How To Destroy Moss On Trees

Use a whitewash of quicklime and wood-ashes.

How To Transplant Onions

Plant them tightly in the soil, with the leaves pointing to the north. When thus placed, after the vegetables take root, the sun will draw the stalks vertical.

Food Consumed By Oxen

An ox will consume 2 per cent of his weight of hay per day to maintain bis condition. If put to moderate labor, an increase of this quantity to 3 per cent will enable him to perform his work and still maintain bis flesh. If he is to be fatted, he requires about 4-1/2 per cent of his weight daily in nutritious food.

Painting Boats

Boats should be painted with raw oil. Boiled oil used in the paint is very apt to blister and peel from the wood.

How To Use Paris Green

In using Paris green to exterminate the potato bugs, the poison should be mixed with the cheapest grade of flour, 1 lb. green to 10 lbs. flour. A good way of applying it to the plants is to take an old 2 quart tin fruit-can, melt off the top, and put in a wooden head in which insert a broom-handle. Bore a hole in the head, also, to pour the powder in, and then punch the bottom full of holes about the size of No. 6 shot. Walk alongside the rows, when the vines are wet with dew or rain, and make one shoot at each hill.

Seeding Pastures

Select varieties of seeds that spring up in succession, so that a good fresh bite may be had from spring to fall.

Pear Culture

Pears have a tendency to crack when the trees stand in soil which is deficient in lime and potash. Common wood-ashes contain these salts nearly in the proportions that pear-trees on such soil require-40 per cent of potash and 80 per cent of lime. By applying wood-ashes at the rate of four hundred bushels to the acre, after the fruit had formed and cracked, the disease was totally eradicated by the next season.

Estimating Quantity Of Peat

Peat, as ordinarily in the bed, will weigh from 2100 to 2400 lbs. per cubic yard; and if drained in the bed, 1340 to 1490lbs.; and air-dried, 320 to 380 lbs., when it will be found to be reduced to about 1/4 or 1/6 its original bulk.

Pegging Down Creeping Plants

To propagate lobelias and verbenas, the first bloom should-be picked off, and the branches, as they extend, should be pegged down closely to the surface of the mould. The branches will then take root as they lengthen, and by thus drawing a large amount of sustenance from the soil, they will bloom very freely and cover a large space. A verbena may thus be made to cover a square yard, and a lobelia a square foot of ground.

Hoeing Potatoes

By drawing up the earth over the potato in sloping ridges, the plant is deprived of its due supply of moisture by rains, for when they fall the water is cast into the ditches. Further, in regard to the idea that, by thus earthing up, the number of tubers is increased, the effect is quite the reverse; for experience proves that a potato, placed an inch only under the surface of the earth, will produce more tubers than one planted at the depth of a foot.