876 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Weeds. —Not long ago I told about our 
now planting of strawberries. There are 
.'i,0(X) plants for a beginning, put 18 
inches apart each waj*. Later, this will 
be e.\tended by 5,0(X) more plants—when 
the peas alongside are done. It is my 
job to keep this big patch clean. A 
woman in New York State writes that 
if the weather here is as wet as in her 
section she will bet on the weeds. We 
have a shower practically every night, 
:ind the weeds which are hoed out during 
the day get a fine drink in the evening 
and start up once more the ne.xt day. 
The election might seem to be going 
again.st the Hope Farm man at jiresent, 
but the returns are not all in yet. We 
.shall have dry weather later, .and then 
the we<“ds can be put out of business, 
'fhe only way to do it now is to jiick 
them up in baskets and carry them off to 
be dumped around fruit trees. 
IIei.p. —I did try a little schoolboy 
labor for a few rows in this patch, but 
such kind of help is not very efficient. 
We had several boys hoeing in a lino. 
.•\t one end I covered four row.s—the boys 
faking two rows each. They thought they 
were doing a fine job. but a few days 
later you could easily tell their rows b.v 
the big weeds growing around the plants. 
These boys had just scraped off the tops 
of the weeds. It looked clean, but the 
roots were undisturbed and the eviuiing 
shower brought up new sprouts until in 
48 hours the weeds were doing ,a whole¬ 
sale business once more. The boys 
seemed to get more of the weeds out in 
the alleys, but they would not get down 
to the plants and finger out the enemies. 
Most of the woi-k these boys have done 
for us has been of about that character. 
They don’t see the necessity of doing a 
thorough job of getting the weeds out of 
the hill and drill. Then I found that 
their ideas of payment were very large. 
They wanted 20 cents an hour for labor 
which had to be done all over in less 
than a week. There may still be people 
who honestly think that boys and un¬ 
skilled clerks can supply our farms with 
needed labor, but every day makes it 
more evident that farming is a full-sized 
job, and no boy’s play. Here is a pic¬ 
ture of a group of our boy workers. Is 
this their favorite attitude? At times it 
seems to be. 
July .It'mpinc!. —With this sort of 
weather we do enter .Tuly with a jump. 
Haying, cultivating, hoeing, spraying 
and late plowing all come in a heap this 
year—each demanding prompt attention. 
AVe put the first spray on the potatoes 
the last week in .lune. The rain fol¬ 
lowed, but the spraying stuck like paint, 
and will hang on—death to bugs and de¬ 
lay to blight. About three weeks later 
we ijlan to give them another do.se, and 
Ibis ought to carry the Irish Cobblers 
through to the .shoemaker’s last. This 
seems to me .just the ideal sea.son to try 
out spraying, for this wet and “muggy” 
weather is ideal for the spread of blight. 
Few. if any, of the farmers here spray 
exc<‘pt with poison to kill the bugs, and 
I .shall watch with great interest to see 
if it pays us. The common practice here 
is to “plow up” the potatoes at about 
this time. After cultivating twice and, 
usually hoeing once a small plow is used 
to throw a furi’ow from each side up 
against the row. The plan is to do this 
just before the upright vine falls down 
to run on the ground. The object is to 
.smother the weeds growing around the 
Ijlants, before they get too large, to make 
it easier to dig the potatoes and to dry 
out the soil in a wet time. Some think 
that b.v hilling up in this way they start 
out new roots and thus get more pota¬ 
toes. Of course, this theory will not 
hold, as what we call a potato ia not a 
root at all, but merely an enlarged under¬ 
ground stem. At any rate that is the 
•way our farmers handle potatoes, and we 
shall fall partly into the plan this year. 
If I had my choice I would keep the cul¬ 
ture just about level and hoe the crop 
twice. In this year that is impossible 
and we .shall hill up a little. 
Eating Hay. —t)n our farm we do 
much of what we call cultivating with a 
scythe dr mower. The soil needs organic 
matter badly, and w'e have learned that a 
pile of hay or weeds left around or under 
'Uhe 
the tree to decay produces a riot of 
growth out of its rot. So we never 
dream of burning or wasting anything 
that will readily decay, but it is put 
around the trees or worked into the ma¬ 
nure j)ile. Trees will cat hay the same 
as cows or horses if you think you can 
afford to feed the hay right to them. 
AVhen we i)low our orchards we leave 
wide strips along the rows. Thes<' grow 
uj) to weeds and grass, and about this 
se.MSon all this is cut and pih-d around the 
trees as what we call mulch. Then all 
weeds and soft brush along fences or in 
waste i»laces are cut and used to feed 
the trees. All this ma.v seem like small 
busine.ss and shiftless farming, but the 
trees seem to enjoy it at least, and a 
fruit-grower lives to make his trees good- 
Three Hope Farm Laborers. Fig. 362 
i-atured and full of color. The little 
picture shows three of our workers who 
have been feeding hay to trees for the 
past week. They are ^Merrill, one of the 
Fherry-tops and one of the Salvation 
Army captains who camped on our trail 
for vacation. The central figure may not 
have handled a ton of hay, but she made 
a small contribution to labor. 
Is It AYaste.^ —An orchard of nearly 
1,000 trees on our hill has a heavy growth 
of Alsike and Sweet clover with some 
Ited-top mixed in. For .years I tried to 
get this hill into a good sod, but only 
after continued liming and seeding did 
Ave get it going. The Alsike was seeded 
as a cover crop and has reseeded and 
spread. Parts of this orchard would 
easil.v cut 3,000 pounds or more of hay 
per acre. This wet season has brought 
up the grass and also kept the trees in 
A Group of Boy Workers. Fig. 363 
good color. Noav I have made an agree¬ 
ment with myself that I will not take 
anything except fruit off that hill. The 
trees are now so large and fine that they 
are worth attending to, and so I plan to 
cut down that line growth of clover and 
grass, and leave it to decay on the ground 
under the trees. That is what we call 
feeding hay to trees, and most people who 
see the clover say it is a waste and a 
shame to do it. This is the off year with 
the majority of those trees. After cut¬ 
ting a new crop will spring up and prob¬ 
ably make se<‘d. This will be left un¬ 
touched. but next year, in the beaidng 
.season, the .sod Avill be plowed under, the 
ground well worked up and reseeded 
in early .lul.v to a mixture of Alsike and 
Sweet clover. Then it will stand in sod 
for two or three .vears more—every ounce 
of the ha.v crop left on the ground—under 
the trees. This plan of feeding ha.v to 
trees seems a fearful waste to a dairy¬ 
man, but on a fruit farm it is often good 
practice and it will pay to feed lime and 
phosphate also along with the hay—like 
grain to the stock! n. w. c. 
Drying Peaches 
AAull you tell me how to dry peaches 
for home use? h. a. p. 
Fredericksburg, A"a. 
The old-fashioned way of drying 
peaches for home use consisted of peel¬ 
ing the fruit, quartering or subdividing 
it smaller if necessary and drying in 
the sun. On rainy days the fruit was 
placed in tins about the house. It was 
the custom in those days to put up much 
of the orchard’s yield for AA’inter’s use 
ill this way. There will be found many 
elderly people Avho ivill vouch for the 
flavor of the product and the correctness 
of the method. 
In modern practice the fruit is often 
dried unpeeled. After being cut and 
pitted it is placed, skin side down, in 
trays or tins and started on the drying 
process by artificial heat. Should one 
wi.sh to bleach the fruit it should be 
.sent to a box under which sulphur can 
be burned for a few minutes. This 
should be done just before the drying 
process is started. One’s judgment can 
usually be depended on to determine 
when the drying process should cease. 
AA’here it is desired that the peaches 
should be peeled first a good way is to 
dip them in hot lye to loosen the skins. 
This is much the quickest way and is 
safe when one acquires the knack. An¬ 
other way of drying the peach is to 
make “peach deather.” The fruit is 
peeled, pitted, mashed, spread out in a 
thin layer, and then dried in the oven 
or in the sun until the mass is tough 
and resembles leather somewhat in ap¬ 
pearance. It will keep indefinitely in 
this condition. a. h. p. 
^ Destroying Ants 
Our garden is entirely overrun with 
ants. For a space of about 40 feet long 
b.v about five feet wide, is a succession 
of ant hills. I estimate there must be at 
least 50 of them. They are now invading 
the hou.se. Is there anything that will 
rid us of these pests? I have tried the 
different ant exterminators, etc., adver- 
ti.sed and sold by the different seed houses 
without result. .j. j. b. 
New York. 
AA’'e can only suggest the plan of using 
bisulphide of carbon. This case is com¬ 
plicated, since there are so many of the 
ants. We .should begin at the point near¬ 
est the house, and with a crowbar punch 
a hole about two feet deep down into 
each hill. Pour into the hole half a pint 
of bisulphide of carbon and at once cover 
with a blanket or sack. The fumes will 
spread through the soil and kill the ants. 
AA^ork in this way down the line of hills 
as rapidly as possible and by persistent 
work you can finally destroy them. The 
ants which enter the hou.se can be 
trapped by laying sponges containing 
sweetened water about where they run. 
The ants will enter the sponges, which 
are then thrown into boiling wat(?r. 
Oil and Gas in Central New York 
A\’’e are told that large depo.sits of oil 
and gas may be found in Central New 
Y’^ork. AAliat are the facts about this? 
Is there enough of such oil to make in¬ 
vestments in a promoter’s company a safe 
risk ? J. 
It can be accepted as practically proved 
beyond all question that the petroleum 
dejiosits of the State are restricted to the 
extreme southwestern area on the bor¬ 
ders of Pennsylvania, where an exten¬ 
sion of the Appalachian pool runs over 
into Allegany, Steuben and Cattaraugus 
counties. The petroleum is found in the 
higher Devonian strata and in very cir¬ 
cumscribed pools. A great deal of time 
and mone.v has been .spent in the attempt 
to discover oil outside of this area, but 
without any practical returns. Conse¬ 
quently I do not believe that there is any 
legitimate field for oil exploration in the 
central part of the State. 
Natural gas has a much wider distri¬ 
bution than oil and in New York has 
been found in paying quantities over 
some 15 different counties. The horizon 
of the gas runs all the way from the 
Trenton limestone up to the sandstones 
of the higher Devonian wdiich carry the 
oil. The most prolific gas pools seem to 
be located in the Medina sandstones in 
the extreme western counties, including 
Genesee, Erie and Chautauqua. fThe 
most easterly area wdiere gas has been 
encountered in consderable amount is in 
Oswego County, near the eastern end of 
Lake Ontario. Here the gas occurs in 
July 14, 1917. 
the Trenton limestone and shales. It is 
this horizon that is most likely to prove 
productive in other localities in Central 
New Y’ork. In fact some wells drilled 
near Utica and Rome, Oneida County, 
and other places in that vicinity years 
ago, did encounter some gas in the Tren¬ 
ton, but the wells did not prove to have 
a very long life. I think it not unlikely 
that exploration in the central part of 
the State may reveal the presence of pro¬ 
ductive gas pools, but it is very doubtful 
whether the returns would be sufficient to 
justify the expense of exploration. 
D. ir. newland. 
Asst. State Geologist. 
A Book on Fruit Diseases 
A most valuable book for the fruit 
grower is the “Manual of Fruit Dis¬ 
eases” recently published by the Mac¬ 
millan Co. The authors. Professors Hes- 
ler and AA'hetzel of the New York State 
College of Agriculture, have gathered to¬ 
gether a very well-written summary of 
our knowledge of most of the diseases 
which attack the following: Apple, apri¬ 
cot, blackberry, cherry, cranberry, cur¬ 
rant, goo.seberry, grape, peach, pear, 
plum, quince, raspberry and straw'berry. 
There is also a chapter on the prepara¬ 
tion and use of fungicides. One thing 
which the ordinary reader might dis¬ 
like in the book is the use of a rath¬ 
er large number of technical words, but 
if they were not used the book must have 
been much larger to allow for the extra 
explanations. These words are all ex¬ 
plained in the glossary, pages 446-44.8, 
and are no harder to understand than 
carburetor, magneto, inoculation, differ¬ 
ential, ignition, etc., which have come 
into the farmer’s vocabulary within the 
last ten years. Other words are going 
out of use. A recent magazine article 
by a famous Englishman moved me to 
wonder how many of his readers would 
know what he meant by a linch-pin. 
Some of the suggestions in the chapter 
on fungicides, while in line with the 
usual experiment station ideas, seem to us 
not practical. The.se are the use of 
angle nozzles and spraying against the 
wind. Personally I have never been 
able to make .satisfactory use of an 
angle nozzle. After using one a few 
hours when no others could be found 
fairly good work was done by bending 
the end of the spray rod to an equal 
angle but in the opposite direction. This 
sent the spray in the right direction but 
was hard to handle. 
As for spraying against the wind, it 
can be done. It is unpleasant. It wastes 
material,^ and with the ordinary nozzles 
a good job cannot be done unless the 
spray rod is at least two or three feet 
longer than the greatest diameter of the 
tree to be .sprayed; that is, if the tree 
is eight feet in diameter it can be 
sprayed with a 10-foot rod, if the wagon 
is driven clo.se to one side and that side 
sprayed, then push the rod through the 
tree and spray the other side “by guess 
and by gosh” until the operator is wet 
enough. If there are only 15 or 20 
small trees to .spray that will do well 
enough, but when there are more than 
that, many acres of trees 30 feet or 
more i_n_ diameter, it is a very different 
proposition. Up to this season the only 
way has been to spray with the wind, 
and thorough spraying on many of our 
best trees has not been possible. The 
most ive could do w’as to cover the low¬ 
er limbs and hope that there would not 
be enough late scab to spoil the high 
apples. 
Last Winter a new type of spray noz¬ 
zle was shown at the fruit meetings, 
and it is now being tested on hundreds 
of orchards. The verdict seems to be 
unanimous that it is a success. It does 
not do away with the soaking clothes, 
.sore faces, and other troubles of spray¬ 
ing against the wind, but it does give 
a chance to make a thorough job in 
spite of these troubles. Yesterday we 
sprayed a lot of trees 25 or more feet 
high and many of them, 50 or more feet 
in diameter, in a variable wind. Not 
more than a third of the tree could 
have been reached wuth the best of the 
old methods but we reached every leaf 
in sight and probably more than 75% 
of all the leaves on the tree were well 
covered. With a pressure of 250 Ihs. 
the stream of spray can be drawn out 
to cover a space a few feet across and 
twenty feet above the nozzle or it can 
.spread out to cover 10 feet wide at six 
feet. Disks with three sizes of hole.s are 
supplied with each outfit, but if the 
smallest is too large take a piece of old 
hand-saw blade, cut it the right size 
and shape with a good pair of tin shears, 
and bore a smaller hole through the cen¬ 
ter. For best results the hole must 
be as large as possible without pulling 
down the pressure. Certain of the old¬ 
er nozzles had as great reaching power, 
but they did it by sending a stream of 
water. This one makes a fine mist, and 
produces a blast of air to carry it. The 
principle seems to be the same as when 
one blows at a distant candle across a 
smoky room. Part of the smoke will be 
carried across the room without dis¬ 
turbing the rest. alfbed c. weep. 
