Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1880 — FARM NOTES. [ARTICLE]

FARM NOTES.

Plant Peach Orchards.—My advice to Kansas farmers is to plant orchards, peach in abundance (seedlings) add to them every year. When they cease to bear, the trees make good fuel— H. C., St. Clair, Belle Plaine, Kan. Ft.ay on Sod.—My experience two seasons, one wet and the other dry, is that prairie sod, no matter how early turned, rota better, is more free of weeds and grass after a crop of flax than uncropped sod broken in May or June. — D. H”. 8., Grinnell, lowa. Tillering of Wheat.—My experience and oliservatjon, as well as experiments, all lead to the conclusion that wheat does not tiller; that one grain brings to perfection only one stalk bearing from twelve (the lowest I ever counted) to eighty-six perfect grains found on one stalk last season.— B. IP. T., Shelbyville, 111. Insects on House Plants. —Place the pota on a table or platform on which there is an inch or two of sand. Cover them with any inverted vessel, the sand making the edges fit closely. Or place over them a light frame or a support, and cover them with a doth. Then burn tobacco under the cover, and let the smoke remain fifteen minutes. This is better than syringing, liecause the smoke penetrates every corner and crevice. When the open soil is infested with insects, caused by a free use of fertilizers, a good remedy is to cover it when dry with a fourth of an inch of s<x>t and water liberally, which kills the insect and leaves the plants. Seeding for Immediate Pasture.— On land plowed last fall, or in cornstidks, we would advise sowing, as soon as the land is in order in spring, a bushel of oats per acre, with a peck of timothy, ten pounds of red clover, two of white, and a few pounds of blue grass. Keep off the cattle till the oats have covered the ground; then, if you do not stock too heavily, you will have pasture continuously. Seeding down on spring plowing is uncertain, if the season is dry. The increased interest in cattle-growing will demand a largely-increased acreage in grass, and many farmers, we find, are needing pasturage the coining summer who have made no move so far toward it. We have tried the above plan and succeeded very well. The oats disappear in July, but the timothy will then be abundant.—Hon. James Wilson. The Lily in Gardens. —The Gardener's Monthly says that as a general thing the lily is not a success in most gardens. This is, however, chiefly from improper soil being used} or their being placed in improper situations. The plants rather like the open sunlight, but the roots abominate hot ground, especially when stiff or clayey. In Prof. Sargent’s grounds at Brookline, Mass., they are planted with the rhododendrons, and are a magnificent success. Here the rhododendrons shield the bulbs from the hot sun. It is beside an excellent idea, as a mere matter of garden taste, for the rhododendrons are all over blossoming before the lilies flower, and so tlie flowering of the beautifid evergreens seems to be prolonged till late in the summer, when the lilies disappear. Sheep Sheltered and Exposed.— Lord Ducie had 100 sheep placed in a shed, which ate twenty pounds of Swedish turnips per day per head; another 100 in the open air ate twenty-five pounds per head per day -for a certain period. When they were weighed the former lot averaged a grain over thirty pounds per head over the latter. In another experiment five sheep were fed in the open aii' between the 21st of November and the Ist of December, at a mean temperature of 44 degrees. They consumed ninety pounds of food per day. At the end of this time they were weighed and had lost two pounds each. In a shed five other sheep were placed and allowed to run at a temperature of 49 degrees; they consumed at first eightytwo pounds of food, but fell off to seventy pounds per day, and increased in weight twenty-three pounds.— American Agriculturist.

To Make Cider Vinegar. —The Ohio Farmer gives the following: To make good vinegar the cider need not be pure. One-fourth water, one-fourth good vinegar, and one-half cider, if placed in casks partly filled and kept in a warm place, will make good vinegar in a short time. Where vinegar is not convenient, put a piece of dough or lean meat in each cask. The rapid process is to fill a cask—set on end, with upper head removed—twothirds full of beech shavings which have been previously scalded aud saturated with vinegar. Then compel the cider to drip through these shavings, by means of numerous small holes filled with bits of thread. A process rapid enough for home manufacture is as follows: Place the cask in a warm place, with a gallon or more of vinegar in it; add a pint of cider for each week till the cask is full. If you put in a gallon of vinegar at first, add a pint of cider, then, in a week, a little more than a pint, the third time about a pint and a half, and so on, the addition becoming larger each week. Save the Coal Ashes. —lt is not generally appreciated how much heavy soils can be benefited by the use of coal ashes, now generally wasted or applied to the roads. Vick says, in his estimable monthly magazine, that it is quite satisfactorily shown that coal ashes, though not having manurial value sufficient to warrant any expense for carriage or long hauling, may with advantage be spread upon the ground where they are produced. Mixed with heavy soils, their mechanical effect is to lighten it and make it porous and friable. A number of experiments with coal ashes, publicly reported within the last year or two, leave ifo doubt that they have at least some slight value as manure, and that mixed with heavy land their effect is very beneficial. Upon this subject a practical cultivator, through the columns of a late, number of a British journal, gives the following advice and corroborative testimony: “A third part of ashes to two-thirds of soil will not be too, much. Yon will very likely not have enough to do this at once, therefore use what you have and repeat the dressing again and again till the soil, however wet it may be, parts readily from the tool. It may require three or four years to accomplish this if you have only the ashes of an ordinary household at your disposal. But pray remember that once well done it will give you no further trouble; for not only do ashes lighten a heavy soil, but they also render material assistence to its drainage, and it becomes so porous that the passage of ram water is secured; hence it is comparatively dry, and warm, it is open to the action of the air and is therefore sweetened and made more fertile.”