The Opelousas journal. [volume] (Opelousas, La.) 1868-1878, 1873-10-31

LA, october l, 1873.
To the Editor of tho New Orleans Times:
Many planters assert, without
due reflection we think, that the alluvial
lands of Southern Louisiana are good
for nothing but for sugar, and that moth
ing can be made even from this crop.
Let us examine few facts bearing on
this question.
An acre of even the old and worn lands
in these regions, that have beer cultiva-
ted from fifty to a hundred years, we'll
ditched, ellcultivated, with ten dollars
worth of commercial or domestic fer
tilizers properly applied, may produce
as an average crop, as follows:
1. From hOgshead and half to two
hOgshead of sugar, and from two to
three barrels of mOlaSses, worth $500 or
more.
2. Thirty bushels of corn, worth $50.
3. Seven barrels flooded rice, worth
$112, or five barrels highland rice, worth
$50.
4. Five tons of hay, oats, pea-vines,
| barley, rescue grass, crab grass, rye and
other summer and winter forage crops,
| the best portion of which should be worth
$40 ton in the New Orleans market.
5. Successive soiling crops, summer
and winter, on an acre of ground, may
support cow twelve successive months,
| that will give three gallons of milk dai-
| ly, ora thousand gallons in a year, worth
over $3.50; or it may fatten several
beeves, which may give the farmer over
q hundred dollars for his five tons of
forage converted into beef
6. It may yield over 800 worth of
sweet potatoes, and over 5000 worth of
onions, or 8,00Oheads of cabbages, worth
ten cents each, $500; or over $1O0 worth
of white beans or 800 worth of ground
peas; or $75 worth of broom corn and
seed or $75 worth of caster oil beans or
garden vegetables, when convenient to
market, worth several hundred dollars,
and many other small articles of value.
An acre of this land may produce
several hundred dollars worth of straw
berries, which may be kept in bearing
three months or more.
81 Itmay produce pears, peaches, plums,
figs, blackberries, dewberries and other
fruits, worth several hundred dollars,
according to the skill and industry Of
the farmer.
9. 1t may support o hundred orange
trees which may yearly produce from
$500 to $1,000.
10. It may support twenty eight
scuppernOng grape vines, which, with
d suitable arbOrs and proper attention,
when ten years old may produce over
two hundred bushels of grapes, and at
twenty years OF age, over q thousand
bushels, worth dollar bushel, the
yield increasing yearly. A bushel Of
these grapes should produce three gal
Ions of wine. A single scuppernOng
grape vine, in full bearing, with plenty
Of room, on good aFbOr, is worth more
than a hundred dollars.
II. Other grape vines may be plan
ted and trained to stakes and trellises
that may yield more than 800 profits
yearly. ..
70. 1t may support hundred Chi
nese ounce trees, which, in full bearing,
, should yield fruit yearly more than two
hundred dollars.
13. It may support fifty pecan trees,
which, when in full bearing, may yield
on an average more than $40 worth of
fruit yearly to q tree, and continue in
bearing from one to two hundred years.
F Though of slow growth their bearing
may be hastened by grating in pecan,
: hickory or walnut. A good pecan tree,
> large fruit, in full bearing, is worth to
. the proprietor more than hundred dol
= lars in gold, and will bring better in
: come, and is better than 800 worth OF
stock in any bank.
This list can be enlarged, but the above
Is SumclenG TO snow That these lands
may produce something besides sugar
t Perhaps sugar planters, and cotton
h planters, also, are apt to think that the
}. staple crops to which they are accus,
8 toned are the only articles of value
Q that can be cultivated in the country
}. merely because they have never taker
t the trouble to examine the smaller in.
= dustries and the various capacities oi
: the soil they cultivate. If such a soil
: as this and our climate could be trans
: ferred to the region around Chicago o.
d within fifty miles of any Western city
|. a thousand dollars an acre i'll gold wou1C
o be- considered cheap for such lands
@ and yet just such have been sold, in tn,
). last three or four years, right in tn,
e immediate vicinity of New Orleans, a
d twenty-five dollars an acre, and the i'm
e prOvements on the lands originally cos
g more than than the whole property SOLE
# for. .*.