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Clutha Leader, Volume I, Issue 21, 3 December 1874, Page 3

I 1 1 / The Value of Large Roots. — It has long been known to observant feeders of stock that overgrown roots or other vegetables are not the best for ' economical use. Mammoth pumpkins, cabbages, or turnips may procure a diploma of questionable value at a local fair, but they are of little value otherwise. Ie is the moderate sized roots which spend best when they come to be fed. This is especially the case with sugar beets and mangels. A crop of 35 tons of the latter, or of 18 to 20 tons of the former per acre, will be worth more in proportion than a larger crop. It has not heretofore been satisfactorily shown why this should be the case, nor wherein the excessively large roots were deficient in feeding value. Prof. Horsford, who has few if any equals in chemistry, as applied to the domestic and useful arts, advises the farmer or gardener to make his own superphosphate, and gives the following minute directions : Get your bones together and break up all the biggest of them with an axe or heavy sledge. Raw bones are much the best, because they contain ammonia in the gelatine. When, by boiling in lye, or by long bleaching, or by burning, the organic matter has been wholly or in part expelled, the bone is still valuable for its phosphate of lime. But a raw or fresh bone properly treated will yield phosphate of ammonia — the most active and valuable of all manures. . Let the farmer dig a shallow pit shaped like a bread bowl, and if the soil is clay he may make it tight enough by ramming and treading. But if his soil is sandy he should line the pit with a waggonload of clay. Pile the bones in the pit, and wet them thoroughly with diluted sulphuric acid. Sulphuric acid or oil of vitrol will not operate on bones unless water is added. He should buy onefourth the weight of his bones in sulphuric acid ; if he has 400 weight of bonps, he should gee 100 pounds of oil vitrol. In diluting the acid, more or less water may be used, according as the bones are bleached, or of large size; but as a rule, liable to exceptions that will occur to the intelligent farmer, five pints, that is, five pounds of water should be added to one pound of the oil of vitrol. In a few days the bones thus treated will be found greatly softened, so as to crush under the stroke of a spade. The superphosphate should be mixed with some other fertiliser, as dry muck, and applien in small quantities not directly to the seed. Economy in feed. — The very dry Spring has caused a very short crop of hay and other forage for the season, with very little left over from last year's crop. It is not uncommon to see barns but half filled and many farmei-s uneasy about their supply of feed holding* out through a hard winter. Farmers will have to shift in many ways to make their feed last through. I have used all kinds of rough grasses, and it has to be a very poor grass indeed if by steaming and mixing* a little mill feed one cannot help their stock through wilh it. I have had very good results from feed, ing common swamp acd pond grass, cut in September, by pouring hot water over it and mixing with corn meal, shorts br wheat bran. The same process will make any of the late growing rough grasses, or even weeds, make very good feed, much better than starvation. Those that have means of steaming can turn most all kinds of rough stuff into palatable feed, and those that have no steaming apparatus can make a good substitute by having a box, with size sufficient to hold a feed for their stock, and use boiling hob wafer to mix their cut hay, straw of course feed with. I have fed the common swamp grasses that way previous to putting' in steaming: apparatus, and a little additional meal would .make my cow's milk as well as when they had the best of dry hay. My plan was to have my- feed mixed about an hour before feeding* time, -and let it stand closely covered during- that time and soften as much as possible, it was then about the right temperature to feed.