The record-union., 1895-02-25
SUCCESSES IN FRESNO COUNTY
y Forage Plant That Produces Two
Hundred Tons Per Acre.

y Forage Plant That Produces Two
hundred Tons Per Acre.
W. a. Sanders of Reedley, who short
time ago contributed to the RECORD
UNION an interesting article on Failures
in Fresno" has also written the follow
ing, which shows what can be made profit
able in that locality:
! The greatest success that l have at
tanned as Fresno county rancher is in
| having produced tender, succulent, nu-
trItIous, palataple, milk producing cow
feed at the rate of over two hundred tons
| per acre III year. The plants yielding
| this enormous amount of iced were three
different species Of ArundineR, plants by
no means new to agriculture. In the
| Bible they are spoken of under the He
brew name, "Kaneh," which is generally
translated reed" The Jews and Greeks
! made their arrows of the stems, and the
tent OF Achilles was matched with their
| leaves.
L planted them without any idea of
their value for feed, but soon found that
! the succulent young stems were greedily
! eaten by stock, and to-day we are feeding
| each cow at milking time pailful of the
! new groWths of tender, juicy stems the
size and length of chair posts-we gather
ing them by swapping them off at the
ground after the manner of gathering
asparagus. We throw them into the
! feeding trough and chop them up with a
sharp shovel, and the cows eat them the
same as they would turnips or pumpkins
prepared in like manner.
| The man who has to make living for
| his family, who will provide them with a
| cow fresh in milk in the spring, and an
| other fresh IN autumn, and will supply TO
! his cows the best of milk-producing feed.
lnsuring constant family supply OF milk,
cream and butter, that man has solved
! the problem OF cheap, good living for his
! amlIy. The best COW feed for such an
! arrangement has been a matter OF study
| to me Tor over forty years. Away back
IN the sixties" l thought alfalfa solved
! the problem. a thorough trial showed
! its deficiencies. Since then I'ye tried a
score OF sorghums, both saccharine and
| non-saccharlne, prickly comtrey, sugar
| beets, evergreen millet, Johnson grass.
! eSpersette, reana luxurianS or teosinte
four kinds of bronze grass, blue grass.
| orchard grass, algoraba, lentils, cow peas
wild peas (lathyrusl, besides carefully
! testing all the more common grains and
/ grasses.
Last August l put my cows from the
eaten out pasture into a 20U-acre field
with ditch running on two sides of it,
along which was growing an immense
amount OF good feed; they showed little
or II o increase of milk. Sixty days later
l put them on to half acre of arundos.
ten to thirty feet tall, with the result that
III three days they had doubled their flow
of milk.
have not fed my cows, young stock.
or indeed anything but my teams, one
pound Of hay Tor five years. When frosty
weather begins l simply turn them on
the arundos, and they do the rest. These
reeds will thrive wherever corn will
grow. All you have to do to get a start
OF them IS to get a bale of the stalks. 80
! cents TO 81 they are understandable by any
delay in being sent by freight, then make
! you cuttings, each two joints in length
and set them the whole length in the
ground. They'll grow on dry land, or
they'll absorb more water and manure
! than any other plant, and when so treated
! they solve the problem of producing the
/ most feed on the smallest area of ground
Seedsmen fully understand the univer-
! sal demand for cow feed that shall give
! the largest yield from the smallest area.
and they are constantly hunting and ad-
I'vertising plans TO fill these conditions.
That they have not found the best is
! evlnced by their Offering a new one every
| year. y scora of seedsmen's catalogues
are before me. The new forage plant this
year is ''Sacaline' (POlgg01uHI Sucbq-
| tiaense). This plant was discovered nv
the bot8nist +. Schmidt In 1868, on the
island OF Saghalien. They claim for it
that an acre well set to it will produce
| from 90 to $50 tons of green feed per year.
But hero is the trouble. The seed can
| hardly be made to grow, while cuttings,
to plant even a single acre, will cost more
than one could get from it in many years.
And here is worse trouble. 1t has a
near relative, P0iygOn1tD1 c1SpidOtuHa, that
is cheap, easily grown, but is of little
value, and may become noisome weed
That is, we may have a repetition of the
old story of selling Johnson grass seed
for evergreen millet, and so filling the
country with another weed pest