Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 September 1878 — AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC. [ARTICLE]

AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC.

Around the Farm. According to a French horticulturist, the occasional bitter taste of cucumbers is entirely due to immoderately alow growth. The prevention is judicious watering in time of drought, but when cold is responsible for the mischief treatment is not so clear. A very prominent leak on a great many farms is found in the careless manner in which the owner allows his stock to destroy both the growing and matured crops, and it is no uncommon thing, where this kind of a leak is allowed on a farm, to find the farmer firstrate in helping to drain his neighbor’s farm in the same way. Nothing can be done for black knot in plum trees but to cut out the diseased part, or the parts showing any kind of disease, and burn them. If the trees are very badly affected, burn all of them. It will be of no use to try to grow healthy plums if your neighbors have diseased trees, so you should induce them also to cut out and destroy the black knots. — Toronto Globe. The most active fertilizers for wheat in the autumn are Peruvian guano and nitrate of soda, but it is not advisable to use these as early as October, except in small quantity, as they are very soluble and quickly washed away by the fall rains. One hundred pounds of either are sufficient at this time, and an equal quantity may be used in the spring.— American Agriculturist. I would recommend the following as a sure cure for gapes in chickens. It has been tried repeatedly by myself and several others in the neighborhood, and has always proved effectual: To every 100 chickens take three teaspoonfuls of tincture of assafoetida and mix it daily in their food. There is no patent on this—it is an old remedy for the ailment. — Cor. Moore's Rural.

During the past week, a couple of days have been devoted to destroying caterpillars, which at this season infest the orchard. We used a wagon, driving it between the rows, and severing the nests from the tree, then throwing them into a box, when they were afterward burned. If every orchardist would follow this system up, in a few years we might almost free our State of these pests.— Cor. Chicago Tribune. “ Waldo ” says, in the Ohio Farmer, that th 1 ? more he experiments with it the less he likes the drilled corn. If he could always do the plowing himself, and choose his own tools, he could get a field of drilled corn tended well, but it is hard to get hands to do it rightly. He is satisfied that there will be less corn drilled in the next five years than in the past five. In traveling on the cars, three or four years ago, he paid careful attention to the corn, and found it the rule to drill and the exception to hill. Recently in traveling he counted 100 fields, 83 of which were hilled and 17 drilled. The marked success which has attended the seeding of timothy in the fall is making that the favorite season for towing meadows. Some, however, make a mistake by not making the ground as rich as possible. We should prefer to manure heavily, plant to early potatoes, and dig them early in September. Then, by plowing the ground well, and sowing and rolling at once, we should, in favorable seasons, have a meadow that would yield a ton and a half of fine hay the first season. When manure is not attainable oat stubble may be turned under with good results. Should the grass grow too large before freezing, it may be slightly pastured; but too much will do it injury.— Cor. Chicago Tribune. Cows accustomed to a great variety of food are invariably good eaters, and almost always heavy milkers. Thus, the best cows in the neighborhood are usually those of poor men, whose one cow is made a pet of, and has all sorts of food. Such cows are usually a good bargain at almost any price, though they rarely do as well when taken from their own old homes and turned in with the less-varied fare accorded to larger herds. Milkmen have learned that it is important to give cows a variety of food. Hence their purchases of bran, meal, roots and oil-cake. It may not pay farmers to take so much pains, but they can promote the thrift of their herds and their own profits by changing the animal’s food as often as possible.— Cor. Country Gentleman. Orchard in Grass.—An old friend writes us ; “ There is a great deal of nonsense talked and written about apple trees requiring cultivated ground. The reason why the trees do not do so well when the ground is in grass is because it is not grazed and kept short as it is in England, where all the orchards, or at least ninety-nine out of 100, are kept in grass, and never, under any circumstances, plowed. But the grass is grazed with sheep and calves and never mowed, as it is well known to be wrong to grow what is not returned to the soil in some shape. Americans do not understand the difference between the fine old permanent sod, which is never plowed, and the timothy and clover temporary grass here. When the sward is grazed in England, there is nothing to prevent sun and air from benefiting the roots, and the sheep lie a good deal under the trees and leave droppings and urine.— Rural New Yorker.