Connecticut western news., 1880-03-24
FARM AND GARDEN.
PRACTICAL HINTS,

 to show that in feeding potatoes to milch COWS they should be fed raw if milk is wanted, and cooked if butter is the object.
 A Canadian, now in his grave, is believed to have died from the effects of eating part of 8 cabbage from patch in which Paris green was used to kill the worms.
 We loosen wet soil to facilitate evaporation, and roll or otherwise com press dry soil to retard it. A com. pressed soil retards moisture and facili- tates germination.
 Good country roads facilitate trade intercourse, promote comfort and conve- nience, increase the value of farms, and attractiveness to the neighborhood, and stimulate individual improvements. MT. Oliver Dalrymple, the great Minnesota farmer, intends to cultivate 30, ,0O0 acres in wheat this year. It is estimated that he will employ 20 steam threshers, with 1855 reaping machines.
 -E. B. s. writes us that he stuck court-plaster over an egg found broken in the nest after the hen had been set ting week, and in due time it gave chick as sprightly as any of the brood.
 A successful potato grower advo- oates planting potatoes out to single eyes only, and reports yield of 488 bushels of Early Rose to an acre, and large bushel yield from % eyes of an- other variety planted in hills three feet apart, one eye to the hill.
 A farmer, who for many years had followed the old custom of planting pumpkins with his corn, reports that the crop is earlier in arriving ct ma turity and larger in amount since he abandoned the practice. The increase in his corn crop was of more value than the pumpkins.
 Prof. Ohas. 8. Sargent, of Brook line, who took the first prize of the Massachusetts Board for print-butter, gives each of his Jersey COWS 8 daily ration of one quart of Indian meal, two quarts shorts, one-fourth bushel car. rots and about ten pounds English hay. The raising of 30 bushels of wheat to the acre will remove from the land 51 pounds of nitrogen, "A pounds of phos phorio acid, and 39 pounds of potash. This could be replaced by 60 pounds of sulphate of ammonia, I'll pounds of superphosphate of lime, and 76 pounds of chloride of potassium.
 l Lime is an important element of plant food. It's free use on stiff-clayed soils renders them fertile. It also de- composes the vegetable matter in the soil. Applied to muck it makes an ex- cellent fertilizer. Lime is not only 8 fertilizer in itself, but the cause of fer tilization in every soil to which it may be applied in quantities, varying with the characteristics and requirements of the soil under treatment.
 -"Are corrcobs of any value as ma- nureP" Being poor in nitrogen and difficult to decompose they would be worth little; any farmer could generally employ his time more prohtably than in trying to fertilize his land with routed cobs. A hundred pounds of the dry cobs would yield about half pound of ashes very rich In potash probably, therefore, no better disposal of this ma terial could be made than to burn it and use the ashes.
 As soon as the bees fly freely in the spring, put rye meal in shallow boxes or troughs @ short distance from the apiary, and attract bees to them by pieces of empty comb laid near by. They soon learn the way to it, and take it eagerly until flowers come when il will be abandoned. The rye should not be bolted. Wheat flour will be taken by them, but not 50 readily. Meal-fed bees will send out larger and earlier swarms than others, because the abun. dance of the bee.bread encourages the rearing of brood.
 A committee appointed by the Maine Slate Grange two or three months ago to investigate the beet.sugar manufac. ture have just issued their report, in which occurs the following "It is evident that with beets at $5 per ton, without the State bounty, the business could not be continued. It is also evi dent that the farmers cannot afford tc raise beets at lower price than hitherto paid" The report, however, makes plain the fact that when farmers started under favorable circumstances and with knowledge of the culture required their crops were in every instance remu nerative.
 Bean straw, especially if the pods are attached, is more valuable as cattle food than is generally supposed, ant though from it's hard and woody natur, it is not so we'll adapted for food as soft CT straws, still 8 portion may be used tt advantage. The greener the condition in which it is cut the better as 8 source o food. Bean straw is increased in valu. by steaming, principally by being mad' softer, and therefore easy of digestion while to limited extent it's solubility ii , increased. Straw of all kinds is a valu able feeding material, ani when prop erly made may be economically substi tuted for hay in feeding the farm ani mals.
 Light, sandy land, generally speak , ing, should be plowed in the spring and experience has proven, in mos , cases, that land near the sea, which i ! IL. | 1
 ter when broken in the spring than i