Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

Page 15 text:

All hardy vegetables do much better if they have a dressing of well-rotted manure or soil from the compost heap-spread upon them each fall. It keeps the soil from blowing away from the roots, adds humus to the soil for the plants to feed upon and prevents the freezing and thawing, which occur in many sections, from lifting the roots out of the soil. Compost should be put on just as soon as the ground is frozen or before it freezes. This will keep the frost in or hold it out so the lifting process cannot take place. EDITH L. FULLERTON. MR. McCANN’S MODERN POULTRY PLANT The Poultry Class recently took a trip to visit Mr. McCann’s poultry plant. Mr. McCann’s place is very interesting and is situated on Bethlehem Pike, in Ambler, where a variety of poultry is kept under up-to-date methods. The main feature of the trip was to see the mammoth six thou-san egg Newtown incubator which was in operation at the time. It was a worth-while trip to see a standard make of mammoth incubator in operation and the growth of the place testifies to the success Mr. McCann is having with it. A part of the success may be attributed to the management and also to the model incubator cellar in which it is installed. A well-planned brooder house with steam heat is located above the incubator cellar. In another part of the place a new modern poultry plant is under construction. In connection with the poultry, Mr. McCann also carries a full line of poultry feeds and supplies. Everyone felt very grateful to Mr. McCann for the opportunity to visit his establishment and for the courtesy in conducting us in person about the place. JUST A CHICKEN “All things considered from beginning to ending, Hatching and catching and feeding and tending, Chasing and killing and scalding and pickin’, There’s a great deal of work about raising a chicken. Watching the hen while she’s doing the hatching. Watching her, too, while she’s eating and scratching, Guarding ’gainst hawks and ’possums and rats, Driving off crows and dogs and cats, Ready all day to give something a lickin’, There’s a great deal of work about raising a chicken.” (Selected). 13

Page 14 text:

apart; when the frost comes, cover with litter or leaves. Early the next spring you will see them poking up their heads. I have seen them lift clumps of frozen earth. Now we must remove the litter and crown them up—cover the shoots with earth and as they push through, cover repeatedly until you have a mound about a foot high, then dig in and cut the shoots off near the root. It is the leaf stalk, nicely blanched, which we eat. You can let them grow up and cut several times, then uncover and allow the plants to grow all summer. Every year follow the same practice. This vegetable is ready to eat earlier than any other that I know of. Cook it the same as asparagus. Jerusalem artichokes are nothing new to some of my Western and Southern friends, but they are little known in the East. The plant is a sunflower, but the roots are like small knobby potatoes. We plant these roots in the spring, and allow them to grow all summer. When frost kills the stalks thev should l e cut down. You may then d:g the roots or leave them until early spring. Save enough roots to plant again and use the rest for cooking and eating. One root planted in the spring will have increased to many when von dig it in the fall. . Chives are onion grass, the grasslike leaves of which are used for flavoring. The plan! increases in size from year to year and you can cut the root into pieces and so increase your number of plants. You can sow seeds of chives or buy plants. One or two is plenty for a family unless they are very fond of it. Mint is considered an herb. It grows wild in many places, but it is extremely nice to have in the garden. It multiplies year after year, because the roots send out runners under ground, which in turn send up new plants every few inches. The leaves and stems are used for flavoring. Sage is another herb; the leaves are used for flavoring. The plant is a small bush and lives for many years. Tarragon leaves are used for flavoring salad and vinegars, and are much sought after by salad lovers. The plants live from year to year and increase in size. You can grow it from seed, but I should advise buying one or two plants. Horseradish is a well-known condiment. The roots are grated fine and mixed with vinegar. The plant is coarse leaved, and when we dig the roots in the fall we save a small piece and set it back in the same place to make a new plant for next year. “Maliner Kren” is the best horseradish I know. Parsley lives over a year and if covered with, leaves and straw can be gathered nearly all winter. The next spring it is also good to use, but toward midsummer it begins to blossom, then the leaves become small and bitter and are not good to use. Plant a little parsley seed each year, and keep it coming along fresh all the time, for when the new plants are large enough to have their leaves gathered the old will be ready to pull out. If you did not save the old plants over the winter there would be many weeks when you could not gather parsley at all. 12

Page 16 text:

PLAN FOR GROWTH On December seventh we had the pleasure of listening to an extremely interesting ta)k by Mr. Bates, of Lord Burnham Company, Philadelphia, on the construction of greenhouses. Mr. Bates drew attention to the fact in the beginning of his talk that a business career might depend on the first lavout of a greenhouse, commercial as well as private, which 'present two different problems, but the fundamentals are the same. Take a commercial project. You have limited means, are just starting out; in putting up a greenhouse, do it with the thought of an addition later on. It is cheaper to tear down, nine cases out of ten, than to fix up old houses. In laying out houses, lay out straight lines. In planning your greenhouse, think over what you want to grow, how much you want to grow, and design the whole layout along that line. A greenhouse roof carries 22 to 24 pounds to the square inch. Add to that your wind load, dead load and other stresses, sometimes causing it to rise as high as 150 pounds, there will be five, ten, fifteen or twenty times the amount it was intended to carry. In time of shortage of coal, look ahead and lay in coal. Greenhouses should be kept with heat in them in winter. They will depreciate at least five years in one winter under normal conditions if left without heat. During the war there were many small greenhouses wiped out of existence through lack of good business methods and not having foresight to lay in coal enough to carry them through. Others foresaw and ordered enough coal to last them during the shortage. These men made enormous amounts of money. Suppose you intended growing a general line of stock in a small, medium-sized city, retail trade, and you had a limited amount of money, and you wanted to take in a general line of business, you had to grow everything—heat with water. Never build less in width than a twenty-five foot house, four benches. Your benches and your heating will cost you the same for an eighteen foot house, approximately, as it will for a twenty-five foot house, and you have gained one bench. Your labor in the erection of a twenty-five foot house is very little over that for an eighteen foot house. Do not, by any means, consider anything less than an eighteen foot house unless it is a passage or lean-to. In designing a range of glass, when you can, and when everything is equal, have it fifteen degrees South. In designing service building, get cellar deep enough; go eight feet if you can ; never less than seven. Give plenty of room to take care of coal and boiler in cellar. You can run two hundred feet with a water main successfully, but not over. The shorter you have mains for water, the better success you will have. Devote one house to a certain kind of plant after you have commenced to enlarge the number of your greenhouses. Increase boiler space as you increase house space. After you have twenty thousand or twenty-five thousand feet of glass, you have to change water for steam. It is always a good policy to have two boilers. 14