THE RU RAL IM E\V-YORKER 
1399 
The Home Acre 
Notes from a Maryland Garden. 
The last of October I found some Yel¬ 
low Potato onion sets that had been over¬ 
looked in the September planting. I 
planted them at once and will be inter¬ 
ested in noting the difference between 
these and the crop planted in September, 
the tops of which were 10 inches high 
when these last were planted. The soil 
will now be pulled to the onion rows and 
the manure mulch placed between them. 
While we do not put any cover over 
strawberries here I find that the manure 
mulch between the rows is exceedingly 
helpful and it goes between the rows of 
all the Winter vegetables. 
The continuous sunny weather has 
brought on the frame lettuce rapidly, but 
the lack of rain has made it necessary 
to water artificially, and the high noon 
temperature has made it necessary to 
strip the sashes off entirely almost daily. 
One of my frames has a hedge of the 
evergreen Amoor River privet as a shel¬ 
ter from the north, the hedge being dense 
and seven feet tall, while the remaining 
frames have a high board fence on the 
north and west.' The hedge I think 
makes the best shelter, but necessitates 
digging down and cutting off its roots 
to keep them from encroaching on the 
frame. In Winter the high brick walls 
which the English use would be desirable 
in our gardens, but in our Summer cli¬ 
mate they would make furnaces of our 
gardens. .The hedge with its roots kept 
in bounds is probably the best wind¬ 
break. Some critical people have writ¬ 
ten me that what we commonly call the 
Amoor River privet here is not the true 
one. but is the Chinese species, and too 
tender for growing North. One corres¬ 
pondent in Ohio sent me cuttings of what 
he said was the true Amurense, but they 
arrived here in such a dry condition that 
they failed to root. There is doubtless 
some confusion in the Ligustrum genus, 
for I have another species which is per¬ 
fectly evergreen, and which my friend 
Joseph Meehan of Philadelphia decided 
was Ligustrum lucidum, and which 
others say is Japonicum, and yet. it dif¬ 
fers from Japonicum growing in the Bot¬ 
anic Garden in Washington. The Ovali- 
folitim or California as it is generally 
called is I believe a Japanese species, but 
it loses its leaves here and in North 
Carolina too, while my hedges of the 
Amoor River keep green all Winter. 
But a hedge of any sort as a general 
garden enclosure is a nuisance, for the 
greedy roots will sap and dry the soil 
so that there will be quite a strip from 
which no good crops can be had. I have 
grubbed out all from my garden except 
the piece named that shelters the frame, 
while I retain it between street and 
lawn. 
All around me I see hedges of the Cali¬ 
fornia privet sheared into the shape of a 
wall, with perpendicular sides and flat 
top, and the result is that in a few years 
the hedge gets open underneath and only 
green at top. A green and flat-topped 
hedge may look for a time like a green 
wall, but it is wholly unnatural, for Na¬ 
ture makes no square corners or perpen¬ 
dicular walls. My hedge is clipped wide 
at base and with a cross section of a 
rounded conical form. The result is 
that the sides are fully exposed to the 
light, and the base grows as dense as the 
top, and no one can see a stem showing 
under my hedge, and to my notion it is 
far more natural and beautiful than the 
green wall shape. And j et, even on the 
lawn, it is hard to keep the grass as good 
next the hedge as elsewhere, because of 
the drying out and impoverishing of the 
soil by the greedy hedge roots. The 
board fence shelter to the frames is hide¬ 
ously ugly, and another season I propose 
to move all the frames to the south side 
of my office building, where they will be 
rather conspicuous from the street, and 
tear down the ugly board fence, though 
this will be an invasion of the more or¬ 
namental space. But the ugly fence must 
go and the robber hedge will not take its 
place. Such shelters are all right in 
a market garden, but in one’s home sur¬ 
roundings more regard should be had to 
the neatness and appearance of the place. 
In our flat country, where the winds 
sweep across from bay to ocean, shelter 
is needed for the frames, or one may find 
his sashes flying across the garden in a 
northwest cold wave or a northeastern 
storm. And this is one of the advantages 
of the heavy double-glazed sashes which 
some object to on account of their weight. 
They do not blow off as easily as the 
lighter single-glazed ones. Then too, they 
certainly save the necessity for mats on 
cold nights, for when the frame is well 
banked on the outside I have never had 
the frost to get through here, though 
last Winter we had it down to 12 above 
zero on one morning. Our usual mini¬ 
mum is 16 to 18 above zero, with at rare 
intervals a Winter like that of 1911-12 
when it goes down very near to the zero 
mark more than once. 
I have a frame of the Grand Rapids 
lettuce for the first time. It has grown 
wonderfully and evidently will be ready 
for use long before Christmas, while the 
head lettuce frames will probably take 
till Christmas for. getting well headed. 
We can get more crop out of the Grand 
Rapids, for we plant it closer so that 
the slight crowding will blanch the leaves 
to some extent. So far I am very much 
pleased with it as a frame lettuce and 
hope to grow more of it. 
It looks as though my Houser cab¬ 
bages will many of them go into Win¬ 
ter cover only partially headed. This is 
such a long season cabbage that it needs 
to be started much earlier than I usually 
start the Late Flat Dutch. I can sow 
seed of the Flat Dutch in August and 
make good heads, while the Houser 
started early in July is too late. 
W. F. MASSEY. 
Transmission of Black-knot. 
Is it known how far the spores of 
black-knot will fly and find lodgment on 
plum trees? f. c. c. 
Maine. 
I do. not think that anyone knows how 
far the spores of the black-knot fungus 
may be carried by the wind. I do not 
recall any experiments on the subject. 
Probably, birds and certain insects aid 
in the dissemination of the spores and 
sometimes carrv them several miles. 
Geneva, N. Y. Exp. Sta. f. c. s. 
Lime-Sulphur and Borers. 
I have read of a little discussion about 
putting lime-sulphur on trees to prevent 
rabbits from gnawing, also on peach trees 
as a preventive of borers, strength one to 
eight. I use it, lime-sulphur 82 to 33 
Beaume test, full strength, on peach, pear 
and apple trees; put on with a brush. 
I have used it for three years and have 
seen no bad results from it. The borer 
still finds his way in some of my peach 
trees. I have 400 peach trees three 
years old next Spring; they have been 
treated with full strength lime-sulphur 
from root to crotch since they were set 
twice each year, Spring for borer, Fall 
for rabbits. I expect to put it on again 
this Fall. I do not advise anyone to use 
it that way, but with me it works all 
right! J. II. GROAT. 
Columbia Co., N. Y. 
Strawberries and Sour Land. 
Our land here is red loam or decom¬ 
posed lime rock. All springs are hard 
lime water, as this is in the Taeonic or 
marble range—Southwestern Vermont. 
Now here is a strawberry story. A few 
years ago one of our garden farmers, 
saw a huge pile of apple pomace in a 
gulch beside the road, having been 
dumped there to get rid of it as it was 
supposed to kill all crops. He saw wild 
strawberries growing around and in this 
pomace. He hauled home 50 loads of it, 
spread it on a piece of quack grass six 
inches deep, and plowed it under, and 
thoroughly disked the land and set it out 
to strawberries, two feet by two feet six 
inches, horse cultivated both ways, and 
he had one of the finest fields of berries 
ever grown here. He never had any grass 
or weeds in them. In five years they be¬ 
came a mat and he plowed them under 
and planted to sweet grown rutabagas 
and had several errtps of fine large sweet 
roots. This was 10 years ago and grain 
will hardly grow on the land yet, but 
potatoes and roots generally do well. The 
land gives an acid test with litmus pa¬ 
per. is rich in humus and mellow to work. 
Vermont. a. l. b. 
Eradicating Tansy. —Is there anyone 
of the many readers of Tiie R. N.-Y. 
who has had any experience in getting 
rid of patches of tansy in old meadows? 
It spreads rapidly and one hardly wants 
to plow in meadows where it is well 
seeded. ii. T. 
Woodbury, Pa. 
Send Coupon 
For These Books 
Send no money. The coupon alone will bring this great agri¬ 
cultural library which tells every important secret of successful 
farming. 
See for yourself the $4,000,000 worth of farming facts these 
books contain. Go through the wealth of information on tested 
methods and money-making facts given on every page—facts on 
profitable dairying, on fruit growing, on animal diseases, on grain 
growing, on hog, sheep and cattle breeding, on bees, on poultry— 
facts on everything pertaining to money making from the soil. 
Just send the coupon. We will ship the complete set to you 
at once. Read the wonderful offer we are making. Read espe¬ 
cially our offer of the free book by the Hon. F. D. Coburn written 
especially for this work. 
Farmer’s Cyclopedia 
(Abridged Records, U. S. Dept, of Agriculture) 
This library gives in condensed but complete form, the records of ob¬ 
servation, inquiry and experiment which government experts have spent 
ten years in time and over $4,000,000 to secure. Practical instruction for 
the man with only a garden, as well as for the man with a 10,000-acre 
ranch. Classified, indexed and cross-indexed—every fact immediately 
accessible. 7 big volumes containing 5,000 pages, 3,000,000 words and 
hundreds of pictures, give you clearly and concisely just the information 
you want about any and every branch of farming. They tell you what to 
do and what to avoid to make your land pay the biggest possible profits. 
The methods given in the Farmer’s Cyclopedia are practical. They 
have been tested and proved by thousands of successful farmers in every 
part of the country and collected in this handy form to help you solve 
your farming problems. For only a few cents a day you get a complete 
course in agriculture and in ten minutes’ reading you may find one fact 
that will be worth many times the price of the books. So send the cou¬ 
pon for the free examination. 
■Partial List of Contents. 
Feed and Care of Dairy Cows 
(This alone worth the price) 
Feeds and Feeding for Beef 
(A wonderful work) 
Diseases and Insect Pests 
(How to protect cattle 
and crops against them) 
Profitable Hog Raising 
(A complete library on the 
hog) 
Success with Sheep 
(Every ()uestion answered) 
Poultry Problems Solved 
(No other books on poul¬ 
try ever need be read) 
Fruit Culture 
(Bigger, more certain re¬ 
sults) 
Latest Facts and Investiga¬ 
tion on every Farm Product 
(Insures bigger, better 
crops witli less labor) 
Every Phase of Farm Man¬ 
agement 
(From Government Experi¬ 
ments and Researches) 
Soils and Fertilization 
(Make your land yield more) 
Farm Buildings 
(How to plan and build 
on the farm) 
Domestic Science 
Comfortable, economical 
farm housekeeping 
(Lightens the work of the 
housekeepers) 
And thousands of other sub¬ 
jects of vital interest and 
value. 
Coburn Will Direct You 
Not only the work done by hun¬ 
dreds of government exports, not 
only the painstaking labor of a great 
board of editors who have searched 
through the departmental records and 
gathered all this practical, useful in¬ 
formation into hand.v form—vou get 
not only the benefit of all of this but 
also the practical direction of Hon. 
F. I). Coburn. America’s greatest 
agricultural authority, who calls the 
Farmer's Cyclopedia “The most val¬ 
uable agricultural information ever 
gathered together.” Mr. Coburn has 
written a valuuble Manual—a com¬ 
plete analysis of the contents of the 
Cyclopedia and suggestions on how to 
study it. You get 
HON. !•'. D. COBUKN 
This Coburn 
Manual 
President Wilson SCiVS » >‘P 0 ? tl‘e scientific information 11 in''the 
is the information given to you in the Farmer’s Cyclopedia’. Yo^need 1 not A go ^uTwashlngton 
to search through the files of the department. In these 7 big books you "an mulinamommit 
what would otherwise take weeks or months to obtain. All that searching, classifying and 
indexing has been done for you. Learn these methods which point the way to better profits. 
Send the Coupon Without Money 
The privilege of examination is yours for the asking. 
We even prepay all charges. Send the coupon and get 
the hooks for 10 days’ inspection. Then if you want 
them, send us 50 cents as first payment and follow S* 
this with only $2 monthly for a year. $24.50 in 
all. Otherwise tells us you want to return 
them. One fact alone may prove to be 
worth ten times the price of the books. > 
Don’t miss this chance. The decision 
in 
is 
ing. 
your hands. You can lose noth- 
Send the coupon today. 
* Doubleday, Page 
► & Co. 
Dept, 4748, Garden City 
New York, N. Y. 
S Send nu*. nil charges prepaid, 
► tlie complete set of Farmer's 
Cyclopedia (Abriged Records of 
U. s. Dept, of Agriculture) in 7 big 
+ thick volumes—bound in strongbuck 
f ram. If not satisfactory, I \* ill tell vou 
jr so in 10 days and you will tell me where 
to return the books at vour expense. Other¬ 
wise I will send 50c. down and then $2.00 
monthly for 12 months 
Doubleday, Page & Co. 
Dept. 4348 Garden City, New York 
Name. 
Address. 
