Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 June 1908 — FARM ORCHARD AND GARDEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FARM ORCHARD AND GARDEN

BY F.E.TRIGG

Virtually the entire acreage of orange trees growing today on the Pacific slope came fron/a slip of a navel orange tree imported from Brasil some twenty years ago. The fellow who will tolerate a forty dollar sire In his herd of beef or dairy cows may be properly styled an agricultural stand patter of a very hope* less and sorry type. Scrub sires are quite likely to be found on the farm of the fellow who trusts Providence for a stand of seed corn and plants his potatoes by a certain phase of the moon. The peach crop of the country has suffered its regular annual freeze and extinction—in the columns of the dally press. Packing time will have to be relied on to give an accurate status of the situation.

Never before have oranges been so plentiful and so fine both from the standpoint of quality and size as they are this year. They have been especially enjoyed because apples have been both poor and scarce. If a field counted on for the growing of corn is considerably below standard In point of fertility It will quite likely produce a larger crop of corn from an average stand of two than from a stand of three or four kernels to the hill. ——• A treat that the family of the country resident will enjoy when they come to town Is once In awhile a dinner at the hotel or attending an interesting and wholesome play. Many take advantage of such opportunities, but many more do not Those who have kept close track of the number of field mice, gophers and rabbits devoured by the average “hen" hawk have estimated its cash value to the farmer at $lO per annum. In view of these figures there is certainly no money in killing this bird. • 4 ” Tbe department of horticulture at the University of Wisconsin has In the greenhouse a banana tree which has this year come into fruitage and borne and ripened a large bunch of bananas. This is tbe first time that this has occurred at a point so far north. In estimating the total returns from his farm during the year the owner ought not to overlook the living which he and hiWamily have had from it in the course of the year, an item which In the expense account of the fellow In town runs all tbe way from $250 to S6OO. An eastern experiment station which has tested various kinds of feed for work horses reports that one of the most effective and nutritive rations is composed of a hundred pounds of cornmeal, a hundred pounds of ground oats and fifty [founds of wheat middlings.

The verdict of those who have made a close study of the habits of the common ground mole is that tbe damage It does in ridging up the soil in garden or on lawn is more than atoned for by its destruction of the common white grub, which constitutes Its chief article of food. It Is the mice which sometimes follow In tbe burrow of the mole which do damage to the roots of plants and shrubs. \

Luxuriance of growth in the common garden flowers may be to some extent Influenced by tbe vigor and. thriftiness of the parent stock, but is quite likely to be more largely determined by the richness of the soil in which the seed is sown or the plants are set A rich soli, coupled with abundant moisture and that degree of sunshine or shade which the particular variety seems to demand, will produce ths desired results.

With a view to Increasing Its stock of game birds, Kansas is nndertaking the experiment of Introducing Hungarian partridges, ten pairs of which species having been recently turned loose on a ranch near Cottonwood Falls. These birds resemble the common quail of Kansas, but are larger, being about two-thlrds the size of prairie chickens. It is believed that the new* birds can be successfully propagated under conditions which prevail tn the state.

In some of their ways dogs are not unlike the human species. The instances are comparatively frequent where dogs that are models of propriety and good behavior In the daytime will, under cover of darkness, when the folks on the place are abed, range over the country for miles around, raiding sheep herds, chasing cattle and horses in pasture, raising the deuce generally and seemlug to show an instinctive belief in the fallaty that they are not going to lose Handing and reputation for that which they do In the dark.