The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1880-04-30
Farm Notes.

Farm Notes.
A chicken fancier says that he stuck coat
plaster over an egg found broken in the
nest after the hen had been sitting a week,
and in due time it gave a chicken as spright-
ly as any of the brood.
An English grape grower stopped the pro-
fuse bleeding of a thrifty young vine by
forming sort of hard cement over the cut
ends by repeated busting at short intervals
with Portland cement.
Potash is absolutely necessary to success
full potato growing. The easiest and best
mode of supplying it is in the form of wood
ashes. 1t is furnished also in soft coal ashes
and well rotted yard OF. stable manure.
If the soil is full of angle worms it is also.
doubtless lumpy and hard to pulverize when
broken up with the spade or plough. An APP
plication of salt also ashes or sand f or me-
chanical effect will prove beneficial.
A New York farmer kills the cabbage
worm by sprinkling the plants With com
mon black pepper from an ordinary TIN box
"a pound to $50 plants pre-
viously sprinkling with soap suds from the
weeks washing.
Bran or ground feed, says the National
Live Stock Journal, is best fed to cows upon
moistened cut hay. BY mixing with the
hay all will be eaten together and raised
and re-masticatsd. But if it is not fed with
cut hay, it should be fed dry and in small
quantity eafn time.
The best apples for export to Europe are
the Northern Spy, Baldwin, Newtown Pip
pin, and Rhode Island Greening. Opinions
vary respecting the Thompkins King, it
proving healthy and hardy in some localities
and in others being sickly and liable to
fall off.
In following the old rule of sowing from
two to four bushels of oats to the acre, re-
member that on a heavy clay land YOU will
want more seed than on light soil On
any ordinary land three bushels of seed will
give the best crop. The earliest sown fields
are usually the most productive.
A correspondent OF the Country Gentle
man recommends clearing away the surface
earth from around the trunks of fruit trees,
down to the branch roots, and giving the
trunk and upper surface of the roots good
coat OF whitewash with salt in it. He saws
it will greatly improve the appearance of the
foliage.
The OK eyed daisy has become great pest
in some sections of the country. Those
who are troubled with this weed should
bear in mind that it is propagated by Seed
and not by root, and to rid themselves of it
they have only to NOV before the seed is
ripe. 1t may require two seasons to rid a
held entirely of the innocent looking flower.
Cow peas, which have long been cultivated
at the South, are beginning to be recon-
mended to Northern farmers as food for
cattle. They are said to be better feed than
green corn, and just as much can be got
from the same space without impoverishing
the soil. They are sown in drills, any time
after spring frost, for fodder. Poultry as
well as cattle are fond of them,
In spring, when either the grass or spring
grain has made start, nitrate of soda at
the rate of 100 pounds to the acre makes an
excellent top dressing. Nitrate of soda being
extremely soluble, should never be applied
except on growing crops There is no feI-
tilizing salt which makes its way through
the soil so rapidly as this, and none which
contains sTch an amount of nitrogen.
A late writer says: 'Most farmers have
noticed that, in fattening swine rapidly,
they appear weak in their bind legs and
sometimes lose the use OF them entirely. In
such cases we find that small quantity of
bone-meal mixed with their daily feed will
prevent weakness, and will strengthen the
animal so as so admit of the most rapid
forcing"