APPLES FOR HOGS.
Farmers are afraid of sour apples; if stock have only sour fruit they are injured; but let both sweet and sour grow in the orchard, and experience has determined that they will, of themselves, eat the due proportion of each. Cattle and hogs are as fond of variety in fruit as men are. In raising potatoes, pumpkins, apples, etc., for animals, it is frequently supposed that the larger and ranker the growth the better; that, at any rate, cattle fare as well on coarse-grained vegetables as on others. But a rank, coarse, watery vegetable is no better for an ox than for a man. The nutritious principle is the same to man or beast. A fine-fleshed, highly nutritious apple or potato is as much better for stock as it is for man. If a variety is not fit for men, it is not worth while to cultivate it at all. Cattle show themselves to be of this opinion when left to range; they avoid coarse, rough herbage, and pick the sweetest and highest flavored. Let the best sorts of apples be planted for stock. If one has a seedling orchard which it would be worth while to graft over for human use, let not its poor, miserable fruit be fed to hogs; let it be grafted over even if one means to use it for stock.
Pulling off Potato Flowers.—The man who makes his potato-ground feed flowers, prevents it feeding his children. Every ounce of matter consumed by the flowers is so much taken from the consumption of the family.
To restore an exhausted, or rather tired field, it should be sown in grass, and stock fed upon it during the winter months. Hogs fattened upon tired land enrich it very much.
THE FLOWER GARDEN.
Spring Flowering Bulbs.—When crocus, hyacinths, narcissus, tulips, have done flowering, let the seed stalks be cut down, as the ripening of the seed severely taxes and exhausts the powers of a plant. Some persons are accustomed, after the bulbs have flowered, to cut off the tops, as if to do the most mischief possible. The success of the next year’s flowering will depend very much on the care given to your beds now. Many bulbs, as the tulip, form entirely new bulbs; and others, as the hyacinth, form the flower bud for the next season. The leaf is the indispensable means of doing this; in it are perfected the juices which are returned and deposited in the root. If the bed is left to be choked with weeds, and your bulbs robbed of nutriment, or if the soil is left compact, or if there is too much moisture, or on the other hand, too little, the bud or bulb for the next year will be weakened. A very deep bed, or a sandy soil, will sufficiently prevent the effects of too much water.