The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
779 
S o y B e an s And Sudan Grass 
I have a three-acre tract that I would like to put into 
Sudan grass. Two of the three acres are in sod (sev¬ 
eral years old) aud I was wondering if I could plow it 
as early in the Spring as possible and disk and drag 
it until the middle of May. and then sow the Sudan 
and perhaps some Soy beans. The piece has been 
quite heavily manured for the three years we have lived 
here, and perhaps with another application of manure 
and some acid phosphate it would make some pretty 
fair hay. How much Sudan grass and how much Soy 
bean seed ought I to put in? J. c. w. 
Michigan. 
UDAN grass is a dry weather and light soil 
plant. It is an emergency hay crop of great 
value—standing considerable drought and 
heat. I do not believe that it would be ad¬ 
visable to put it in after sod. You have 
heavily manured the ground, and if you 
turn the sod in under the ground should be verJP r 
rich. Such soil can he better utilized for other 
crops than Sudan grass. 
Your idea of putting in Soy beans is very good 
and you should get good results by using Manchu 
or Ito San. You may drill in solid at the rate of 
one bushel to the acre, or if you want to row it like 
ordinary beans, three pecks would be enough. It 
would be advisable to inoculate the 
seed, which is an inexpensive and sim¬ 
ple operation. You could cut the Soy 
beans for hay and should obtain a 
very good yield of valuable leguminous 
hay crop. 
If you wish to mix the two, Soy 
beans and Sudan grass together, it 
would be well to use about 15 lbs. of 
Sudan grass to a bushel of Soy beans. 
Taking the crop off for hay you might 
get some late pasture from the Sudan 
grass provided moisture conditions are 
satisfactory. It is the nature of the 
Sudan grass, when cut off to make an 
aftermath growth, which provides a 
good pasture. 
In your territory you could well put 
in the Soy beans and Sudan grass 
about the middle to third week of May. 
Do not get them in too deep. Work 
the seed bed down well, and get the 
seed just nicely covered with good 
moist soil. This is particularly true 
with the Soys, as if you get them in 
too deep they will not come up through. 
Should a crust form on the soil use 
the harrow to break it; even though 
you dig out a few Soy bean plants 
you will be gaining. Soys are unable 
to push their way through a crust. 
A. L. B. 
Soy Beans and Sudan Grass on Damp Soil 
What do you think about growing Soy 
beans on a piece of ground that is blue 
clay, and has not been worked for about 
four years? How about mixing with 
Sudan grass and millet for the silo? 
Ground is very wet in a rainy season. I 
like to grow about two acres of Soy beans and four 
acres of Sudan grass and millet. s. L. J. 
New York. 
Soys are not well adapted to a clay soil. The 
trouble is that the clay is more than likely to crust, 
and the Soys cannot push their way up through a 
crust. Of course you can take a harrow and break 
this crust through and get the Soys started. An¬ 
other reason why I would hesitate recommending 
Soys for this piece of ground is because it’s so wet. 
Soys are more of an upland dry soil crop. They are 
quite resistant to droughts, but do not do particu¬ 
larly well where the ground is wet, this being es¬ 
pecially true of clay. 
The same thing is quite true with Sudan grass, 
although you would probably get better results with 
Sudan grass than you would with Soy beans, but 
Sudan grass is more of a dry soil, hot weather 
crop. 
Of the three crops, millet would be best adapted 
to your soil. Japanese millet is very good variety, 
but the Golden millet I believe will give you a bet¬ 
ter quality hay. The Hungarian millet is another 
very good variety, which on ordinary soil does not 
yield quite as well as the Golden variety, but the 
quality of the hay is a little liner. If you wish a 
good hay crop from this ground, it might be well 
to put in six pecks of oats with one bushel of 
Canada peas, cutting them green. This would fur¬ 
nish you a hay of a little higher feeding value 
than obtained from the millets, the yield also might 
be a little greater. It is more difficult to harvest 
such a hay crop, especially in a wet season. 
Should you decide to use millet Avould ndvise 
one of the above varieties, which should be seeded 
three or four pecks to the acre during the first two 
weeks of June in a well-prepared seed bed. Do not 
seed too deep, and should a crust form on the soil 
before the millet gets up through, it would be well 
to scratch the surface with a harrow, even though 
the millet seedings are disturbed. Be careful about 
feeding millet hay to horses. In other words, if 
you plan to use the hay for horse feed, cut the millet 
just after blooming time. Should you plan to use 
the hay for cattle and sheep, you may delay the 
cutting until seed reaches the late milk stage. 
A. L. B. 
Curing Soy Bean Hay 
On page 691 appears an excellent article by A. L. 
Bibbins on “Soy Beans, a Sure Hay Crop.” I agree 
with all that Mr. Bibbins says except the method 
of curing the hay. Curing in stack, as he suggests, 
is the way that I did when I first started. If 
the bean straw ration and cut on the clover, with a 
change in the milk flow that was noticeable. 
Ohio. CHAS. B. WING. 
Harold B. Tukey, whose notes on horticultural matters have become a 
standard feature of The R. N.-Y. 
weather is good this is all right, but weather isn’t 
always good. I complained of my trouble during 
bad weather when I was talking to another grower, 
and he said: “You aren't doing it right at all. There 
is just one way to cure Soy bean hay; mow it down, 
leave it in swath; go off and forget about it until 
it lias had about a week’s time to cure. If it rains 
never worry, and don’t go near it. When it is dry, 
stems and all, dry enough to go into the barn, go 
out early enough in the morning to rake when just 
a little bit tough. Rake it, load right onto the wa¬ 
gons and put it in.” I followed his instructions and 
they are absolutely all right. Rain does not hurt 
the plant when in swath. One year we had 
some that we were feeding from and did not want to 
put into the barn. Before we fed the last of it up 
six weeks had elapsed from time of mowing, but 
the cows licked it up clean and did well just the 
same. 
Do not forget that Soy bean straw from thrashed 
beans is an excellent forage, also I have fed it when 
I was sure that the results were better than from 
Medium clover hay. One year we had a stack of 
the thrashed straw, and nice clover hay at the same 
time. I had the man feed the milk cows part of 
each, because I feared that they would not do well 
on the bean straw alone. One day the cows acci¬ 
dentally got into the lot where the bean straw was, 
and ate all they wanted. Next day the man said: 
“Those cows gave more milk this morning. It must 
be the bean straw that did it.” I had him increase 
Regulations for Cider Makers 
S OME of our readers have seen the following 
statements printed in the daily papers and 
come to us to ask if they are correct: 
Free manufacture of apple cider will be permitted 
under newly codified prohibition regulations announced 
by the Treasury Department. 
These new regulations provide that a permit and 
bond will not be required for operation of a custom 
cider mill eugaged exclusively in manufacture of cider 
from apples owned by others, provided the freshly 
pressed cider or apple juice is removed promptly to the 
homes of the owners. 
If the proprietor engages in the manufacture of pre¬ 
served sweet cider or vinegar he must have a permit 
and give bond. 
When cider mill patrons take their cider home they, 
must not permit it to become hard or to turn to vine¬ 
gar. If it turns to vinegar they stand iu technical 
violation of the regulations as manufac¬ 
turers of vinegar. 
Sale of apparatus, appurtenances and 
materials for the manufacture of home 
brew is held illegal and prohibited 
by the regulations. It was under 
a test of such regulations that stores in 
Washington selling malt and hops and 
various bottling and other devices were 
raided and put out of business. 
The first statement about operation 
of cider mills without a permit or bond 
is correct. Farmers may have their 
apples crushed at local cider mills pro¬ 
vided they take the fresh cider prompt¬ 
ly home. When a part of the fresh 
‘ipplo juice is taken as toll by the cider 
mill owner it may be sold for imme¬ 
diate removal or taken to the home of 
the proprietor. A farmer may produce 
cider vinegar for his own use, but if 
he produces either vinegar stock or 
vinegar for sale he must have a per¬ 
mit. “Preserved sweet cider” is de¬ 
fined in law to be cider which has been 
pasteurized and put in airtight pack¬ 
ages while hot or treated with ben¬ 
zoate of soda—not less than four 
ounces to the 50-gallon barrel. The 
manufacture of such preserved cider 
is permitted. “Vinegar” must contain 
4 per cent of acetic acid and cider con¬ 
taining 1% per cent is considered 
“vinegar stock.” The object of these 
cider regulations is to encourage the 
sale of the fresh, non-intoxicating ap¬ 
ple juice and to regulate as far as 
possible the sale of “hard” cider. It 
would be a great national blessing if 
apple juice could be substituted for the 
vast amount of soft drinks annually poured down 
the American throat. Prohibition has brought an im¬ 
mense increase in the consumption of fruit juices, 1 
and it may yet be doubled. 
Starting an Orchard with Seedlings 
S EVERAL months ago a correspondent wrote ask¬ 
ing advice as to planting an orchard, using 
seedlings growing around in fields on the farm. 
Quite a discussion followed. Everyone writing, I 
believe, advised against it. At the time I was 
tempted to write taking the other view of the ques¬ 
tion, but decided it was not wise to go against the 
advice of more experienced fruit-growers. How¬ 
ever, after going over about BOO young trees today 
that I have produced by the very method he sug¬ 
gested, I feel I am safe in saying that very good 
results can be obtained in this way. I might also 
say that the head of our horticultural department 
at the State Experiment Station saw some of these 
trees a few days ago and called them good. 
If money was no consideration 1 might prefer 
nursery stock, but I am not so sure of that either, 
as I have two-year-old Rome Beauty trees grafted 
on seedling stock growing alongside of four-year-old 
nursery Romes. Afany of the latter are worthless 
and will have to be pulled out, while the former are 
great thrifty fellows, some of them with several 
blooms this year. 
In producing these trees I followed three different 
methods. Of course in digging the seedlings I aimed 
