1914. 
A BUSINESS BALDWIN TREE. 
What the Hudson Valley Does in Apple Culture. 
D EFECTS IN PRUNING.—The tree shown in 
Fig. 612, is a Baldwin about 30 years old. It 
is one of a block of 182 trees planted 35x35 
feet, of which 20 are missing from various causes. 
Standing on the end of a row with a vacant space 
on one side, it is a little above the average in size 
and vitality. When I took the orchard in 1900 it 
was full of dead and diseased wood from scale, can¬ 
ker and collar-rot. We pruned out all the dead and 
diseased wood and headed the trees back about five 
feet on top, and thinned them on the sides, working 
as much as possible from the outside of the tree. 
The branches were what I call “mule tails.” By this 
I mean that the men in pruning had usually gone up 
on the main branches and cut the suckers and 
branches they could reach, leaving a long, naked 
main limb with a little clump of bearing wood at 
the end. This system of pruning makes weak 
branches subject to sunseald and splitting with 
the weight placed at the end where it can do the 
most damage. 
IMPROVING THE FORM.—We reversed all this. 
Suckers are allowed to grow on the main limbs and 
are carefully preserved. We thin them to approxi¬ 
mately two feet apart, and head them back half of 
the season’s growth every year. As a rule, in three 
or four years they change the nature of their growth 
from the rapid watery growth of the water sprout 
and become slow growing bearing wood. We thin 
out and head hack from the outside of the tree to let 
the sun into the center 
instead of bringing the 
center out to the sun, 
and to force the weight 
of fruit back toward 
the main trunk as much 
as possible. 
BETTER FRUIT.— 
The habit of the or¬ 
chard before 1909 was 
to hear a very heavy 
crop of undersized, 
poorly colored apples 
every other year. Our 
aim was to get a fair 
crop of large red apples 
every year. The orchard 
has produced about as 
follows: 1910, 3S0 bar¬ 
rels, 2% inch and up, 
and clean; 1911, 500 
barrels; 1912, 205 bar¬ 
rels: 1913, 500 barrels; 
1914, 419 barrels. That 
is a fairly uniform pro- 
duction. The pruning 
acts partly as thinning 
the fruit does, and while 
10 or 12 trees still con¬ 
tinue to overbear every 
other year, the majority 
are hearing a few nice 
apples every year. The A HU 
tree pictured bore 15 
barrels in 1913, when the picture was taken, and 
nine barrels this year, but the difference in size and 
color often makes the smaller crop the rnoi'e valu¬ 
able of the two. 
Son, MANAGEMENT.—The soil management has 
been as follows: Late Fall plowing—in November 
or December—cultivation once every week or 10 days 
from early Spring till July 4, and then a cover crop 
of one half bushel buckwheat, one-half bushel rye, 
one quart rape, one-half quart vetch per acre, sown 
broadcast and harrowed in. This cover crop has 
never failed to catch and make a heavy growth to 
tui'n under and the orchard is gradually coming back 
to a good state of growth and production. 
Columbia Co., N. Y. e. w. mitchell. 
THE R.UKAE NEW-YORKSK 
last census taker didn't get any closer guesses as to 
the size of your neighbors’ flocks than the one you 
made with regard to your own the size of Uncle 
Sam’s lienyard is probably, very much over or under 
estimated? Be that as it may, we are now told that 
sanitary conditions in well-ordered towns have out¬ 
stripped in wholesomeness those of the hills, and 
that we country people are dying sooner, if not often- 
er, than we should. If this is true, we should bestir 
ourselves to throw back on the town the onus of be¬ 
ing the sapper of health and regain for ourselves the 
reputation of living up to our privileges in the mat¬ 
ter of disease-defying habits. 
It is satisfying, and yet a little mortifying as well, 
to know that many of our most serious diseases are 
absolutely preventable. Take typhoid fever, for in¬ 
stance, the one particular uisease which is now con¬ 
sidered characteristically of country, rather than 
city, origin; it annually slays its thousands, and yet 
with a care which it is perfectly feasible to take it 
need not slay any. Until the origin of a disease is 
known, it is usually impossible successfully to com¬ 
bat it, but when we have traced it to its source we 
can shut it off right there. We now know that every 
case of typhoid comes from some preceding case, 
somewhere, and that it would not have made its ap¬ 
pearance had not some one failed to destroy the 
typhoid germs in the discharges from that preceding 
case. True, there are a few unfortunate people, 
known as carriers, who, after recovery, continue to 
disseminate the germs of this disease for a period of 
time, but with the proper disposal of the wastes from 
the human body these need not contaminate the food 
1391 
house if an effort is made to do so. With the pass¬ 
ing of the house-fly, typhoid on the farm will dimin¬ 
ish and other sources of infection being attended to 
the coming generation will probably know little of 
this, the most serious of our fevers. 
THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
SWAMP MUCK AND ITS USES. 
I MAIL you a sample of muck of which we have 
nearby five to six acres, a deposit from two to six 
feet deep. It looks to me not the common muck, 
but decomposed vegetable matter. About two feet 
from the top we found a layer (three-fourths of an 
inch), of charcoal, just as if a fire had burned the 
woodland and left part of it. The sample sent was 
taken four feet from the top down. There is no water 
at the depth of seven feet now after an eight-weeks’ 
drought, although this muck is very damp. There is no 
sand or gravel mixed in with it. This muck has been 
used as a fertilizer by using air-slaked lime with it, 
and has given good results. The formation of the sur¬ 
face soil is like a giant bowl, never has been cultivated 
and it is, as all the land here, woodland, pine, oak and 
maple. This part is cut off now, and has nothing but 
underbrush on it. The land all around is sand and 
gravel. Can you give me the value as a fertilizer and 
how it should bo treated as such? r. a. a. 
Raymond, N. H. 
The “muck” is a sample of brown peat, and from 
a physical examination seems to be above the aver¬ 
age in quality. No one, however, should figure on 
the values of Jarge quantities of muck without hav¬ 
ing a careful analysis made. The chief value of 
muck lies in -the nitrogen which it contains. There 
is very littlg.potash or phosphoric acid as a rule. 
►Samples ofvrfitifck 'will run all the way from one-half 
of 1 per gefit. upwards to 3 y 2 per cent, of nitrogen, 
» ... - therefore an accurate 
DSON VALLEY BUSINESS BALDWIN TREE. Fig.. 612. 
TYPHOID ON THE FARM. 
I T has always been assumed that good health was 
an accompaniment of farm life and, like stone 
bruises and freckles, went with the soil. Now, 
those who are engaged in the occupation of compiling 
statistics with regard to disease and death tell us 
that the death rate of cities is falling below that of 
the open country, or, in other words, that townspeo¬ 
ple are living longer than their contemporaries un¬ 
der the open skies. The country doctor confesses to 
a bit of scepticism with regard to most statistics, 
lie would like to trust them all, but, having seen 
something of the work of various compilers, he is 
compelled to take census figures, and the like, with 
a grain of salt. A single error may not amount to 
much, but multiply it by thousands and the total is 
enormous. Did you ever stop to think that if the 
or drink of others. And it is through food and drink 
that the germs of typhoid enter our bodies. This has 
become popularly known and when typhoid breaks 
out in a family the well usually falls under suspi¬ 
cion. The well may be at fault if it is so situated or 
constructed that surface water, with its pollution, 
brought from no one knows where, may obtain ac¬ 
cess to it, or if some underground channel may carry 
a portion of the contents of a privy vault into it. 
But the well on most farms is more safe than the 
privy, the unscreened, fly-attracting, privy. Here 
typhoid germs are likely to be found, if anywhere; 
perhaps deposited there by some chance visitor or by 
a member of the family with a case of very mild, or 
“walking” typhoid. 
The common house-fly delights in the filth of the 
privy, and few farmhouses are so well screened that 
he does not also obtain access to the food of the fam¬ 
ily. His death-carrying feet leave their unseen 
prints on butter, pie, and bread, or are perhaps 
washed in the childrens’ bowls of milk. A few germs 
carried on the dirty feet of a fly rapidly become 
thousands in number when deposited in warm food 
or in milk. The responsibility of the fly having be¬ 
come known, its presence, which was once regarded 
as only a nuisance, is now considered a menace, and 
intelligent people are forbidding it their premises. 
Its common breeding places, piles of horse manure, 
are removed to the fields, and privy vaults are so 
built and screened that it cannot obtain access to 
them. Screen doors and windows are now very 
cheap, and cotton fly netting is still cheaper, so that 
it is practicable to exclude flies from almost any 
analysis is the only safe 
guide in buying or sell¬ 
ing it. This sample 
would make an excel¬ 
lent absorbent or bed¬ 
ding. On dairy or live 
stock farms this absor¬ 
bent value of muck is of 
great value. Used free¬ 
ly in the stalls or be¬ 
hind the stock it will 
take up great quantities 
of the liquid manures, 
and save large amounts 
of nitrogen and potash 
which would otherwise 
be wasted. The com¬ 
mercial or selling value 
of such muck is not 
large. Several firms 
have tried to put such 
products on the market, 
and for a while, through 
extravagant statements, 
they have sold some of 
it. Except for lawns or 
greenhouses or garden 
work this muck is not 
profitable at the high 
price charged for it, and 
the chief value of such 
muck will be for use 
right on the farm or 
within a short haul of the deposits. By all means 
send to the Vermont Experiment Station, at Bur¬ 
lington, Vt., for a copy of their muck and peat 
bulletin. This gives a very complete statement about 
this product with many analyses and full descrip¬ 
tion of the best methods of handling. Muck as it 
comes from the swamp is sour and the nitrogen 
which it contains is inert and unavailable. It must 
be sweetened and thoroughly fermented before it will 
prove of any great value. The best way to handle it 
is to haul the muck from the swamp and put it in 
long, narrow piles, where it is to be used in the 
Spring. To each load of muck scatter about 50 
pounds of air-slaked lime as the pile is made up. A 
good plan is to dump a wagonload over the space 
about 10 feet long, scatter the lime over this, put 
another wagonload on top with more lime and so on. 
If it is possible to throw in an occasional load of 
horse manure or chicken manure, fermentation is 
started more rapidly, and the muck will be in better 
shape. After about three months the pile may be 
forked over, the workman starting at one end and 
throwing the muck behind him into a new pile as he 
forks over the old. To obtain the best results from 
the muck, a quantity of phosphoric acid and potash 
should be used along with it, as it is deficient in 
these elements. Three parts of acid phosphate or 
ground bone to one part muriate of potash is a good 
mixture to use with fermented muck. Plow or har¬ 
row the muck in and use the chemicals in hill. 
To take the squeal out of your wheel apply a bit of 
grease. It will, of course, give the poor horse Thanks¬ 
giving. rest and peace. 
