SWINE
Hogs are evil in their propensities, mischievous and filthy in their habits, and yet profitable to the farmer. Every farmer should keep a few in proportion to the refuse grain and various slops that his establishment may afford. Buying hogs and then purchasing grain on which to fatten them in the usual way is the poorest economy. Such pork is often made to cost from twelve to twenty cents per pound.
There are many breeds of swine highly recommended. Some of the varieties of the Chinese are the most prolific and have the greatest tendency to fattening of any known. They have formed the basis of the great improvements in the breeds in Great Britain. Farmers will be able to select the best breed from their own knowledge and observation, better than from any directions we can give them. Every new variety will be introduced by dealers, and farmers must be cautious how they accept their representations.
Age of Swine for Pork.—It is most profitable and least troublesome, to keep over winter, no swine but breeding sows, to have pigs early in spring, to kill in autumn. Of any of the good breeds, they can be made to weigh from 300 to 350 pounds, by the proper time for killing. The practice of keeping swine till eighteen or twenty-four months old, and only fattening them late in the fall and beginning of winter, is very unprofitable. It is best to give pigs about what they will eat, from the time of beginning to feed them until they are slaughtered. This is in every way most economical. It secures fattening in the hot weather in summer, when pork can be made faster and cheaper than at any other time. Many farmers begin to fatten their pork, after the season in which it can most rapidly and cheaply be done.
Hogs having been kept poor, on being fed freely for fattening, become cloyed, and much time is lost, while those that always have had what they would eat, of good wholesome food, always have a good appetite for as much as they need, and not root over and injure more.
Food for Swine.—They do better shut up in a pen, but where they can get access to the ground. All edible roots are good and all the grains. But grain should be ground or soaked. It pays well to cook all food for swine. Boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, and parsnips, are all good. Ground feed should be mixed with cooked vegetables. The disposition that swine have to root deep in the ground, indicates the want of something, not found in sufficient quantities in their ordinary food. Numerous experiments show that that deficiency is abundantly supplied by having charcoal within their reach. The stories of fattening pork wholly on charcoal, which we find in the books, we do not credit. But that small quantities of it are uniformly healthy for swine, is an established fact. The question of sour food has many respectable advocates. Cultivators and writers take different sides of the question, based as they say upon their carefully-tried and noted experiments, one affirming that fermented food is superior, and others that it has done his hogs positive injury. This discrepancy grows out of not carefully distinguishing the different kinds of fermentation, the sweet, the vinous, the acid, and the putrid. The first makes excellent food, the second will do quite well, the third is injurious, and the last absolutely poisonous. As it requires much care and observation to get this right, and mistakes are easy, it is best to take the sure method, give them food in a natural state, ground, and either cooked or fed raw. Either will make good pork at a reasonable cost, but cooked food is preferable.
Sows are prevented from destroying their young by quiet, plenty of food, and little animal food, and but a very little straw in a dry pen, or washing the pig's backs with a strong decoction of aloes.
TOBACCO
This is a plant abhorred by everything but man and the tobacco-worm. Its use for chewing and snuffing is happily becoming more and more offensive to refined society, and we hope it may, after a long struggle, go out of use. For those who will cultivate it as an article of commerce, the following brief directions are sufficient. Burn over a small bed, on which sow the seed early in March. When the leaves are as large as a quarter of a dollar, transplant them in deep, rich soil, or on new land, in rows three feet apart each way, or four feet one way and two the other. Tend as cabbage. It is necessary, twice in the season, to destroy, by hand, the large green worms that feed on this plant. When the plants are from two and a half to three and a half feet high, according to the richness of the soil on which they grow, pick out the head or blossom-buds, except in the few plants you would have go to seed. Pinch off also the suckers, or shoots behind the leaves, as they come out. When the leaves are full grown and begin to ripen, which is known by the small, dusky spots appearing on the leaves, cut up the stalks and lay them down singly to wilt; when they are thoroughly wilted, lay them together, that they may sweat for forty-eight hours, then hang them up in a tolerably tight room to dry—hang across poles, one on each side. A sharp stick put through the but of the stalks and laid over the pole, leaving one stalk on each side, is a very good method. When it becomes well dried, pick off the leaves, and tie the stems together in small bunches, and pack away in hogsheads or boxes, in a dry place.
We recommend to every agriculturist to cultivate a little tobacco—not for himself or others to chew, snuff, or smoke, but to use in destroying insects. A strong decoction, used in washing animals, will destroy lice on horses and cattle, and ticks on sheep. Tobacco-water applied to plants, or trees, will effectually destroy all insects with which they may be infested. Boil tobacco-stems or stalks, or the refuse-tobacco of the cigar-makers, until you make a strong decoction, and apply with a syringe, or in any other way, and it will prove more effectual than anything else known. Tobacco-stems, stalks, or leaves, laid around peach-trees in the month of May, will protect them from the attacks of the borer. This is also a good manure for peach-trees.
TOMATO
This vegetable is well known, and has recently come to be generally esteemed. It can always be grown without failure, and more easily and at one fourth of the cost of potatoes. Its use for cooking, eating raw, and pickling in various forms, is known to all. There are several varieties. The best of all is the large red—not the largest, but the smooth ones: although smaller, they contain more, and are much more conveniently used, than the very large rough or scolloped variety. The large yellow are less liable to decay on the vines, and have less of the tomato taste. The small plum-tomato, both red and yellow, and the pear or bell-shaped, are good for preserving as a common sweetmeat, and for pickling whole. They should be started in early hotbed—in February in the Middle States—and transplanted after frosts are over, in rows eight feet apart each way. That distance will leave none too much room for letting in the sun and for the convenience of picking. They will mature on the poorest land; but the amount of the crop is graduated altogether by the richness of the soil, and the care given them. They will produce frequently a bushel to a vine, lying on the ground. But they ripen better, and as the vines are not injured by picking the early ones, they will produce more, by being trained up. A few sticks to hold them up at first, and let them break down over them later, is of no use. Train them, and tie up all the principal bunches, and they will be greatly benefited thereby. Tied to slats, or any board fence, in a kind of fan-training form, they do very well. In all cities and villages, enough for a large family can be grown on twenty-five feet of board-fence, exposed to the southern or eastern sun, and not occupy the ground a single foot from the fence. Drive in nails, and tie up the branches as they grow. Removing some of the branches and leaves, and letting in the sun, or placing the fruit on a shingle or stone, hastens its ripening.
TOOLS
It is no part of our design to go into any general description of agricultural implements. There are constant changes and improvements, and they are introduced at once to the whole country by the inventors or dealers. We also wish to avoid all participation in the controversies respecting the merits of various new inventions. We have several forms of cultivators, horse-hoes, subsoil-plows, drills, seed-sowers, land-diggers, and drainers, various formed plows, root-cleaners, corn-planters, &c., &c. These possess different degrees of merit; all have their day, and will be superseded by others, in the general advancement that marks the science of soil-culture. We strongly recommend the use of the best tools, especially subsoil-plows, seed-planters, and root-cleaners. Always have a tool-house, as much as you do a kitchen. Use the best tools; never lay them down but in their proper place; and always clean them before putting them away. Keep all the wood-work of tools well painted, and the iron and steel in a condition, by the application of oil and otherwise, to prevent rust. Good tools facilitate and cheapen cultivation, and increase the yield of crops, Money paid out for such tools is well expended.
TRAINING
This is a matter that has received much attention from all fruit-growers. The influence of different modes of training and pruning is very great on the bearing qualities of trees. The peculiarities demanded by the various fruit-trees, vines, and bushes, are given under these articles respectively. We give here only some general principles. The health, beauty, and profit, of most fruit-trees depend upon judicious pruning and training. The following are the general objects:—
1. To secure regular growth and prevent deformities, and thus promote the health of trees.
2. To secure a sufficient number of fruit-bearing shoots, and in right locations, and to throw sufficient sap into those shoots to enable them to mature the fruit. With a certain amount of pruning, you may double the quantity of fruit, or destroy half that the trees would have produced if not trained at all. One half of the fruit of any orchard depends upon correct pruning. It also has a great influence upon the quality of fruit. The cherry is almost the only fruit-tree that throws out nearly the right number of branches, and in the right places. It needs a very little direction while young, and afterward only the removal of decaying branches. The quince needs considerable trimming at first; but, the head once formed, it will need very little after-pruning. Next comes the plum, needing, perhaps, a little more pruning than the cherry or quince, but much less than the other fruits. The plum is apt to throw out strong branches, in some directions, quite out of proportion with the rest of the top. Such need shortening in, to distribute the sap equally through the tree, and thus produce a symmetrical form. This is all the trimming necessary. The roots of a plum-tree are usually stronger than the top, and absorb more than the leaves can digest; hence some of its diseases. The natural remedy would be root-pruning, and leaving the top in its natural state, except shortening-in the disproportioned branches. Removing much of the top of a plum-tree would ordinarily prove injurious. The apple needs considerable pruning, but not of the spurs and side-twigs which bear the fruit, but of limbs that grow too thick, and of disproportioned luxuriance. (See under Apple.) So the pear must be often slightly pruned to check the too vigorous growth and encourage the too tardy. The peach must be so pruned as to prevent the long bare poles so often seen, and to secure annually the growth of a large number of shoots for next year's bearing, and to check the flow of the sap by cutting off the ends of the growing young shoots, so as to cause the formation on each, of a few vigorous fruit-buds. Peach-trees, so pruned, will be healthy and do well for fifty years, and produce a larger number of better peaches than will grow on trees left in the usual way. By a system of pruning that will equalize the growth and strength, the bearing will be general on all the branches of the tree. This will make the fruit more abundant and of better quality. The following six principles—first stated by M. Dubreuil, of France, and since presented to the American people in Barry's "Fruit-Garden," and still later in Elliott's "Fruit-Book"—will guide any attentive cultivator into the correct method of pruning and training:—
1. The vigor of a tree, subject to pruning, depends, in a great measure, upon the equal distribution of sap in all its branches.
2. The sap acts with greater force, and produces more vigorous growth on a branch pruned short than on one pruned long.
3. The sap, tending always to the extremities, causes the terminal shoots to push with more vigor than the laterals.
4. The more the sap is obstructed in its circulation, the more likely it will be to produce fruit-buds.
5. The leaves serve to prepare the sap for the nourishment of the tree, and to aid in the formation of fruit-buds. Therefore, trees deprived of their foliage are liable to perish, and they are injured in proportion to their defoliation.
6. When the buds of any shoot or branch do not develop before the age of two years, they can only be forced into activity by very close pruning; and this will often fail, especially in the peach.
Observe the foregoing, and never cut large limbs from any tree, except in grafting an old tree (and then only graft a part of the top in one year, especially in the pear), and of old, neglected peach-trees, to renew the top, and any careful cultivator can raise an orchard of healthy, beautiful, and profitable trees. There are different forms of training that have gone the rounds of the fruit-books, that are nearly all more fanciful than useful. There are four forms of fan-training, and several of horizontal and conical. The following only are useful:—
Fan-Training.—A tree but one year from the graft, or bud, is planted and headed down to within four buds of the ground, the buds so situated as to throw out two shoots on each side (see fan-training, first stage).
Fan-training, 3d stage.
Fan-training, Complete.
The following season, the two upper shoots are to be cut back to three buds, so as throw out one leading shoot, and one shoot on each side. The two lower shoots are to be cut back to two buds, so as to throw out one leading shoot, and one shoot on the upper side. In this second stage, you will have a tree with five leading shoots on each side (see cut, fan-training, 2d stage). These shoots form the future tree, and should neither be shortened in, nor allowed to bear fruit this year.
Each shoot should now be allowed to produce three shoots, one leading one, and two others on the upper side, one near the bottom, and the other half way up the stem. All others should be pinched off when they first appear. At the end of the third year you will have the appearance in the cut (Fan-training, third stage). After this it may bear fruit, but not too much, as a young tree so trained, is disposed to over-bearing. These shoots, except the leading ones, should be shortened back; but to what length depends upon the vigor of the tree. This is to be continued and extended as the grower may choose, always preventing the top from becoming too dense, and the shoot too long for a proper flow of sap, and maturity of fruit-buds. A good form, though slightly irregular, is seen in the cut (Fan-training, complete). Such trees trained against walls, or better, on trellis-work, are beautiful and very productive.
Horizontal Training, first stage.
Horizontal Training, fourth year.
Horizontal Training is another form contributing to fruitfulness, by regulating the flow of the sap. This is done by preserving an upright leader with lateral shoots at regular distances. To secure this, such shoots as you wish to train must be tied in a horizontal position, and all others pinched off on first appearance.
The process is simple and easy, continued as long as you please. Head in the shoots of these lateral branches to two or three buds and they will bear abundantly. As the growth increases, remove all that are not in the right places, and train all you spare, as before. In the fourth year, you will have trees of the appearance in the cut (Horizontal Training, fourth year).
Conical Training.—The Quenouille (pronounced kenoole) of the French, is the best of all forms of training, especially for the pear. To produce conical standards, plant young trees four or five feet high, and after the first year's growth, head back the top, and cut in the side branches, as in the cut (Progressive stages of conical training).
The next season several tiers of side branches will shoot out. The lowest should be left about eighteen inches from the ground, and by pinching off a part, others may be made to grow, at such distances as you may desire. At the end of the second year, the leader is headed back to increase the growth of the side shoots. The laterals will constantly increase, and you must save only a sufficient number. The third or fourth year, the lateral branches may be bent down and tied to stakes. The branches must be tied down from year to year, and the top so shortened in as to prevent too vigorous growth, and throw the sap into the laterals. This may be continued until the tree will exhibit the appearance in the cut (conical training complete). When the tree has become thoroughly formed it will retain its shape without keeping the branches tied. The fan and horizontal training are valuable for fruits that need winter protection, and they are also very ornamental, and enable us to cultivate much fruit on a small place. All these forms of training increase largely the productiveness of fruit-trees. It is recommended for all small gardens and yards, and will pay in growing fruit for market.
TRANSPLANTING
Trees should be transplanted in spring in cold climates, and in autumn in warm regions. The top should be lessened about as much as the roots have been by removal. Cutting off so large a part of the top as we often see is greatly injurious. Trees frequently lose one or two years' growth, by being excessively trimmed when transplanted. The leaves are the lungs of the tree, and how can it grow if they are mostly removed? All injured roots should be cut off smoothly on the lower side, slant out from the tree, and just above the point of injury. Places for the trees should be prepared as given under the different fruits and the trees set firmly in them an inch lower than they stood in the nursery. The great point is to get the fine mould very close around all the roots, leaving them in the most natural position. Trees dipped in a bucket of soil or clay and water, thick enough to form a coat like paint, just at the time of transplanting, are said to be less liable to die. Every transplanted tree should have a stake, and be thoroughly mulched. Trees properly transplanted will grow much faster, and bear a year or two earlier, than those that have been carelessly set out. For further remarks on this important matter, see under the different fruits.
TURNIP
This is one of the great root crops of England, and to considerable extent in this country, for feeding purposes. We think it should be displaced, mostly, by beets, carrots, and parsnips. They are more nutritious, as easily raised, and more conveniently fed. The Rutabaga is a productive variety, and possesses a good deal of nutriment. The essentials in raising good turnips of most varieties, are very rich soil, worked deep, and finely pulverized. They should stand in rows two feet apart, and one foot apart in the rows. They may be mainly tended with a small cultivator or root-cleaner.
English turnips are extensively grown as a second crop on wheat stubble, &c. The soil is highly enriched and the seed sown in rows to allow cultivation. The best method, however, is to turn over old greensward say June 1, and yard cattle or sheep on it till July 10, and then harrow thoroughly, and sow the seed broadcast. The yield will usually be large, and they will need very little weeding. If it is not convenient to yard cattle on the turnip-ground, apply fifteen double wagon loads of fine manure with a few bushels of lime to the acre, and the crop will be large. The usual time of sowing turnips is from the 10th to the 25th of July. We think the yield is larger when sown by the middle of June. The only way to get good early turnips is to sow them very early. The flat, or common field turnip, is easily grown on new land, or on any rich soil tolerably free from weeds and not infested with worms.