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Special Attention To One Thing

Special Attention To One Thing image
Parent Issue
Day
6
Month
April
Year
1882
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

ihere 1S a very close analogy between animal and vegetable life The new hfe springs from an ovary, an ere and agerm. A seed is an egg that bears a close similarity to the egg of a tard. Warmth quickens the glim il the birt's egg, the latent life gradually becomes active, the youuK creature gathera lts substance from the matter of the egg, and subsista upon ii until it is able to gather its own food. A seed of wheat or corn is put into the soil, warmth and moisture start the latent hfe in the germ, the matter of the seed forms the substance of the youiiu plant, which subsista upon it until it can gamer iooa rrom the soil, which is when the first rooüet is put forti. When this occara the plaut feeds fron the soil, and the seed raay remain partly used up, or it may decay and bewnic mingled with the soil. Now, we might as well expect to get a large wheat plant from a large seed, or a large potato froin a large eutting, as a large birrt from a large egg, and yet from a large, white Leghorn egg we shall get a very small, white Leghorn fowl, and from a small light Brahiuu egg we shaü get a monstrous bird, or from thesmall turkey's egg we shall get a 40-pound tom turkey - if wefeedthem justrighí, This is the truê inwardness of thia matter, and if we f eed the young plañís just right as soon as they emerge froro their small eggs by supplying the soil with the right food in the right condition- that is, soluble, we shall get the large growth which is natural and inbred to the variety. And this is the secret of f ertilizing in the hill or the drill. But it is a good and bad method f or it is good if wegive the plant some highly nutritious and precisely proper food in a soluble condition, so that it may feed healthf ully upon it, but it is bad if we stop there and confine the plant when it is full grown to this circumscribed feeding-ground. I once pulled up some corn-stubs to show a neighbor the effect of manuring corn in the hill. The whole stubble of the hill came up in a small bunch, in the centre of which, grasped firmly by a small compact knot of roots, remained a portion of the manure put in the hill, and which was not yet all completely decomposed. A hill of corn so manured caniiot feed vigorously because it is eonfined to the small quantity of manure or the fertilizer given to it. But if the ground is manured broadcast and the manure is thoroughly mixed with the soil the young plant will soon flnd the food and the root will wrap itself about that and send out a little flbre here and otherá there which wind thernselves around the food, and so they spread in the soil until the soil is filled with a neb-work of them, and every partiële of it contributes something to the rootlet which seizes upon it. It is very well to put a little fertilizer in the hill or the drill to start on, but another supply shouldbe put just beyond it, and another beyond that and so on until the whole soil can be occupied. By a precisely similar system of feeding, so to speak, it is proposed that an expedition shall reach the north pole, and that barren ground can doubtless be made to support a vigorous plant of enterprise on exactly a similar method of support to that by which we make a barren soil produce a vigorous and profltable plant. PLANTING FRUIT TREES. I am now beginning the planting of an orchard of dwarf pears, which 1 intend shall in time occupy several acres. I conflne myself to the Duchesse, for the reason that in an experimental planting of dwarf pears of 10 varieties I flnd the Duchesse bears the second earliest and is the most proliflc. Louise Bonne de Jersey bore a great many pears the second year after planting, and last year the trees were loaded witü them; but one dozen well-grown Duchesse is as large as 50 Bonne de Jerseys, and they sell better. The longer I live and the more I learn the more i am convinced that it is best to give one's attention specially to one thing - one system of managing the farm, one kind of cows, one system of crops, one variety of fruit, and stick to these, making a continuous and persevering efforfto excel with each, For when one is continually changing he has not time or opportunity to know how to manage his specialty in the best way, and never makes a success of anything. So with a pear orchard. When one has a single good variety he can pack them for market all alike, packing the selected fruit by itself and the culis by themselves; the fruit ripens at the same time and can be shippedpat one time, and a. good-sized "straight" lot of anything sells better in the market than small lots of odds and ends. The pear-grower, too, can manage his fruit better witb one kind only than with several; for by keeping it in a cold fruit cellar he can retard the ripening and send it to market in such quantities as will sell well and bring the highest price. HOW TO PLANT PEARS. Procure your trees not from an agent wlio will show you a book of colored pictures of this or that fruit and take an order for a hundred or two trees, and then send yon a different and worthless kind, perhaps mere seediings of no account whatever, and when you want to talk witb that man after flnding out his delinquency, he is nowhere - gone - to be seen no more; just where your money went to. If the trees are bought from a respectable, old-established nursery you get what you want, and if you don't you have a good, responsibleman to talk to about it. Order treesearly. This is of the greatest importance. As soon as the letter is mailed go to the ground and stake out the places for the trees, setting the rows of stakes in exact lines, 16 feet apart for dwarf pears, and the stakes 16 feet apart in the rows; havean exact rneasure; a cord 160 feet long, with a piece of red flannel tied every 16 feet apart, is a quick and easy method of ing. Thus placed, the stakes will be in line every way. Dig the holes, throwing out the top soil on one side and the bottom soil on the other. Draw a load of fine manure and scatter a shovelful over the bottom soil. When the trees arrive, plant them at once, putting the top soil among the roots and the mixed manure and bottom soil on the top. A road locomotivo for war purposes was lately tried before Count Moltke. It drew easily 40 tons weight of guns mounted on their carriages f ully equippetl. lts maximum traction power is 150 tons, and its cost of maintenance is about thirty cents an hour.

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Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Democrat