Farm and Garden

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 172, 12 July 1909, Page 3

Farm and Garden

Pruning Fig Trees. W.F. Toomey. the t\g \ :>* ker of Fresno, California, has asu ( :»;?3tiwn for the : improvement of the status of the fig < grower and bis fruit. Mr. Toomey ! says that not one in a hundred of the growers in the San Joaquin Valley prune their fig trees enough. What's the matter with the fig growers is that they do not prune enough. The suggestion ought to be made that they should do more of this in producI tng figs fruit grown. Not one in a hundred of the growers prune anywhere near enough, and some of them actually do not prune their trees at all. Would pruning make any difference in the fruit? Certainly it would, and a big difference too. The quality would be iramenssely improved. F»'g trees need as much pruning as vines of any other plant, and should be pruned as conscientiously. This is certainly not done in the vast majoirity of cases. The result is inevitable. A great proportion of small goods, fit only for manufacturing, is produced. The proportion of the small grades this season ran as high as 30 per cent, or a little more of the entire crop. This proportion should not be moJe than five to ten per cent., and in case the right sort of pruning were done might be two or three per cent. And this would make a great difference in the fig situation, for everyone in the business."

Scour in Pigs.

Diarrohea in pigs is usually preceded by constipation. It indicates a diseased condition of the digestive organs. It may be caused by green food, as is often the case with children or grown people. Whatever the cause, it is not well to check it too suddenly. Serious results may follow a too sudden stoppage of a lax condition. A mild purgative to clean intestines from morbid matter should be administered promptly in case of scours. A tablespoonful of castor oil for a pig weighing 125lbbs to 150lbs is sufficient. In place of the oil a teaspoonful of Epsom salts may be used, -the oil or salts to be mixed with sweet milk.

New milk, floor, porridge, and ginger—say a teaspoonful for each pig once a day—are al) excellent for pigs that are scouring, and may be fed to advantage. The diet should be limited, and if swill is fed it should be sweet If there is any doubt on tbis point, add half a teaspoonful of common baking soda for each pig. Salt and hard wood ashes, with air slaked lime, and in pleasant weather a small amount of sulphur, as-tist digestion, destroy vermin, and assist in keeping pigs in a healthful condition. In many respects the pig resembles man himself, and he is subject to like ailments, with this difference —that they run a much more rapid course in the pig, and for that reason there is usually little time allowed to receive benefit from medication. Prevention is thus seen to be all-important, and the great object should be to allow such food as can be readily digested and assimilated, and under no circumstsancesto make any sudden changes in food, or overload the stomach. Clearness is imperative, pure water absolutely necessary, a dry bed and pure air indtspenstble, and all food should be sweet, and fed in a cleanly manner. When this is the case, disease is reduced to a minimum, and pigbreeding becomes a pleasant and profitable business. In this connection it might be well to state that common salt in large quantities is injurious, and in feeding swill it should never contain more salt than is enough to j make it palpable. In mixing salt and ashes the latter should largely predominate; not lest than four or five times as much ashes as salt.

Hens that are overfat are liable to lay bad eggs. That is, a fresh laid egg is not always fresh. The egg, going through the process of formation, after reaching its shell, reaches the vent, and if there .is an excessive accumulation of fat it may remain there for two or three days before it is ejected. If it is fertile.and lies in the hen's warm body, it starts to incubate, and when it is laid, the chick whose circulation had started, dies, resulting in a putrid egg. Other eggs the back of this one are often retained in the department devoted to shell making, and a second shell forms over the first,making a nonhatchable egg. The pores of the shell are clogged so that evaporation cannot take place. Even if it could proceed, the chick would die on batching day, as it would be unable to burst more than one shell. .

Clovers and Soils.

Recent bulletins from the Michigan experimental station have discussed the utilisation of the free nitrogen of the air by leguminous crops. I has been shown that while the clover crop doe* exhaust, to some exent, the mineral constituents of the soil, it leaves a large quantity of nitrogen in the roots. As a matter of fact, the soil is sometimes richer in nitrogen after growing a crop of clover than it was when the clover seed wat sown. The

early experiment in this matter was performed in 1897. A sandy loam was bearing a heavy crop of clover. A section of earth was dug, and left standing, a ditch being dug about it. By means of iron rods thrust through the mass of earth, the clover roots were held in place while the sand was washed away. The experiment was performed when the clover was in full bloom. The clean roots and green tops were weighed separately, the tops being cut off lin above the crown. The tops weighed 24.41b and the roots 2.14 lb. A chemical analysis was made, showing that the dry matter of the tops contained 2.48 per cent, nitrogen, that of th«j roots 2.55 per cent. The tops were slightly richer in potash—--1.82 per cent, as against 1.2 per cent in tbe roots. In phosphoric acid neither was rich, the tops having .68 per cent, and the roots .83 per cent. When the ground is measured, and tbe yield weighed, it is easy to compute the amount of these fertilising constituents in an acre of tbe crop, separating the content of the roots from that of the tops. Such a calculation is not always too reliable, because the area taken is small. Tbe results indicated however, that on an acre of clover in full bloom, the tops would yield 132.31 lb of nitrogen and the roots 621b. It would require something like seven tons of average farmyard manure to supply as much nitrogen as is furnished by these roots of the clover on an acre. If the'whole crop were ploughed under it would supply tbe soil with as much nitrogen as would be furnished by twenty-one loads of manure per acre. Tbe experiment also illustrated the fact that a clover crop removes about 1001b of potash and 361b of phosphoric acid from an acre. Naturally, if the clover hay is fed on the farm, tbe manure carefully protected from washing, and carted back to the land, there will be no great loss of these important minerals.