Newspapers / The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, … / March 18, 1916, edition 1 / Page 4
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392 (4) What Farmers Want to Know By W. F. MASSEY HAVE A REAL HOME ON YOUR FARM Doing So Will Keep the Boys and Girls on the Farm, and Neglecting to Do It Will Drive Them Away A FARM with an unpainted house . standing in an open field in the glaring sunshine, with cotton rows running up nearV it, no green: grass, no trees nor shrubbery, and not a ; flower blooming around it, is a place the hovs and e-irls rf the familv will W "- AM -J embrace the first opportunity to es cape from. Especially will this be the case with the girls if the interior of the house corresponds with the exterior, for much of the beauty and comfort of the home depends on the women hav ing a chance to beautify the interior. The farmer in such a place as I have described may by most rigid economy . accumulate monev. and mav eet a reputation among his neighbors as a good farmer, simply because he has made some money. But he has miss ed life, real life, and has simply been ; grubbing after filthy .lucre. He has failed to make a home, and from the old house that was simply a shelter, the boys and girls will leave him to himself after awhile, and would not be manly boys nor womanly women if they did not. For the boys and girls are catching the spirit that is abroad in the South, and will leave the old shelter and be making real homes for themselves. Painting the house is not only add ing to its appearance, .but is import ant in adding durability to the wood Avtirk. A dwelling should be painted every three years at least.- Then make a pretty grass, lawn about the house, especially a good sweep of grass showing from the front windows. While trees and shrubbery are important and desira ble, do not smother the whole front with trees but keep some open lawn there and plant trees and shrubbery as a framework for the lawn. In our Southern homes we use the porches more for shade than the trees, and we do not want the breeze smothered out by too thick planting of trees. Flowering shrubbery along the base of the house greatly helps the ap pearance of the house itself, and with a variety that bloom in succession from early spring till late summer the shrubbery can be made very attrac tive and interesting. Then to the sides of the dwelling have some flow er beds, largely of the hardy herbac eous plants that come up and ' bloom every year with some of the summer flowering bulbs like the old Madonna lily and gladiolus, and on the shady side of the house a bed of the lily of the valley. Then keep the grass in the lawn .nood and neat with-the lawn mower and an annual top-dressing of bone meal, and do not use it "for a horse pasture. Stock of no kind should be allowed on the lawn. Have a good pasture elsewhere so that there will le no. temptation to turn the horses on the lawn to tear up the shrubbery nnd bite the trees. Then make a drive to the house that will not fce used by the farm wagons, and make this drive of good material, rock, if at hand, for the foundation, and close-packing gravel for the surface. See that the rooms inside are made homelike with neat wall paper and good pictures and good books and plenty of papers and magazines. Get a good lighting system, if you can afford it, and above all provide the house with running water and a good bath and drainage. And while put ting improved machinery and imple ments on the farm, do not foriret that the kitchen should be homelike as well as the rest of the house. Heat the-house all over from, the cellar, and-then-ybu-will-be-getting-some- thing like a home outside and in, and the boys will like it so well that they will get fond of the home and the farm, and will want an educaticm that will make them better farmers. It will take a first-class, young man to attract, the girls away, from such a home, arid . they.; will not take up the first chance to escape from a place that is not a home. . Making an Asparagus Bed "II OW is an asparagus bed prepar Aled as to soil and manure, etc ?" To make an asparagus bed, the soil best suited is "a light and deep sandy loam. Make furrows or trenches four feet apart and fifteen inches deep. Fill half full of old, well rotted ma nure. Cover this with two or three inches of soil and sow the seed thinly in a row on this and cover. When the young plants are up four inches or thereabouts, thin them to two feet apart, and gradually work the soil to them till level. Twice dur ing the summer apply nitrate of soda along the rows 10 days apart to urge a rapid growth. Cultivate clean till late fall. Then mow off the matured tops and cover the whole bed heavily with stable manure and dig this in in the early ; spring. Cultivate in the same way through the summer, giv ing a complete fertilizer this time. If well grown some shoots may be large enough to cut the second spring, but not much. Cover every fall with ma nure, for heavy feeding is the way to get big stalks. Asparagus grown in this way will give its crop a year sooner than if grown from trans planted roots. i with - the - same methods, do a - great deal better with two. The fact that he sold corn to men with many more horses does not show that the number of horses governs the style of a man's farming. A man may work two or thirteen horses and still be a poor farmer, and if he is buying feecLit-is evident that he is a poor farmer. What The Progressive Farmer has been trying to doTs to get the one horse farmers to, understand the great advantage of -having a heavier team to do better ' plowing and to make their land more productive by getting a - better seed bed and being able to turn under a heavier growth, so that the soil will be gaining in hu mus. . Mr. Moore, with two mules could break his soil deeper,' could save time in the preparation, and could make the extra mule pay better than the one he now uses. He simply proves that a hustling man can do well under favorable conditions, for there is more' in the man than in the land. He is really under the chip and does not realize it, and the man who re mains satisfied with present attain ments is not going to shake off the chip. Get another horse, Mr. Moore, and sell more corn to the poor farm ers, r : . THE PROGRESSIVE FARMER and the Azaleas are-evergreen : too They do best on the , shady side of the house where the winter sun does not strike them. Then of course you want cape jessamines, too. . . i. . - j Peas in Corn "YOU say that cowpeas or other le . igumes among corn will help thP --corn-crop. This-is -important this" season in view of the scarcity of fer tilizers, and if so should be more" generally known." .' Experiments at two stations, west and east, have shown that corn with cowpeas among it made mo're corn ' tha.n. similar land alongside without peas.. No one has ever found out positively just how the bacteria on : the roots of legumes.get the nitrogen combined. My own theory is as good as any till disproved. I ' consider these; bacteria as ferments oxidizing . the free nitrogen of the air andform ing nitric acid. This being present will at once seek a base in the soil and form a nitrate which the peas can use and any .plant associated with them can use too. I know from personaltest that the corn is better where peas are sowed than without them. Why Not More Team ? MR. MOORE in a recent issue of The Progressive Farmer tells of' his success as a one-horse' farmer, but he does not prove that one-horse farming is the best. The man who does so well with one mule would, Chinese Azaleas "VOU advise the Southern people J- to plant the Chinese Azaleas. I have understood from the catalogs that only the Japanese Azalea Mollis is hardy, and the Chinese tender. Are the Chinese evergreen? What other hardy evergreen shrubbery do you advise?" ' From Raleigh, N. C, southward any of the Chinese azaleas are hardy. -In fact, two varieties, the Single White Alba and the Pink Phoenecia, are hardy as far north as New York City. The catalogs are mainly con cerned with colder latitudes than yours. The Camellia Japonica is har dy with you and at Raleigh. Then there are several varieties of the Por tugal laurel which are beautiful ever greens, one variety having leaves as large as a magnolia. Then the Mag nolia Fuscata, the Banana shrub, is good, and several varieties of the Eleagnus, and the Holly-leaved Os manthusvand its near relative, the Sweet olive are all hardy evergreens, Poor Land T HAVE been planting some land J- for several years in cotton and given it 500 to 600 pounds of fertilizer an acre, and have gathered only 500 : pounds of seed cotton an acre. Will it do to put this land in peas with 200 pounds of acid phosphate an acre? Ought not these peas turned under in September to get the land into condi tion for cotton the next season with 600 pounds of fertilizer?" . Better give the peas 300 pounds of the acid phosphate. Turn them under in August and then harrow in a ton of lime an acre and sow to crimson clover, 15 pounds of seed an acre. Turn this clover in the spf ing for cotton, and the land should make more than double 500 pounds of seed cotton. Sweet Potatoes A PRETTY BUNGALOW WITH NATIVE STONE COLUMNS ;,-8 Z - .nH EJjMAWWWriMW ,JKv-' rtr. imtmi,'uaui. - in mini . ii ii riii i PVfcJ',, 40AV",,'An" -- -p i H--1-- r iiiiiiiiiiiiih:i;iiiii t it -'fa ;4 - r. I 1 1 'THE distinguishing feature of this attractive bungalow of Dr. Albert l Anderson, near Raleigh, N. C, is found in its pretty stone columns. On thousands of other farms just as pretty stone is right at hand, ready for use by aiexpert mason. The following additional description is fur nished by Dr. Anderson: "The roof and outside walls-are coVered with hard cedar shingles. The interior is mission finisl, with all walls and ceilings plastered; floor, of Georgia yellow pine. The front porch is nine feet wide and sixty long,.with six rock pillars extending to the roof of the porch, a t galvamzed chain stretching from pillar to pillar. There are six rooms, one sleeping porch, a back porch and kitchen, a bath room, while there is also a basement the size of the house-34x42-with furnace room, coal room, vegetable room and servants' toilet, the floor being of con crete. The house is heated with low-pressure vacuum two-pipe steam heater, and the windows, outside doors, back porch and sleeping porch areed fuU he,8hl'" The house' t0eher with an excellent bam, cost $4,000. "PAN I grow sweet potatoes any Vyearlier from the old vines than from draws? Florida parties adver tise that they keep the vines green all winter and that these will make the earliest potatoes. What is the earliest sweet potato?" I do not believe that cuttings of the old vines willfmake as early potatoes as good young plants from bedded seed. . The earliest . sweet potato I know is the Hayman, called in some places Southern Queen. But it is not of the best quality. -The Nancy Hall is my . favorite, and it is little later than Hayman. Early Triumph is praised by some, but I have never grown it. ' Phosphate Rock and Acid Phosphate WHAT is the relative value of the ground raw phosphate rock and the dissolved rock? Is there any difference between the .Florida soft phosphate rock . and the Tennessee hard rock, "both pulverized fine?" The raw ground rock will contain about twice as much phosphoric acid as the dissolved rock or .acid phos phate, but it is insoluble and very , slowly available. I do not suppose there is any difference in the soft and hard phosphate rock except in the percentages of phosphoric acid each may contain. Lespedeza WILL lespedeza do well in Orange County, North Carolina?" I suppose that it is already grow ing plentifully in most parts of Or ange County every summer. It will thrive there and make a good summer pasture, but will hardly grow tall enough for hay, though it might do so on very rich and -.moist bottom land. It has already spread over most of North Carolina.
The Progressive Farmer (Raleigh, N.C.)
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March 18, 1916, edition 1
4
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