Connecticut western news., 1879-03-12
FARM AND GARDEN.

Nc H., AaGo1y Jolu the ClaGnam EarmcrS Club that in ditching he ploughs as deep as he can before using pick and shovel. MT. Parks mentioned Scotchman who went in debt for $2, 500 farm, drained and cultivated it, refused $5,OOO for it thlee years after, and in five years had paid off every cent of his obligation. MT. Garnet, who thinks he has had laid thirty-four miles of tile in as many years, remarked that poor, wet piece of land, drained, cropped several seasons, and then laid down to grass, was the only part of the field where the seed did not fail. MT. Stewart put in main, with few short laterals, twenty-five years ago they work still, and cattle always eat the pasturage close on the spot before feeding elsewhere, and there the yield is always heaviest whenever the field is cropped.
 Poultry Manure. Potash and plaster are usually added to poultry manure for use on corn. One bushel each is mixed together and two handfuls are applied in each hill, mixed with the soil. The mix ture is kept dry Or it is damaged by chlmlcal decomposition it is best made at the time it is needed for use. Coal ashes are totally useless as fertilizer. Bones my be softened and broken up (but not dissolved) by mixing them with fresh wood ashes and keeping them moist for three months, the bones may then be broken down fine with pound CT or Hail on barn floor. The bone and ashes are mixed in layers of three or four inches thick in @ large barrel or hogshead or heap under cover. The mixture is a complete fertilizer for any crop containing potash, phosphoric acid, lime and nitrogen.
 Nice ia Orchards. .-Tramping snow or earthing up about fruit-trees is a very uncertain means of preventing the rava- ges of mice. To prevent them with cer- talnity, the following plan may be adopted: Procure few sheaves of corn stalks or straw, and leave them here and there in the orchard. Scatter some corn-meal under them, which will at. tract the mice. This should be done be- fore any show falls. Then mix some corn-meal mush with arsenic or phos- phorus-paste, work it into small pellets, and lea7e these under the sheayes. Sugar of lead my be used instead of arsenic, or corn my be soaked in solu- tion of sugar of lead and placed under the sheaves. In this way whole farm may be cleared of mice, and the orchard will be saved. The orchard is now worth less. It may be saved by grating small twlgs into the bark above and below the wounds, three or four to each tree, so as to connect the separated bark but it will never be worth much. We would saw off the stumps, and graft them over again at the proper season for this work, and then exercise precautions in future.
 SaW 0s c Md,aure.-We have applied salt to our garden say at intervals of from six to eight years, for twenty five or thirty years. We could not discover that it had any particular effect. We believe, however, that it had 8 good effect, beside destroying insect life. We use it alm annually on the asparagus beds, as most persons do, and know that the plant greatly thrives upon 1t. In wheat-felds it tends to stitfen the straw and acts thus as protection against storms, which lay low so many fields. It also attracts moisture, and in times of drought acts favorably in this way. But that it is manure in any sense, or that it will show itself after the first crop is removed, we do not believe. It is question for the observing farmer to decide whether or not it's application will "pay." In England it has long been experimented with in every way, as fertilize CT, and the farmers there are as much in the dark about it to-day as they were at the beginning. The Mark Lane Ecpress, regarded as good authority there, says that there is no clear evidence even as to it's mode of action, as the results are so varying that they are "oonflicting and contradictory,
 Soiling-A Coming Necessity.-A departure in the business of farming in our country, especially in the older portions of it, may be expected sooner or later, as like causes produce like effects. When land was cheap and labor dear, labor was economized and land set less store by; now the millions of our own native population, and the agumenting crowds that are gathering from beyond the sea, admonish us to reverse this policy and use as much labor as possible in making the land as productive as it is susceptible of being made. My theme is soiling or, in other words, cutting and putting their feed before cattle, sheep, etc. This i'm plies 8 revolution but the more we consider it in theory or practice the more it commends itself as true principle. In it's favor we may claim the saving of fence-which amounts to
 the heaviest tax the farmer has to pay an increased belt of land to till the
 prevention of noxious weeds and briars
 along fences an insurance of cutting
 down or ploughing under all such sub
 stances before their seed maturity
 making very large increase of manureal
 material for litter and absorbing drop
 pings from stock and, most of all per
 haps, the prevention of loss by cattle
 tramping and fouling what they nigh eat. We are entirely safe in assuming
 that by the soiling system double th' quantity of stock can be kept, and con aoo-on41v o rrr6ot inoroooo of ,,oonrr.