1577 
Notes from a Maryland Garden 
After the wet August we have for a 
time been having dry, sunny weather, and 
olir sandy soil soon shows the effect. To¬ 
day we turn on the Skinner irrigation 
spray for the first time since .Tune. Not 
that there are many things needing it 
hut the spinach, the young lettuce for the 
frames and turnips. The late-sown spin¬ 
ach i« intended for wintering over for 
Spring cutting. 
It is curious to note how slow farmers 
are to find out that the failure of crops 
they formerly grew is due to their own 
practices with the soil. A few days ago 
a farmer in the upper Piedmont section 
of North Carolina asked: “Why is it 
that we cannot grow wheat as we did “0 
or more years ago?” lie is in the famous 
old Cold Leaf tobacco section along the 
south side of the Virginia line. T re¬ 
member well in my boyhood, in the days 
of the old Blue-^tem white wheat, that 
the best wheat growers in Maryland were 
in the habit of sending to that very sec¬ 
tion for seed wheat, arguing that wheat 
sown later in North Carolina and cut 
earlier in the Spring would make an 
earlier wheat in Maryland. But the 
North Carolina farmers got into the cul¬ 
ture of tobacco, and the old Blue-stem 
wheat went out of use, and red wheat 
has since been exclusively grown. The 
Maryland wheat growers stuck to Red 
clover and followed a rotation that soon 
convinced them that they did not. need 
to buy nitrogen in a fertilizer and on 
much of their soil did not need potash 
so long as they maintained the organic 
decay in the soil and their wheat crops 
increased. One of the oldest, of these 
wheat growers, an enthusiastic farmer 
until his death at the age of 86, wrote 
to me shortly before his death that for 
20 years he had bought no fertilizer ex¬ 
cept plain acid phosphate for the wheat 
and during that time he had averaged 40 
bushels of wheat where they formerly 
grew 15 to 20. 
In the bright tobacco section of North 
Carolina, where wheat formerly made 
good crops, I urged them to use a Winter 
cover of Crimson clover and to sow peas 
in the tobacco at the last cultivation, so 
that aftev the leaves were all primed off 
and cured (they do not cut tobacco in 
North Carolina) they would have a 
growth of peas and the tobacco stalks to 
disk down for wheat, since the tobacco 
crop there is usually cured by the middle 
of August. But they objected that if they 
improved the land with peas and clover 
the tobacco would hi* ruined in quality 
and there would be no bright wrappers. 
Now after keeping their land poor to get 
fine wrappers, they wonder why they can¬ 
not grow wheat as they once did. 
And all over the country there are men 
wondering why their soil is not so pro¬ 
ductive as it once was. When I was a 
youngster tramping the Western prairies 
running railroad lines, they were just 
breaking the prairie sod, and they laughed 
at the idea that their land would ever 
need manure, and they made every effort 
to get rid of the manure they made rather 
than bother to spread it on the fields. In 
the famous valley of the Red River of 
the North, the old home of the bonanza 
farms, they cannot today grow as much 
wheat an acre as we do in Maryland. 
Single cropping with tobacco or single 
cropping with wheat will have the same 
effect of decreasing the productivity of 
the soil. On the prairies of the Grand 
Divide, in Missouri, where in the Fall of 
1S58 we cut a truck with axes through 
a growth of dead pigweeds a dozen feet 
tall, they arc today usiug commercial fer¬ 
tilizers. 
Li all parte of the country we see the 
effect of the failure to maintain the vir¬ 
gin conditions in the soil. We see soil 
wasting in Winter for lack of a green 
cover crop, and the farmers paying their 
hard-earned dollars for forms of plant 
food they need not buy if they farmed 
Properly and maintained the humus in 
the soil upon the maintenance of which 
the lif e 0 f the nitrifying bacteria depends. 
" hen the bacteria are starved out and 
they have only the dead mixture of sand 
'lid clay instead of a fertile living soil, 
they wonder what is the matter with the 
s °il that they can no longer get the old 
•'lops. R u t the day is coming in the 
s,) i'tli when a farmer who has owned his 
hind for years will be ashamed to say that 
it is poor. AV. F. MASSEY. 
Tfe RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
Could you use 3 hours 
more a day? 
A s 
S a rule we farmers don’t give 
much thought to the value 
of our time. But we sud¬ 
denly realize that time is worth 
money, when milking the cows or 
mixing the feed keeps us from bigger 
jobs, out in the fields. 
“Last year I made up my mind 
that I would look for a farm plant 
with power enough to do real work. 
The one I picked was the Western 
Electric Power and Light Outfit, 
and please notice that putting the 
word Power first in the name 
describes the outfit very well. 
It is powerful. But I’m not going 
to praise it up to the skies. I just 
want to describe this outfit and the 
The Western 
Electric Vac¬ 
uum Sweeper 
cleans your 
house quickly 
and easily. 
Just connect this 
portable motor to 
any electric lamp 
socket 
m*- - 
A Western Electric lamp post outside 
means an up-to-date farmer inside. 
work it is doing for me, and let 
you judge whether it would suit 
your needs too. 
The battery lasts longer 
“it is the ‘tapering charge’ that 
makes the Western 
Electric battery 
last so long. The 
charge doesn’t 
strain the bat¬ 
teries, because as 
they fill, the cur¬ 
rent gradually 
slacks up by it¬ 
self. These bat¬ 
teries are power¬ 
ful too. They can 
run my portable 
motor for hours and hours on a 
single charge. Or they can operate 
ten electric lamps for thirteen and 
a half hours. 
“Then there is the generator, 
built for endurance and hard work. 
In fact, it will run such a combina¬ 
tion as an electric iron, twenty lamps 
and a one-sixth horsepower motor 
just as long as you keep it going. 
‘With the batteries and the gen¬ 
erator working together, you just 
add the capacity of both. That ex¬ 
plains how I can use electricity to 
milk the cows, separate the cream, 
arouvdwyfijj before I 
three hours * 7 an d 
got an ele 0 f courS e,if 
* ish ‘hw£™ hcre ‘° V 't- 
^IpSlAjO/S. 
. farm er t ' c ° r 
garlo B ^^ nS ° ; ‘' 
churn the butter, turn the grind¬ 
stone and pump water. 
The powerful engine is a 
big help 
“The Western Electric Outfit 
has an extra size 
engine, with a 
pulley all ready 
to be hitched up to 
a lot of the machin¬ 
ery I used to turn 
by hand. So taken 
all in all, you can 
see how I save 
at least three 
hours a day for 
work in the field. 
And in these 
times when farm-hands are so 
few and far between, it is mighty 
important to have this dependable 
help that my electric power outfit 
furnishes." 
A farmhand you 
can always de¬ 
pend on—Western 
Electric Power 
and Light 
Western Electric 
Power i/Light 
Makes the Battery last longer 
Western Electric distributors in your neighborhood: 
G. H. S J. T. Kelly, D. G. Babcock, Amos Barnes, 
Elmira, N. Y. Lake Huntington, N. Y. Ithaca, N. Y. 
C. U. DeVoe, Perry L. Young, Miller & Wait, 
Syracuse, N. Y. Green, N. Y. Owe go, N, Y. 
Theodore M. Gunther S Rusterholtz Electric Co., L C. Beers Electric Store. 
Sons. Buffalo, N. Y. Eric, Pa. Rochester, N. Y. 
Warden S’ Smith. D. S F. Engineering Co., 
Catskill. N. Y. Ogdensburg, N. Y. 
SULPHUR 
“BROOKLYN 
BRAND’’ 
COMMERCIAL FLOUR SULPHUR, 99>^% pure, for making Lime-Sul¬ 
phur solution. 
SUPERFINE C OMMERCIAL SULPHUR, 99 l / 2 % pure for dusting purposes. 
FLOWERS OF SULPHUR, 100% pure. Also Crude Nitrate Soda, Saltpetre 
and Muriate Potash. 
BATTELLE & RENWICK 
80 Maiden Lane, New York 
Write for price lists 
WILSON FEED MILL 
For grinding corn in the ear and 
•mall grain. 
Has special crusher attachment 
which first breads the ears of 
corn, which can be shoveied right 
into the hopper. Also Bone and 
Shell Mill* and Bone Cutters. 
Send for Catalog 
WILSON BROS., Bu.t5CMtoB.Pa. 
