entirely by the middle of 
October. If they lay 1,300 eggs all told 
by November 1, it will be at least 300 
more than I expected, and I am pre¬ 
pared to enter them right over again for 
another trial. 
Christmas Trees.—I have told sev¬ 
eral times what a mistake we made when 
we first came to this farm and started to 
clear up the hack fields. We started to 
raise corn and potatoes, and then peaches 
and apples. The latter are doing well, 
but the journey over the rough hills is 
bad for the peaches. I now see that if, 
when we started, we had planted from 
year to year, hemlock and spruce in these 
fields and given them reasonable care we 
should now be reaping our reward. The 
demand for Christmas trees is growing 
each year, while the supply for New York 
has been restricted. Had we started 
planting the evergreens when we came 
here we might this year cut out carload 
lots of trees suitable for Christmas, and 
in this way benefit the trees that were 
left. Somehow I must confess that I 
could not take “forestry” very seriously 
when we started. By the failure to look 
ahead we have missed an opportunity. 
No doubt the dairyman or the grain grow¬ 
er or stockman will smile at this idea of 
a Christmas tree crop, but there is a 
good future in it for some young fellows 
near large cities who have cheap waste 
land and abundant patience. This coun¬ 
try is now so big and its people are so 
varied that any product you can mention 
may become a profitable crop if the right 
man will start it in a suitable place. 
If you could look ahead 10 or 15 years 
into the future development of your 
neighborhood and market the chances are 
that ycu would go to planning to pro¬ 
duce things which seem ridiculous to you 
now. ii. W. c. 
The Florida Land Frauds. 
Y OU recently printed part of our cir¬ 
cular showing up the land frauds and 
fakers. While you evidently bear the 
distinction clearly in mind, I want to in¬ 
vite your attention long enough to say 
that readers of my letters should notice 
that I am aiming only at the fakers; I 
mean the fly-by-night organizations or 
agents that acquire swamp lands or beds 
of sand in Florida and sell them out to 
unsuspecting victims. These barren 
tracts are to be found in New York and, 
indeed, in every State in the Union, and 
constitute but a small part of the acre¬ 
age. These fakers do not go into the 
best counties, or even secure titles to or 
control of fairly good land, not to men¬ 
tion the best land. These are the fellows 
we want to nail, and thus save men and 
women from all over the country from be¬ 
ing victimized. Whenever you hear of 
one of these fellows in this territory, if 
you will send us down a description of 
the exact location of their lands, we will 
have the matter looked into, and can tell 
you mighty quick if the soil is fertile and 
adapted to the peculiar crops that may 
be boosted. 
Only the other day we very likely 
saved a man from investing in some 
pineapple land or land for pineapples. 
The tract was represented to him as be¬ 
ing first-class for the growing of that 
fruit, when as a matter of fact, it was 
not. being within the frost belt, but is of 
high grade as farming or grazing land. 
f. m. runnels, 
Secretary. 
Gainesville, Fla., Board of Trade. 
The real estate dealer had gone into 
the details of the Summer cottage at great 
length and Air. Steiner had become bored. 
“The cottage is a stone’s throw from the 
trolley,” said the agent. “Indeed! That’s 
good,” said Steiner. “It will give us 
something to do Summer evenings.” “I 
beg your pardon,” said the agent, rather 
mystified. “I said if would give us some¬ 
thing to do evenings,” repeated Steiner. 
“We can sit in the cottage and throw 
stones at the trolley.”—Evening Post. 
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MINNEAPOLIS. MINN. 
RIEMER’S 
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Buckle Shoes, $2.50 
High Boots, 4.00 
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The Rural New-Yorker, 333 West 30th St.. N. Y. 
