Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1899 — TOPICS FOR FARMERS. [ARTICLE]

TOPICS FOR FARMERS.

A DEPARTMENT PREPARED FOR OUR RURAL FRIEND& Sone Facta About the Cow Pea-How to Girdle Grape* Transplanting Lettuce-Care of the Strawberry Eed —To Check the Heeaian Fly. The cow pea is not a pea In habit, but a bean. There is a number of varieties. Some varieties grow like a bush; others have trailing runners that grow 15. to 20 feet in length. The whippoorwill is a cow pea. Sow broadcast or in drills, 18 to 30 inches apart* The average quantity of seed to the acre is a bushel to a bushel and a half. They must be planted when the ground is warm and dry. In soil in that condition the peas may be covered three Inches deep. In the North there have been many failures in growing them, ft is said, because they were planted before the ground was warm enough. However that may be, as they were originally a tropical plant, it is better not to plant as early as we would the ordinary garden pea. If the vines have plenty of room the yield of peas will be better. The yield from late planting in tbe South is better than from early planting. The varieties that make the heaviest yield of vines will also produce the largest crop of peas. When the peas are well forced and the pods begin to turn yellow, cut for hay. In the South they permit the vines to lay on the ground, in windrows, for twenty-four hours, or even longer, after cutting; then place them in small thin cocks, where they cure for several days, when the hay Is put under cover. They are somewhat difficult to cure. In the green state they equal, if they do not surpass, any succulent food, for swine. Hogs will fatten upon them as they will upon alfalfa, and will need only a little topping off with corn. Fifteen to twenty hogs cab be kept for a number of weeks on an acre of cow peas. Cattle and horses also do well upon them, but It is safer to soil such stock, and never to turn it into the field. It is true that some of our Northern experiment stations report that cattle will not eat cow peas unless they are starved to it. In the South no such complaint is made, at least not generally. The varieties that are best adapted to the North are—unknown, clay, whippoorwill, red ripper, goard und "black. It is not necessary to sow oats with them. It is necessary to procure seed that has been acclimated in the North.—Martin Hewes in Epitomist.

Transplanting Lettuce.

Even a small head of letutce may be made to produce a good supply for the family, if, after it is pulled and the leaves are trimmed off for use, the root Is carefully set out in a rich place and shaded until it has established itself. It is a surprise how readily transplanted lettuce will grow. When it starts from the seed the lettuce grows slowly. But in transplanting a great number of new roots put forth, and these make tender and succulent lettuce leaves, 'which are much better than Those growing slowly. Often heads of letutce that have been transplanted once or twice will on a single plant produce enough for a small family, and most of this growth is made within two or three weeks from the previous •cutting and transplanting. In fact, so successful is this method that some housewives take up lettuce plants in the fall and try to grow them in tubs filled with rich soil in the house. But the conditions cannot be kept in most farm houses like those of summer out •of doors. In a greenhouse with bottom heat lettuce can be grown in winter as well as in summer. It needs less heat than most other hot bouse plants, and can be grown farthest from the fire, but must always be well supplied with water.

Hog Bristle*.

The Siberian bristle Industry has buen seriously affected, because the majority of those firms engaged in manufacturing the product are badly crippled on account of the scarcity of labor. To such an extent has this Industry been Interfered with that it is said this year’s output will be less than twothlrds of the normal. This opens up to the American hog a destiny beyond lard, bacon and ham. For years Russia, or rather Siberia, has been the home of the hog that produces the great “okatka,” the bristle from which brushes are made. Next year’s collection of the raw bristles will be less than one-half of the usual quantity, and as the tendency of late years tn the brush trade has been toward the use of higher grades of goods, and as almost 80 per cent of this class of goods come to the American market, the price cannot fail to be affected.—New York Tribune. Girdling Grapes. Among the many artificial expedients for making plants do as one wishes, that of girdling or ringing the grape, which Is now and then practiced by horticulturists, la not the least curious and interesting, says the Homestead. It consists of the entire removal of the bark just below the fruit cluster about a month before the time of ripening. Its effect is to hasten the ripening by a week or two and to increase the size of the fruit The sap ascends through the pores of the wood and sustains growth, but on descending the elaborated sap, which passes down between the wood and the bark, can go no lower than the point where the vine has been gMM. It stope there and goes to feeding the bunch of grapes growing at that point Of course ringbranches It is evident that all that

part of the vine below the cut will suffer the following year, and thatth* entire vine itself would be permanent-' ly Injured and perhaps destroyed if the practice were made at all general. As an interesting experiment, however, to be made on branches that one thinks of removing anyhow, a trial of ringing -will furnish an interesting study to those curious in such matters. The Strawberry Bed. If the strawberry bed, set last spring, has got the start of you, cultivate between the rows until the ground is as mellow as an ash heap and every weed dead. File your hoe and go at the weeds in the row between plants. Limit the runners to four or five to the hill, or if you want big berries, cut off and keep off every runner. Let no weeds grow, and manure with wood ashes, hen manure (in moderation), pig ure or sheep manure, as close to the hill as you dare. Remember that strawberry plants do not root deep or wide. The plant food you supply must be close and near the top. If you cut off all runners and depend on the main plant to bear fruit, you will get fine, big fruit, easily picked,- and there will be nothing to prevent clean culture. In fact, the laziest way to grow strawberries is to plant three feet apart each way, cut off all runners, keep bed clean by horse power, make it rich and let it bear as long as plants are thrifty, four or five years, probably. Too many runners and too much grass makes small berries and weak plants.—The Farmer.

Insanity in the Lower Animal*.

Darwin declared that Insanity was not peculiar to human beings, and asserted'that other animals often become insane. According to Dr. Snellson, the lower animals, without exception, at times labor under delusions like those of insane beings. They work themselves Into a frenzy of Insanity, and this is applicable to birds, cats, dogs, monkeys, cattle and horses. Mr. Richard Kearton gives instances of birds developing forms of insanity. Razor-bills, he says, are somewhat shy birds, and yet on one occasion when 250 Dutch fishing boats landed at the capital of the Shetlands, in order to hold their annual feast before starting summer herring-catching, and the place was literally crowded, a razorbill came in from sea, and began to cut such odd capers within a dozen yards of tbe crowded esplanade as made everybody who saw it wonder. He also instances a form of mental aberration in a young eider duck.

Acid Fruit May Be Sweet.

There is a distinction often forgotten between the words sour and acid as applied to fruit. Sour fruit, of course, must be acid, though it may be more than offset by saccharine material, which neutralizes the acid taste. On the other hand, the poorest of all fruit may be that which is only slightly sour to the taste, but contains very little sweetness. Some of the best grapes ace soar, but when their juice is made into wine it shows that they have a high degree of sweetness also. Wellripened grapes of so-called sour varieties are much better than the comparatively tasteless kinds like Adirondack and Creveling, though the latter when not contrasted with the best grapes are commonly pronounced “good” by inexperienced Judges of fruit. The taste for good fruit can be cultivated. In the beginning of their experience with fruits most people are well satisfied with kinds that, after they have grown and eaten those which are better, they would consider scarcely eatable.

Bachelor Corn Stalk*.

Wherever corn is planted on poor soil or too thickly on good soil some of the stalks will not silk or form ears. These are called bachelor corn stalks, having only the male blossom, which Is found in the tassel. The female blossom is the silk, which has as many threads as there will be grains of corn on the. ear. The pollen from the tassels is blown about by winds so that only a few grains of the corn ts fertilized from the tassel on the stalk where it grew. Some farmers believe it an advantage to go through their corn fields and cut off the tassels of all stalks that do not show any signs of forming ears. By preventing these from fertilizing any of the corn the barren stalks are suppressed, thus securing a strain that will produce no stalks that do not bear at least one ear. There are some kinds of sweet corn and pop corn that bear two, three or more ears on a stalk. In most cases such ears are small, but the corn ripens early, and is generally more productive of sound grain than the larger ears that grow one to a stalk.

Checks to the Hessian Fly.

Since the habits of the Hessian fly are better understood farmers have'learned how to make it much less destructive than it was when first Introduced. The paras Hes that kept it in check in Europe were not brought over with the first importations, and it seemed when it first began its ravages that it must make an end of wheat-growing. It Is noticed, wherever this pest appears, that it Is worse for one or two years than it is afterwards. Seeding so late that the frost comes before the fly can lay her eggs is an effective preventive. The fly will not lay her eggs after frost has touched the leaves, though there may De much warm growing weather thereafter. In most cases the fly finds scattering wheat from grain wasted at harvest. Al such wheat sholuld be plowed under. We have known small pieces of wheat to be sown for the pm> .pose of attracting the fly. By plowing these under after frost came, a crop of wheat could be grown free from this peat. Naturally the Hessian fly la wore* for Southern wheat growers, aa the frost in such localities often bold* off until November, leaving not enough time for the wheat* to get a tuft growth that will stand the winter.