The Opelousas courier., 1890-04-05
FARM AND GARDEN NOTES.

In early winter horses and COW should
have specially good care.
The hog, properly raised, is the ''nim-
BILE sixpence" Of the modern farm.
There are quite as weighty reasons for
keeping clean the pens of hogs as the
stalls of horses.
Look for white scale on the bark of
your apple trees. Otherwise the lice
will destroy your tree.
A mound of earth about a foot high
around young trees is a common prevent
i've of injuries by mice.
There is something else to be aimed at
in breeding and feeding hogs besides the
amount of lard they will make.
It is as plain as the rising sun in a clear
sky that the man who says that silage is
the best food that can be procured for a
cow is the man who cares for the COM
fort of his COWS no further than to get a
great quantity of a poor quality of milk.
Large, smooth, juicy fruit can be OBJ
tanned only from thrifty wood in which
| the sap-movement is free. While trying
to reserve fruit-buds enough, therefore,
and to have the head evenly filed with
out risk by crowding and consequent
oyershading, it is always desirable to re-
move wood that shows marks of weak
growth and exhaustion.
There istno danger whatever that ap-
pies, peaches, pears or any other useful
fruit will be produced in excess of the
demand. The truth is, demand keeps,
pace with production. People will use
q great deal more fruit when it is plenti-
| full, and when they acquire the habit of
using they retain it. There is perhaps
no branch of farming that yields safer~sf
more steadysreturns than orchard fruit.
Why.do varieties Of potatoes run out9
Because no special care is taken to select
the best for seed. The old sorts are not
to b found; new sorts, without improve
ment,except as to earliness, taking their
places. A selection of the fittest for
seed will without doubt keep the variety
| vigorousiand preserve its peculiar quail
ties. To keep the early sorts from
sprouting until the time comes for plant
ing reauiEes a cool cellar and air-tight
packages. The first sprouts make the
more vigorous plants and produce more
tubers.
Tt seems sometimes a convenience to
put stones ,out of the way, to pile them
| around a tree where the pillow cannot
! come, but there is no surer way to de-
| stroy the tree. The reason seems to be
that the stonesiacts as a mulch, keeping
the soil moist to the very surface. This
| encourages the root to grow upward
near the top; of the ground, and as the
| stone mulch does not prevent frost, the
roots are frozen in and cannot furnish
r sap. Stone heaps should especially be
avoided around apple and other fruit
trees, as they harbor mice, which eat the
bark, thus girdling and killing the tree.
For a crop to pasture, to rot
on the land or to plow under for
manure, the pea-vine clover is superior
to the medium or small variety. But it
makes a very coarse hay, which can hard
ly be cured without heating or getting
wet before it is drawn in. Thus kept,
cattle and sheep reject the butts much as
they do the coarse butts of cornstalks.
Considering the extra trouble there Is in
curing the large variety, the smaller is
preferable for hay. In fact, it will prob
ably give more feed in first and second
crop than the large kind. Owing to its
stronger growth, the pea vine is less
liable to winter-kill than the common
I, variety of clover.