The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., July 09, 1910, Page 478, Image 2

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

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Professor Massey’s
Editorial Page.
Farm and Garden Work for July.
WHERE COWPEAS are to be grown foi
seed, sowing in July is better than earliei
sowing, as the plants make less vine and
more seed. 1 hope that all of our readers will
determine that they will have seed, to sow next
season and will not be deterred by high prices.
Crimson clover seed have reached the highest
price they have ever sold at,
and I think that the chances
are that they will not be as
high at seeding time as now.
Here the price now is $10 a
bushel for the home-grown
seed. With this price there
will be large importations from
Europe, and I believe that be
fore September there will be a
drop in price. Hence, I would
Professor Massey, not advise the buying of the
seed now, for they can not go higher.
But do not fail to sow' the clover because of the
high price. Even at $10 a bushel it is cheaper
than 2—8—2 fertilizer, for a crop of crimson
clover will give you more ammonia than a ton of
2—8—2 and give humus-making material that
will permanently improve the land. You can not
afford to break up a good rotation of crops be
cause of high prices of peas and clover seed. You
will lose money by failing to sow them.
Much corn will be laid by in July. Do not do
it. with a turning plow, banking up earth to the
corn and cutting the feeding roots. Shallow and
level cultivation will give far better crops, and
corn cultivated in this way will stand up in a wind
storm that will blow down that banked up and
the roots weakened.
If you did not use fertilizer enough on your
cotton at the start, you can still apply a dressing.
Where the color is pale and the growth weak, ni
trate of soda alongside the rows, 100 pounds to
the acre, will cause a far more rapid growth, and
if there is plenty of phosphoric acid and potash
at the start, the increased vigor will make more
cotton. But as a rule, I believe that all the phos
phoric acid and potash needed should be applied
before planting, for it will stay by you till the
crops calls for it.
If you have no other place for the manure that
should be hauled out to prevent wasting, spread
it down between the cotton rows. It will help
the crop and give you a stand of crimson clover
that you should sow between the rows at first
picking.
kt
Clean cultivation during the earlier weeks will
find your peanuts now in good shape for bloom
ing and fruiting. Mine are already laid-by, but
with the Spanish nuts, one can still get through
the rows shallowly. I am growing the running
Jumbo nuts merely for home use.
Now is the time to make cuttings of the sweet
|^^^otato vines for planting. Sweet potatoes grown
H^Vrom July cuttings will keep better in winter than
those grown from the spring plants. Make the
W cuttings about ten inches long and put the whole
in the ridges but the tip. Do this after a good
rain and they will all grow.
To make small potatoes for bedding next spring
make cuttings about a yard long and coil the cut
ting around your hand and plant the coil with
only the tip showing, and every joint will make
a bunch of little potatoes that will keep well and
be better for bedding than the little ones culled
from the crop.
Rutabaga turnips should be sown early in the
month on well fertilized beds and well cultivated.
August will be early enough for other turnips.
But one of the best winter turnips—a turnip that
can be left in the ground all winter and pulled
as wanted—is the Long White French or Sugar
turnip. It should be sown in early July, and is
the best of all turnips for table use in winter.
Early Irish potatoes being now ripe, will be dug
and put in the coolest and darkest place at
hand, but for late crop, I shall get seed potatoes
from cold storage. I plant these, after exposing
them to the light and sprouting them, in deep
furrows, and cover very lightly. Then the soil
is worked to them as they grow till level, and the
cultivation will be level, for at this season we
must conserve the moisture and not hill as we
do early potatoes, but get them deep In the
ground and keep a dust mulch to retain the mois
ture.
I am still sowing a succession of snap beans as
fast as the previous sowing is well up, and in this
way I keep a regular succession for the table.
We are just finishing our second sowing, and the
third will soon be ready.
There are many things that we can save in our
gardens that are improvements and we should al
ways be on the lookout for these My fourth
planting of corn is just up, and I shall plant one
more lot in July, which will give us roasting ears
till frost, I hope.
If you never grew any chard in your garden,
try it. You can still have it ready in the fall
months. Chard is a sort of beet, the leaf stalks
of which are eaten like asparagus. Mine is now
about ready to use. We pull off the leaves as
they grow large enough and trim out the leaf
stalks and cook like asparagus. It is fine, and
once grown, you will always want it.
You can still plant kohlrabi. This, too, is a
delicious vegetable of the cabbage family which
.—■ - - . .. ■ -i
PUT THE IDLE LANDS TO
WORK.
Live stock will be found profitable
or otherwise according as we produce
feeds cheaply and abundantly. If we
continue to feed too sparingly, as we
surely shall so long as we buy corn and
hay to feed, live stock will not prove
profitable.
If we but use lands and labor at idle
times to grow forage, we can produce
it cheaper than it is grown in any
stock-raising section of this country
today, and sufficient forage can be
produced at times when the labor is
not pressed with the other crops, and
on lands that are idle, to make this a
great stock-raising country. Tait But
ler.
i---!
makes a swollen stem as large as a turnip above
ground. This swollen stem is peeled and cooked,
and is the next thing to cauliflower.
My okra is now blooming, but if you failed to
plant any earlier, you can still plant It and get
the pods later.
Now is the time to sow parsnips and salsify in
the South. 1 am in the upper section and my pars
nips and salsify are Just up and thinned. 1 plant
parsnip seed in pinches about three or four inches
apart, so that they will help each other get up,
and the little bunches are more easily thinned than
a continuous row.
Carrots for the table or for stock can now be
sown. These and the parsnips and salsify are
left in the ground all winter and pulled as needed.
A mess of carrots now and then in winter is fine
for horses, and keeps them in good trim. They
are good, too, for the cows, and seem to keep
up the color of the butter.
'I here is nothing that so adds to the comfort
of the family on the farm as a good garden. Not
merely a plot of ground prepared and planted in
the spring and then let run to weeds after the
early crops are ofT, but a garden loved and tended
and kept making something for the table all the
year through. A garden in which every crop Is
followed at once by another as soon as past Mh
usefulness, and the soil kept clean the whole
season and left in winter crops in the fall so
clean that the cutworm moths find no place to lay
eggs, and hence no cutworms in the Hprlng, as
there always are If the garden runs to weeds in
the fall.
In my garden here I pile the peavines after the
crop is off, the dead vegetation of every descrip
tion, the over-grown lettuce and radishes and
scatter some lime on the heap as made up, and
next spring I will have a mass of humus-making
material to go back on the garden. My soil is
sandy and humus is used up rapidly and must be
maintained in every possible way. Then the tree
leaves are raked in the fall and piled In the same
way and added to the garden. Already the sandy
soil, from the manuring last winter, if of a more
loamy character and more retentive of moisture.
Some Things I Saw in the West.
I‘ HAVE JUST returned from a trip through the
Central West, and I came home still more
- convinced of the great future before the
Southern farmer. There are fine lands in the
Central West, and much poor farming on fine
lands.
I went first to Cleveland, Ohio. Starting on the
I>elaware-if ary land peninsula, my route was
through two sections where the best farming in
(he United States is done, one In the upper part
of the Peninsula south of Wilmington, Delaware.
It is hard to find a more beautiful farming coun
try, or one so well cultivated. The reapers were
busy in the broad wheat fields and on the clean
corn fields men were riding on the cultivators
cleaning out both sides of a row at a trip, and the
dwellings and farm buildings are all first-class,
and silos and good grass were everywhere.
The next fine section I passed was In the beauti
ful valley, of Chester County, and in I.ancaster
County, Pennsylvania. There are many people
who imagine that the cultivation of tobacco means
keeping the land poor. I wish they could see the
farms in I.ancaster County, for this is generally
considered the banner agricultural county of the
whole United State*. The gently rolling fields,
with no weeds nor bushes, the big crops of grow
ing wheat, the clean corn fields, the great stretches
of grass and clover, and the tobacco fields Just
starting well, all show that the big barns are
needed. And the big barns are there, barns that
cost enough to pay for a big plantation in the
Fouth. Darns with heavy stone basements and
super-structure of dressed lumber finely painted
and lots of broad glass windows giving light to
the cow stables. And they did not seem to be
afraid that their land would get too rich for to
bacco, for they raise 1.200 pounds an ncre. and
sell It to make cigars to go South and sell for &
cents, for nearly all the f» cent cigars sold In the
South are made in eastern Pennsylvania.
Hut, after passing Pitsburg with its steel aud
smoke we found another state of affairs through
eastern and northern Ohio. I soon caiue to the
conclusion that nil the bad farming was not in the
South. Here I passed hundreds of farms on which
the farmers are plowing around cat-tail sinks in
stead of draining them, and all the way to Cleve
land it seemed that the farms were a succession
of ridges and cat-tnils swamps. Then on hill
sides I saw poor crops and gullies, for they plow
straight up and down the hill. The wheat was
Hill green there, and less of it and poorer crops
than I saw In Delaware and Pennsylvania. The
larger part of the country seemed to be In rough
pasture, and dairying the chief pursuit on the
farms, and not till near Cleveland did the farm
houses and out-buildings seem to indicate pros
perity.
r rum Cleveland in < minimus. onto, in me
night and, doubtless, passed through a better sec
tion. From Columbus to St. Louts the route lay
through central or rather south-central India and
Illinois, crossing the Wabash Itiver at Terre Haute
Some fine farms were seen In Indiana, but the ma
jority were rough and bushy till wo reached the
level prairie country.
1 hen through Illinois, the beautiful level coun
try showed backwardness In neat farming, for
while the land is fine, there was not the neatness
on the farms, nor about the farm buildings, thnt 1
raw in Pennsylvania. Here and there one sees a
neat two-story farm-house and good out-bulldlngs,
hut as a rule, all through that section of Illinois
the farmers seem to live In one story shacks with
tumble-down out-bulldlngs, as destitute of paint
or whitewash as can he seen In the South. In
fact, 1 believe that the average farm buildings
through the South are far better than those 1 saw
through Illinois w ith all her One land. And then
the last week In June the corn could Just be seen
in little green lines across the Helds, nud It look
• <1 as though more frosted corn was to In* grown
to sell the South. Leaving home with my corn In
tassel and silk, It looked as though there was
small chance to make corn In the great Corn Hell.
I lie farmers seem to be growing spring outs more
than wheat. 1 he oat HehlB looked well, hut the
wheat was far poorer than In Pennsylvania and
Delaware and Maryland.
In fact, I <ame to the coNcluslon that I had
lather have the sandiest cotton farm In eastern
North Carolina than a prairie farm In Illinois.
With good farming in the South, farming will pay
far better than It seems to pay lu the Central
West, and I believe that the Corn Belt Is moving
south, for we are Increasing the average crop
w-hlle the West is going downwards In product.