The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., October 29, 1910, Page 734, Image 2

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

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What Farmers Want to Know.
A CELLAR THAT has heretofore kept sweet
potatoes well, now rots them. I do not think
it the fault of the cellar, then, but that you
are storing the potatoes with black rot on them.
The digging and handling of the roots has a great
deal to do with their keeping.
Potatoes grown from cuttings
of the vines set in July will
keep far easier than those from
spring plants. As soon as frost
has nipped the vines, get the
vines off at once, for they will
communicate disease to the
roots if left on. Dig on a dry
sunny day, and do not throw
_ the potatoes in heaps and
Pbofbssob Massey. t,rujse them, but let them lie
along the rows and sun during the day. Haul to
the cellar carefully in basket or crates. Do not
store any cut potatoes nor any with brown blotch
es on the skin, for that shows the black-rot dis
sease. Then when all are in, if possible heat the
cellar up to 90 degrees till the potatoes have
dried oft from the sweat they always go through.
After that a temperature of 45 degrees in winter
is warm enough, and the cellar should be well
ventilated in good weather. It is far better to
have a potato house made for the purpose as I
have heretofore described.
J*
WHEAT AFTER COTTON.—As a rule, I do not
Advise sowing wheat after cotton, as it is usually
too late. But if the cotton is off early, you can
go over with a disk harrow both ways and chop
the stalks up. Keep going till all are chopped
and the surface made fine. The more you har
row and tramp the soil the better the crop will be.
SEED CORN.—Taking the lower ear of corn for
seed will tend to prevent the ears getting higher
on the stalks, and in my experience, also tends
to make ears above it. If I had corn already of
an ideal stature, I would select the best ear on the
stalks for seed without regard to where it grew.
Where the corn makes its ears too high from the
ground, a constant taking of the ear next the
ground will bring it to a better shape.
LATE SOWN OATS.^Winter oatB should have
been sown in September for the best results. But
I have known fine crops made from later sowing.
The point of importance is to get the surface three
inches, made as fine as possible by harrowing, and
then to drill the seed at rate of two bushels an
acre. The regular wheat drill is the best thing
for sowing oats if the ground has been properly
harrowed and tramped firm. Winter-killing re
sults from a loose preparation of the soil.
ft^
DISTANCE TO SET FRUIT TREES.—Wants to
plant a home orchard and wants to know when
to plant. I assume that the orchard is to be of
different fruits. Apples should be set 30 to 35
feet apart each way; peaches, 20 feet; pears of
standard size, 25 feet; dwarf pears, 10 to 15 feet;
plums, 16 feet each way. Plant in the South all
trees in the fall. The best place to get the trees
will be the nearest reliable nursery. *
ROTATION OF PASTURE CROPS.—Twenty
five acres of bottom land of good quality, one
third now in corn and two-thirds in peas after
oats. Wants to feed some beef cattle. If it is
proposed to rotate the 2 5 acres in crops, I would
not use any grass, but would make a three-year
rotation of corn, with peas among it. Corn cut
and peas harvested and land prepared with disk
harrow and seeded to oats. Peas sown after the
oats and made into hay and red clover sown on
the stubble in September. Clover pastured the
next summer and the following spring turned for
corn again. If your idea is to put the whole 2 5
acres in pasture permanently. I would seed it to
grass this fall, sowing 10 pounds of tall meadow
fescue, 10 pounds of tall meadow oats grass,
and 5 pounds of alsike clover. Never turn cattle
on clover pasture when hungry, or you will have
some bloated, but turn on after they have been
well fed and at first for a short time and they
will not gorge themselves.
J*
STRAWBERRIES.—A Louisiana correspondent
is bothered about fertilizers for strawberries and
wants to know about the formula. I have given
others. The stations down in that part of the
Mississippi Valley have decided that potash is
not needed there. Hence, the low per cent potash
in the formula I gave may not be needed. But
HOW ABOUT THE HOME
ORCHARD?
\T7HAT are you doing about a home
orchard ? No farm should be with
out an abundant supply of both small
and orchard fruits, and where these are
lacking the reflection upon the farmer’s
industry and business sense is obvious.
He must show why he is without them,
or stand convicted of neglect.
Right now is the time to be thinking of
the home orchard and fruit garden—and
not only thinking of them, but prepar
ing for them, getting the land ready, or
dering the trees and plants, etc.
This Southland of ours should be a
land of overflowing fruitfulness. The
traveler through our farming sections
should never get entirely away from the
beauty of blossoming orchards in the
springtime, of laden trees in the au
tumn. The children on our farms should
revel in fruit from the year's beginning
to its end.
To try to get along without orchards
and vineyards and berry patches is the
poorest sort of policy. It means a poor
er living at a higher cost.
Let no reader of ours try it any long
er. Plant a few fruit trees this very
fall, and some grapes and small fruits.
Few things will pay yiu better.
jjieuijr ui puuapuunc aciu is, aouuiiess, neeaea,
and the nitrogen should be mainly used after the
fruit is off so that strong crowns tend to make
the fruit soft for shipping. Hence I would fer
tilize heavier in, summer after the fruit is gath
ered than at any other time, and would, in your
section, use only acid phosphate in spring.
J*
WINTER PASTURE.—On laud in peas now,
our friend will sow oats late in October and wants
to sow vetch or rape with the oats. How soon,
he asks, can hogs and Bheep be turned on it?
1^'ite October will be too late to sow rape, and
vetch sown at that time will not be ready for the
stock till late March or April. Crimson clover
can be sown in Craven County, N. C.. late in Oc
tober with fair prospect of success, and it will be
a little earlier in Bpring than the vetch. But as
you want to put the land in corn after cutting
the oats and legume or pasturing them, you will
have little pasture, except the oats, perhaps, be
fore March. Better bow a mixture of crimson
clover and vetch and leave out the oats and turn
all under for the corn, as you admit that the
land is not rich.
WHICH FAR FOR «KKI>?—“With three ears
of coru on a stalk, which is best for seod, the (op
or bottom one?” If the corn is incliued to grow
too tall and to make the ears away up on th©
stalks with a short top above them, the use of the
ear next the ground for seed will tend to reduce
the tall stature, and will be more inclined to make
an ear or ears above it. If the coru has already
a fairly good stature, and the ears come handy
and about half-way between the tasBel and the
ground, then take the best ear ou the stalk with
out regard to its position.
LIME AXI) PHOSPHATE.—‘Would like to
have your advice as to using lime and pulverized
phosphate rock at same time on cotton etc.? Hew
can I tell when lime Is needed"? In the first
place understand that lime is not used as a fer
tilizer. but as a means for sweetening an acid soil,
promoting the formation of nitrates from organic
decay in the soil, and having a mechanical effect
In making sandy lsnd closer and stlfTer land mor*
porous. The common test as to acidity Is to take
s piece of blue litmus paper that can be bad at
any drug-store, and moisten some of the soli and
place the litmus paper in It. If it soou turns
pink, It shows acidity. Liming may not altogeth
er prevent this, but it will render the soil more
nearly alkaline. Hut liming alone will never make
poor land rich. It Is useful to lime occasionally
where a farmer practices s good rotation and gets
humus Into his land. Hut lime and phosphate
rock used together will be of no advantage. The
rock is the phosphate of lime, and Is In « very
lnsoluable state, and applied to poor land, or land
that Is deficient in vegetable matter. It will be a
good while before plants can use the phosphorus
It contains. But where a growth of peas or pea
stubble Is plowed under, the humic acids develop
ed from the decaying vegetable matter will tend
to dissolve the phosphate. It will also act well
when mixed In stable manure at rate of 109
pounds to a ton of manure. At the Ohio Station
it was found that 4 0 pounds added to a ton of
manure made a great Increase In the crop over
that from a ton of stable manure without it. You
need to make more feed for stock and feed It and
make manure. Then you can use lime about one*
in six years, and can use pulverized phosphate
rock to advantage with the manure.
J*
Till ftfl a * ft iwzttf /% s<«« «>■» tsjtj — ... •••.amLL
— * ■ ii a v»»|'v % ....
ly Interested in tall meadow oats grass. I Ilk*
It better than any other grass, but can not worn to
get a permanent Held of It-** This is one of the
best grasses for the South. Professor Phares. in
his book on grasses, anys It Is the best winter
grass that can he had for the South, and that it
will make twice as much hay as timothy, and for
summer soiling, It may be cut four or five times.
It Is an early grass, and associates well with
orchard grass, thickening up the stand of this
which Is apt to grow In bunches. It should be
cut like orchard grass ns soon as the heads are
out. On strong, moist bottom land It will last
five or six years, but on dry upland, It Is not so
lusting. I would always sow it In mixture with
orchard grass and redtop. and the second cutting
will have the redtop In plenty. Then when tho
oats grass and redtop run out on dry soli the
orchard grass will still be good. The tall meadow
oats grass Is better suited to moist and strong
land, bo far as lasting is concerned, but It will
grow on thin land better than most grasses,
though not permanent lu such a location.
If every farmer In the Cotton Belt farmed In a
good three-year rotation, tho biggest sort of a
crop could be grown on one-third tho land now
used, and the remainder would bo getting ready
In profitable crops of other sorts to make more
aDd more cotton per Here. The cotton farmers of
the South have a cinch on cotton, and there Is no
more profitable crop that can be grown In the
South, provided the land la farmed instead of
merely planted In cottou year after year.
■ Save the time and expense of hauling your^B
9 Corn to the mill Buy a Monarch Mill B
■ and grind the meal fop your own table. You B
jfl are sure to have cleaner, Ireslier and more 1
Imeal. Send to-day lor a Monarch Mill I
For grinding corn meal, all kinds of feed, or f
l_j craning torn, t'.c.. Monarch 1
Mitts a e ti e be t, Write us 1
amount and k:nd of power you I
have and we wdl send I
you iliu iraud catalog. I
SPROUT. WllCRQK ft CO. I
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A. J. VI It W li COM FAN Y •
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MrblnU ^ |*urk hiation 4 h'.euftut ilk ,M
Mi DUPLEX G«KG
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jihHled corn. oaU, *ho*L, barley, rye
kaflir corn, cotton mod
nlicaf out*
bagger ha*
THE
duplex
1* the only
m I II ni a d ii
with n .ii,,||,|,,
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lUwjuiriW 2T.* Ion.
power anil iloca twice
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DUPLEX MILL & MFC. CO., Buitt'O Sgnugliald. Ulna
The Horse Collar
• ml pre
vent any otln-r*
vi q while work
the hoi« e in liot
r Henri youf
iiamr now for ffti U, Hg
. freight prcpei*! offer on
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*» proving that you ran ln»nra your«Hf l(<K!f hor«e
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Jolinitcn-Slocuni Co., Sl< Suu S«., C»ro, Mick.