The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
75 
Notes from a Maryland Garden 
In the general digging some of the 
finest Cannas were overlooked. We lifted 
them today, and they are as bright and 
sound as ever, for ‘the soil has lately ‘been 
barely crusted in the morning, and en¬ 
tirely open by noon or earlier. The days 
are bright and pleasant, but the nights 
are sharp and frosty. Today is the line 
the almanac make the sun turn north¬ 
ward, the shortest day in the year. 
The annual coat of manure is going on 
the garden, but I had to pay $2.50 a load 
for a moderate horseeart load. Still, it 
is essential on a garden where we cannot 
grow all the organic matter needed, to 
say nothing of its value as plant food. 
Since the man who sold it was short of 
bedding, the manure is far more concen¬ 
trated than the manure coming here from 
New York, which is often more than half 
dry straw. 
In the Spring I expect to use some acid 
phosphate and some potash, as I believe 
that with what the soil still retains and 
the new manure I shall have enough 
nitrogen. The old man came in just now 
and said, “There is some dead crab grass 
where the late tomatoes were let grow on 
the ground, and it was not practicable to 
keep the land clean in the late Fall. Had 
I not better burn it off before spreading 
manure there?” I said no, for even crab 
grass will help when well-rotted. And 
yet all around I can see the smoke of 
fires in gardens which were all overcov¬ 
ered with weeds, and the soil is losing 
thereby. 
Up to within the last three nights the 
salsify seemed to be growing as well as in 
the early Fall. But when the morning 
temperature got as low as 25° the salsify 
showed that it must stop growing. 
It is hard to make some people realize 
where the feeding rootlets and hair roots 
of the trees are. The old man-of-all-work 
piled manure around the trunks of the 
fruit trees. I told him that if he spread 
it all over the ground he could use that 
pile around the trunks of the trees else¬ 
where, for the feeding roots were away 
out where the limbs drip, and manure 
around the trunk would do more to har¬ 
bor mice than to help the tree. But I see 
wiser people doing the same thing when 
they might as well hang a bag of oats out 
of reach of a horse and tell him to help 
himself. 
Farmers in the South, in hopes of re¬ 
cuperating from the heavy loss on cotton, 
are planning to plant largely of early 
Irish potatoes. I have replied to a num¬ 
ber. advising them to go slow on any large 
acreage, for I have understood that the 
potato crop North was large last Sum¬ 
mer, and that if the market in the Spring 
is loaded with old potatoes that, must be 
sold at any price, the price of * South¬ 
ern crop must be unfavorably ffeeted. 
Then, too, there is no prospec' or the 
high price at which the early | >tatoes 
started last Spring. Prices may 1 fair, 
but not large. Sweet potatoes are retail¬ 
ing here for $1.50 a bushel, and the cur¬ 
ing houses are taking advantage of the 
mild weather to ship largely for the 
Christmas market. Sweet potatoes would 
be a profitable crop here at a net price 
of 50c per bu. 
One man writes that he intends to grow 
oats for grain, as corn is so hard on the 
land, and he wanted to know if he could 
not sow oats every year and turn under 
the stubble and weed growth and keep 
the land improving without clover or fer¬ 
tilizer. I told him that no crop was half 
as hard on the land as the man who pro¬ 
posed to grow one crop on it year after 
year and expect it to improve without any 
help. The only thing that will ever pre¬ 
vent the periodic catastrophe in the cot¬ 
ton belt will not be merely planting a 
smaller area in cotton, or an abandon¬ 
ment of cotton, but good, systematic farm¬ 
ing. with cotton as the leading, but not 
the only sale crop. 
You give on page 1SS2 a cut showing a 
growth running through a potato and say 
that it is a shoot of nut-grass. Now I 
have seen the growth of a great deal of 
nut-grass (Cyperus rotundus, Var Hydra) 
and do not see how it is possible for a 
growth of nut-grass to penetrate a potato. 
I have seen couch or quack grass run its 
sharp-pointed underground stems straight 
through a potato, and Bermuda grass, 
though far more delicate than quack, has 
the same habit of growth, and sometimes 
will grow through a potato. But nut- 
grass makes no such growth, and the cut 
looks very much like quack grass. 
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The Fitzpatrick Predicts Cerp 
Bex 34 
99 John St. New York 
Box 34 
16th and Kaniaa Stt 
San Francisco, 
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