2r/>c RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1055 
The Home Garden 
Renovating Old Lawn 
I have a half-acre place with a good 
many trees and a clayey soil which bakes 
down hard every Summer. Gradually, in 
spite of all my efforts, the grass in many 
places is pretty well run out. 1 know 
it is partly due to the trees, but a great 
deal is due to the soil. I have just 
had the worst places heavily limed and 
dug up and have cut down some of the 
trees. What kind of grass seed should 
I Sow where I have dug it up? Would 
you put in some kind of clover? Would 
you sow to Alsike? I know Alsike is 
coarse, but it breaks up the soil and 
later I could re-seed. Or do you know 
of some easier treatment? I have re¬ 
peatedly sown in the Spring with “shady 
lawn” mixtures. They come up well, but 
hot, dry weather burns everything out 
aud I have to begin over. Now, with it 
limed and dug up, what is the best treat- 
meut? And about v/heu would you do 
your seeding? 1 have used quantities of 
farmyard manure. F. c. T. 
Yonkers, N. Y. 
Such lawn difficulties are sometimes 
hard to overcome, but it can usually be 
accomplished if the right thing is done. 
I would advise an application of well- 
rotted manure be applied to these spots 
and spaded in lightly. Rake the ground 
level and smooth, then roll with hand 
roller before seeding. If any depressions 
after rolling level the ground and roll 
again, after which go over it with a 
steel rake and loosen the siirface so as to 
make a good seed bed. Sow some good 
lawn mixture, to which add about one 
ounce of White clovdr sjeed to each 
pound of the lawn mixture. Sow at the 
rate of one quart to 250 or .*>00 .square 
feet. Rake it in lightly and roll with 
hand roller. The seed may be sown 
aTiy time the soil is in good condition, 
but if weather is hot and dry the ground 
should be lightly mulched with straw to 
protect the germinating seed and young 
plants after they come up. Do not cut 
the (grass until three or four inches 
high and as high from the gro.und as the 
machine can be set. When seeding dur¬ 
ing hot weather I have found it advan¬ 
tageous to use a half gallon or so of 
oats to each bushel of seed. The oats 
germinate quickly and grow rapidly and 
usually by the time the grass seed is up 
the oats are large enough to give con¬ 
siderable shade and protection to the 
young grass. K. 
Abnormal Sprouting of Potatoes 
I have a small field of potatoes. I 
went to dig some recently and every 
l)otato, small or large, sprouted just 
the same as they would do in the cellar 
in Spring. Some had sprouts an inch 
long. What is the cause of new pota¬ 
toes doing this? s. n. 
New York. 
The abnormal sprouting of your po¬ 
tatoes is in all probability due to the 
soil getting very hot. Your vines must 
be dead so that they provide no shade 
to keep the soil cool; also the vines 
being dead, the potatoes have cea.sed to 
grow, have ripened up and are being 
forced into growth “against their will.” 
Potatoes dug very early may be planted 
again that Summer. PTowever, they do 
not come up especially well. Neverthe¬ 
less, it has been found that by injuring 
the potato or cutting a slice off it 
when dug and by allowing them to lie 
in the air about a month and then plant¬ 
ing them, they will grow pretty well. 
Y''our potatoes must have been prema¬ 
turely ripened and held in the hot soil 
or they never would have sprouted. 
R. w. D. 
Notes from a Maryland Garden 
I was away from home the first week 
of August. Up to the time of leaving 
I had not seen a potato beetle in my 
garden. When I returned I found that 
the late brood had come like a wolf on 
the fold. They had nearly eaten up 
a lot of late tomato plants and were 
swarming on the eggplants. Added to 
these there was a swuirm of aphides too 
on the eggplants, and w'hile when I left 
they were the most flourishing plants I 
ever grew’, they were beginning to look 
very sick. Of course spraying was in 
order, and to kill two birds with one 
stone I made the spray of a solution of 
nicotine sulphate sold under the name 
of Aphine, and added lead arsenate to 
this for the benefit of the potato bugs. 
Three sprayings seem to have finished the 
pests, and as the leaves of the eggplants 
still show the w’hitening of the lead ar¬ 
senate I suppose the woi-k is done un¬ 
less rain washes it all off. 
The Earliana tomatoes are completely 
played out, while the Bonny Best is still 
making fruit and ripening. The Earliana 
is a good tomato for the market man, as 
it throws its whole crop early aud then 
quits and gives him a chance to put in 
a succession crop. But for the home 
garden there is too little difference in the 
earliness of the Earliana and Bonny 
Best to make it worth while to use both 
for the early crop. The Earliana is so 
much superior in quality, aud so nearly 
as early, that we do not need the Ear¬ 
liana. In the home garden we like the 
staying quality too, and are perfectly 
w’illing to give an early tomato the room 
till the late ones come»in with their best 
fruit. The Greater Baltimore has made 
tomatoes this season as large as 
an average I’onderosa, and red to the 
stem. In fact it looks very like the 
Crimson Cushion. It is claimed to be 
a heaver cropper than the Stone, w’hich 
has long been the only variety grown 
for the canners, but as a rule the extra 
large tomatoes are not the heaviest 
croppers, at least in number of fruits. 
If prices keep advancing it looks as 
though the market gardeners w’ill have 
to pay as much as the crop is worth. A 
year or so back we could buy spinach 
seed for 20 cents a pound. Now it is 
$1.25 and limit placed on the amoirnt 
sold to each grower. The trouble seems 
to be the crop in this country has never 
been enough for the American gardeners, 
and the bulk of the spinach seed has 
come from Holland, and it is hard now 
to get seeds away from Holland owing 
to the restrictions on exporting them. 
This may lead to more limited sowing 
with the Norfolk grow'crs. and better 
l)riees in the Winter for the crop. 
The cantaloupe crop is now over, and 
the season, while not at all remarkable, 
has been fairly profitable to the grow’ers. 
There is a limited area in the Honey 
Dew’^ yet to ship, as this variety is later 
than the Rocky Ford. These melons 
brought fancy prices last year, and it 
remains to be seen what the result will 
be with a greater quantity offered. I 
have a few which I am watching with 
some iTiterest. The vines seem to be 
very prolific and the melons are larger 
than the Pollock and other Rocky Ford 
varieties. They are perfectly smooth 
and white, turning to creamy yellow in 
ripening. 
The Nanticoke blackberry began to 
ripen early in August and now’ (August 
15) is in its full production. It has 
the curious habit of making a ripe berry 
in a cluster of green ones and in this 
way makes a long season. The Atlan¬ 
tic dewberry gave its first ripe fruit on 
the 12th of August. The fruit is not 
so large nor as good as that of the Nau- 
ticoke. The trouble with the Nanticoke 
in a home garden is the size and fierce¬ 
ness of the canes with their hooked 
briars. I have threatened to grub it 
out, but the fruit is so good and comes 
at a season when there are no other 
blackberries that I suffer it and suffer 
from it. W\ F. MASSEY. 
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On Country Roads 
We Claim a Car Needs 100% Over-Strength 
Up to three years ago our margins of 
safety were 50 per cent in the Mitchell. 
And that was considered excessive. The 
chief trend then was toward exceeding 
lightness. 
But we had watched 70,000 Mitchells 
under all road conditions. They showed 
wonderful endurance. Still we saw that 
some conditions called for stronger cars. 
So we started to double our margins 
of safety. We adopted the standard of 
100 per cent over-strength. And we 
still maintain it, despite advancing 
steel costs. 
Our safety parts are vastly oversize. 
Over 440 parts are made of toughened 
steel. And we use much Chrome- 
Vanadium. 
Some Sample Results 
Two Mitchell cars have been run over 
200,000 miles each. That is 40 years of 
ordinary service. So we know that 
Mitchells as now built can give lifetime 
service. 
Not one Mitchell rear spring has 
broken since this standard was adopted. 
That is an amazing record. 
The demand for Mitchells has multi¬ 
plied, especially in hard-road sections. 
The export demand has grown enor¬ 
mously, to countries like South America. 
And scores of America’s leading en¬ 
gineers have chosen Mitchells for their 
personal cars. 
Many Other Extras 
In the latest Mitchells you will find 31 
features which nearly all cars omit. You 
will find vast added luxury — about 25 
per cent. You will find a heat-fixed 
finish which stays new. 
You will find at least 20 per cent extra 
value as compared with other cars in this 
class. All paid for by factory economies 
due to Bate efficiency methods. 
See these superlative cars. If you 
don’t know our nearest dealer, ask us 
for his name. 
MITCHELL MOTORS COMPANY Inc. 
Racine, Wis., U. S. A. 
Mitchell"^ 
xTxx i.\..xx^xx passenger 
Six, with 127-inch wheel¬ 
base and a highly devel¬ 
oped 48 horsepower motor. 
$1525 
Foot -Passenger Roadster, 
$1560. Sedan, $2240. Cab. 
riolet, $1960. Coupe, $2060. 
Also Town Car and Limousino. 
Mitchell Junior 
—a 5-passenger Six o^n sim¬ 
ilar lines, with 120-inch 
wheelbase and a 40-horse- 
power motor. K-inch 
smaller bore. 
$1250 
All Prices f. •. b. Racine. 
