News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1888-10-04
MORE OF THE NEW AGRICULTURE.
The Good Results of Subterranean
Irrigation.

Will you be good enough to lay the
following facts before the Farmers Club
of Elmira ? / last season and this prov
ed to mathematical demonstration that
by an expense not exceeding $50 an acre,
three perfect crops of grass can be annu
ally realized OH meadow lands of regions
of country having firm subsoils, averag-
ing, wear in an year out, ten tons of
cured hay to the acre.
| I have demonstrated the fact equally,
last V sar and this, on somewhat upward
of an eighth of an acre devoted to black
berries, fitted at an expense not exceed
ing $50 an acre, that thousand bushels
to the acre can be realized annually, my
crop netting me the present season 81. 56
per crate or bushel, up to the point
where the wild berries came into com
petition, the average of entire crop
netting at the rate of 50 per bushel. /
have two rows of wilding, the finest
berries ever grown, and averaging at the
rate of l, 500 bushels to the acre, and am
now pushing on with five acres of new
settings, most of the sets being wildings-
| These berries are more profitable for
evaporating than selling fresh.
[ have 0ne-sixteenth of an acre of
| black caps, averaging this season at the
rate of 900 crates to the acre (bushel
crates), netting $3.50 to the crate.
| Another plot of a twelfth of an acre of
Cuthbert rel raspberries has melted
| 50. SO per crate, and the product was at
| the rate of 700 crates to the acre.
Ny Strawberries were sadly dam agcd
this season by frost, reducing them to
little more than quarter of o crop, the
| frost striking them in blossom. Had
/ the crop been full, realizing as [ did
net of 125 cents quart, [ would have
had not less than 500 bushels on an acre
and half, none of them in full bearing
till next season. With good luck next
year this acre and a half should give Us
| $50 bushels, netting 81 per buslol.
1000. Strawberry culture having been
almost wholly abandoned in this part of
the State, the prospect for growers on
sub-irrigated lands is somewhat better
than ordinary farming in the ChemuDg
valley.
Ny apple trees on sub-irrigated lands
produce on all average three times as
much as formerly; the fruit increased i'll
size and greatly improved in quality.
When i comes to grapes and ounces,
though these are rarely produced in our
country by any one except myself, [ am
p
five to to ten-fold greater crops than the
average produced in most favored fruit
regions of our State. / am growing the
Mikado tomato at the rate of from 5000
to 5000 bushels to the acre, nor has O
speck of rot been so far discovered dur
ing the present season. My caulifower
presents the most amazing sight of all;
one plant, to which I give four feet of
pure mold in perfect sponge before
reaching water table beneath, on Friday
morning last, Aug. II, stood two feet
and two inches in its stockings" and
measured eleven feet in circuit OF out
side spread of leaves. The five days
since of growth finds it about three feet
in height, and circumference reaching
sixteen feet. To estimate the ''big
cheese am hoping for in time for our
fair, first week in September, [ will not
but ask, urge and insist upon it that q
second committee representing your
club shall come here and see what l am
doing and once more report.
As for potatoes, am not this year
making tests of utmost degree of pro-
duction, but will only say that $50 an
acre should fit your hill lands in Che
mung by use Of one-fourth of the ma
nure usually applied, to average from
500 to 900 bushels to the acre one year
with another. have oats and buck
wheat on the gore, the soil worked by
our old "white Indian" Billy Weed,
for forty years without, manuring on
which there has been no fertilizing done
in several years outside that of water
running through it for four years past,
coming of application of methods of the
New Agriculture by myself, and here
are found growing crops the present
year rivaling, if not cchpsing, any to be
found in Allegheny county. [ do not
mean to be disrespectful toward your
grand farmers of the Chemung valley,
but do not hesitate to conclude and
thus declare that should the farmers of
Chemung county hold on in old ways
they will in all probability find Ale
gheny producing more of the fruits of
the earth at the close of the present cen
tury than a score of counties like yours;
since, so far as Allegheny is concerned,
our farmers are finding out that the old
things are passing away and all is be-
com ing new.
In addition to all above, let it be I'M
derstood that on all farms with firm
sub-soili, permanent springs and flowing
wells will be begotten, and with fifty
acres fitted with reservoir trenches from
five to ten rods along more elevated in
clines, ON q second fifty acres lakes can
be grown, and spring brooks brought
out alive with brook trout From the
HlSb0HdmdH.