THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1291 
Soil and Fertility Problems 
Scattering Lumps of Stone Lime. 
Possibly Mr. Edward Van Alstyne can 
tell your readers something about using 
stone lime. If I am not mistaken, he 
said it was the practice on his farm, to 
place the stone lime in small heaps about 
the field and when slaked, it was an 
easy job to scatter it. H. E. 
New Paltz, N. Y. 
That is good practice where the stone 
lime is to be spread and worked in. The 
lumps are put in little piles over the field. 
They slake and crumble up on exposure 
to air, dew and rain, and can then be 
easily scattered with a shovel and har¬ 
rowed in. In the case mentioned on page 
1187 the farmer asked if it would do to 
scatter the lump lime over the field in the 
Fall and leave it there without working 
it in. The object was to save the dis¬ 
agreeable job of spreading lime by hand. 
The theory is that the scattered lumps 
will slake and crumble enough to take 
the place of spreading by hand or ma¬ 
chine. 
Ground Lime in England. 
The following shows an advertisement 
appearing in Farm and Home, an Eng¬ 
lish agricultural paper: 
GROUND LIME—Ilreedon Lime, used 
by agriculturists for centuries; in bags, 
ground into flour, 15/0 ton (4-ton lots & 
over) f. o. r. Worthington, M. R. Now 
is the time to use it. Bags 1/1 each, al¬ 
lowed 1/- on return. Odd bags, 2/0, con¬ 
taining 1 2-3 cwt., bag included, not re¬ 
turnable ; purchaser pays carriage. Ap¬ 
ply .1. G. SHIELDS, Isley, Walton, 
Derby. 
This means a little more than $3.75 
for a ton of ground limestone. We are 
having a great revival of interest in lime 
not only in this country, but through¬ 
out the world. It is a much-needed 
thing, and we shall do all we can to keep 
it going. I-ime is a necessity on practi¬ 
cally all of our Eastern farm land. The 
soil cannot be made to produce evenly or 
properly until lime is used. The lime 
stands in great masses of limestone power¬ 
less to'help the sick land all around it 
until crushed or burned and spread into 
the soil. There is not enough fuel in 
most places to burn the lime economical¬ 
ly. Therefore the lime crusher is needed. 
Is It Too Much Lime? 
During the past two years I have from 
time to time carted some air-slaked lime 
on my farm. This lime was housed in a 
shed adjoining the kiln, and was not ex¬ 
posed to the open air. I spread from one 
ton to two tons to the acre with the lime 
spreader, and the crop of clover and Tim¬ 
othy cut from that land this season was 
very satisfactory, I believe owing largely 
to the lime. This Fall I plowed up a 
five or six-acre lot which had been used 
as a meadow on a side hill. I have 
carted lime on this lot. and intended to 
spread about two double horse loads to 
the acre. I had no way of weighing the 
lime, but I guessed that each load would 
weigh one and a half ton. After plowing 
this lot I harrowed it once over with a 
disk harrow so as to level it of! better for 
the lime. As soon as 1 got ready to spread 
the lime on I found the lime spreader 
would not do its work, owing to the lime 
being so moist the revolving rods in the 
spreader would get clogged, the lime be¬ 
ing pasty, so I had to spread the lime 
from the wagon as evenly as I could with 
an ordinary shovel. This took a great 
deal more lime than it would with the 
spreader, and on the five or six-acre lot I 
have drawn and spread 22 loads of lime. 
I harrowed the lime in and sowed about 
seven-eighths of the lot to rye. I har¬ 
rowed that in also and rolled it. One- 
eighth of the lot is not seeded at all, not 
being able to get any more rye locally 
here. I intend to plow this rye under 
some time next Spring and give this lot 
a good coat of stable manure and then 
seed the field down to Alfalfa. Have I 
not used too much lime on this lot? 
Danbury, Conn. d. ii. c. 
For a light soil and for some crops— 
like corn for example—we think you used 
too much lime. If the meadow is a 
tough soil with considerable clay in it, 
we doubt if there will be any bad results. 
We should not expect a heavy growth 
of rye, as that crop does not, with us, 
respond to liming as the other small 
grains do. For Alfalfa, on heavy soil 
in particular, such a dose of lime should 
not prove injurious though we do not 
consider it economy to use so much. We 
must remember that burned lime, when 
slaked, goes back to the condition of 
limestone or carbonate of lime. This 
change will be more rapid if the lime is 
exposed freely to air and water. In the 
case of this lime we think most of the 
“kick” or chemical action of burned lime 
had been spent so that it was much like 
ground limestone in its effect. 
Seeds of Dodder in Manure. 
I have a hay and clover field two years 
old that has had nothing done to it since 
planting, and has had a very good stand 
both years. Each year when it was 
cut and carted (by the same farmer) 
after about 20 days I have found one or 
two spots of dodder. Could that seed 
have come from the droppings from the 
mules? The owner’s farm has a large 
amount in his field. Have you ever 
heard of such a case? I burned the spots 
and of course killed them, but would it 
die out with the season or would it 
spread? e. a. t. 
New York. 
Personally we believe it entirely pos¬ 
sible for the dodder to be distributed in 
this way. We have consulted a number 
of authorities, and they all seem to agree 
that a fair proportion of the seeds of 
dodder might readily pass through the 
system of horses or mules, and still germ¬ 
inate and grow. Among others we have 
the following from the Department of 
Agriculture: 
The only recorded investigations on this 
subject are those published in Bulletin 12S 
of the Maryland Agricultural Experi¬ 
ment Station. In the course of this work, 
in which numerous weeds were tested, 
it was found that when fed to calves 2 x /> 
per cent, of the seeds of field dodder 
(Cuscuta arvensis) and one per cent, 
of Cuscuta epithymum germinated after 
passing through the animal. It is there¬ 
fore not at all unlikely that a field can 
become infested with dodder through the 
use of contaminated stable manure. 
In the investigations mentioned it was 
found in general that a very much larger 
percentage of the seeds of various weeds 
would germinate when they were inci¬ 
dent-ally mixed with the manure, even 
after that had fermented for some time. 
Of course, where doddery hay is fed to 
animals many of the seeds wiil find their 
way into the bedding and otherwise to 
the manure pile without having passed 
through the digestive tract of the animal. 
It will be clearly evident to anyone 
who has ever used horse manure, that 
great quantities of weed seed live even 
after a strong fermenting of the manure, 
and we believe that in the case mentioned 
above the mules might easily have 
brought the dodder into this field. A 
prompt burning of the spots where the 
dodder appears should kill it out, but 
you must watch carefully for new out¬ 
breaks. 
A Bunch of Notes. 
Game Laws. —The hunting season is 
nearly here, in fact, it has already opened 
in certain cases; some water birds and 
shore birds may be killed. As a result 
we hear some shooting in the woods each 
day. It is certain that much of this is 
illegal, but it is very hard to stop. It 
would be a much less serious matter if 
the laws were such that the game could 
be increased in numbers. It is to be 
hoped that this State will soon pass the 
same law as is now in force in Indiana. 
This la w reads: 
Be it enacted by the general assembly 
of the State of Indiana. That all birds 
and animals reared and bred in captivity, 
shall be considered domestic fowls and 
stock, and tin? owner or raiser thereof 
may keep, sell, ship, transport or other¬ 
wise dispose of them, and the same shall 
not be affected or covered by the laws 
prohibiting or regulating the killing or 
disposition of birds and animals grown 
or propagated in a wild state. 
Such a law would permit any farmer 
to raise any game birds or animals on his 
place, and would make it an object to 
him to take some pains to protect his 
land. At very small expense a man 
could have in his barnyard a flock of 
ruffed grouse, or of quail or any other 
kind of game bird of similar habits. Some 
of these birds would go back to the woods 
each year, but enough would stay to 
keep up the breeding stock. There is 
enough wild land in all parts of the 
State to support a great amount of game 
if the supply can be increased or the 
shooting reduced. We have been trying 
to reduce shooting for many years, but 
the game has been reduced much faster. 
It would seem to be a wise move to 
change our policy before it is too late. 
Game farms are helping a little in the 
matter, but if every farmer could have 
a game farm if he wanted it and could 
sell enough game to make it an object to 
protect his land it would be a much 
greater help. 
The mere posting of trespass notices is 
no protection to property unless the own¬ 
er is willing to do or hire a lot of police 
work. Some of this will be repaid by 
the prevention of damage to woods, 
fences, gates, crops, stock, etc., but most 
men will want a better return than this 
before going to the expense of hiring one 
or two men to do nothing but walk 
around and watch. Under the proposed 
law there would be less need of so much 
police work, as the overflow from the 
barnyard flocks would easily keep up 
the wild stock. If the farmers of the 
State would get together this law could 
be secured this Winter. The Grange 
secured the passage of the law permitting 
farmers to kill rabbits in almost any 
manner on their own land, and the city 
shooters have not yet taken it away. 
Let us hope that this other piece of jus¬ 
tice may soon be ours. 
Woodchucks. — Woodchuck hide is 
very tough. It makes excellent whip 
lashes, and was formerly tanned for 
gloves. The great objections to its use 
are the small size of the skins and the 
fact that there is no regular relation of 
supply and demand. If the skins were 
worth 10 or 15 cents each there would 
be a large supply on the market, but 
owing to the small size the thickness of 
the leather is so irregular that it is only 
suitable for cheap gloves, and this cuts 
down the price of the raw material. 
Alfalfa and Sweet Clover. —Some 
of the Alfalfa mentioned on page 1054 
was 24 inches high seven weeks from the 
day the seed was planted. Such a growth 
would make a very good cover crop if 
used only one year. Our Sweet clover 
patch is growing vigorously. The horses 
do not seem to eat it much, probably be¬ 
cause they are fed about all the fresh 
Alfalfa they want each day. 
Feeding Mangels. —Regarding state¬ 
ment on page 1071, we have sometimes 
had trouble getting horses and cattle to 
eat various root crops unless they were 
chopped and a small amount of ground 
feed sprinkled over them. 
Raspberries Dying. —When searching 
for the cause of the sudden death of red 
raspberries, page 1137, it is well to con¬ 
sider the possibility of root-gall. This 
disease will sometimes wipe out a large 
area in a single season. Plants which 
grew six or more feet high one year will 
be only a few inches tall the next Sum¬ 
mer, and will then be gone. This is the 
same disease as the “crown-gall” of ap¬ 
ple trees, and is also the cause of many 
of the tumors or “burls” found on forest 
trees. It kills some plants very quickly, 
but seems to have little effect on others. 
We have an apple tree which has a 
“crown-gall” about the size of a bushel 
basket just below the surface of the 
ground. Rot has entered at this point, 
and will kill the tree some time, but it 
has probably already borne more than 
20 good crops of apples. Some of our 
oldest trees have “burls” which were 
probably caused by the same bacteria, 
but which have never hurt the tree, be¬ 
cause the infection was in the wood in¬ 
stead of in the cambium layer. The re¬ 
sulting tumor is simply a smooth hard 
swelling entirely covered by bark. It 
gives no cliance for fungus to enter. 
Locust Culture For Fence Posts. 
—A page about a year old of a “Farm 
Magazine” is before me with a great arti¬ 
cle on the growing of locust fence posts. 
Good, rich, well-drained loam soil must 
be used, and may be expected to turn out 
1,500 locust posts per acre in a 15-year 
rotation. That is 100 posts per acre per 
year or about $15 per acre per year. 
(Similar land with very little more work 
should produce 20 or 30 bushels of wheat 
per acre, and corn in proportion.) The 
writer closes with the statement that 
owing to the work of the locust borer 
this crop is not profitable in the East or 
Middle West, but farther west in the arid 
regions it will do very well. Such ar¬ 
ticles are so common in the farm papers 
that it is a great relief to find one that 
does not deal in them. 
ALFRED C. WEED. 
“I wish, Mrs. Nurich, you would come 
over some time and see my apiary.” 
“Thank you, Mr. Jiggs, but really mon¬ 
keys never interested me.”—Buffalo Ex¬ 
press. 
When you write 
Tun It. N.-Y. anti 
reply and a "square 
tee editorial page. 
advertisers mention 
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