The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., November 05, 1910, Page 750, Image 2

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

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Professor Massey’s
Editorial Page.
Farm Work for November
WHEAT SEEDING Is now the important
work In the South. If the soil is not fine
and well settled, go over and over with
tihe harrow until it is made flue, for there is noth
ing that tendB more to winter-killing of wheat or
oats than a loose, lumpy soil.
Be liberal with the acid phos
phate on the wheat. Do not
imagine that 150 to 200 pounds
will give you a good crop. Noth
ing less than 300 pounds of
acid phosphate should be used,
and it will pay to use 400
pounds. On red land I would
leave out the potash, but on
gray soil I would add 25
fwofessob massey pounds of muriate of potash to
every 300 pounds of acid phosphate.
If the wheat is on a pea stubble, I would use no
ammonia at all at planting time. But in the
spring, if the growth is not satisfactory, it will
pay to apply about 75 pounds an acre of nitrate
of soda Just as the new growth starts. The thin
ner the soil, the thicker the wheat should be
sown, as it will not spread or tiller so much. On
an average, five pecks an acre is about right.
Use the drill in sowing all sorts of small grain.
It will put the seed In at a uniform depth and
the growth will be far better than where the seed
are sown broadcast and harrowed in. It will take
a small field not to more than pay for the drill in
the difference in the crop. The wheat drill comes
in also very handily for sowing the cowpeas after
the small grain, and they, too, do much better
fk on krAQr?Anaf a/1
If the oats were not sown in September or Octo
ber, it would be best now to defer the sowing till
February. But I would still sow the winter va
rieties, as they will make heavier oats than the
Northern spring oats in the South. But to make
the best crops of oats in the South, the seed
should be put in during September or October.
If you did not sow crimson clover among the
cotton, sow some rye between the rows as a winter
•over, and do not have a dead stalk field all win
ter, and the rye turned under in spring will add
some humus-making material to the soil, far in
ferior to clover, of course, but far better than
hare land in winter.
DRAIN WET LANDS.—There are farms all
•ver the South with ditch banks and fence-rows
grown up with bushes, and with ridges along the
ditches that prevent the water draining into them.
As the crops pass, get at the bushes and ditch
hanks. Get rid of the bushes and grade the banks
down so that the ditches will drain. The best
open ditch is one that is graded back so that
teams can cross it, and the ditch can be kept
clean with the plow. Then, in plowing a field
with open ditches, do not plow around the outside,
hut Btart in the middle and back furrow, so that
when you come to the ditch you will always be
'throwing the soil from it and not to it.
But as fast as possible do away with open
flitches. Lut them out as deep as they will drain
well; the deeper the better If you have the fall,
and If you can not afford tiles, use green, skinned
pine poles, laying two side by side with a space be
tween them and a larger one to cover this space.
Then cover with pine Btraw and fill in the earth.
I made ditches of this sort over twenty years ag©
that are still keeping the land dry.
Read what Mr. French has been writing about
drainage, and determine that your land that needs
draining shall be drained, and not allowed to
have lines of bushes marking open ditches that
are of little use In their grown-up condition.
„•*
FIX UP ABOUT THE HOUSE.—If your dwell
ing is unpainted, or the paint is getting shabby,
new is a good time to paint it. Your barn and
stables, and out-houses in general, will be better
■ft with a good coat of whitewash. I have a llt
le compressed-air spraying apparatus. The white
wash Is strained Into this and is sprayed on the
.'ough boards five times as fast as any one can put
it on with a brush. Brighten up the whole place
with paint and whitewash.
i hen if you have no-grass lawn around your
louse, now Is a good time to make it. Prepare
he soil deeply and line, and any time this month
ovv a mixture of bluegrass and redtop so thick as
to make the soil gray with the seed, and then
rake them in lightly. Then next spring get a
lawn mower and keep that grass cut neatly. In
short, make things homelike, and after you get a
nice lawn, you will want ornamental shrubbery
around it and some flowers.
Jt
IN THE GARDEN.—My garden will be almost
as full of growing vegetables in winter as in sum
mer, and yet all over the South one can now see
garden plots with the old corn stalks from which
the first roasting-ears were gathered, and dead
tomato vines and weeds galore. Of course, in
the far South, in Florida, for instance, they are
now just making garden, but all over the country
from Maryland southward we can have vegetables
all winter from the garden if we will. My onion
sets planted in September are now a foot high.
The parsnips, salsify and carrots are in fine shape
and will Btand all winter till used. Then I have
winter radishes of the Japanese and Chinese va
rieties that will be mulched with manure and pull
ed as wanted. Spinach is growing, of course, and
the curled kale, too. My peanuts are in the
shocks, and where the peanuts grew’ I will set
strawberries this month.
Late in the month the plants of Wakefield cab
bage will be set on the north side of ridges, deep
enough to cover the entire stem. They will thus
bo sheltered from the morning sun that damages
when frozen more than the degree of cold. Let
tuce of the Wonderful variety will be set in same
way for spring heading. In my frames the fall
crop of lettuce Is now (October 24) nearly beaded,
and will be cut out in November, and then I will
sow beets in rows a foot apart and a row of rad
ishes between them, and having the double-glazed
Sunlight sashes, I can keep out any cold that
comeB with the frames well banked on the out
side. In one line of frames (fourteen sashes) I
have planted onion sets in rows a foot apart, and
aB in the dry weather I could not get plants for
this frame, I have sown rows of lettuce seed be
tween the onion rows and will thin them out for
heading. The onions take little room, and will be
pulled and bunched late in winter, and I hope to
have the lettuce in February and March, and then
plant both frames In cucumbers while hardening
off my tomato plants at same time.
There is just as much fun and as much of profit
in a winter garden as a summer one, and it is
never too hut to work in it, and by keeping
the garden at work continually, it la easy to keep
it clean of weeds. I started in on a lot of nut
grass at one end of my garden last spring, and I
kept at It, till now one will have to hunt to find
a spear of nut-grass. There will bo some next
spring, of course, but it will not be allowed to
grow, and I expect to see the last of it then. The
way to get rid of weeds of any sort is simply not
to allow them to grow.
Better Seeds.
DR. BUTLER !b right as to better seed. I
have long Insisted that there is as much to
be done in the improvement of our crops by
good breeding and selection of the seed as in any
actual improvement of the soil, and when both
go hand-ln-hand there Is bound to be the greatest
improvement. But go about the Improvement of
seed In a rational way. Do not Imagine, as one
of my correspondents recently wrote, that plant
ing cotton when the sign is in the twins will give
you twin-boiled cotton, for it will do nothing of
the Bort unless your Beed has a hereditary ten
dency to produce twin bolls. It may be question
ed, too, whether the tw in bolls are beet, or wheth
er a large single boll will not usually give a bet
ter staple. As Dr. Butler says, we must have in
mind an ideal cotton plant, one that we would
consider a perfect plant In every way, and then
select seed from plants that come nearest to the
ideal we have in mind. Careful selection year
after year, and the elimination of inferior plants
around, either in corn or cotton, will result In es
tablishing a hereditary or a tendency to come true
to type. In improving cotton, or corn either, I
would plant with the best seed obtainable a patch
remote from other lands, and in the seed cotton
patch I would pull out every plant that seemed
to be a rogue and not the style of plant I wanted,
so that none of its pollen could be carried to the
plants I wanted to save for seed. Then select
for the new seed plot seed from the plants that
come nearest to your ideal of what a cotton plant
should be, and use the remainder of the seed for
the general crop. Keep this up year after year
till you find there are no long-legged rogues in
the seed plot, and getting a uniform type, you
can easily keep up the type In the same way.
How to Keep the South Poor.
GOD DESIGNED this country for the saggjj.
ing of the world with cotton, other ••uairfea
being set apart for the studying of the world
with grain, wool and other products.” Se aaga a
writer in a Southern paper.
Now, Southern planters have been working an
this theory and trying to make the eottoa es*)
pay for everything else they need. The reealt
has hten the production of less than 200 poaa4a
per acre of lint all over the Cotton Belt, while
men who have gone to farming, and are growing
the grain and other products that other seeMaae
were set apart for, are making here and there
1,000 pounds. Diversification and a sensible raft,
tlon of crops does not mean the production of
cotton, but the making of more cotton oa fewer
acres. This newspaper man would huve the wave
of good farming now sweeping over the SeaU
checked, and the farmers go hack to the old gam
bling with fertilizers for growing cotton year af
ter year on impoverished acres.
The hope of the South, the hope of the Soaftfti
cotton grower, lies in modern farm methods ft the
production of cotton by a rotation sad the de
velopment. through these practices, of tha ea
pacity of the soil for the production of cotton. If
every acre planted In cotton in the Soath were
developed even to the point of making a hale aa
acre, iug present average crop couia ue moot ei
one-third the acres now planted, aud the otker
two-thirds could be growing largo crops ol Me
grain and other things the South l* now Inking
money out of the cotton crop to buy.
Other sections were "set apart." asya ikla maa
who knows the purposes of the Almighty, tn mww
the grain. Have any of the grain sections ever
made as much corn on an acre as has been made
In the South? lias the corn crop ever boon eut
short In the South by frost as It was Inst yew to
the great Corn Hell? Did the Almighty snake a
mistake in setting apart a section where the snap
Is apt to be caught by frost to grow corn, or did
He not make the climate of the Soath eepeetaUy
favorable to the corn crop?
The South, on improved lands, can make It te
7 5 bushels of winter oats per acre, sad follow
them with peas that will make two tons of the
best hay on earth per acre the same season. Css
the part of ih** country "set apart" rw» Krain pro
duction do anything llko that?
Then, too, the very crops that thus aid the
farmer In the production of food and the Improve
ment of his soil tend to Its development tn tke
production of cotton, and If the Almighty set ap*wt
the South to grow cotton. He ruts the Souther*
farmers brain to use In order that they may use
the best means for the production at the lowtwt
cost of the great crop they were set apart to grow
They were certainly not set apart to waste their
heritage In the soil ns has been done, end the*
are waking up to the necessity of fanulag and the
abandonment of the old plantlug Idea, and ao re
actionary with his little broom can sweep baek
the advancing tide, for the Southern cultivators
of the soil are fast going to farming, and are
studying the best methods of farming with eottee
ns the money crop, hut not the oaly orep; sod
they are year after year going to make more cot
ton on fe * er acres, for this Is what the Seatb was
set apart to do.
President Barrett Is right In saying that we
need more men to develop the ftoeth. aad the
farmers of the Central West and North went as
similate with our people far better thaa those
from the Northeast. The Western farmer, as s
rule, succeeds far better lu the South than ths
man from New York or New England
I saw a handsome flock of Angora goats on th«*
great Lindsay farm near Portsmouth. Va.. a week
or two ago, and they seem to be thriving finely on
the reclaimed swamp land. On such lands there
Is no stork that will keep the ditch hanks cleaner
than Angora goats, and every one having such
lands knows how rankly the bushes grow on the
ditch banks.
It Is a sly trick of the oleo men to get the Con
greHsmen from the South persuaded that It will
be to the Interest of their constituents to let the
oleo makers color their grease, when the amount
of cottonseed oil used in making It a whole year
amounted to one and a half cents an acre on the
cotton area and the dairy Interests In the Cotton
States were 107 times greater. Congressmen
need to be Informed about the growing interest 1*
the cow In the South.