Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1906 — FARM GARDEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARM GARDEN

> CANADA THISTLE. Hint* For Kill in* It In Small Patehea or Lar*er Arena. We Have had but one patch of Canada thistle on our land, perhaps a fourth of an acre. We killed this in the dry year of 1894 by hoeing It off every Saturday. The operation will be effective much more quickly If after mowing It off the farmer will pour Into ( the stub from a common oil can a very 'little of a mixture of one part of crude carbolic acid and four parts of water,

shaking the can before each application so as to keep the ingredients well mixed. This is perhaps the easiest way to deal with a small patch of thistles. Where a farmer has a Small patch of thistles in a field intended for corn he should under no circumstances cultivate this patch with the corn, especially with any of the common cultivators. In doing so he will inevitably distribute the plant and it will be but a short time until his entire field is infested. A single plant if given enough time and opportunity will spread over a 'ten acre field. Each rootlet that starts out from the plant sends up separate stalks every three or four Inches, and lit is only a question of time when It will occupy the whole field; hence the necessity of locating these patches and at all hazards and at any cost getting rid of them at the earliest opportunity in the way above mentioned. Where there is a larger area we suggest letting the thistles grow until they are well in bloom, then mowing and for security burning. You must attack the plant at the weakest point before it has stored up much starch in the roots. After plowing the ground should be thoroughly harrowed, the ■roots gathered up, dried and burned. This wifi greatly reduce the vitality of the plant It is doubtful, however. If one year’s treatment of this kind will prove effective, particularly so If there should be a season of abundant rainfall.—Wallace’s Farmer.

Transplanting Strswbrrrleii. The accompanying picture shows a transplanter made years ago and in constant use since by a Rural New Yorker writer, who says: The part marked A is a heavy sheet brass welded, B is heavy brass wire, C brass wire

and D brass wire pounded somewhat fiat about one-half inch wide. Place -A over any plant and with foot at X force into the ground about four inches. Pull it up and force the plant out by pressing on the handle Y. D is made to slip inside of main cylinder A. Take your barrow load to the planting ground and make your

hole with the same transplanter and drop your plant in on a dry, hot August day, and you will not find a wilt. , For practical work in a one family garden I have six rows of strawberry plants about seventy-five feet long, renewing two rows each year in August. Plants are set about eighteen inches apart with transplanter; second year "allowed to make a matted row; third 'year after bearing dig up and replant. .Lawn clippings are put between rows, and after bearing it is forked in. My bed migrates east or west, two rows each year, and you wIM see by the tabove plan I always have plants one, two and three years old. Bnear Prodnctton. Messrs. Willett and Gray, the New York sugar statisticians, estimate that the total sowings of sugar beets this year approximate 399,562 acres, which should give a probable yield of 325,000 tons of sugar. This means that for the first time the beet sugar factories’ outturn will exceed that of Louisiana's sugar mills, for It is ndt expected that the cane crop there will quite reach the 800,000 ton mark this year. Yet the 1906 beet outturn was not so far behind the average Louisiana cane sugar production, for then the result was 288,717 tons from 34L--075 acres of beets.—Sugar Planter.

CANADA THISTLE, SHOWING LEAF. [1, flower stalk; 2, root stalk; 3, single floweret with seed.]

A STRAWBERRY TRANSPLANTER.