The Lake County star. [volume] (Chase, Mich.) 1873-current, 1876-05-04
AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

oVJA POUNDS OF Dutter In ten months
after calvipg, or between March 10th,
1866, and January 10th, 1867, besides
supplying family with milk and cream.
A GERMAN market gardener in Penn
sylvania in putting out his cabbage fol-
lowed the German custom of pnddling
the roots of a part ofhis plants in thin
mixture of cow manure and water. Five
rows thus treated entirely escaped dis
ease, growing prosperously, while the
remaining portion Of the crop, 1,4C0
plants, all died.
II. H. MORGAN, of Castleton, Vermont,
says he had grade heifer two years old
in May last. His little daughter fire.
quently pretended to milk her, and final.
ly he began milking her regularly. The
first week she gave only about teaspoon
full of watery fluid. Now she gives
three quarts day Of good milk which
produces good butter, yet she has never
had a calf. .,,.
In the mania for tree planting this
year will not some of our people plant
ornamental evergreen hedges? Nothing is
more attractive than q beautiful hedge
we'll kept. The common hemlock is un-
questionably very superior as hedge
plant, and although rather more difficult
to manage than spruce or arbor vit@,
richly repays every item of care in the
delicate droop of foliage and airy appear
ance when some size is attained.
The Rural Cdrolinidn, edited by d.
Wyatt Aiken of the National Grange,
quotes the Rural Neo Yorker on the i'm.
portance of diversity of crops, and says
that Carolina farmers need fear no glut
of corn-would rather welcome it as a
variation from recent experience. This
is undoubtedly true, and Carolina far
mers, and others in the older Southern
States, need not fear any glut of corn.
The difficulty will be found, rather, in
getting enough of it. In the States
Bordering the Mississippi river it may
still be found better to use cheap West
ern corn than to grow all wanted at
home.
THERE is less said about the artificial
methods of training the grape than there
used to be, and there seems to be ten.
dency to revert back to old ancestors in
the wild state. Instead of training arms
at regular intervals and deciding just
where each bunch of grapes shall grow
before the wood is made, the vines are
allowed to grow a limited number of
canes naturally, with dropping habit,
attached in very few places to the trellis
or stake. This seems to check excessive
growth of wood, and the vines are more
easily cared for, beside giving full as good
crops as when trained with the greatest
precision.
LET every barn-yard be scraped to the
bottom and every scrap of material that
will add to the capacity of the soil be
employed to increase fertility. Sow
plaster, scatter ashes, pound up old bones,
clean the chip-yard, use the earth about
where the drains issue in truth, let not
particle of fertilizing material go to
waste. There is money in it, and the
study of methods for the employment of
manure upon the soil is everywhere
needed. We complain of poor crops
of grass and clover seed, not talking of
wheat winter killing and a hundred other
trials that may be wonderfully modified
by higher system of farming, which in
every instance means more manure.
AN illustration Of the value of timber
on waste lands is afforded by sale of
wood which took place on the estate of
the Earl of Cawdor, in Nairnshire,
England, the other day. In. 1920 two
hills, about three hundred acres in ex-
tent, were planted with fir and other
trees, and after successive thinning, the
sale of which realized large sums, the
remainder of the wood has just been sold
off for the sum of E16,000. The sums
realized for the wood on this waste land
during the fifty years is stated to be
equal per acre to the return for the best
arabic land in the country.