THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
703 
The Home Acre 
Tobacco Stems for Aphides. —Soak¬ 
ing tlie stems, as the Virginia Station ad¬ 
vises, is all right for a spraying material 
for aphides. But where tobacco stems 
can be had cheaply I have found that the 
best way to head off the green pea aphis 
is to use the stems liberally in the fur¬ 
rows. and the aphides will not come out 
to any extent, while the stems make an 
excellent manure, and in some places in 
North Carolina can be had for $5 a ton. 
They carry about 2.50 per cent of nitro¬ 
gen. eight per cent of potash and over one 
per cent of phosphoric acid. At .$5 a ton 
they make a cheap manure. Some quas¬ 
sia chips added to the soaking tobacco 
stems make it still more an effective so¬ 
lution. but the tobacco tea alone is good 
enough. I tried the quassia many years 
ago alone, and did not find this equal to 
tobacco stems. 
ing to find its plant food needs, or to 
hunt up and name the various acids that 
may be causing the acidity. Great is the 
Bureau of Soils, but greater is Nature’s 
laboratory outdoors. 
Sunshine And Geraniums. —Mr. 
Pierce says that the sun cannot be too 
hot and bright for geraniums. That will 
do for Ohio, but down here we cannot 
do anything with bedded geraniums un¬ 
less they are sheltered from the afternoon 
sun. China Asters do best in a semi- 
shaded place. For an early blooming 
shrub the Spiraea Thunbergii is excel¬ 
lent. I have them surrounding the taller 
Spiraea Van Ilouttei, and they are white 
with bloom by the time the Van Ilouttei 
is just swelling it buds, and when this 
gets in bloom the fine foliage of S. Thun¬ 
bergii makes a handsome border for the 
flowers. 
Nitrate of Soda on Wheat. —On 
strong land where there has been a fair 
amount of fertilizer applied at seeding 
time, I would hesitate to use nitrate of 
soda, as it might cause too rank a growth 
of straw and make it liable to lodge. On 
thin land where an abundance of phos- 
phatic fertilizer was used in the Fall, I 
have used as much as 100 pounds of the 
nitrate of soda an acre on part of a field, 
and the extra growth on that part in¬ 
creased the crop nearly nine bushels an 
acre over the part left without it. In 
the garden the only crop I use nitrate of 
soda on after the soil has had my usual 
Fall dressing of manure, is the outdoor 
lettuce crop. The nitrate is very effec¬ 
tive in hurrying the plants along, and 
getting them in head before the weather 
gets too hot. It seems to prevent the 
check that throws the plants into making 
flower heads. 
A moor River Privet. —I am glad to 
see Mr. Pittman’s note on the Ainoor 
River privet, for I have been anxious to 
learn of its hardiness. I have a hedge of 
it here which attracts much attention 
now because of its perfect evergreen char¬ 
acter. while all the California hedges 
around me are leafless. Perhaps, while 
hardy in Iowa, it may not be evergreen 
there. The best evergreen privet is the 
.Taponicum. which is barely hardy in 
Philadelphia. 
Soil Analysis. — I like your reply to 
R. W. T. (page 617) about soil analy¬ 
sis. The first idea of an inexperienced 
man who wishes to improve his soil is to 
get an analysis of the soil to show what 
it needs, and if is often hard to convince 
him that the analysis would be of little 
value. Far more can be learned by the 
work that has been carried on for many 
years by the Ohio Experiment Station in 
the maintenance of fertility than by any 
sort of soil analysis. 
Poisoned Soil.— According to a 
writer in Harper's Magazine, the Bureau 
of Soils is doing wonders in hunting out 
the toxins In soils. By trituration, filtra- 
t•• *n and the use of reagents they located 
in an unproductive soil a substance which 
they named picolene carboxylic acid, and 
that this acid has an ancestor called 
uvit<mic acid which is very damaging to 
vegetation, and the presence of the pico¬ 
lene carboxylic acid showed that the 
soil is recovering from an attack of uvi- 
tonicaeiditis. Another sample of un¬ 
productive soil was analyzed and the 
head devil of all acids discovered, and 
this being a very bad fellow had to have 
a bad name, and they called it dih.vdroxy- 
stearic acid. But they found that when 
the soil was dried out and aerated this 
jaw-breaking acid disappeared, and it 
was evidence that the soil needed drain¬ 
age. Now it seems to me that any man 
with common farming sense can see 
wlmn his soil needs drainage, and we 
know that any soil will lack pro¬ 
ductiveness if drainage is deficient, and 
it will be acid. And we know that 
when a soil is wet and acid drainage and 
liming and aeration by deep plowing and 
good cultivation will restore it to a less 
acid condition, though we may not know 
the names nor family descent of the va¬ 
rious acids in it. Good drainage, deep 
plowing and thorough cultivation, and the 
stocking the soil with organic decay, and 
an occasional liming and the supplying 
of the mineral plant foods which we can- 
v't from the air. will enable us to 
‘ the soil productive without aaalyz- 
Cooking Sweet Potatoes. —When the 
Northern people find out that the South¬ 
ern yam varieties of the sweet potato 
will not abide steaming or boiling, and 
will learn to roast them, they will soon 
come to the conclusion that the Southern 
people are right, and that the soft, jelly- 
like yams are far superior to the dry 
choky Jerseys. w. f. massey. 
Maryland. 
Killing the Ground Mole. 
We have called for information about 
killing moles by other methods than 
spring traps. Here are a few volunteer 
reports: 
My experience with these pests has 
been with trap and pitfalls, sunken pots, 
and about all the contraptions ever heard 
of. but the only method that did a good 
clean job was to mix a small quantity of 
arnsenic with bran, punch a hole with a 
broomstick down through the runs, then 
Pour a little of the poisoned bran in the 
hole. The mole will surely stop and have 
a feed the first time he comes through 
again, as moles seem particularly fond of 
bran. r. g . ii. 
('onnecticut. 
Open oin* or two places in their run, 
eight or 10 inches long. Sprinkle liber¬ 
ally with powdered lye. Lay a narrow 
board that will fit down, jiist so it is 
beneath the level of the ground, cover the 
board with dirt, then stay away from the 
place for several hours. Moles do their 
work in the early morning and about 11 
and 4 o’clock in the evening. Moles arc 
very sensitive to smell, but as lye does 
not have any odor they walk into it. It 
sticks to their feet and I presume thev 
get it off their feet with their mouth, anil 
that kills them. Leave plenty of room be¬ 
tween the board and the bottom of the 
run. Make as little disturbance in the 
looks as possible. Another way is to 
watch them digging and sink a spade 
(or the .heel of your shoe) behind them, 
then with your hand scoop them out. 
Be very careful and get far enough be¬ 
hind them, as they are very rapid movers 
backward. I killed six in one Summer 
that way. It is said that they work be¬ 
tween < and 8 a. m. and 3 and 4 p. m., 
but I have found them working and 
killed them at 6 a. m., 10 a. in. and 5 
A sure way to rid lawns of moles is 
to drop a few grains of corn which has 
been soaked in Paris green water (a can 
of which keep handy) into the runways 
of the moles. As the moles work back 
over the runways they will pick up the 
grain. One can soon rid a lawn or garden 
of all moles by above treatment. 
Indiana. A . l. i.. 
I have had good success by rolling 
pieces of fat meat (lie size of a finger 
nail in arsenic, making a small hole in 
the runway to drop it in. and draw the 
earth together with the hand. That it 
was successful was proved by running a 
roller over the ground in a few days and 
finding the surface was left undisturbed. 
I owe an apology to many generations of 
field mice for blaming them for eating 
my vegetables when now I am satisfied it 
was done by moles. Many years ago I 
read a statement purporting to come from 
Greenwood Cemetery, that they knew by 
keeping moles in captivity, that they 
would starve before they would eat vege¬ 
table matter; their food was exclusively 
animal. My father was often staggered 
when my cat. as he frequently did, would 
go under the evergreen trees' in midwin¬ 
ter and come out with a fat mole, for I 
could not imagine said mole getting 
earthworms then. Recently I found a 
number of potatoes in a barrel in my 
cellar were being eaten, some dropped oil 
the floor. 1 discovered a hole under the 
bottom of cellar wall, six feet from sur¬ 
face of ground. My rat-trap, which has 
always proved sure was baited and set 
and I found a large mole in it. I know 
many persons labor under the delusion 
that moles cannot see. If a man gets a 
foot on it. he will become convinced to 
the contrary. joiin r. day. 
New York. 
1 
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