934 
Jht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
June 28, 1924 
All Sorts 
Some Notes on Seeds and Seasons 
With us in Monroe Co., N. Y., the sea¬ 
son has been unusually backward, es¬ 
pecially the month of May, so that both 
garden and field work has been greatly 
retarded. I have noticed some, to me, 
ratlxer unusual performances in regard 
to vitality in seeds planted this Soring. 
Onion seed was so long germinating 
that a crop appeared out of the ques¬ 
tion' still at the present writing I 
never had them looking more promising. 
One'row of Golden Wax beans was plant¬ 
ed May 2, entirely too early to plant 
beans unless the weather was unusually 
favorable, and I always take a chance 
on at least One row. These beans were 
in the ground until the last of May. As 
all well-bred and well-behaved beans 
•should be found rotted under the sea¬ 
son’s conditions, I supposed this to hap¬ 
pen to them. The row was well worked 
over with the little cultivator and an¬ 
other row planted on June 2 beside the 
first, and the earth turned back to cover 
it, .and rolled down. After all this 
tiipe and after such treatment those first 
beans, after being in the ground so 
long, came up and are growing very 
fast, and will give us early beans. The 
later planting are also up and doing 
business. Last season some early- 
planted corn passed through the same 
experience, and still gave us our earliest, 
corn. 
One of my neighbors once planted a 
field to beans; the soil was a strong 
loam, inclined to a clayey nature. These 
beans were so long showing that he be¬ 
came discouraged, worked the ground 
oyer, and planted again, but did not get 
tfie rows in the same place with those 
first planted. Most of the first plant¬ 
ing came after this, but the plants were 
not in the same row, and this bothered 
ip cultivating. I believe that in both 
gjirden and field work, there are times 
and conditions where some such heroic 
treatment would save the crop. Still 
it ' requires some nerve to operate in 
•such cases. As the bean plant is sup¬ 
posed to be well above ground in five 
days after the seed is planted, it is 
rather out of the usual for them to 
stow good healthy growth after 24 days 
of seclusion. The one redeeming fea¬ 
ture in planting and growing garden and 
field crops is that there are so many 
interesting things arising continually, 
and so different from the case in any 
other line of business. We must credit 
this up not to cash, but as educational, 
and one can get a fairly good education 
by the time he is 70 if he is so in¬ 
clined. H. E. COX. 
: Monroe Co., N. Y. 
Fertilizer to Hasten Maturity 
Will commercial fertilizer, put around 
my tomato plants after they have been 
set in the field help to mature the crop 
earlier, or tend to increase the yield? 
Amsterdam, N. Y. J. o. H. 
It would depend on what the ferti¬ 
liser is made of. If very high in nitro¬ 
gen the effect would be to prolong 
growth and delay ripening. Nitrate of 
soda is sometimes used alone for that 
purpose. Phosphorus and potash tend 
to hasten maturity by stimulating seed 
formation. A fertilizer low in nitrogen 
but high in phosphorus would act to 
hasten maturity and make the crop 
earlier. 
Culling Out the Apple Drones 
It gave me great pleasure to read on 
page 86G that there is another grower in 
the Hudson Valley who has the “courage 
of his convictions” and “practices what 
he preaches.” I have been doing this for 
some time, though I have been called a 
“crank” and worse for so doing. And let 
me say that while I have a large acreage, 
I have not so many trees, for I want 
plenty of daylight, or rather sunlight, be¬ 
tween them. In fact, three of my neigh¬ 
bors have as many McIntosh trees a© I 
have of all varieties together, and another 
grower, not far away, has just 10 times 
as many. And the result of this will be 
that a lot of "bum” McIntosh apples will 
go into market and ruin it for all of us. 
For no one can take care of a great quan¬ 
tity of McIntosh, and even an over-ripe 
McIntosh is a “bum” apple. 
I cut down a large number of Opales¬ 
cent trees just in full bearing, because I 
found them to be a low quality apple and 
injurious to the trade. And I cut down 
a lot of Maiden Blush and York Imperial 
for the same reason. 
I also cut down a large number of 
Wealthy trees, because the market was 
glutted with that variety, and for the 
same reason I grafted this year a block of 
50 Duchess to early and late McIntosh 
and Cortland apples. At the end of this 
season I expect to cut down 100 20-year- 
old Rome Beauty trees. * I had kept this 
low variety on for sale in the late season, 
when everything else was out of the mar¬ 
ket. But on account of storage I found 
it was coming into competition with the 
Baldwin and Greening, so down 
in this matter, for I am not! I find it 
practical, profitable and so much more 
satisfactory every way to everybody. It 
simply works out this way : I devote to 
one high-grade tree the care that was for¬ 
merly given to two, and I directly derive 
great benefit by the change, and you do 
indirectly, for I’ve changed from a bear 
to a bull in the apple market. 
Two years ago a buyer gave me more 
for 100 barrels of Newtowns than he gave 
a neighbor for 2,000. My man and his 
wife picked and put mine up in a little 
over a week, while my neighbor worked 
with a gang a good part of the season to 
harvest his. And later in the year the 
buyer wrote me to say that he had never 
handled any apples which had given such 
universal satisfaction. 
The cost of producing a barrel of ap¬ 
ples is so great now, and in an average 
year the crop is so large, and with the 
European outlet almost negligible, there 
is great chance for the grower to lose in 
one season what it has taken him several 
to make. And if the blue sky is to be the 
limit for planting, I can see no hope for 
any improvement in the market, and at 
present that is a toss-up between profit 
and loss. harvey losee. 
Dutchess Co., N. Y. 
Sanitary Toilet 
Would you tell me how to build an out¬ 
door sanitary closet where no flies could 
get to it? We have tuberculosis in our 
family and do not like the idea of flies 
going from the closet to the house, etc. 
Wooster, O. R. 
The U. S. Public Health Service, 
Washington, D. C. has published several 
pamphlets illustrating and describing 
sanitary privies for rural homes, and 
these will be sent you upon application 
to the address as above. Like many 
other Government efforts, most of these 
appear more strenuous than practical, 
but you may get suggestions that are 
worth while and incorporate the useful 
ideas in a plan of your own. There is 
no difficulty in making a privy vault fly- 
tight ; simply make it fly-tight. Seat 
covers should be permanently hinged and 
well fitted; closet doors should be 
properly fitted and hung, and window 
openings should be protected by fly 
screens. That is all that there is to it. 
Open, insanitary closet© are not open 
and a source of danger because of the 
difficulty in making them safe, but be¬ 
cause they are considered of so little im¬ 
portance that any cheaply-built structure 
is made to do. Flies are admitted to 
kitchens and dining-rooms, not because 
they cannot be shut out, but because, in 
too many families, they are considered, 
like violets and roses, a part of the glad¬ 
some Summer season. If some respon¬ 
sible member of the family could see the 
fly that has drowned itself in baby’s milk 
A nr,i rl a/1 + li nAn erli t li a r, aI-I -*-v O A 4* -pii tli amV i 
filth of the family privy, gathering in the 
ooze between its toes any typhoid, or 
other, disease germs that might be there, 
there would be a prompt visit to the hard¬ 
ware store for some fly-screening ma¬ 
terial and an hour or two spent in mak¬ 
ing fly-proof the family toilet out in the 
backyard. 
If wire screen© cannot be afforded, 
mosquito netting is very cheap and will 
last at least one season, tacked over the 
outside of window frames. If the closed 
end of a flour sack is wound, for three or 
four inches of its length, about the end 
of a piece of old broom handle and the 
free portion of the sack is then cut into 
strips, an excellent fly chaser is made, 
with which the children can clear the 
dining-room of flies before dinner, and 
usually without knocking the clock off 
the mantelpiece. That is better than to 
have them swarming over the table as the 
family is eating, but far inferior to keep¬ 
ing them out of the house entirely and to 
preventing their breeding in countless 
numbers by keeping the manure piles of 
the horse barn cleaned up during the 
Spring and Summer. 
Flies are wholly an unnecessary nuis¬ 
ance ; we put up with them simply be¬ 
cause we have become used to them, as 
Job did to boils. I have eaten at a well- 
to-do family table where I hesitated to 
lay down my fork, for fear of killing a 
score or two of more or less innocent 
creatures, while the rest of the family 
did nothing more than to gently wave a 
hand over the plate if the flies gathered 
in such number as to obscure view of the 
food. The well-built kitchen and dining¬ 
room could easily have been screened, 
and the family could afford to go to the 
expense, but it never entertained the 
idea that flies could carry disease, so 
easily, too, that the house-fly has been 
named the typhoid fly, or that they could 
inspire disgust when wandering over the 
butter plate or buzzing in the sugar 
Don’t think I am a Don Quixote person 
vi »» u wv v* v/uj^n mv ovjlv ^ , vi r> 
pie previously disporting itself in the 
AVe have all heard of pigs in clover. This pig seems to have had about all the clover 
he wants—or perhaps he is suspicious of the boy—from past experience. We are told 
to beware of the Greeks (or mischievous boys) when they come with gifts, and this 
pork maker doesn’t intend to spill the beans of his comfort. But every pig should 
have a chance to get out at grass and clover, especially during his youth. That will 
give him bone and frame, which will fill out with fat later. 
bowl. No, what we need i© not better 
method of getting rid of flies; it is a 
little more commendable finickiness in 
our habits. m. b. d. 
Rights Under Joint Deeds 
Will you tell me the meaning, when 
buyers, in New York State, take deed as 
follows: 
■ 1. As joint tenants or joint owners. 
2. As tenants (or owners) by the en¬ 
tirety. 
3. As tenants (or owners) in common. 
A brother and sister, or a man and 
wife, taking a deed in either of above 
words, on death of one to whom does the 
property go? In either case, can one sell 
their half interest to another person, or 
must both join in deed in selling? 
New Jersey. a. b. b. 
Joint tenancy occurs between persons 
other than husband and wife, and the sur¬ 
vivor takes all the property. Tenancy by 
the entirety occurs between husband and 
wife only; the survivor takes all. Ten¬ 
ants in common, each holds an undivided 
share in the property in question, and at 
their death their share goes to their 
heirs. In the case of joint tenants either 
tenant may dispose of his share by deed 
or otherwise. n. t. 
EVENTS OF THE WEEK 
DOMESTIC.—Three officers and 45 
men of the battleship Mississippi were 
killed June 12 on the San Clemente fleet 
drill grounds off San Diego, Cal., when a 
shell in one of the 14-in. guns of the 
ship’© No. 2 turret exploded prematurely. 
The switch was thrown to ignite the shell 
before the breech was locked, and instant¬ 
ly the turret was littered with dead and 
dying. The mistake caused the terrific 
charge to come through the breech of the 
gun instead of out through the muzzle. 
Threats to blow up the morgue containing 
the bodies of the victims, said by police 
to have been uttered by radicals, whose 
hall was raided and wrecked by sailors at 
San Pedro, Cal., June 14, caused a strong 
armed guard of civilian and naval police 
to be thrown about the morgue June 15. 
The guard was placed a© the result of 
information said to have been given to 
Police Lieut. Ilollowell to the effect that 
members of the Industrial Workers of the 
AA'orld planned to dynamite the morgue 
in retaliation for the attack on their meet¬ 
ing place. 
William AV. Barr was electrocuted at 
Uxbridge, Mass., June 15, when he at¬ 
tempted to climb a fence charged with cur¬ 
rent from a high-tension wire carrying 
13,000 volts. He was on his way to aid in 
extinguishing a forest fire. 
A Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul 
mail train from Chicago, en route to St. 
Paul, was held up and robbed June 12 at 
Rondout, Ill., 32 miles north of Chicago, 
by bandits riding in four automobiles. 
The robbers took 40 pouches of registered 
mail containing bond© and currency. Local 
bank officials estimate the loss at $1,000,- 
000. The bandits used chlorine gas to 
subdue the mail clerks. One wounded 
bandit and several suspects have been ar¬ 
rested. 
A storm which swept all South Dakota 
June 14, assuming tornadic proportions in 
a score of localities, took a toll of at lea©t 
five lives, and caused great property loss. 
Great injury was done to growing crops. 
Excessive property damage was done in 
Wessington Springs and over the country¬ 
side for a radius of 20 miles. Estimates 
of damage range from $500,000 to $1,000,- 
000 . 
June 10 Treasury agents in New York 
©eized illicit narcotic drugs smuggled in 
from Germany on the President Roosevelt 
of the United 1 States Lines, the consign¬ 
ment being valued at over $1,000,000. The 
drugs were concealed in cases of scrub¬ 
bing brushes, which were supposed to be 
trans-shipped to the West Indies. 
To blow out a big tree stump Arthur 
Rouss of AVhite Lake, Sullivan Co., N. Y., 
June 13. got a stick of dynamite, with the 
use of which he was not familiar. It ex¬ 
ploded in his hand, destroying one eye, 
severely injuring the other and cut his 
hands, arms and legs. He is in serious 
condition. 
Coming Farmers’ Meetings 
June 25-26—Field days, Federation of 
Horticultural Societies and Floral Clubs, 
New York State Agricultural College, 
Ithaca, N. Y. 
July 14-15—New York State A>go- 
table Growers’ Association, first Summer 
meeting, Mineola, L. I. Secretary, T. H. 
Townsend. 
Sept. 22-28—Fifteenth annual Dairy 
Cattle Congress, Waterloo, la. 
Sept. 27-Oc-t. 4—National Dairy Ex¬ 
position, Milwaukee, Wis. 
Nov. 1-8—Fourteenth annual Pacific 
International Live Stock Exposition, 
Portland. Ore. 
Teacher : “Tommy, give me three 
proofs that the world is round.” Tommy : 
“Well, you say so, pa says so and ma says 
so.”—London Answers. 
Wife: “D’ye know you’re growing 
quite handsome, John?” Husband: “Yes, 
Mary; it’s a way I have when it gets 
anywhere near your birthday.”—Tit-Bit©. 
