The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., April 23, 1910, Page 302, Image 2

About The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette. (Starkville, Miss.) 1910-1920

Image provided by: Mississippi Department of Archives and History

                
Professor Massey’s
Editorial Page.
The Joy of Making a Garden.
ID YOU EVER make a garden from a piece
of bare ground? There Is lots of fun in it.
I am doing this very thing now, and I take
a great deal of pleasure in the work, and try to
do it all myself, for one takes more pride in his
own work than that which he hires done. I
bought a dwelling with a lot fronting 50 feet on
one street and running back 150 feet on another.
This lot I wanted to make ornamental with lawn
and shrubbery and a few fruit trees and grape
vines. But I wanted a kitchen garden, and right
alongside was another lot of the same size.
I am out within one block of the city limits,
and there are vacant lots all around. I can re
member when I could have bought all the land
around me for $ 1 0 an acre before the city spread
out this way. But now I paid at the rate of $3,
000 an acre for that vacant lot alongside of me
and every one thinks I got it very cheap. A pret
ty high-priced garden, but never going to be
W'orth any less, and it is to be a real garden.
I covered it all over with stable manure from
New York that cost $3 a ton on the ground, and
f am adding a high-grade fertilizer. This land
lias been used in truck gardens for years, and is
a good sandy soil with a little way down a clay
bo hard that only a pick will touch it. Hence it
retains moisture finely.
I hastened to get some peas in in February
and some early beets, and then the neighbors’
hens began to cultivate it for me. So I had to
make a fence of poultry wire all around it. This
fence is not pretty, but is substantially built with
a 2 x 4 scantling along the top and a base-board
to prevent the hens from scratching under. At
the north end and outside the west side, 1 have
planted some peach trees and plum trees to make
fruit and act as a wind-break to the garden. And
all along one side I have planted eleven sorts of
grapes. Along the front fence next the street 1
have sweet peas to make it look well for a time,
and am going to put clematis and Crimson Ram
bler roses there for permanent adornment. Then
back on the sunny side of the barn I have a frame
covered with glass sashes in which tomato plants
have been transplanted and will soon go out into
the garden, and in another frame I have lots of
flower seed sown and growing. I have hundreds
of dahlias coming on from seed, for one can grow
a dahlia to bloom from seed almost as soon as
from the roots, and it is fun to see how they turn
out in the flowers. On one side the dwelling,
ulong the porch that runs around two sides, I
have a shrubbery border in which I have planted
thirty varieties of blooming .shrubbery, including
white and pink crepe myrtles and a wistaria to
climb on the porch. The wire fence in the kitch
en garden will be utilized to a great extent for
my lima beans and will save poles. On the north
end I have the tall Champion of England peas to
run on the fence, and on part of the west side
where there are no grape vines 1 shall have the
climbing nasturtiums.
I do not want a mere truck patch, and hence
have made borders arouud the inside of the fences
for radishes, late cabbage plants, mustard, etc.,
and a walk all around and one across the gar
den, making two blocks or squares. The tall
growing things will be kept at the north end so
as not to shut out the sunshine from the lower
► growing plants that are to the south. The early
peas will soon bo in bloom, and will be followed
by tlie Champion of England. Beets are up thick
ly, and I will have lots of thinnings to transplant
The early corn. Tait's Early, has been planted,
and a succession will be kept up of sugar corn
Tait’s Early is not a sugar eorn, but is early and
will be followed by the Country Gentleman ...
corn and Stowell’s Evergreen.
Onions I have, of course, and now that April is
bringing us a little rain, and the weather con
tinues hot, I shall now try some snaps outside.
April 4th is early in this latitude for snaps. Mv
tomato plants that have been once transplanted
in the frames will be stout, and short plants and
not the leggy sort one sees from thickly sown beds
They will go out about the middle of the month
and 1 hope to have ripe fruit before the end of
June. My early cabbages will this season be
really a succession crop, as I did not own the land
| last fall and could not plant them. Another sea
son 1 hope to have some cauliflowers, too, hut it
is too late to set them now, as the hot weather
would catch them before heading. Okra, of
course, 1 shall have, and salsify and parsnips and
rhubarb and asparagus, and the chard or aspara
gus beet.
**
Few people in the South grow chard, but It is
one of the finest things in the garden. It is a
kind of beet, but the root is not the part eaten.
We eat the stems of the leaves rooked like aspa
ragus, and they can be pulled all summer, and
any one who has a garden should plant some
chard.
Then we like sage for sausages In the fall, and
I have sown a lot of sage seed, for I do not want
old sage bushes in the garden. The seed were
sown on a border, and will be transplanted where
the peas are now, and will cover the ground by
fall, and the sage can be cut and dried, as it will
all be tender. Then I shall sell the plants to those
who want sage bushes, and shall sow seed again
next spring, for I ran make more sage from seed
than by keeping old plants in the garden to be
weed harbors. Then as fast as one crop is out of
the way, I shall plant something else In its place
and keep the garden clean.
\! t nmaf n » \ 1 «» *■» t . * * 1 1 Kn I’rtf t t.... * 1. >• t u
feet, and trained to single stems on stake- a- I
can get more and earlier fruit in this way. Then
I shall spray them with Bordeaux mixture to pre
vent rot and leaf blight. Fortunately, we do not
have the Southern wilt here, and the farmers all
around are contracting tomatoes to the canning
houses at $7 a ton. There are over fifty canning
houses in this county, putting up green peas, corn
and tomatoes. They sow Alaska peas broadcast
and mow them when filled, and the machine* at
the canning houses shell them from the vine- and
the refuse is hauled back for feed. I shall tell
more about my garden during the summer
Too Many Hands Between Producer
and Consumer.
FACT THAT the grower and hlpper of
xAjCl vegetables gets so small a part i»f what the
™—" " consumer pays for them i* a matter that
interests all Southern shipper* Much «.f (hi*
loss Is caused by rascally commlndon men. Many
years ago uiy first shipment of w inter head lettuce
went to a man in Baltimore who reported sale of
It that netted me about one cent a bead I found
out a few clays later that one ron*umer bought
some of that very lettuce and paid 2<> rents a
head for it. My next shipment went to another
merchant who kindly let me net 7r. . ..i i»..r
dozen.
The best way out of thin Is the organization of
the selling exchanges that ore now so successful
in Virginia and Maryland. If compelled to ship
to a commission merchant, look into his commer
cial rating and his character for honest dealing,
and never ship to a man who tells you he cau get
(tetter prices than other competing merchant* lie
may get better prices at times, but you will not
get them.
J»
It would seem that the * home hamper” of as
sorted vegetables shipped direct to consumers
should be a means for the grower and consumer
to get nearer together. If the trucker would ad
vertise in the city papers, saying that lie will send
such and such amounts of vegetable* assorted In
carriers direct to consumers at a fixed price, I
believe that a good private trade could he built
up in tills way, cash in advance always being re
quired. One customer well pleased would soon
lead to more, drovers, as a rule, are too much
afraid of printers* Ink. There Is nothing equal to
advertising to make one and his business known
The editor of the Practical Farmer tells a cor
respondent that the Southern cowpeas and oats
do excellently together. I wonder If he has ever
Hied sowing oats in June or cowpeas In Feb
ruary? The two can not be made to mix, and it
* a pity that some editors do not know more
about the crops they advise about.
Mr. C. F. Ames says: “The average cost of
a wage hand for one year is about the same as the
first cost of a good mule. At the end of the year
>ou own the mule, hut not the wage hand.”
Paste that In jour hut.
Double the Corn Crop.
*w^kI1KRK IS NO DOUBT, as Dr. Butler intI
mates, that, as a rule, the farmers In the
-I South do not have stalks enough on :),e
land to make a large crop. One stalk in a hill
five or six feet apart ran not make a large crop
no matter how fertile the soil. The notion baa
been that as corn grows tall in tho South It must
have more room for air. The true method Is, to
breed the corn by selection to a lower stature,
and not by stunting It In Its early growth i
have tried checking corn on level land, and 1 feel
sure that on any land I can make more corn In
rows with stalks 18 to 20 Inches apart than by
crowding two or three stalks In a hill and working
both ways. And the man who works both way*
and follows the old plan of banking the earth to
the corn with a plow, will cut more roots all
around than the one who follows the same prac
tice In drill rows.
I was In a field last fall that was checked each
way and two stalks In the hill. Tho crop was
nearly 100 bushels an acre, hut I believe that on
the same land, wdth the same intelligent cultiva
tion that corn had, there would have been over
100 bushels made from a continuous drill row
with the same number of stalks. This Is assum
ing that the early cultivation will be with harrow
and weeder and hoe work saved
Fertilizers and Fertility.
\f^ s Mil MH.I.KH *ugge*t*. the matt who ap
I ijL piles only 2»>o pounds of «t 2 j fertiliser
dMffl to his land Is only enabling the crop to
lira*’ more on the natural fertility of blw soil,
and the crops sold off bare carried away this fer
tility and the land Is p»*orer than before the f«»r
liliier was applied Hut the man who applim an
equal money value of phosphoric arid and potash
lo a crop of crimson clover to be turned for corn
1 ot only Kites the phosphoric acid and potash to
the corn, but more nitrogen than a Ion of the
poor s 2 2 carries, for In the 200 pounds of
*22 he does not apply t pound* of nitrogen,
but 3 4 pounds, for the * per cent on the sack is
ammonia and not nitrogen, and ammonia Is only
about KS per rent nitrogen, and the farmer buys
ibis when he could get more than twenty Mt»e« m
much free by growing crimson clover as a winter
rover to hts soil and a nitrogen Over for his corn
or cotton.
- •
Fake Advertisers.
r 18 SAI>I«\ true that the vunt fakes and •
patent medicine humbugs are lu found lu
the Advertising columns of the ebureb pa
pers I picked up a pat>cr a few days ago that
Ih published by one of the largest church urganlia
tlorn*. Id this country in behalf of the missionary
Work of the churrh. and the editor said that the
paper is getting on a better financial basis be
cause of the Increase In the advertising 1 looked
•It the advertising columns, and fully 90 per cent
1,1 1 *u’ that missionary paper were pure
fakes. The editors of the religious paper*. gen
r:i!l> lacking In worldly wisdom, are more easily
Imposed upon than any other class of papers, an 1
all the fakes know that they are •easy.” And
they know, too, that It Is useless to try to get Into
the pages of The progressive Farmer and Oaastte
ri«K FOl.I.y of <*>9ll1mTIN<;.—With the ei
ceptinr, of manure for truck crops. | do not be
lleve lu composting, it is all Well to use some
• eld phosphate with the manure, but I would then
at once haul it as fast as made and spread It
where crops are to be planted. It Is safer there
than anywhere else. The practice of composting
has grown up from the scarcity of manure by loo
little cattle feeding and the putting of the com ■
Pont only lu the furrows for cotton The best
way to Improve the land Is to grow plenty of good
forage and feed to cattle and then spread the
manure on a crimson clover sod to be turned un
der for corn, and to spread It there as fast as
made whenever you can get on the laud.
There would be no trouble from thu cotton root
Iouhe If tobacco sterns are used lu the furrow. To
l-acco is the sovereign preventive of all forms of
plant aphides ou root or top. Where the lauds
are infested with the root-louse, try tobacco stems
from the factories, and my word for It. you will
have no rool-llce.