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From the Southern Farm and Home.
Sweet Potato Culture.
Mr. Editor —You never gave your
readers belter advice than when yon
told tb( m plant a plenty of sweet
potatoes. There is not a crop upon a
plantation which pays better for hu¬
mans as well as stock than they do. It
is all nonsense saying they will “not
keep” as an excuse for only p’anting
a little patch and only raising a few
bushels. They will keep if the
proper means are used to keep them,
and if wc have sense we will make up
our minds to do this, even if it docs in¬
terfere a little with that big cotton
crop we propose to make, which is lo
pay us out of debt and make us rich
besides. I visited recently the planta¬
tion of a friend who plants for over a
hundred bags, and works about twenty
hands. When I reached his houso I
found him in his vegetable garden
bedding two bushels of refuse yams
to make draws for his sweet
potato patch 1 If all his yams sprout,
which L doubt, and lie keeps on set¬
ting out away into July, he may
have draws enough to plant a quarter
of au acre. As there are many other
planters—large planters at that—
who, like my friend, utterly neglect
this crop or plant it as he does, 1
thought I would avail myself of your
offer to publish communications from
plain fanners, and send you a few
lines as to “what 1 know about’’
sweet potatoes. I have planted three
or four acres of them every year for
many years, and sometimes have
planted more. During the war,
when I raised little or no cotton, and
did all I could to raise provisions for
our brave *‘boys in grey,” 1 increased
my sweet potato crop in order to save
corn to send to Virginia. [N. B—
1 never sold a bushel *for more than
government price, and never charged
a soldier’s wife or widow a cent. |
The great secret of sweet potato
raising is to plant the draws early—
middle or end of April—and to have
the draws to plant, a sufficient num
her of bushels must be bedded. 1
generally bed from twenty to twenty
live bushels, selecting the very best
potatoes in the bank for seed. Small,
refuse seed will not yield large yams
As well expect shrivelled, half filled
grains oi wheat to produce full,
heavy ears. I make my hod iu the
ordinary way. digging out the soil
about hft('( n inches deep, filling it
with stable manure, covering the
manure with a couple of inches or so
of flue soil, laying tin potatoes on this
just close enough uot. to touch, theu
covering the potatoes with straw, and
then covering the whole with three or
four inches of soil.
_
A good sandy loam is the right soil
for the yam. It ought not to be
made too rich. You may get a
greater number of bushels by heavy
manuring, but the potatoes will not
keep as well. For early use I plant
the Spanish, which yield capitally
from the draw, but for the principal
crop, I plant the yam known as the
llaytian yam. It yields abundantly,
grows and to a very large siz ». keeps well,
produces fine vines. I throw up
my beds high and broad, about three
feet or forty inches apart, and plant
the draws from fifteen to eighteen
inches apart, completing the planting May.
by the end of the first week in
I cultivate the crop three times—first,
with the hoes, putting a little^ soft
earth to the plants a week after set¬
ting out, and then splitting out the
middles with a double shovel plow :
second, a good plowing with a turn
plow ; and third, sweeping the middles
and working the bods with the hoe,
being careful not to cover the vines
with dirt and thus make them take
root.
L never dig the crop until the frost
has nipped the vines. 1 have often
raised on good, loose, fresh land as
much as four and five hundred bushels
t.o the acre ; and on worn land, that
would not give me ten bushels of
corn, I have raised from one hundred
and fifty to two hundred bushels. I
have hoard of men who have raised
eight and nine hundred bushels to the
acre, but I think there must have
been some mistake in the score, or
the measure was not “scaled.” I will
send you later my way of keeping
sweet potatoes.
“Nigger-Killer”
Hancock Co., Ga , March, 1872.
Poppy (Papaver Somnifcrum ) —
As the time approaches for planting
the seed of this valuable drug, a
concise report of its culture may not
be uninteresting to your readers.
Culture .— Select a dry, rich soil,
and prepare it well, as soon as the
frost leaves the ground, or before the
loth of May, in tho Middle States
Make ridges three feet apart, and
plant on the ridges, covering the seed
not over half rn inch deep ; when the
plants arc two or three inches high,
thin out to tweive or fifteen inches
apart. Keep the soil loose and free
of weeds
Harvesting .—Eight or ten days
after the flowers ripen, pass through
the field in the afternoon and make
one or two horizontal incisions around
and near the center of the capsule,
just through the outer skin, being
careful not to penetrate the cavity of
the capsule, and tho next morning
scrape off the gum with a dull knife
and pla<’c in a plate to be set in a dry
room for a day or two, when it should
be rolled into balls of one half or one
pounl ieav<'3 each, and enveloped in the
of the plaut. After drying in
in this condition fur two or three
days, it is ready for the market. The
seeds, after the opium has beeu ex
tractcd, will yield twenty five percent,
of oil, which is equal to the best im¬
ported olive oil, aud the oil cake |
makes an excellent food for cuttle, and I
is valuable as a manure. The poppy '
does not impoverish land. The seeds
arc not liable to plant alter two years
old— J. W. Mot ton Jt. t in Union \
and American.
Recipe far Buga on small Plants.
—Fresh cow-manure, made thio with
water, and sprinkled on Cucumbers,
Melons, Turnips, Cabbage, Beans,
Ac, will eerta'uly drive every bug
from the small plants .-^Southern j
Farmer.
From the Southern Farm and Home.
Grafting Pear Trees
Mr. Editor— I have Dumber just seen of aD
article in the January 3 ’our
very valuable and instructive paper,
in relation to a new mode of practiced grafting
and budding pear trees as the
by a Frenchman, (taken Chronicle) from
London Gardener 's
Well, I have an experience of nearly
twenty-eight years in the cultivation
of fruits, flowers and vegetables, practical or,
in other words, I am a
nurseryman, florist, horticulturist and
gardener in general. wild stock the
In working the or
tame it is not necessary to cut off one
inch if you do not want to do it. If
it is a bushy seedling trim it out to
the shape that you would like to have
your fine pear tree to have, then in
the mouth of September (about the
10th,) on the tips of those branches
that you left, insert a graft, leaving
but one eye on the scion, wrap the
stock and scion with cloth dripped in
a composition of one-half beeswax,
one fourth rosin, and one-fourth tallow,
incited together and brought to the
boiling point. Before dipping your
cloth, wrap it closely and firmly to
the top and at the top. When you
tear < ff, twist the end so as to exclude
all air, as this is indispensable to
success. Your mode should be the
whip-graft, as it is the surest of all
grafting on small stocks. These
grafts will unite in two weeks, and if
the fall comes moist, will very often
make six inches in growth, which
brings your tree into bearing one
year sooner. In this way you can
get tine head on the pear seedling or
quince stork without risking your
stocks. I have practiced this mode
of grafting for fifteen years, ^ud I
can truly say that I can secure ninety
nine per cent, of all I graft. This
mode will do very well in the spring,
but l could not get more than fifty
per cent, to grow.
As to the mode of budding men¬
tioned, it is uot new to Irish and
English gardeners of very moderate
pretensions. It is not certain by any
means, and ought uot be practiced iu
this country, when our Spring and
Fall budding is so successful. I can
put in one thou and buds in the
Spring, and I will warrant not l<» have
one miss unless it meets with an
accidr nt. In this latitude the sun is
so hot in July aud August that the sap
ceases to How, and budding is difficult
it not impossible, unless on one year
old stotkn kept in good cultivation.
This method of grafting can be ap¬
plied to the pear, apple, j»eacb, plum,
nectarine, apricot, almond, and in
fact all Southern orchard trees.
Patrick. II. Parker,
Gardener to K B. Todd. Esq.
Bastrop, La., February, 1872.
llay as a Market Crop — Iu many
districts around Philadelphia, hay is
the chief market crop. The laud is
kept up by return loads of manure.
In the late Farmers’ OuDveution in
New Hampshire, J. F Epping, a
member cf the .State Board, states
his system to bo that ot selling ijvpd hay,
aad that the status of his ?s kept
up by the commercial fertilizers. He
said that “during the past twelve
years he had given his attention to the
raising of hay for the market, and
though his neighbors told him in the
outset that he would exhaust his
lands by such a system, he had this
year sold two thirds of his crop of hay,
and yet his crop was a third greater
than before, and two years ago he re¬
ceived a premium of $50 for the best
cultivated farm in his country.” lie
said he had brought his lands to a
high state of cultivation by the use of
commercial fertilizers. lie said that,
this year he had sold $1200 worth of
hay from his farm. His experiments
with commercial fertilizers had been
narrowly watched and examined by
the many 7 farmers in Strafford and
Rockingham counties, and he said his
system had been adopted in those
localities with the best results.—
Practical Farrier.
--
Feeding Straw .—Straw, if rightly
managed, can be made to serve a
more profitable purpose than mere
littering, or to add bulk to the manure
pile. In England, and among the
the English farmers in Canada, most
of the bullocks arc led and fattened
on straw, with roots and meal. No
hay is used, that being kept for the
horse - . Thus a large number of stock
can be fed. Straw cut, wetted and
sprinkled with ground feed or oil
meal, will carry cattle very well
through the Winter. Pea straw is
more valuable than oat straw.
Remedy for Rust in Wheat .—
“It. M. Y.,” of Abingdon, Va., com¬
municated the foilownwing to tho
Southern Farm and Home:
“While I do not claim to have dis¬
covered an infallible cure for rust in
wheat, I believe I have found tho
means of preventing rust in four
crops out of five, perhaps more. You
remember how destructive rust was to
the last crop in nearly all the wheat
producing sections of the South. I
raised as fine a crop as I ever had in
my life, and I am an old farmer, while
all my neighbors’ crops were ruined
by rust. I attribute my escape en¬
tirely to the fact that l top dressed my
wheat in March with wood ashes, put¬
ting on about twelve bushels to the
acre 1 got the idea from some
Northern publication, (I forget the
namel which recommended ashes not
ouly as a preventive of rust but as
-the best mauurc for growing w heat.
My experiment was so successful that
f mean to top-dress my crop ibis year
if I have to buy and haul the ashes.”
---+ * %-
Scurvy Legs in Poultry .—Fowls
that show any symptoms of s urvy
legs, should at once be separated from
the others and placed in warm, dry
quarters. Give them plenty of whole¬
some day, food, including, as often as once
a some animal food. Wash the
legs with a weak solution of sugar of
lead in the morning, and anoiut them
with clean lard, mixed with ointment
of creosote, just before*they go to
roo>t. Keep them from the wet.
Others advhe to wash the legs with
kero*wi03 <>il, aqfijntjng with salt