tops are cut oft after frost and burned. One grower 
Claimed it was a choice between lost liumus and lost 
religion, and be preferred to lose the humus. Isn’t 
there some way to keep both? I wonder why some 
bright fellow doesn’t invent a machine that will go 
in an asparagus bed after frost and cut up all brush 
and cow peas, if there are any, in small pieces 
similar to the way corn fodder is cut, and leave it 
remaining on the ground. In that condition it would 
be a fairly easy matter to work up the bed in good 
shape for the cutting season, and the soil would get 
some vegetable matter in it. Can some one help us 
out on this machine? Perhaps there is such a con¬ 
trivance already in existence, only we don’t know 
about it. 
APPLYING FERTILIZER.—Another more or less 
disturbing matter is that of applying fertilizer. 
Belle Self-pollinated. Fig. 67 
Flat Spreading Growth, Like Greensboro 
When is the proper time to do it? Scientific men 
tell us that plants do not assimilate plant food unless 
they have leaves. The leaves act as digestive or¬ 
gans. If this is true, then asparagus is not benefited 
at all by soluble plant food used in early Spring, 
becarise there are no leaves until the cutting season 
is over, and the shoots produced in any one Spring 
are manifestly the result of plant food digested and 
stored up in the crowns the previous Fall. That is 
the theory. The actual practice down this way is 
to use fertilizer liberally in the Spring, both before 
and during the cutting season. Some very good growers 
use. say one-lialf ton to the acre of 4-8-4 or 5-S-4 fer¬ 
tilizer just before cutting starts, then use one-half 
ton of a high-grade tankage, or else a repetition of 
the first application, in the middle of the cutting 
season. Now. according to the theory, practically 
all of the soluble plant food in that fertilizer is lost, 
because most of it is surely gone out of the soil 
before the cutting season ends, July 1. Is it really 
lost or not? Who can tell? The best growers think 
not. In fact, they are sure they get well paid for 
using this fertilizer the same season the fertilizer 
is applied, and they back their convictions with 
their pocket books. Are they working under a false 
belief and throwing money away? Personally 1 feel 
that where anything is practiced to the extent that 
the Spring application of fertilizer, rich in soluble 
plant food, is practiced here, there must be far 
more value to it than our scientific friends have as 
yet discovered. At the same time I believe many 
growers err by using all of the fertilizer in early 
Belle X Early Orate ford. Fig. 6S 
Upright Spreading Ilabit. Much Like Elberta 
Spring. Should we not feed more heavily than we 
do at the end of the cutting season, so as to get the 
greatest possible crown development for the next 
season’s cutting? Can growers in other sections en¬ 
lighten us on any of these matters?. 
Gloucester Co.. N. J. willard b. kiixe. 
R, N.-Y.—On page 055 of the 1018 volume we 
printed pictures of a machine used in the Connecticut 
Valley for chopping up tobacco stems. It would 
eem as if that machine would fill the bill. 
Tk RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Growing Sunflowers for Silage 
I N the Spring of 1018 we purchased 10 lbs. of 
Giant Russian sunflower seed. The field used 
for planting this was an old meadow, which had 
been used as a pasture for about three years. It was 
on the slope of a hill facing the west, ami was damp 
in spots. During the Winter a fairly heavy covering 
of manure had been applied, which was plowed in 
during May. We planted a few rows of sunflower 
seed unmixed with corn, the seed being planted quite 
thickly. A few rows were planted in about equal 
proportions of sunflowers and corn, and some rows 
were planted with a small proportion of sunflowers 
compared with the corn. We found after the seed 
had sprouted that the pure sunflowers were planted 
too thickly. They were only an inch or so apart, and 
grew to he about 6 ft. tall, with stalks about y» in. 
in diameter. The heads did not develop properly. 
The mixture of equal proportions of sunflowers and 
corn came up in a satisfactory manner, but the sun¬ 
flowers grew so much more rapidly than the corn 
that the result with the corn was that it was nearly 
killed out due to the shade of the sunflowers. Where 
there were only a few sunflowers mixed with the 
corn the sunflowers developed properly and grew to 
be 10 ft. tall or more in some cases. 
All three mixtures were put through a silo cutter 
just as they came from the field. We found that the 
sunflowers kept perfectly and were relished by the 
cattle. When changing from corn to sunflowers, 
however, it took the cows a day or two to get used 
to the different feed. The milk flow seemed to hold 
up. and in general the cows did just as well on the 
sunflowers as on the corn silage. 
In 1010 we planted about five acres of sunflowers 
alone in the same ground which we used for the sun¬ 
flowers the year before. This ground was not ma¬ 
nured and not fertilized. The sunflowers were plant¬ 
ed with a grain drill, just as thin as the drill would 
plant. We used about 4 lbs. of seed per acre, plant¬ 
ing five acres with 20 lbs. When the sunflowers came 
up they seemed -to be very thin, in some cases a foot 
or more apart. As the Summer advanced they de¬ 
veloped very fast, and by September were 8 to 12 ft. 
tall, and in some cases 2 in. in diameter. The heads 
filled out well. We cut them for silage when a little 
over half of the sunflowers were in full bloom. They 
were so tough and woody that we had to cut them 
by hand. They were put through the silage cutter, 
however, without much difficulty, and we secured 
about 18 tons of silage per acre. As the best results 
with corn around Cazenovia. where our farm is lo¬ 
cated. is five to 10 tons per acre of silage, we feel 
very favorable toward sunflowers. They require 
less care than corn, and grow so fast that the weeds 
do not bother them. We believe it advisable to 
plant the sunflowers by themselves rather than 
mixed with corn, as they have a much more rapid 
rate of growth. We think that the best way to han¬ 
dle tire sunflowers is to mix the corn with the sun¬ 
flowers at the time of filling the silo. This next Sum¬ 
mer we expect to plant half our silage as sunflowers 
and half as corn, mixing the two by putting first a 
load of sunflowers and then a load of corn through 
the silage cutter. We are heartily in favor of the 
use of sunflowers in either replacing corn entirely 
or in part in localities where it is difficult to get a 
heavy stand of corn due to the short season. 
Syracuse, N. Y. h. h. s. handy. 
Fall Plowing for An Ohio Rotation 
I uote in The R. N.-Y. for Dee. 20. page 184(1. A. C. 
W. speaks of a rotation—oats, wheat and grass. In 
Northeastern Ohio we find plowing a sod in Spring for 
oats does not give a good crop >f oats, so we are plan¬ 
ning to plow the sod in the Fall, so it will be firm for 
oats’ seedbed in Spring. Does A. C. W. plow the sod 
for oats in Spring or Fall? c. x. at. 
Ohio. 
T HIS is a question which brings up the matter of 
differences in climate. We are three degrees 
of latitude north and five degrees of longitude 
east of C. N. M.; moreover, he seems to be about a 
hundred miles from any large body of water. His 
climate will certainly be quite different from ours 
in many ways. Ilis annual rainfall will probably be 
less than ours, and his Summers will be much 
warmer than we have. Oats will not do well in hot 
weather. Especially they must have cool weather 
at the time the seeds are growing (as the old farmers 
say. while the grain is “filling"). This makes it 
necessary to plant early to give oats time to grow 
before very hot weather comes. If tl** 1 ground can 
*v , 
l)e mostly prepared in the Fall it will sav^ time the 
next Spring and may (with us) make the difference 
between a good and a poor crop. 
We do not make a regular practice of Fall plowing 
for oats, because this crop is a side line, and must 
289 
wait until the more important things are done. Our 
regular work takes us well into November before we 
could begin Fall plowing, and then we are usually 
willing to give the teams a few weeks’ rest after the 
strenuous times of apple harvest. Some years we 
get the land plowed for oats before the freezing 
weather comes, but most years we don’t. We recog¬ 
nize the advantages of F°U plowing. Everything we 
can get done before Winter comes is a thing that will 
not have to be done next Spring. Last Spring we 
put oats on the old potato patch. The land was gone 
over three or four times with the tractor and disk 
and seeded. The rains came in and around these 
times of cultivating, and if we had not put the crop 
in when we did it might not have gone in at all. 
Many of our neighbors did not sow oats until corn- 
planting time. On some of the poor knolls the oats 
A Fete Seedlings from Known Varieties. Fig. lift 
were smothered out by the stiff clay that baked over 
the seed, but as a whole the field gave a much better 
yield than we usually get. 
In the changes that are sure to come in our 
methods we may find time to get the ground plowed 
for oats every Fall, and we may not. We have rea¬ 
son to expect that within the next few years our 
average apple crop will be greatly increased. This 
will make it necessary to change many of our meth¬ 
ods. If we can get the roads improved we can do 
our hauling by truck. The tractor will probably 
have to be helped out by another, and these may give 
us a chance to get the plowing done in better season. 
We do not plow early for beans, because we put 
this crop in the young orchards, and we want the 
cover crop to get a good start before it goes down. 
Sometimes we guess wrong, and get it plowed after 
the last good rain, so that the green stuff does not 
rot down, but generally we can let the rye and vetch 
get nearly waist high and still plow in time to give 
a good crop of beans. 
We can only give a guess as to the effect of a given 
action in a different climate, but judging from our 
results we should expect that C. W. M. would have 
better crops from a rotation of oats, one year; 
clover, one year: wheat, one year, and clover, one 
year, than from following the oats with wheat and 
then with clover, either one or two years On our 
soil it would be better to plow the sod in the Fall 
if the job could lie done, but some writers, speaking 
Belle X Elberta. Fig. 70 
White Freestone. Oval. Semi-cliug, Ripeuiug Just 
Before Belle. (See page 200) 
of other soils, say that Fall-plowed land should be 
plowed again in Spring, because the soil will be too 
much compacted during the Winter. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. 
ALFRED C. WEED. 
