The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-04-02
AGRICULTURAL.


picks up the corn-a grain at a time.
-. In cultiyating with fork or rake work
backward to avoid showing footprints.
One pound of potatoes, carefully cut,
will make one hundred sets. These will
plant hundred hills that should raise
from two to three bushels.
Soak beet and carrot seed from twelve
to twenty-four hours before sowing. This
forwards termination and helps them to
come up as quickly as weeds.
Weeds should be collected and re-
moved IRON the ground after being
pulled or hoed up, they often root and
grow. The best way is to burn them,
root and branch.
Dwarf popcorn, planted in drills eigh-
teen inches apart, and thin, will produce
abundantly. When sinking sow early
purple-top strop leaf turnip between the
rows. Plants do not eat manure, they
drink the essence of it.
An English writer advises young ladies
to look favoraby upon those engaged in
that their mother Eve married a gardener.
He forgot to add, however, that the gar
dener lost his situation in consequence of
the match.
"A great source of agricultural profit is
overlooked at the present time, although
an epoch of intellectual activity and morbid
cravings for wealth. 1t is irrigation. Four
thousand five hundred years ago, in the
reign of Pharoah Amenemha ILL.,, Lake
Merus was dug in Egypt in order to have
a supply of water for quenching the thirst
of growing crops when the Nile was low.
In that fruitful granary of the ancient
world irrigation is still universally prac-
ticed, and with the most satisfactory re-
suits. In Colorado and Utah, where the
people must irrigate the land or get nothing,
the probability is their products few years
hence will far exceed those of the richest
lands under culture on the continent. All
water holds in solution plant food. Give
them that simple article literally and look
for a return of tenfold for the labor as a
recompense.
THINK ABOUT THE GARDEN Now.
How often have we commended to those
having sufficient ground enough for gar
den, and especially farmers, to pay in
creased attention to this important append
age of family comfort. Farmers as rule,
are entirely too careless about their gardens,
their whole mind being placed upon their
corn-fields, stock, etc. The women would
in most cases be competent and willing to
take charge of a larger portion of the labor
necessary to the proper cultivation of the
garden, if the men would prepare the
ground to their hands. Indeed, it is fact,
those who pursue the cultivation of the soil
as their business, rarely enjoy garden pro-
ducts in perfection, just because they APP
pear to insist upon the error that they
don't pay. Now is.the time to think about
how the garden can be enlarged and the
number and quantity of the crops increased.
The stuff can also be got ready for the adj
ditional fence, and the fence itself erected
as soon as the weather will permit. The
little hot-beds in which to raise your toma-
to, cabbage and egg plants should now be
repaired and gotready for sowing the seed
as soon as the time arrives. One thing
must be remembered, that there should be
no sparing of the underlying stratum OF
horse manure in preparing the BEDS Ger
mantooa Telegraph.
How TO PLANT THE PoTATo.-Here
is what writerin the Prairie Farmer says
on this subject:
Plant never less than six inches deep,
better seven, in sandy soil never less than
seven or seven and half. The reason is
this, and it will show how many points il
will cover: 1t will put the crop beyond
the hurtful influence of the heat and the
drought; it will bury the seed so that the
frost cannot reach it, early as it is put into
the ground and if it should reach it, being
buried so deeply, it will draw out gradual
ly, which will save it. 1t is as well here,
the seed is, as in the cellar, and may bet
ter sprout here than in the cellar. 1t will
thus show above the ground in due time,
when the frosts have disappeared and the
growing season sets in. The soil being
well drained-an indispensable .thing-the
rest will not hurt. There being good
mellow soil, with humus vegetable matter,
changing it, it will be comparatively dry
and warm. This will save the seed, pro-
yidlng always it is sound; otherwise, af-
iected with rot, it will be lost.
The distance of planting apart must de.
pend upon the sort that is planted. A
spreading potato-spreading in the hill
must have more room. Thus we plant the
Peach Blows further apart than the Early
Rose. The latter will put its tubers close
together, nest of them, and the hills can
be put close together, say twelve to four
teen inches, or drop the seed "a single eye
or two) continuously eight inches apart,
the rows as near together as will permit
with the cultivation, the nearer the better
for the close-growing roots. By thus plant
ing, as will be seen, rather close, there will
be no overgrown and consequently coarse,
and it may be hollow, potatoes. Neither
will there be necessarily many small ones,
especially with some sorts, of which the
Early Rose is beautiful example. The
size will be medium, large enough-iust
fha Fl, Il 81, L