Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1889 — THE FARM AND HOME. [ARTICLE]

THE FARM AND HOME.

A New Jersey farmer gives his experience in using chemical . fertilisers and shows that it pays: “When I com, menced the use of chemffeal fertilisers on wheat, I applied about 300 pounds per acre; but I nave increased the application to 700 pounds, which has j doubled the yisld of wheat per acre, as i compared wish the outcome from the old system. It-has also largely increased the yield of grass per acre, so that my gross receipts from the farm have increased, over the yieldl under the old system, to an average of SI,OOO per annum. And it appears to me that I have just learned how to use,the chemical fertilizers with profit. I am now applying 1,200 pounds of Mapes potato fertilizer per acre, for potatoes, and as wheat follows potatoes, I apply about 300 pounds per acre for the wheat, making 1,500 pounds of pnrehased fertilizers per acre, for the potatoes. It appears to me 1 hat I may apply even 1,800 pounds, to 2,000 pounds per acre for the five years rotation as the quantity that can be most profitably used. My present system of rotation is corn, potatoes, wheat, and grass two years. I have never used any of the ordinary superphosphates on wheat or when seeding to grass. I have always used fertilizers of the highest grade I could buy and my f Aith is very strong that mine is the only safe system for permanent improvement.” ' ;

It does not take as much milk to make a pound of buttter when the cows are fed on hav as it does when they are fed on grass, provided the hay was green when cut, and was well cured and is of good quality. A cow would make more butter from less milk when fed on green, well cured clover hay, than from clover pasture from which she would make more milk. The butter is the product of the butter fats in the milk. The value of milk is in its solids and not in the amount of water, Rich, dry foods will make more solids in proportion to the water in the milk, and grass will increase the volume of milk and the amount of water in proportion to the solids. The kinds of hay and grass must all be taken into the account. When fed on good silage, cows will give more milk and make mere butter than when fed on hay. The rule for feeding i ; S, two pounds of dry fodder for every 100 pounds of live weight. • Prepare the soil for good melon crops by first giving it under drainage unless the sub-soil is open and porous; next by plowing deep and fine, and if the surface is a dead level, he should leave it in ridges eight or ten inches wide. The application of wood ashes—-one bushel to a square ro<J—tjiospughly harrowed in, or double the quantity plowed in, has a tendency to keep the soil mellow, and is a good fertilizer. If manures are required, that made from the horse stable is the best for such a soil. The application of Band does not usually show any immediate benefit. Probably a good load of sharp sand to the rod for four or five years, if thoroughly incorporated with the soil, would in the end prove advantageous; but if all were applied at once it would prove injurious. Varieties: Mush ; melon, Emerald Gem, Surprise, Early Hackensaek; water melons, Kolb’s Gem and Gipsy. Mpuntain Sprqut and Black Spanish are also good varieties. Home grown seed does not seem to be as sure as that grown South and East. *• A correspondent who has a level but rocky piece of ground on which sheep have been running, wrote to the Rural New Yorker for advice as to the best use to make of it, and received this answer: “If the land is so rocky that it cannot be plowed with advantage, he should let it remain in grass and try to bring in much.better grasses by sowing 250 or 300 pounds of some high grade complete fertilizer, selecting the jpne that will give the most nitrogen, phosphoric and potash, at the least cost, giving the preference to the one containing the most nitrogen. Another far cheaper method, but hot so rapid, will be to keep sheep on the pasture and give them a pound of cotton‘seed cake each, per day. Sell the sheep when fat and bay and fatten lean ones, and continue feeding cotton seed cake. If properly managed, the sheep will pay for the feed, and the manure from the cotton seed cake will greatly improve the pasture. If the field has been in grass for many years it will probably not be necessary to sow grass seed, though it conld do no harm to sow a little white clover, Alsike clover, rye grass, orchard grass, etc., on the land very early in the spring.

One cannot nse the soil as the cook makes a cake or pie, mixing so many ingredients and getting the same results. It varies in composition and character for almost every square foot of it. One plot or one analysis affords little information for the rest of it. . The only safe way is to supply sufficient-plant food—a square meal, in fact, containing every thing that the crop mayVr'might want —in due proportion. Good stable manure made by well-fed animals is the staple fertilizer, and contains everything that plants require for their fullest and most progtable growth, and in procuring a substitute fpr it the safest is that mixture of artificial substances which roost nearly approaches it in character and is known as complete manure. Consequently it follows that the so-called ‘•tests” with artificial fertilizers as a means of getting an approximate analysis of a soil are delusive and unprofitable.