Norwich bulletin., 1918-09-06

up around them.
 Even early corn grew we'll and matured promptly Corn is suppes- ed to want hot weather There were not four really summer days from the time my earliest sweet corn was plantd, till I picked the first ears. Yet it grew and set and turned over to me a rather larger crop of roasting cars than usual.
 Potato experiences were similar. Part of my potato ground had been in corn the year before, and part in cab bages Both are crops supposed to draw very exhaustively from the soil so put on a rather heavy dosage of stable manure to supply food for the coming potatoes. I brought on my head sharp criticism from the neigh bor of whom I bought the manure You ant goin' to plant potatoes on all this manure, be yer" he queried. When. I answered, Yes" he grunted out: You'll rot 'em al1.''
 Yet those same potatoes, planted in mud, cultivated and shovel plowed in the wet, over r-manured to start smoothest est-selling and most re- munerative yield of early potatoes ever raised.
 They're another crop which has got me guessing. Their performance has gone squarely against all local tra- ditions of potato-growers and all req sonable expectations. based on my own previous experience. l Then there were onions. Despite the wet and the cold and the lack of summer sunshine I never had so fine i looking a patch of onions in Smy life, till the hot weather finally came | For it did come at last, with whoop, The rains shut off, the sun came out the thermometer climbed up into the nineties and staid there. And those onions, which had stood up nob1y against wet and cold promptly tum 1 bled before the first week of what we've been taught to consider ''real 1 growth weather had ended. They
 were about half grown. Right at that l they stopped. We've had to pull l them, because the tops died and the hot sun began to scald and discolol ! them. q raise only white onions i They seemed to thrive under dis
 couragements, but couldn't endure kindness.
 Turnips are supposed to stand al most anything in the way of weather 1 sowed the usual amount of the usua
 seed at the usual time for a winte lcrop. 1 know the seed was good fo
 a little out of the same bag which
 sowed for extra earlies came up fine
 But not a single seed has germinatet
 in the field so far as I can discover The same weather conditions whicl
 resulted in better corn and potatoe
 and onions and beets and carrots an,
 cabbages and wheat and beans an
 peas, etc, proved deadly to turnips
 Can you explain it? 1 can't Really, I'm worried over the topsv
 turvyness of things. Can't we ii
 up to anything in the way of farm
 ing traditions? Are they all wrong
 Have we been standing on our head
 all these years and seeing thing
 'tother end to?
 "Eut this has heeu an unusus
 year," some one will say. Of ccurst l Every year is an unusual year. N observant farmer ever saw two sea sons just alike.
 What gets ny goat as the boy l say, is that an unusually discourag } ing season should have produced un
 usually encouraging results in tn garden and fields with the exceptio of a few such things as hay and tur nips and oats and perhaps one or t= l more.
 7 Why should what all farming ex perience diagnosed as a black outloo
 produce blue-ribbon resultso , Is it really more rain and less sun , shine that our crops want? Are the ; really better off in cold season tha l in warm one? Who would da1 , say so?
 And yet. what else is it that m gardens are shouting at me? l THE FARMER.