Agriculture for Beginners by Daniel Harvey Hill (ebook reader 7 inch .TXT) π
The joint action of air, moisture, and frost was still another agent of soil-making. This action is called weathering. Whenever you have noticed the outside stones of a spring-house, you have noticed that tiny bits are crumbling from the face of the stones, and adding little by little to the soil. This is a slow way of making additions to the soil. It is estimated that it would take 728,000 years to wear away limestone rock to a depth of thirty-nine inches. But when you recall the countless years through which the weather has striven against the rocks, you can readily understand that its never-wearying activity has added immensely to the soil.
In the rock soil formed in these various ways, and indeed on the rocks themselves, tiny plants that live on food taken from the air began to grow. They grew just as you now see mosses and lichens grow on the surface of rocks. The decay of these plants added some fertility to the newly formed soil. The life and death of
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Fig. 289. Beauty from Flowers and Grass
Fig. 290. A Country Road in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina
Happy would it be for our nation if all the young people who live in the country could begin their training in good citizenship by becoming workers for these four things:
First, attractive country homes.
Second, attractive country schoolhouses and school grounds.
Third, good country schools.
Fourth, good roads.
If the thousands on thousands of pupils in our schools would become active workers for these things and continue their work through life, then, in less than half a century, life in the country would be an unending delight.
One of the problems of our day is how to keep bright, thoughtful, sociable, ambitious boys and girls contented on the farm. Every step taken to make the country home more attractive, to make the school and its grounds more enjoyable, to make the way easy to the homes of neighbors, to school, to post-office, and to church, is a step taken toward keeping on the farm the very boys and girls who are most apt to succeed there.
Not every man who lives in the country can have a showy or costly home, but as long as grass and flowers and vines and trees grow, any man who wishes can have an attractive house. Not every woman who is to spend a lifetime at the head of a rural home can have a luxuriously furnished home, but any woman who is willing to take a little trouble can have a cozy, tastefully furnished homeβa home fitted with the conveniences that diminish household drudgery. Even in this day of cheap literature, all parents cannot fill their children's home with papers, magazines, and books, but by means of school and Sunday-school libraries, by means of circulating book clubs, and by a little self-denial, earnest parents can feed hungry minds just as they feed hungry bodies.
THE QUEEN OF FLOWERS FOR THE HOME.
Fig. 291. An Attractive Country Home
Agricultural papers that arouse the interest and quicken the thought of farm boys by discussing the best, easiest, and cheapest ways of farming; journals full of dainty suggestions for household adornment and comfort; illustrated papers and magazines that amuse and cheer every member of the family; books that rest tired bodies and open and strengthen growing mindsβall of these are so cheap that the money reserved from the sale of one hog will keep a family fairly supplied for a year.
Fig. 292. An Unimproved Schoolhouse
Fig. 293. An Improved Schoolhouse
Fig. 294. The Same Road after and before Improvement
If the parents, teachers, and pupils of a school join hands, an unsightly, ill-furnished, ill-lighted, and ill-ventilated school-house can at small cost be changed into one of comfort and beauty. In many places pupils have persuaded their parents to form clubs to beautify the school grounds. Each father sends a man or a man with a plow once or twice a year to work a day on the grounds. Stumps are removed, trees trimmed, drains put in, grass sowed, flowers, shrubbery, vines, and trees planted, and the grounds tastefully laid off. Thus at scarcely noticeable money cost a rough and unsightly school ground gives place to a charming school yard. Cannot the pupils in every school in which this book is studied get their parents to form such a club, and make their school ground a silent teacher of neatness and beauty?
Fig. 295. Washington's Country Home
Life in the country will never be as attractive as it ought to be until all the roads are improved. Winter-washed roads, penning young people in their own homes for many months each year and destroying so many of the innocent pleasures of youth, build towns and cities out of the wreck of country homes. Can young people who love their country and their country homes engage in a nobler crusade than a crusade for improved highways?
APPENDIX SPRAYING MIXTURES FOR BITING INSECTSDissolve soap in boiling water, add kerosene to the hot water, churn with spraying pump for at least ten minutes, until the mixture changes to a creamy, then to a soft, butterlike, mass. This gives three gallons of 66-per-cent oil emulsion, which may be diluted to the strength desired. To get 15-per-cent oil emulsion add ten and one-half gallons of water.
FOR FUNGOUS DISEASESUse only before foliage opens, to kill wintering spores.
Dissolve the copper sulphate (bluestone) in twenty-five gallons of water. Slake the lime slowly so as to get a smooth, thick cream. Never cover the lime with too much water. After thorough slaking add twenty-five gallons of water. When the lime and the bluestone have dissolved, pour the two liquids into a third vessel. Be sure that each stream mixes with the other before either enters the vessel. Strain through a coarse cloth.
Mix fresh for each time. Use for molds and fungi generally. Apply in fine spray with a good nozzle.
Use for both fungi and insects on apple, potato, etc.
Used for fungous and insect enemies of the potato, and of the apple when bitter rot is troublesome.
Use for spraying apples.
Dissolve the copper carbonate in the smallest possible amount of ammonia. This solution may be kept in stock and diluted to the proper strength as needed.
Use this instead of the Bordeaux mixture after the fruit has reached half or two thirds of the mature size. It leaves no spots as does the lime-sulphur wash or the Bordeaux mixture.
SPRAYS FOR BOTH FUNGOUS AND INSECT PESTSThe lime, the sulphur, and about half of the water required are boiled together for forty-five minutes in a kettle over a fire, or in a barrel or other suitable tank by steam, strained, and then diluted to 50 gallons. This is the wash regularly used against the San Jose scale. It may be substituted for Bordeaux mixture when spraying trees in the dormant state. Commercial lime-sulphur may also be used in place of this homemade wash. Use one gallon of the commercial lime-sulphur to nine gallons of water in the dormant season.
Self-Boiled Lime-Sulphur WashThe self-boiled lime-sulphur wash is a combination of lime and sulphur boiled only by the heat of the slaking lime, and is used chiefly for summer spraying on peaches, plums, cherries, etc. as a substitute for the Bordeaux mixture.
The lime should be placed in a barrel and enough water poured on it to start it slaking and to keep the sulphur off the bottom of the barrel. The sulphur, which should first be worked through a sieve to break up the lumps, may then be added, and, finally, enough water to slake the lime into a paste. Considerable stirring is necessary to prevent caking on the bottom. After the violent boiling which accompanies the slaking of the lime is over, the mixture should be diluted ready for use, or at least enough cold water added to stop the cooking. From five to fifteen minutes are required for the process. If the hot mass is permitted to stand undiluted as a thick paste, a liquid is produced that is injurious to peach foliage and, in some cases, to apple foliage.
The mixture should be strained through a sieve of twenty meshes to the inch in order to remove the coarse particles of lime, but all the sulphur should be worked through the strainer.
GLOSSARYTo enable young readers to understand the technical words necessarily used in the text only popular definitions are given.
Abdomen: the part of an insect lying behind the thorax.
Acid: a chemical name given to many sour substances. Vinegar and lemon juice owe their sour taste to the acid in them.
Adult: a person, animal, or plant grown to full size and strength.
Ammonia (ammonium): a compound of nitrogen readily usable as a plant food. It is one of the products of decay.
Annual: a plant that bears seed during the first year of its existence and then dies.
Anther: the part of a stamen that bears the pollen.
Atmospheric nitrogen: nitrogen in the air. Great quantities of this valuable plant food are in the air; but, strange to say, most plants cannot use it directly from the air, but must take it in other forms, as nitrates, etc. The legumes are an exception, as they can use atmospheric nitrogen.
Available plant food: food in such condition that plants can use it.
Bacteria: a name applied to a number of kinds of very small living beings, some beneficial, some harmful, some disease-producing. They average about one twenty-thousandth of an inch in length.
Balanced ration: a ration made up of the proper amounts of carbohydrates, fats, and protein, as explained in text. Such a ration avoids all waste of food.
Biennial: a plant that produces seed during the second year of its existence and then dies.
Blight: a diseased condition in plants in which the whole or a part of a plant withers or dries up.
Bluestone: a chemical; copper sulphate. It is used to kill fungi, etc.
Bordeaux Mixture: a mixture invented in Bordeaux, France, to destroy disease-producing fungi.
Bud (noun): an undeveloped branch.
Bud (verb): to insert a bud from the scion upon the stock to insure better fruit.
Bud variation: occasionally one bud on a plant will produce a branch differing in some ways from the rest of the branches; this is bud variation. The shoot that is produced by bud variation is called a sport.
Calyx: the outermost row of leaves in a flower.
Cambium: the growing layer lying between the wood and the bark.
Canon: the shank bone above the fetlock in the fore and hind legs of a horse.
Carbohydrates: carbohydrates are foods free from nitrogen. They make up the largest part of all vegetables. Examples are sugar, starch, and cellulose.
Carbolic acid: a chemical often used to kill or prevent the growth of germs, bacteria, fungi, etc.
Carbon: a chemical element. Charcoal is nearly pure carbon.
Carbon disulphide: a chemical used to kill insects.
Carbonic acid gas: a
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