'Ghe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
35 
The Home Acre 
Plan Now—For Future Profit 
There is good money in growing fruit for the 
man who will study the right methods and put them 
into effect earnestly and intelligently. More and 
more farmiers are putting in an orchard. It brings in 
the most cash without neglecting other farm crops. 
The average return per acre from fruit is 7 times 
as much as from cereal crops, according to the 
United States Chamber of Commerce reports. 
Let Wm. P. Stark Help You 
to Make More Money 
Mr. Stark has had nearly 40 years’ experience in nursery 
and orchard work, in close touch with successful fruit growers 
in nearly every state. Many of his associates have spent their lives in 
the study and practice of growing nursery stock that gives satisfaction. 
This knowledge and experience is at your seiwicc. The first thing to do 
is to send for our free catalog—at the same time let us know how much 
land you wish to devote to fruit rai.sing, the location, character of the soil, 
what markets you would suppl}^—local towns or big cities, etc, 
Wm. P. Stack’s New Fruit Book — Free 
This catalog is of great value to the com¬ 
mercial orchardist, to the general farmer who 
diversifies with fruit, and to the home grower. 
Our catalogs are used as reference books by uni¬ 
versities in horticultural courses, and are en¬ 
dorsed by experts in all sections. 
It contains new information never printed 
before; one-third larger, bigger type, 160 pages, 
200 pictures. Gives just the information you 
need; best foundation for your orchard, number 
of trees to the acre, how to pay for orchard with 
fillers, what makes a first-class tree; picking, ripen¬ 
ing and storage dates; Mr. Hale’s own story of the 
J. H. Hale peach; origin of the Delicious apple; 
.size, color and quality of fruit, growing habits, 
hardiness, best varieties for your section, etc. 
WimjamRStark i 
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Notes from a Maryland Garden 
SiiippiXG Sweet Potatoes. —In Win¬ 
ter this demands close watching of the 
weather and some dependence on the pre¬ 
dictions of the weather man. Yesterday 
was mild, and the prediction was for 
warmer weather. The roads were lined 
with wagons of sweet potatoes in ham¬ 
pers lined and with wooden covers, and 
the cars were being rapidly loaded, and 
.are probably in New York and Philadel¬ 
phia to-day. The chances for shipping in 
December have been few, for we have had 
an unusually cold snap for so early in 
Winter, with a minimum of 12 above 
zero. Fortunately for our garden stuff 
there was snow on the ground, and the 
young folks had two days’ sleighing be¬ 
fore it vanished, the first sleighing for 
three or four years. 
Cold Frames in Winter. —Our let¬ 
tuce. under the double glazed sashes, suf¬ 
fered no injury, but is heading rather 
slowly, and will probably hold the frames 
till middle of ,January, by which time I 
shall be wanting to get beets and radishes 
and onions and cabbage plants under the 
sa.'shes. In one paper a few days ago I 
noticed an article -on the use of cold 
frames in Spring. Here we keep them 
busy all ''''inter with the lettuce as a 
start, and keep up a constant succession 
of other things and lettuce plants for 
Spring setting, not to forget the violet 
frames, which so far are flourishing, but 
ns yet giving few flowers. The single¬ 
flowering Princess of Wales starts first 
and later we get Lady Hume Campbell 
with double blooms. Our Fall-planted 
onions stood the cold snap Avell. and are 
looking hearty after the snow left, and the 
spinach, protected by the .snow, does not 
show a singed leaf, and is in abundant 
supply for the table daily. 
OrTDOOOR Winter Gardening. —It has 
always been a wonder to me how people 
all around are content with bare gardens 
here in Winter, when so many things can 
be grown. With plenty of parsnips, sal¬ 
sify. leek.s. spinach, carrots and beets, one 
can have a great many things fresh from 
the soil, for our soil is clear of frost more 
than it is frozen, and I find that even the 
carrots are better left where they grew. 
They lose most of the tops, but the roots 
seem sweeter for the frosting. AVhile 
late beets will stand outside, I have but 
once had the chard to winter in the open 
ground. On that occasion I assumed that 
it would quickly run to seed the following 
Spring, but being left it gave fresh leaves 
till mid.summer, before showing any signs 
of bloom. As a substitute in Winter for 
the green onions I formerly grew shallots, 
but find that leeks are better and milder. 
Starting some leeks in a frame in .January 
and transplanting them after the early 
outdoor lettuce one can get them of un¬ 
usual size. 
Pot-grown I^eeks. —A skilled gardener 
on a large private estate near Baltimore 
always exhibits at the Fall show there 
the largest leeks I have ever seen. I 
asked him how he produced them. He 
said that he started them in flats in the 
greenhouse in January, and set them in 
small pots and transplanted them from 
these in the Spring, and gave them the 
whole Summer and Fall to grow. He 
could affoi’d to do this, but few of us can 
take such an exi)ensive way to produce 
the crop, for I always want the leeks as a 
succession crop to some earlier one. But 
leeks such as he grows, fully two inches 
in diameter, are a temptation for one to 
go to more trouble to get them, and 1 
compromise on a cold frame, and in that 
way get very nice ones. They are set in 
heavily manured open furrows, and grad¬ 
ually earthed as they grow, and even 
hilled a little in late Summer to make 
the longest white shanks. Being perfectly 
hardy, the leeks come in very nicely to 
fill the gap before the green onions are 
ready in March, 
Egyptian Onion.s. —Much is written 
in the horticultural papers about the 
Egyptian onions being especially hardy. I 
have not tried them, as I find that the 
Norfolk Queen and Pearl, and the offsets 
of the Yellow Potato onion here fill the 
bill satisfactorily. The Norfolk Queen 
onion is very different from the Queen of 
the Northern catalogues. It is similar to 
the Pearl, but earlier and larger. Two 
years ago the crop in this country failed 
entirely, but the seed has been again ob¬ 
tained from Prance, and we shall have 
them again after a year’s absence. 
Flowering Plants. —The green tops 
of the Nerines, the scarlet Anemones and 
the Candidum lilies seem entirely unhurt 
by the cold snap. Curiously, the tops of 
the Nerines disappear as soon as the 
weather gets warm, and we see nothing 
of them all Summer till the bare flower 
stalks shoot up in the Fall, to be followed 
by the TNrinter foliage. Then, with tubers 
of the hardy Begonia Evansiana planted 
between the Nerines we can keep the bed 
gay in Summer. Geraniums, so useful 
for bedding in the North, are a failure 
here except in pots, and as a good sub¬ 
stitute I use the everblooming Begonias 
Vernon and Vulcan for red and some 
white and pink ones. I grow these from 
seed, and am now about to sow the seed in 
flats in the greenhouse. The red ones 
change in the open air to a bronzy red on 
their leaves, while the white and pink 
ones keep their foliage green and make a 
pretty border to the red ones, and they all 
stand the sun and are covered with bloom 
all Summer. Of course, they are easily 
grown from cuttings, but they seed abun¬ 
dantly and we get them faster in that 
way. J.ast Spring, having more than 
needed I sold a large number to the local 
florists to use in porch boxes. 
Noticing that the Department of Agri- 
ulture puts the average crop of sweet po¬ 
tatoes at less than 100 bushels an acre, it 
is evident that some people are making 
very small yields, for in this part of the 
country a farmer would consider 100 
bushels an acre a very small crop. In 
fact, with goo<l cultivation on our sandy 
soils anyone can make 400 bushels an 
acre, and we have a record of G50 bushels 
an acre. In all the crops of the country 
the average seems very low, and the 
p.apers urge the cultivation of more land 
to increase our crops when the fact is 
that we are not getting anything like the 
crops that could be made on the area al¬ 
ready in cultivation. It is not more land 
that is needed, but better farming of the 
land now in cultivation. 
The average cotton crop of this past 
yojir is put at 187 pounds an acre, and 
yet I know of one farmer, and a woman, 
too, who made this poor season two bales 
an acre. Then to make the 187 average 
there must be thousands who in even 
this time of high prices are not making 
anything in growing cotton. The .same ;s 
true of our truck crops. The Irish potato 
crop of the country over is put at less 
than lOO bushels an acre, and yet I know 
men in the South who get from 7.’5 to lOO 
barrels of marketable potatoes an acre. 
Somebody must be losing money growing 
Irish potatoes. 
Bight here where I live every farmer 
plants tomatoes for the canning fact¬ 
ories, and the average crop here is hardly 
as much as four tons an acre, while in 
the adjoining county of Dorchester a far¬ 
mer told me that in the past poor season 
he made nine toms, and I know of others 
who made 10 tons an acre, while more 
than this has often been made in the 
counties north of us. One man works over 
three acres to get as much as another 
gets from one acre or less. It is the poor 
farmer who runs down the average of 
crops everywhere. Our county agent 
says that one difficulty is that many far¬ 
mers are not farming as well as they 
know how. They lack the “get up.’’ 
While the area here in tomiitoes this past 
season was very much larger than usual, 
the output was poor, and yet in- my gar¬ 
den I never had a more abundant crop all 
through the season from early in .June 
till Novembei-. and then had green tom.a- 
toes ripening in the house for slicing till 
late in November. 
I offered my grocer some Grand Rapids 
lettuce, but he said that he could only 
sell head lettuce. I have found that the 
Grand Rapids is superior to the head let¬ 
tuce in my estimation, and while I have 
plenty of head lettuce coming on and 
nearly ready, I have been using the Grand 
Rapids with great satisfaction, and I 
think that it would soon be as popular 
here as in the West if people only once 
got to using it. For the earliest crop in 
the frames the Grand Rapids comes in 
very nicely, while the Big Boston comes 
in for Christmas. I have lettuce in 
frames with double-glazed and singh>- 
glazed sashes. While the double-glazed 
.sashes are .safer fi-om cold there is one 
very serious difficulty. This is the ac¬ 
cumulation of dust between the two lay¬ 
ers of glass, darkening the frames some¬ 
what, and causing some drawing up of 
the plants. w. F. massey. 
“Your 1917 catalog contains a deal of 
material which is of practical interest to 
any horticulturist.”—Prof. J. C. Whitten, 
University of Mi.souri. 
”I really cannot make any suggestions 
toward the improving of your 1917 catalog. 
It is about as near perfection now as cata¬ 
logs attain in this day and generation—I do 
not know of a better one.”—Prof. U. P. 
Hedrick, New York Agricultural Experi¬ 
ment Station. 
■‘I have your catalog in my fruit library, 
and would not give it up for $1.00. It is 
chuck full of up-to-date information, such 
as I need. I have about 500 different fruit 
trees on my farm.”—Ambrose J. Moyer, Pa. 
A Wonderful Help to Fruit Growers 
Beginner a and Experts, Say: “Most Practical, Concise, 
Reliable, Helpful, Up-to-Datc Guide to Fruit Growing. ” 
This book tells howto plant, prune, spray, cul¬ 
tivate, dynamite, fertilize; about cover crops, 
thinning fruit, why trees do not bear—88 pages, 
many pictures, drawings and diagrams. It con¬ 
tains no advertising. Read what growers and 
experts say: 
“Exceedingly useful to every fruit grower for¬ 
tunate enough to posse.ss a copy.’’—Prof. W. L. 
Howard, University of California. 
“Just the advice and information I been have 
hunting for, but knew not where to find.’’—■ 
Ivan '\Vhite, Kansas. 
“Wouldn’t take $1.00 for the book and be with¬ 
out it.’’—R. D. McMillen, M. D., West Virginia. 
“Send me 12 copies for my foremen in charge of my various orchards.’’ 
—Sen. H. M. Dunlap, Ill. 
‘ ‘I saved those two trees just from reading jmur book.’ ’—C. E. Root, Ohio. 
Sent free with orders for $2.00 and up—otherwise 10c per copy. 
“How to Beautify Your Home Grounds’^ 
Many a farm has brought a higher price than its intrinsic value merited, 
because the owner had spent a little money and time planting trees, 
shrubs, etc. You can make your place more at¬ 
tractive to yourself and others with little expense 
and trouble. This book makes it simple and easy. 
Price 10c. Free with orders of $2.00 up. 
No Agents —We Sell Direct-From-Nursery Only 
We prefer to deal direct with our customers- 
This method eliminates many causes for dissatis¬ 
faction, such as wrong advice, mixing the labels, 
delays in delivery, and indirect responsibility. 
We want to be in direct touch with you both be¬ 
fore and after you buy our trees. We definitely 
guarantee true-to-name trees and safe delivery, 
but practically assure your satisfaction. To se¬ 
cure the best service, high quality, safe delivery, 
up-to-date information, reasonable prices, buy 
direct from our free catalog. 
William P. Stark Nurseries 
Box 295 
Address and name 
are both the same 
To William P. Stark Nurseries, Box 295, Stark City, Mo. 
Please send books as checked: I am interested in planting 
j I Approximate number of 
- trees 
n 
1917 Catalog—Free 
I 
^ “Inside Facts” (10c enclosed) I 1 
! “How to Beautify Your Home | I 
Grounds” (10c enclosed) I_1 
For Big Markets 
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