Farm Gardening with Hints on Cheap Manuring Part 4

=Bursting.=--Bursting of cabbage heads is caused by a second growth, the result, perhaps, of continued wet weather, or warm weather following cold weather. The best remedy is to cut part of the feeding roots, either by close cultivation or with a hoe.

=Selling.=--Cabbage prices vary between extremes that are far separated. Early cabbage usually sells at a good profit. Summer and autumn prices may be low. Winter and spring prices are almost always fair, and occasionally extra. Pennsylvania farmers sometimes ship to wholesalers in the cities and sometimes sell at public sale in the open field, in the autumn, just as the crop stands. The latter plan is an excellent one, where auction prices warrant it. It avoids the cost and risk of storage, as each buyer removes and stores his purchase.

=Storage.=--Cabbage will bear much freezing without injury. The art of winter storage is to put it where it will have the fewest changes of temperature, and where it will be cool and damp without being wet.

The most common practice is to cover two or three rows of inverted heads, with roots attached, with from 6 to 12 inches of soil, making provision for good drainage by ditches on both sides of the wedge-shaped heap.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cutting Johnson & Stokes' Earliest Cabbage for Market.

Photographed June 1st, in the Field of Messrs. Myers & Bowman, the well-known Philadelphia Market Gardeners. This was the first Home-grown Cabbage in Philadelphia Markets.]

This system may be modified so as to include six or more rows of inverted cabbage, the heap being flat instead of wedge-shaped on top.

It does not turn water so well, but in practice is usually satisfactory. A good plan is to use about 6 inches of soil, and to add straw or litter as the cold increases.

Under a steady low temperature it is no trouble to keep cabbage through the winter, but it is hard to provide against the many changes of our variable climate.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Johnson & Stokes' Matchless Late Flat Dutch Cabbage.]

Where heads are to be carried over for seed, or where it is intended to head up soft cabbages during the winter (a feasible thing) the roots are set downward instead of upward. If care be taken to remove the roots without much injury, they may be set in furrows or trenches, and the earth heaped over the cabbages just as in the several ways above mentioned, and they will make decided growth during their life under ground. In fact, a cabbage with any sort of immature head in November will, under proper management, be in good marketable condition in March or April.

Solid freezing in the trenches is not necessarily destructive, but if the temperature falls much below 15 (at the point occupied by the heads), there is danger that they will perish. They may be in good edible condition after such severe freezing, but the chances are that they will fail to grow if set out for seed. The cabbage decays with a strong, offensive smell when its tissues finally break down after repeated changes of temperature and moisture. A uniform temperature is favored by the use of earth in storage, and though storage in buildings and cellars is quite feasible, there is nothing better or cheaper than the soil of the open field.

If the crop is not all to be marketed at one time, it is well to make a number of separate trenches, so that each can be wholly cleared of its contents at a single opening. These trenches and ridges must be made upon dry ground, where there is no standing water.

=For Stock.=--Cabbages make good food for cows, but should be fed after milking; and frozen cabbages should never be fed in any considerable quant.i.ty, as they are liable to cause hoven or bloat.

CARROTS.

A sandy soil or light loam is best for carrots, but they will grow anywhere under good culture. Enormous quant.i.ties are grown by the market gardeners, both under gla.s.s and in the open ground, for use in soups and for seasoning purposes. The short or half-long varieties are demanded by this trade.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Average Specimens of Rubicon Half-Long Carrots.]

Farm gardeners will do best with half-long and long kinds, unless a special demand calls for the smaller carrots. The large half-long and long ones are suited to both culinary and stock-feeding purposes.

It requires from three to four pounds of seed to the acre, depending on the distance between the rows. The plants should be from 3 to 5 inches apart in the rows, and the rows as near together as is feasible for horse work. Clean culture is demanded. The seed must be planted shallow, and may go into the ground as early as it can be worked in the spring, and from that time until the middle of June. The only danger about late planting is the possibility of dry weather.

The carrot is quite free from insect or other enemies, as a rule, and its culture is not difficult. It demands thinning and hoeing after the plants are well above ground, but no extra attention of any kind.

The winter storage is the same as for beets or turnips, either to be put away in earth-covered heaps or preserved in a cool, non-freezing root cellar.

The so-called Belgian carrots (both yellow and white) are used only as stock food; though the other sorts, such as Rubicon, Danvers and Long Orange, if in excess of market demands, are equally good for stock. Cows and horses are fond of them, and they are most wholesome. The farm gardener should raise them, however, for their cash value in the produce markets. The carrot is in high favor with good cooks everywhere.

The carrot does not demand excessively rich ground; in fact, too much manure tends to stimulate the growth of the top at the expense of the root, and fresh manure makes the root rough.

The smaller carrots are bunched and sold like radishes or early beets.

The larger kinds are sold by measure--about 60 cents or more per basket at this time (January, 1898). This is at the rate of $1.50 per barrel, or about $300 per acre. The crop is a good one, if near a market where carrots are demanded.

CARROT.--We especially recommend Rubicon Half-Long for market or stock. See "Johnson & Stokes' Garden and Farm Manual."

SWEET CORN.

There is no money crop more available to the farm gardener than sweet corn. It will grow anywhere, and the young ears are always in demand.

Any sod land plowed shallow will yield a crop of sweet corn. It is easy in this lat.i.tude to have an unbroken succession of marketable ears from July 1st to October 1st, or even somewhat earlier and later.

Shallow plowing and the use of a little fertilizer or compost in the hills will put the ground in order. A complete fertilizer is best. A compost containing hen manure is excellent.

=Planting.=--Eight or ten quarts of seed are required to plant an acre of corn in hills, allowing for replanting of what is injured by grubs or other causes. The larger varieties should be planted 4 feet by 3; the rows 4 feet apart and the hills 3 feet apart, with not more than three stalks in a hill. The smaller varieties may be grown much closer--3 feet by 2. Any method may be used in laying out a corn field that will give each stalk (of the large kinds) the equivalent of 4 square feet of ground s.p.a.ce. The dwarf sweet corns demand about half that s.p.a.ce.

=Varieties.=--The sweet corns require from sixty to eighty days to produce ears fit for boiling. The earliest varieties are small, and are lacking in sweetness as compared to the best intermediate types.

Still, the early prices are so much better than midsummer prices, that the early varieties will always be grown for market. Indeed, the best profits of the business are from the extra early and extra late sales.

Sweet corn should not be grown by shippers who are distant more than twenty-four hours from market, as the ears lose quality and flavor soon after being pulled from the stalks. Forty-eight hours from market is an extreme distance, but is feasible if the ears can be chilled in a cold storage house previous to shipment; otherwise, they will heat and spoil. Even when designed for a near-by market a load of sweet corn ears may heat and spoil during a single night. It is best to scatter them upon the gra.s.s, if pulled during the afternoon for shipment the following morning.

The most profit to the grower will be found in ears which are not too large, as corn is often sold by the dozen, the large sorts being too weighty.

The early kinds, though small, can be planted closely, and a large number of ears secured; and they are out of the way so soon that the ground can be used for celery or other late crop. Celery can be set out between the rows of corn, and thus be shaded to some extent during the critical period following transplanting.

The Evergreens, Early and Late, and the shoe-peg types, such as Country Gentleman and Zig Zag Evergreen, are among the sweetest of all. The grains are of irregular shape and arrangement, and the appearance of the ears is not altogether prepossessing. When once known, however, they are in demand by consumers.

The red-cob corns should be cooked by dropping into boiling water. If cooked slowly, the red color of the cob affects the appearance of the grains.

SWEET CORN.--For first early, we recommend Burlington Hybrid and Mammoth White Cory. The former closely resembles a true sugar corn in appearance. For second early, Early Champion and New Early Evergreen; for late, original Stowell's Evergreen, Country Gentleman, Zig Zag Evergreen. See "Johnson & Stokes' Garden and Farm Manual" for descriptions of varieties.

=Cultivation, Enemies, etc.=--Shallow culture, frequently repeated, is demanded by sweet corn. The growth at first is timid and slow; afterward, if well cultivated, the stalks grow with great rapidity and vigor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: New Early Evergreen Sweet Corn.]

To make the most of the stalks, they should be cut as soon as possible after the last ears have gone to market and fed to stock. Sweet corn stalks when dry make excellent fodder.

The main enemies of corn are the cut worm, which is only troublesome in spring; a fungus which attacks the ears and which is always most prevalent on the small, early sorts; and a worm which cuts and injures the grain while the corn is in milk. Crows sometimes pull up the seeds, but can be disposed of by scattering a little yellow corn on the surface of the ground around the edges of the field. As the crow destroys many cut worms, it is better to feed him with corn than to shoot him.

The prevalence of fungus-troubled or s.m.u.tty corn is probably a symptom of weakness, the result of planting too early, or of too much wet weather. All plants that are weak are liable to fungus attacks, and it is the early corn that suffers most. This corn is often planted before the ground is sufficiently warm, and there is a consequent weakness of growth. Indian corn, at Philadelphia, should not be planted before May 10th, and yet it is not uncommon to see gardeners planting sweet corn two weeks earlier. They say they are "going to risk it." The result may be a good crop of corn, or it may be a crop of worms and fungus. Of course, the high price of the first corn in market is the excuse for the unseasonable date of planting. But it is not quite fair to blame the seed or the variety of corn for what is partly the result of the gardener's impatience. All traces of s.m.u.t on corn stalks should be burned, and not allowed to be fed to cattle.

=The Corn Worm.=--Far more destructive and disastrous than s.m.u.t is the corn worm (Heliothis armiger). This is the cotton worm of the South, there called boll worm. It is also sometimes called the tomato worm.

It is the larva of a day-flying moth.

The difficulty in dealing with it is that when in the corn ear it is out of the reach of poisonous applications of any kind. Its depredations are extensive, especially in early corn. It prefers corn to all other foods, and cotton planters protect their crops by planting early corn in the cotton fields and then destroying the corn and the worms within the ears.

The best remedy at the North is to feed all wormy ears to pigs; and to plow the corn land in autumn, when the insects are in the pupa or chrysalis state. If turned up by the plow, it is believed that they mostly perish. The worms are said to be cannibals, eating each other to a great extent.

This worm is, perhaps, the greatest enemy with which the grower of sweet corn has to contend. The plan of feeding wormy ears to pigs offers the double advantage of destroying the enclosed pests, while at the same time fattening the pigs.

=Successional Planting.=--The skillful farmer will arrange successional plantings of corn, beginning (at Philadelphia) May 10th and ending about July 10th. The first and last plantings should be of the early sorts; the intermediate plantings of the full-sized varieties.

=Profits.=--Profits depend on location. The size of the crop should approximate 1,000 dozens of ears per acre, and the gross receipts should be $100 to $200 per acre, more or less, above the value of the fodder.

=Suckering.=--Time is often spent in pulling the suckers from the stalks of sweet corn. Such time is wasted. If the suckers are let alone they will not reduce the number or quality of the marketable ears.