The Savannah morning news., 1902-05-05
THE FARM AND THE GARDEN.
MATTERS OF INTEREST To HOUSE,
WIFE AND AGRICULTURIST.

Rhubarb in the SOuth-The Assert
ing of Irish Potato seed-PruninG
Southern Grapes.
The farming world is at the mercy
not of Tiberius-but of the insect and
blight
Nearly all of our crops are now in
tested with one or the other, but it is
not quite as bad yet as it will be in
the years to come. And the pity of it
is our farmers and truckers are not
alive to the danger that is confronting
them.
What with imperfect seeds, voracious
insects and insidious disease the tiller
of the soil will have his hands full to
protect his crops even after they are
well under way from now on. There
has been a tremendous change for the
worse in the past twenty years. The
! evils that beset the path of the far
mer, gardener and fruit grower have
multiplied tenfold in recent years. We
! have disease and insects and destruc-
tive drouth and freshets beyond any
| thing dreamed of twenty years ago.
| iiC iliciil llie1L uOGS llOl IedllEe lIlSs
| how portentous it is, will have 10
| drop out of tilling the soil before very
| long. Once upon a tine the fight was
about won when a good stand of any
particular crop was secured. Reason
able cultivation secured the results in
due time. If a fruit tree was set out
and it lived that was all that was
necessary. There was no scale or
| blight to interfere. Now there is
nothing in anyway valuable that
! hasn't its scale or other insect and its
peculiar blight. Never before was
their such intelligence necessary to
enable man to succeed as a tiller of
the soil whatever direction it takes.
There is one thing that appears
quite plain through the darkness Of
all these threatenings, and that is our
grass and our clovers were never
greener and more luXuriant. Seemingly
there is nothing threatening them. Our
cattle all seem to be healthy and
| thriving on our grasses and clovers,
and so forth.
Is it not suggestive?
But is it not strange that so few of
our people have read Alright the hand
writing upon the wall-the wall of our
| deli u al d pOSolDlHtleS. E1OM Lew
i have seemed to see the hand of PROV
idence in the sure but steady encroach-
ment of Gods grass" up
on our valleys and upon
our uplands. Some forty years ago
just about the time the natural fertil-
ity of our soils here begun to show
exhaustion there appeared in spots
here and there upon Georgia soil a
new grass, something entirely different
] -
"crowfoot." Farmers became wildly
excited. Should it be allowed to spread
over the land nothing but ruin was to
be the result. We remember distinct
ly the wall of terror that went up
from Southwest Georgia when a few
years prior to the Civil War patches
of the new grass were discovered in
sections of Dougherty county. Cotton
culture would soon be doomed" Our
lands will lessen in value, What shall
be done about it?" The few papers
devoted to agriculture were deluged
| with inquiries as to how best to deal
| with the new foe to our prosperity.
Since then a generation of those most
| affected by the threatened calamity
| has passed away. Cotton growing has
! continued Instead of a quarter of a
million of bales, the output is five
| times the quantity. Despite the mill
lions of foot tons of labor devoted to
its annual destruction the terrible
grass" has continued to spread over
Georgia bottoms and uplands. Fought
and neglected as it has been so long,
it is still here ready to solve for US
the great problem that concerns so
many. How to make farming the
source of profit to its people and to
sustain the Empire State as a great
| agricultural territory" Now brought
very low through the persistent neglect
| of a God-giVen means to change to a
system demanded by the progress of
time and of events. When country
exhausts the fertility of its soils by a
long continued clean culture of them
the natural, the inevitable change is
| back again to pastoral farming" The
alienation is as logical as that illus
trated in that of forest growth. Cut
down the oak and the pine takes its
! place and vice versa.
1t does not mean that we are not to
cultivate anything, that we are to turn
all our fields into pastures and pro-
vide them with cattle of one kind or
another. but it does mean that due
proportion of every farm should have
its pasture and it's cattle to feed upon
| il. OF every 100-aCre farm fifty should
be pastoral and fifty devoted to crops
requiring cultivation. Something like
! this proportion should exist.
There is no need whatever for our
soils becoming exhausted. Under jul
| dicious rotation of crops they should
| rather increase in fertility a little year
| by year.
! The soils considered worn out now,
| if given over to grass and pasturage
! for a period of years would become
! fertile again and allow of being
! brought back into clean culture if there
| should be warrant for it.
| If half of the commercial fertilizer
used in this state in the past twenty
years had only been used to make
| Bermuda grass grow on our worn up
| lands that were not worth cultivating,
what difference it would have MADE
| in their value to-day A Z.
Rhubarb Culture In the south.
1t is almost impossible, we find, to
carry Rhubarb plant safely through
our summer and fall weather, espe-
cialIy where the plant has been trans
planted from a seed bed to the open
! ground.
AS it is a vegetable of great value It
is we'll worth whatever trouble its sue
| cessful culture demands, and as few
we'll grown plants go a long ways in
the average garden and average fam
| ily. it deserves attention. The seeds
should be sown right where the plant
is to remain and the best way to Sc
| cure a dozen matured plants is to pro-
vide that number of small frames 2x2
feet. made out of 10 or pinch plank to