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Renting An Apple Orchard 
One of my neighbors has offered me his apple orchard 
on shares for next year. I an. to prune the trees, spray 
them for codling moth (two sprays), for which I will 
require about two barrels of concentrate lime-sulphur 
and about 50 lbs. of arsenate of lead; pick all the apples 
and dispose of them, mostly at Baltimore, which is about 
12 miles from here. I have never had any experience 
in renting an orchard on shares, nor do 1 know of any¬ 
one else who has ever done so. I would like to have 
Vie RURAL NEW-YORKER 
workers in Fig. 553 are bunching radishes and rhu¬ 
barb. Transplanting lettuce in cold frames for 
forcing is shown in Fig. 556. Large quantities of 
lettuce are grown in this manner, both in the North 
and Middle South. 
Cleaning Onions in the Field. Fig. 552 
your opinion as to what would he a fair share for 
owner and tenant. Should 1 furnish all of the spraying 
material, or should the owner furnish half? About one- 
third of the trees have been bearing 12 years, while the 
rest have came into bearing about three years ago. The 
trees have been pruned quite regularly, so they will not 
require so much pruning this Winter. They also have 
been sprayed several times in the last last few years for 
scale. f. l. K. 
Maryland. 
W E assume from the amount of spray material 
that there are from 200 to 250 trees in the 
orchard. We know nothing about their 
condition, whether in sod or cultivated, 
nor do we know what varieties they 
are. We should consider all these 
things in renting an orchard. For ex¬ 
ample. some varieties bear heavily 
every other year. We have one orchard 
which this year gave nearly $20 to the 
tree, where last year the average was 
about $2. Is next year the bearing 
season for this orchard? 
When land is rented for farm pur¬ 
poses the usual plan is to assume that 
the owner is to have one-third the in¬ 
come, the renter another third, while 
the remaining third is divided between 
them in proportion as they put up a 
share of the expenses. An orchard 
proposition is quite different, because 
the cost of picking and packing and of 
packages is very much larger than corresponding 
expenses of handling regular farm crops. For a 
single-year proposition we would not take chances 
on a crop for less than two-thirds of the apples, or 
one-half if the owner paid half the cost of packages 
and spraying materials. If the orchard is not in 
good shape we would not touch it with less than a 
five years’ contract and all the fruit for the first 
two seasons. After that half and half for three 
An Ohio Low-down Wagon 
O NE of the handiest sets of tools that we use on 
our farm is four low steel wagon wheels. We 
purchased this extra set for particular purposes, and 
simply substitute them for the wooden wheels of the 
regular wagon outfit. By using these wheels the 
height of the platform wagon is reduced a foot or 
more, making it particularly easy to handle crated 
produce, such as potatoes, onions or apples. The 
tires are six inches in width, and even when a heavy 
load is placed on the platform they cut into the soil 
very little. 
This wagon, as shown in the illustration. Fig. 554, 
is particularly valuable for hauling corn in the Fall 
out of the fields that have been sown to wheat. 
With the narrow-tire wagon, the wagon cuts in 
deeply and destroys a great deal of wheat, but with 
the wide tires the wheels may pass directly over the 
wheat stalks without injuring them, only bending 
them over into the ground slightly. 
Of course, for hauling, a wide-tired wagon runs 
harder than a narrow tire, and if the roads are 
muddy the wide wheels are not practical in most 
cases. For hauling grain to market we always use 
wooden wheels, which have a narrow tire, and if the 
loads are heavy these generally run easier than the 
wide tires, or wide-tired wheels; or if the ground 
is frozen and there are ruts to travel in, the narrow 
tire gives the best satisfaction. 
1711 
meal with the grain. A small amount of green stalks 
can be fed, but it is not safe to feed them heavily. 
Too much of such green stuff will give a horse the 
colic. We were in the South once and wanted to 
hire a horse for a 20-mile drive. The farmer said 
he was feeding green stalks, and the horse could not 
stand over five miles travel! In feeding dry stalks 
to cows where there are only a few head what is 
known as mock silage is often made. Bun the dry 
Running Pickling Onions Through Fanning Mill 
Fig. 555 
stalks through a cutter and put the pieces in a bar¬ 
rel or tight box. Put in a little waste of feeding 
molasses, and then pour boiling water over the corn¬ 
stalks and cover the barrel. The steam from the 
hot water will soften the stalks and make a mess 
that looks and smells something like silage. The 
same thing can be done better where it is possible 
to let in a jet of steam. On many 
farms the corn fodder is badly wasted 
by not giving good shelter or feeding 
it out early. 
Selecting Potatoes for Planting 
Do you approve of keeping small pota¬ 
toes for seed? If not, is it better to save 
one’s medium-sized tubers, or renew seed 
each year from Maine? j. g. 
Philamont, N. Y. 
A Handy 
Wagon. Fig. 554 
By using the platform as shown in the illustration 
we really do not have much use for a wagon-box. 
The ordinary 50-bushel wagon-box placed on any 
strong wheels is too high to pour in ear corn easily. 
A man must lift an entire bushel almost as high as 
his head to do this. For this reason we simply use 
a wide platform, putting on small side-boards, and 
then we can haul more than 50 bushels if necessary. 
We use the same platform in haying, hauling wheat, 
hauling fertilizer from railroad and in hauling crated 
products. Even when hauling potatoes to market it 
is easier to set on 50 one-bushel crates than it would 
be to take potatoes in a deep wagon-box and then 
be forced to shovel them off at the market point. 
The low-down steel wheels are not expensive, and 
we feel that they pay for themselves every year. 
Wayne Co., Ohio. c. m. b. 
PR understanding of the seed 
potato question is about as fol¬ 
lows: The plants on an ordinary acre 
of potatoes may vary in productive 
power about as much as the individual 
hens in a large flock. The egg-laying 
contests and trap-nesting large flocks 
have shown that some hens will lay 
200 eggs and over during the year, 
while others of precisely the same breeding will lay 
only about SO. To select eggs at random from a 
large flock would be a very poor way of improving 
the egg yield. Unless you know the superior layers 
you could not be sure of breeding fi*om the best. 
The potato situation is somewhat the same. Careful 
tests in large fields have shown that some plants 
produce a few good-sized potatoes, others a number 
of small tubers, others a large yield of good-sized 
mm* 
Bunching Radishes and Rhubarb. Fig. 553 
years. This may seem a one-sided arrangement by 
some orchard owners, but it will take at least two 
years of hard work to bring some of these old trees 
back to production life. 
Working with Vegetables 
T HE two pictures at top of this page show part 
of the work of onion harvest as it is handled 
in some localities. In Fig. 552 the onions after 
being pulled and dried are trimmed and cleaned for 
crating or bagging. Fig. 555 shows one method of 
cleaning small pickling onions. They are thoroughly 
dried under glass and then put through a fanning 
mill, which removes most of the loose stuff. The 
Cornstalks for Horses 
Can cornstalks be fed to horses if cut up? Is sweet 
corn good to feed horses before it is dry? If cornstalks 
are desirable for horses, I would like to know how they 
should be fed. My horse is idle most of the time. 
New York. j. m. d. 
W E shall feed the stalks from 12 acres or more 
of corn this Winter to both cows and horses. 
Bart of this is sweet corn. We have already begun 
to feed the stalks. It is better to feed early than to 
wait until late Winter. The smaller varieties of 
sweet corn give a small stalk, which can be fed 
whole. The horses will eat most of the stalk in this 
way. The larger stalks may be shredded. That is 
better than cutting in a fodder cutter, as the latter 
leaves some hard pieces with sharp edges, which are 
likely to cut the horse’s gums when very dry. Where 
there are not many stalks to feed some farmers chop 
them on a block, using a broadax to cut them in 
pieces about a foot long. The horses can handle 
these pieces well. We find it better to feed hay 
once a day when feeding the stalks. The horses do 
better than when fed stalks only. It is also a good 
plan to feed a few raw potatoes, carrots or small 
apples while feeding the stalks, or a little linseed 
Transplanting Lettuce to Cold Frame. Fig. 556 
tubers and still others a number of medium-sized. 
The plants vary in yield even when they appear 
quite uniform above ground. As a rule the plant 
when grown to maturity is likely to reproduce itself 
in its tubers. That is, tubers from a plant yielding 
only a few large tubers will be likely to produce 
other plants with the same sort of a crop. A plant 
with many small tubers will produce, through its 
tubers, plants of much the same habit, and so on. 
That, as we understand it. is the general rule. It 
has worked that way with us when we have selected 
the best hills for seed potatoes, so that when the 
crop is all mixed together you cannot select the best 
seed simply by sizing it. If you rejected all small 
seed you might throw out a small tuber from one 
