Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 January 1880 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

Dom t store oelery too early. Don’t jover strawberry beds until after the ground is frozen an inch in depth. A bepobt is made to the California Academy of Sciences that sulphate of iron (copperas) is a remedy for mildew and grape-rot. A mixture of four pounds to five of water is applied to the stems of the vine. Hon. James Wilson, of lowa, says; “Just now there is a great demand for feeding steers, which is an evidence of something lacking. The most profitable way to manage is to raise the steers you feed, as you rarely can buy firstclass animals. It takes care to reach the point when you are possessed of first-class young nteers, and those who are enterprising enough to raise good steers are generally wise enough to feed them.”

Pebiods of Milking.— A cow that is milked three times a day will give more milk and yield more cream than one that is milked at intervals of twelve hours. When the udder is filled a process of absorption goes on, and part of the milk thus secreted is thus lost. It will pay to tike the milk from copious milkers at intervals of eight hours as nearly as possible. A cow that is milked at 5 in the morning, 1 in the afternoon, and 9 at night will yield from 10 to 20 per cent, more milk and more cream than if milked twice a day. Many a Little, Etc. —To plant one grain of wheat, in the hope of in a few years producing enough to seed a field, may seem to many as a hopeless task. But we do not realize the vast increase which is made in the produce of a single grain in the course of a few years. Plant one grain this year and gather fifty from it and repeat, and the third year the harvest will be a peck; but the sixth year the product will be 15,000 bushels, and the twelfth harvest would be sufficient to supply the whole population of the world for their natural lives. This fact may tend to show what may be gained by a courso of persevering industry and economy in the pursuit of agriculture and the rewards which are offered for honest work in the labor for which our race was first created—the cultivation of the soil. Potato Culture. —A writer in the English Agricultural Gazette says: “ The crown-eyes of the potato are the only ones which yield vigorous plants; the*produce of the other eyes is feeble and unremunerative. If, therefore, potatoes are cut for seed, they should not (as is usual) be cut in their length, by which the crown is divided and eyes of all kinds introduced into the seed, but they should be cut across, the half containing the crown-eyes planted and the other half consumed as food. The very best results are obtained. when largo potatoes are taken, all eyes excepting those of the crown cut out, and the whole remaining potato planted. Stealer points out that the potato is an underground stem, and the crowneyes the buds at the end of the branch. But the terminal buds of a branch are always far more vigorous than the lateral buds, as any one may ascertain for himself by watching the growth of trees and shrubs. The degeneration of varieties of potatoes is believed by some of the German writers to be largely due to repeated propogation from small potatoes and feeble buds. The two laws of propagation noticed are strikingly illustrated by the experiments of Franz. His experiments were carried out in garden soil; tho crop obtained is given below in tons per acre: Tubers divided in their length, per acre 5 Whole tubers 7*4 Crown half of tubers WJj Whole tubers, eyes other than crown re moved 11)4 Derschler and Fesca have experimented on the same subject; all of them conclude that whole tubers yield a much higher produce than tubers divided in their length; also, that the crown half of the potato yields a decidedly larger crop than the half obtained by division through tho length; but they do not, like Franz, find that tho crown half is generally superios to the whole tubers. Derschler, from the results, concludes that the crown half is superior to a whole potato when it is cut from a larger tuber than that with which it is compared.