produce plants enough for an acre of land. Cover the seed by beating 
with the back of the spade or by tramping, and cover with plant-bed 
muslin. 
Order your seeds and commerical fertilizers. All seeds to be sown 
should be tested, that the farmer may know how to sow them in 
order to secure the best results. Pour a little water in a plate and place 
a piece of flannel in it, and when the flannel is nicely and evenly damp¬ 
ened count out a number of seeds and spread them on the flannel; cover 
with a piece of glass, and place the plate in a warm place—say on a 
shelf near the stove. In a few days such of the seeds as are vital will 
germinate, and the proportion of good seed will thus be ascertained, and 
form a guide to the quantity necessary to be sown. 
WORK FOR MARCH, 
The month of March may be said to fairly commence the work of 
preparing the land for the season’s crops all through the Southern States. 
Do not, however, be in too great a hurry to plant or sow crops. The 
land, as a rule, is still too cold for anything but oats, or early Irish pota¬ 
toes. These may be got in, especially the oats, at once, though in the 
upper sections of country the potato will be quite as well out of the 
ground till April. Instead of hastening to plant other crops than these, 
if your land is already plowed, devote the time to fitting it better for the 
reception of the seed, particularly the corn land. To secure the greatest 
yield, corn land should be deeply broken and finely worked. 
Buy a roller, or make one, and use it freely as soon as the land is dry 
enough not to stick to it. Wheat and oats should always be rolled. It 
remedies much of the injury done by the alternate freezes and thaws, 
consolidates the soil around the roots of the crops, and enables them to 
seize hold of the plant food in the soil and thicken the stand. Rolling 
also destroys much insect life on the younger plants. All grass land in¬ 
tended to be mown should be rolled, as it destroj'S grubs and insects 
infesting the roots, consolidates the land, making it easier to mow and 
rake with machines, besides making a quicker and denser growth. 
The land intended for tobacco should be plowed and broken as soon 
as possible. When setting out your land for the season’s crops, don’t 
forget to set out a plot, say of half an acre or an acre, of a fair average 
of the land of the whole farm, as an experiment plot. Let this be as 
near uniform in fertility, texture of soil, slope and aspect as can be. 
Divide it into plots, say of one-tenth of an acre each, extending the whole 
length of the plot, and leave between each plot a strip two or three feet 
wide. Here you should test different fertilizers and manures upon dif¬ 
ferent crops. It is the only way in which you can ascertain the require¬ 
ments of the farm. 
WORK FOR APRIL, 
To make a successful crop, corn needs to grow right away, from btart 
to finish, without check. The time of planting should be regulated by 
considerations of locality and weather. Too early planting is not to be 
advised anywhere. Experience points to the period between the middle 
of April and .middle of May as the best. As the land and atmosphere 
should be warm when the seed is planted, the time of planting should 
be subject to local climatic conditions being favorable. Care must be 
taken to give sufficient distance between the rows or checks to permit of 
40 
