Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1876 [PAGE 103]

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103

Root Crop. The problem of the value of roots for cattle feeding as compared with corn and other grains, or as compared with each other, has never been determined for Illinois, notwithstanding the interest and importance of the question. To throw if possible some light on the subject, it is recommended that two or more acres be planted, as follows: One % acre Lane's Improved Sugar Beet. One % acre Large Turnip Carrot. One % acre Large White Parsnip. One % ftcre Mangold Wurtzel; and such other roots as may be thought worthy of trial. Vegetables. I now come to vegetables, and first among them of importance as a crop ranks the potato. I think cultivators will admit that no general crop is more uncertain than this, in these latitudes, and they will agree to the proposition that to teach or to suggest how to grow it, under all reasonably fair condition of soil, situation and season, would be a valuable addition to our agricultural knowledge. For proof that this can be done I point to the fact that occasionally a farmer is to br found who seldom fails in securing a crop—while his neighbor^ with the same means at hand and equally good inclinations, fail three times where they succeed once. For the purpose of throwing some light on the different ways and "manners of cultivation, and the good or bad effects of manners and commercial fertilizers, I have laid down a pretty extensive programme for potatoes, as follows: Mof an acre of .Early Rose. % of an acre of Peach Blows. M of an acre of Late Rose. ^J of an acre of Extra Early Vermont; and experiments for the purpose of learning comparative value of kinds by trial on a small scale of 30 or 40 distinct varieties. In order to determine which is the best summer and the best winter Cabbage among five or six of the leading kinds, and the cost and profitableness or unprofitableness of the Cabbage as a feed crop, and perhaps, going far enough to learn, if possible, the value of Cabbages, compared with •oats, as cattle feed, it might be well to lay out— One-eighth of an acre of Early Winningstadt. One-eighth of an acre of Early Schweienfrutt. One-eighth of an acre of Drumhead Savoy. One-eighth of an acre of Marblehead Mammoth ; and, perhaps, One-quarter of an acre of some large forage kind. With a respectful invitation to the Board of Trustees to make such additions, amendments and •curtailments to these several lists as their judgment warrants, I pass on to experiments to be made with commercial and other fertilizers. There is no question-but Artificial Fertilizers will be called upon to play an important part in the agriculture of the future. They will, in the nature of things, be first used in the extensive culture of the neighborhood of cities and large towns—indeed they are now, to a much greater extent than is generally known. If then, in the judgment of the Board, tests of the value and comparative value of Fertilizers ought to be made, in advance of their general use, by the farmers of Illinois, I suggest the purchase of the following, or others which will answer the same p u r p o s e Two tons of Ground Bone Dust. Two tons of Super Sulphate of Lime. One ton of Peruvian Guano. Two tons of Plaster of Paris, Five hundred pounds of Crude Potash. Leached and Unleached ashes. Common Hard or Soft Coal Ashes. Refuse Gas Lime and Amonia Water from Gas Works. Stable Manure. These are large quantities to be purchased, it is admitted, and perhaps the same is true of areas recommended for experimental crops. But to be of real value and to inform the public, trial crops and experiments with Fertilizers must be sufficiently broad, pronounced, and determined to show to the unassisted eye and judgment whether they are a success or a failure at a glance. Moreover, nothing is more fallacious than to conclude that because one has succeeded or failed with a rod square of this, or two rods square of that, that therefore such a course is to be pursued and such another disallowed, when it is proposed to apply either to fixed crops. Because, in our circumstances, and under our climate, and on our soil, we cannot control absolutely the conditions, whether favorable or unfavorable, and therefore experiments on a very small scale are of little or no value. To extend the area of an experiment is to lesson the chances for disturbing causes, whether for or against success, and to secure, in tke same ratio, a valuable and trustworthy a-esult. But it may be asked of me why I advise such extended experiments with Commercial and Industrial Crops, and Plants, Roots and Vegetables. I reply that it is possible that insects which have already entailed losses to the extent of many millions on the Cereals and Commerce Crops we grow, may develop into a plague of still more formidable dimensions, and compel a change in our-whole system of Agriculture, as they have done and are now doing in Europe. But on this head let me borrow the words of a distinguished French Agriculturalist and public man, M. Drougn de Lhuys. to be found in an opening address delivered by him at the Wine Growers' Convention held at Montpelier, October 26,1874. " I n contemplating the ravages caused by the destroyer of our vines, (the phyllocera,) our thoughts involuntarily turn to two analogous plagues—the silk-worm cholera in France, and the potato-rot in Ireland. The first broke out when our cocooneries had suddenly increased to an extent before unknown, and was especially severe at or near those places where great masses bf silkworms had been brought together. Neither hygienic cures nor the most minute precautions succeeded in arresting it or causing it to disappear. It constantly reappeared wherever there were large numbers of silk-worms massed, and small colonies only, each remote from the other, escaped contagion. In 1846 the potato had become the principal crop of Ireland It took the most cool soil, which was at tne same time sufficiently warm, marvelously. Potatoes were as abundant as they were incomparable in quality ; they fed the whole population who had for them given up the cultivation of the cereals. All at once the famous Potato Rot broke out. You know the results, a famine and a vast exodus of the Irish population were the sad consequences.- Since that time the potato has been cultivated as an accessory crop only—the cereals have taken possession of the soil of Ireland and the potato rot is losing little by little its intensity and virulence. In France the vine