The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Home Acre, by E. P. Roe

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Title: The Home Acre

Author: E. P. Roe

Posting Date: September 8, 2012 [EBook #5418]
Release Date: April, 2004
First Posted: July 14, 2002
Last Updated: August 16, 2005

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE HOME ACRE

E. P. ROE






CONTENTS

   CHAPTER I   TREE-PLANTING

  CHAPTER II   FRUIT-TREES AND GRASS

 CHAPTER III   THE GARDEN

  CHAPTER IV   THE VINEYARD AND ORCHARD

   CHAPTER V   THE RASPBERRY

  CHAPTER VI   THE CURRANT

 CHAPTER VII   STRAWBERRIES

CHAPTER VIII   THE KITCHEN-GARDEN

  CHAPTER IX   THE KITCHEN-GARDEN (Concluded)




CHAPTER I

TREE-PLANTING


Land hunger is so general that it may be regarded as a natural craving.
Artificial modes of life, it is true, can destroy it, but it is apt to
reassert itself in later generations. To tens of thousands of
bread-winners in cities a country home is the dream of the future, the
crown and reward of their life-toil. Increasing numbers are taking what
would seem to be the wiser course, and are combining rural pleasures
and advantages with their business. As the questions of rapid transit
are solved, the welfare of children will turn the scale more and more
often against the conventional city house or flat. A home CAN be
created in rented dwellings and apartments; but a home for which we
have the deed, a cottage surrounded by trees, flowers, lawn, and
garden, is the refuge which best satisfies the heart. By means of such
a suburban nook we can keep up our relations with Nature and all her
varied and health-giving life. The tired man returning from business
finds that his excited brain will not cease to act. He can enjoy
restoring rest in the complete diversion of his thoughts; he can think
of this tree or that plant, and how he can fill to advantage unoccupied
spaces with other trees, flowers, and vegetables. If there is a Jersey
cow to welcome him with her placid trust, a good roadster to whinny for
an airing, and a flock of chickens to clamor about his feet for their
supper, his jangling nerves will be quieted, in spite of all the bulls
and bears of Wall Street. Best of all, he will see that his children
have air and space in which to grow naturally, healthfully. His
fruit-trees will testify to his wisdom in providing a country home. For
instance, he will observe that if sound plums are left in contact with
stung and decaying specimens, they too will be infected; he will see
that too close crowding renders the prospect for good fruit doubtful;
and, by natural transition of thought, will be glad that his boys and
girls are not shut in to the fortuitous associations of hall-way and
street. The area of land purchased will depend largely on the desires
and purse of the buyer; but about one acre appears to satisfy the
majority of people. This amount is not so great that the business man
is burdened with care, nor is its limit so small that he is cramped and
thwarted by line fences. If he can give to his bit of Eden but little
thought and money, he will find that an acre can be so laid out as to
entail comparatively small expense in either the one or the other; if
he has the time and taste to make the land his play-ground as well as
that of his children, scope is afforded for an almost infinite variety
of pleasing labors and interesting experiments. When we come to co-work
with Nature, all we do has some of the characteristics of an
experiment. The labor of the year is a game of skill, into which also
enter the fascinating elements of apparent chance. What a tree, a
flower, or vegetable bed will give, depends chiefly upon us; yet all
the vicissitudes of dew, rain, frost, and sun, have their part in the
result. We play the game with Nature, and she will usually let us win
if we are not careless, ignorant, or stupid. She keeps up our zest by
never permitting the game to be played twice under the same conditions.
We can no more carry on our garden this season precisely as we did last
year than a captain can sail his ship exactly as he did on the
preceding voyage. A country home makes even the weather interesting;
and the rise and fall of the mercury is watched with scarcely less
solicitude than the mutations of the market.

In this chapter and in those which may ensue I merely hope to make some
useful suggestions and give practical advice--the result of experience,
my own and others'--which the reader may carry out and modify according
to his judgment.

We will suppose that an acre has been bought; that it is comparatively
level, with nothing of especial value upon it--in brief, that the home
and its surroundings are still to be created.

It is not within my design to treat of the dwelling, its architecture,
etc., but we shall have something to say further on in regard to its
location. Before purchasing, the most careful investigations should be
made as to the healthfulness of the region and the opportunities for
thorough drainage. Having bought the acre, the question of removing all
undue accumulations of water on or beneath the surface should be
attended to at first. The dry appearance of the soil during much of the
year may be misleading. It should be remembered that there are
equinoctial storms and melting snows. Superabundant moisture at every
period should have channels of immediate escape, for moisture in excess
is an injury to plant as well as to family life; while thoroughly and
quickly drained land endures drought far better than that which is
rendered heavy and sour by water stagnating beneath the surface.
Tile-drains are usually the cheapest and most effective; but if there
are stones and rocks upon the place, they can be utilized and disposed
of at the same time by their burial in ditches--and they should be
covered so deeply that a plow, although sunk to the beam, can pass over
them. Tiles or the top of a stone drain should be at least two feet
below the surface. If the ground of the acre is underlaid with a porous
subsoil, there is usually an adequate natural drainage.

Making haste slowly is often the quickest way to desired results. It is
the usual method to erect the dwelling first, and afterward to subdue
and enrich the ground gradually. This in many instances may prove the
best course; but when it is practicable, I should advise that building
be deferred until the land (with the exception of the spaces to be
occupied with the house and barn) can be covered with a heavy dressing
of barnyard manure, and that this be plowed under in the autumn. Such
general enriching of the soil may seem a waste in view of the
carriage-drive and walks yet to be laid out; but this will not prove
true. It should be remembered that while certain parts of the place are
to be kept bare of surface-vegetation, they nevertheless will form a
portion of the root-pasturage of the shade and fruit trees. The land,
also, can be more evenly and deeply plowed before obstructions are
placed upon it, and roots, pestiferous weeds, and stones removed with
greatest economy. Moreover, the good initial enriching is capital,
hoarded in the soil, to start with. On many new places I have seen
trees and plants beginning a feeble and uncertain life, barely existing
rather than growing, because their roots found the soil like a table
with dishes but without food. If the fertilizer is plowed under in the
autumn, again mixed with the soil by a second plowing in the spring, it
will be decomposed and ready for immediate use by every rootlet in
contact with it. Now, as farmers say, the "land is in good heart," and
it will cheer its owner's heart to see the growth promptly made by
whatever is properly planted. Instead of losing time, he has gained
years. Suppose the acre to have been bought in September, and treated
as I have indicated, it is ready for a generous reception of plants and
trees the following spring.

Possibly at the time of purchase the acre may be covered with coarse
grass, weeds, or undergrowth of some kind. In this case, after the
initial plowing, the cultivation for a season of some such crop as corn
or potatoes may be of great advantage in clearing the land, and the
proceeds of the crop would partially meet expenses. If the aim is
merely to subdue and clean the land as quickly as possible, nothing is
better than buckwheat, sown thickly and plowed under just as it comes
into blossom. It is the nature of this rampart-growing grain to kill
out everything else and leave the soil light and mellow. If the ground
is encumbered with many stones and rocks, the question of clearing it
is more complicated. They can be used, and often sold to advantage, for
building purposes. In some instances I have seen laboring-men clear the
most unpromising plots of ground by burying all rocks and stones deeply
beneath the surface--men, too, who had no other time for the task
except the brief hours before and after their daily toil.

I shall give no distinct plan for laying out the ground. The taste of
the owner, or more probably that of his wife, will now come into play.
Their ideas also will be modified by many local circumstances--as, for
instance, the undulations of the land, if there are any; proximity to
neighbors, etc. If little besides shade and lawn is desired, this fact
will have a controlling influence; if, on the other hand, the
proprietor wishes to make his acre as productive as possible, the house
will be built nearer the street, wider open space will be left for the
garden, and fruit-trees will predominate over those grown merely for
shade and beauty. There are few who would care to follow a plan which
many others had adopted. Indeed, it would be the natural wish of
persons of taste to impart something of their own individuality to
their rural home; and the effort to do this would afford much agreeable
occupation. Plates giving the elevation and arrangement of country
homes can be studied by the evening lamp; visits to places noted for
their beauty, simplicity, and good taste will afford motives for many a
breezy drive; while useful suggestions from what had been accomplished
by others may repay for an extended journey. Such observations and
study will cost little more than an agreeable expenditure of time; and
surely a home is worth careful thought. It then truly becomes YOUR
home--something that you have evolved with loving effort. Dear thoughts
of wife and children enter into its very materiality; walks are planned
with a loving consciousness of the feet which are to tread them, and
trees planted with prophetic vision of the groups that will gather
beneath the shade. This could scarcely be true if the acre were turned
over to architect, builders, and landscape-gardeners, with an agreement
that you should have possession at a specified time.

We will suppose that it is early spring, that the ground has received
its second plowing, and that the carriage-drive and the main walks have
been marked out on paper, or, better still, on a carefully considered
map. There is now so much to do that one is almost bewildered; and the
old saying, "Rome was not built in a day," is a good thing to remember.
An orderly succession of labor will bring beauty and comfort in good
time, especially if essential or foundation labors are first well
performed. Few things will prove more satisfactory than dry, hard,
smooth carriage-roads and walks. These, with their curves, can be
carefully staked out, the surface-earth between the stakes to the depth
of four or five inches carted to the rear of the place near the stable,
or the place where the stable is to be. Of the value of this
surface-soil we shall speak presently, and will merely remark in
passing that it is amply worth the trouble of saving. Its removal
leaves the beds of the driveway and walks depressed several inches
below the surrounding surface. Fill these shallow excavations with
little stones, the larger in the bottom, the smaller on top, and cover
all with gravel. You now have roads and walks that will be dry and hard
even in oozy March, and you can stroll about your place the moment the
heaviest shower is over. The greater first cost will be more than made
good by the fact that scarcely a weed can start or grow on pathways
thus treated. All they will need is an occasional rounding up and
smoothing with a rake.

While this labor is going on you can begin the planting of trees. To
this task I would earnestly ask careful attention. Your house can be
built in a summer; but it requires a good part of a century to build
the best trees into anything like perfection.

The usual tendency is to plant much too closely. Observe well-developed
trees, and see how wide a space they require. There is naturally an
eager wish for shade as soon as possible, and a desire to banish from
surroundings an aspect of bareness. These purposes can, it is true,
often be accomplished by setting out more trees at first than could
mature, and by taking out one and another from time to time when they
begin to interfere with each other's growth. One symmetrical, noble
tree, however, is certainly worth more than a dozen distorted,
misshapen specimens. If given space, every kind of tree and shrub will
develop its own individuality; and herein lies one of their greatest
charms. If the oak typifies manhood, the drooping elm is equally
suggestive of feminine grace, while the sugar-maple, prodigal of its
rich juices, tasselled bloom, and winged seeds, reminds us of
wholesome, cheerful natures. Even when dying, its foliage takes on the
earliest and richest hues of autumn.

The trees about our door become in a sense our companions. They appeal
to the eye, fancy, and feelings of different people differently.
Therefore I shall leave the choice of arboreal associates to those who
are to plant them--a choice best guided by observation of trees. Why
should you not plant those you like the best, those which are the most
congenial?

A few suggestions, however, may be useful. I would advise the reader
not to be in too great haste to fill up his grounds. While there are
trees to which his choice reverts almost instantly, there are probably
many other beautiful varieties with which he is not acquainted. If he
has kept space for the planting of something new every spring and fall,
he has done much to preserve his zest in his rural surroundings, and to
give a pleasing direction to his summer observation. He is ever on the
alert to discover trees and shrubs that satisfy his taste.

During the preparation of this book I visited the grounds of Mr. A. S.
Fuller, at Kidgewood, N. J., and for an hour or two I broke the tenth
commandment in spite of myself. I was surrounded by trees from almost
every portion of the northern temperate zone, from Oregon to Japan; and
in Mr. Fuller I had a guide whose sympathy with his arboreal pets was
only equalled by his knowledge of their characteristics. All who love
trees should possess his book entitled "Practical Forestry." If it
could only be put into the hands of law-makers, and they compelled to
learn much of its contents by heart, they would cease to be more or
less conscious traitors to their country in allowing the destruction of
forests. They might avert the verdict of the future, and prevent
posterity from denouncing the irreparable wrong which is now permitted
with impunity. The Arnolds of to-day are those who have the power to
save the trees, yet fail to do so.

Japan appears to be doing as much to adorn our lawns and gardens as our
drawing-rooms; and from this and other foreign lands much that is
beautiful or curious is coming annually to our shores. At the same time
I was convinced of the wisdom of Mr. Fuller's appreciation of our
native trees. In few instances should we have to go far from home to
find nearly all that we wanted in beautiful variety--maples, dogwoods,
scarlet and chestnut oaks, the liquid-amber, the whitewood or
tulip-tree, white birch, and horn-beam, or the hop-tree; not to speak
of the evergreens and shrubs indigenous to our forests. Perhaps it is
not generally known that the persimmon, so well remembered by old
campaigners in Virginia, will grow readily in this latitude. There are
forests of this tree around Paterson, N. J., and it has been known to
endure twenty-seven degrees below zero. It is a handsome tree at any
season, and its fruit in November caused much straggling from our line
of march in the South. Then there is our clean-boled, graceful beech,
whose smooth white bark has received so many tender confidences. In the
neighborhood of a village you will rarely find one of these trees
whereon is not linked the names of lovers that have sat beneath the
shade. Indeed I have found mementoes of trysts or rambles deep in the
forest of which the faithful beech has kept the record until the lovers
were old or dead. On an immense old beech in Tennessee there is an
inscription which, while it suggests a hug, presents to the fancy an
experience remote from a lover's embrace. It reads, "D. Boone cilled
bar on tree."

There is one objection to the beech which also lies against the white
oak--it does not drop its leaves within the space of a few autumn days.
The bleached foliage is falling all winter long, thus giving the ground
near an untidy aspect. With some, the question of absolute neatness is
paramount; with others, leaves are clean dirt, and their rustle in the
wind does not cease to be music even after they have fallen.

Speaking of native trees and shrubs, we shall do well to use our eyes
carefully during our summer walks and drives; for if we do, we can
scarcely fail to fall in love with types and varieties growing wild.
They will thrive just as well on the acre if properly removed. In a
sense they bring the forest with them, and open vistas at our door deep
into the heart of Nature. The tree is not only a thing of beauty in
itself, but it represents to the fancy all its wild haunts the world
over.

In gratifying our taste for native trees we need not confine ourselves
to those indigenous to our own locality. From the nurseries we can
obtain specimens that beautify other regions of our broad land; as, for
instance, the Kentucky yellow-wood, the papaw, the Judas-tree, and, in
the latitude of New Jersey and southward, the holly.

In many instances the purchaser of the acre may find a lasting pleasure
in developing a specialty. He may desire to gather about him all the
drooping or weeping trees that will grow in his latitude, or he may
choose to turn his acre largely into a nut-orchard, and delight his
children with a harvest which they will gather with all the zest of the
frisky red squirrel. If one could succeed in obtaining a bearing tree
of Hale's paper-shell hickory-nut, he would have a prize indeed.
Increasing attention is given to the growing of nut-trees in our large
nurseries, and there would be no difficulty in obtaining a supply.

In passing from this subject of choice in deciduous trees and shrubs, I
would suggest, in addition to visits to woods and copse, to the
well-ornamented places of men who have long gratified a fine taste in
this respect, that the reader also make time to see occasionally a
nursery like that of S.B. Parsons & Co., at Flushing, N.Y. There is no
teaching like that of the eyes; and the amateur who would do a bit of
landscape-gardening about his own home learns what he would like and
what he can do by seeing shrubs and trees in their various stages of
growth and beauty.

I shall treat the subject of evergreens at the close of this chapter.

As a rule, I have not much sympathy with the effort to set out large
trees in the hope of obtaining shade more quickly. The trees have to be
trimmed up and cut back so greatly that their symmetry is often
destroyed. They are also apt to be checked in their growth so seriously
by such removal that a slender sapling, planted at the same time,
overtakes and passes them. I prefer a young tree, straight-stemmed,
healthy, and typical of its species or variety. Then we may watch its
rapid natural development as we would that of a child. Still, when
large trees can be removed in winter with a great ball of frozen earth
that insures the preservation of the fibrous roots, much time can be
saved. It should ever be remembered that prompt, rapid growth of the
transplanted tree depends on two things--plenty of small fibrous roots,
and a fertile soil to receive them. It usually happens that the
purchaser employs a local citizen to aid in putting his ground in
order. In every rural neighborhood there are smart men--"smart" is the
proper adjective; for they are neither sagacious nor trustworthy, and
there is ever a dismal hiatus between their promises and performance.
Such men lie in wait for newcomers, to take advantage of their
inexperience and necessary absence. They will assure their confiding
employers that they are beyond learning anything new in the planting of
trees--which is true, in a sinister sense. They will leave roots
exposed to sun and wind--in brief, pay no more attention to them than a
baby-farmer would bestow on an infant's appetite; and then, when
convenient, thrust them into a hole scarcely large enough for a post.
They expect to receive their money long before the dishonest character
of their work can be discovered. The number of trees which this class
of men have dwarfed or killed outright would make a forest. The result
of a well-meaning yet ignorant man's work might be equally
unsatisfactory. Therefore, the purchaser of the acre should know how a
tree should be planted, and see to it himself; or he should by careful
inquiry select a man for the task who could bring testimonials from
those to whom he had rendered like services in the past.

The hole destined to receive a shade or fruit tree should be at least
three feet in diameter and two feet deep. It then should be partially
filled with good surface soil, upon which the tree should stand, so
that its roots could extend naturally according to their original
growth. Good fine loam should be sifted through and over them, and they
should not be permitted to come in contact with decaying matter or
coarse, unfermented manure. The tree should be set as deeply in the
soil as it stood when first taken up. As the earth is thrown gently
through and over the roots it should be packed lightly against them
with the foot, and water, should the season be rather dry and warm,
poured in from time to time to settle the fine soil about them. The
surface should be levelled at last with a slight dip toward the tree,
so that spring and summer rains may be retained directly about the
roots. Then a mulch of coarse manure is helpful, for it keeps the
surface moist, and its richness will reach the roots gradually in a
diluted form. A mulch of straw, leaves, or coarse hay is better than
none at all. After being planted, three stout stakes should be inserted
firmly in the earth at the three points of a triangle, the tree being
its centre. Then by a rope of straw or some soft material the tree
should be braced firmly between the protecting stakes, and thus it is
kept from being whipped around by the wind. Should periods of drought
ensue during the growing season, it would be well to rake the mulch one
side, and saturate the ground around the young tree with an abundance
of water, and the mulch afterward spread as before. Such watering is
often essential, and it should be thorough. Unskilled persons usually
do more harm than good by their half-way measures in this respect.

Speaking of trees, it may so happen that the acre is already in forest.
Then, indeed, there should be careful discrimination in the use of the
axe. It may be said that a fine tree is in the way of the dwelling.
Perhaps the proposed dwelling is in the way of the tree. In England the
work of "groving," or thinning out trees, is carried to the perfection
of a fine art. One shudders at the havoc which might be made by a
stolid laborer. Indeed, to nearly all who could be employed in
preparing a wooded acre for habitation, a tree would be looked upon as
little more than so much cord-wood or lumber.

If I had a wooded acre I should study the trees most carefully before
coming to any decision as to the situation of the dwelling and
out-buildings. Having removed those obviously unworthy to remain, I
should put in the axe very thoughtfully among the finer specimens,
remembering that I should be under the soil before Nature could build
others like them.

In the fitting up of this planet as the home of mankind it would appear
that the Creator regarded the coniferae, or evergreen family, as well
worthy of attention; for almost from the first, according to
geologists, this family records on the rocky tablets of the earth its
appearance, large and varied development, and its adaptation to each
change in climate and condition of the globe's surface during the
countless ages of preparation. Surely, therefore, he who is evolving a
home on one acre of the earth's area cannot neglect a genus of trees
that has been so signally honored. Evergreens will speedily banish the
sense of newness from his grounds; for by putting them about his door
he has added the link which connects his acre with the earliest
geological record of tree-planting. Then, like Diedrich Knickerbocker,
who felt that he must trace the province of New York back to the origin
of the universe, he can look upon his coniferae and feel that his
latest work is in accord with one of the earliest laws of creation. I
imagine, however, that my readers' choice of evergreens will be
determined chiefly by the fact that they are always beautiful, are
easily managed, and that by means of them beautiful effects can be
created within comparatively small space. On Mr. Fuller's grounds I saw
what might be fittingly termed a small parterre of dwarf evergreens,
some of which were twenty-five years old.

Numbers of this family might be described as evergreen and gold; for
part of the perennial foliage shades off from the deepest green to
bright golden hues. Among the group of this variety, Japanese in
origin, Mr. Fuller showed me a "sporting" specimen, which, from some
obscure and remarkable impulse, appeared bent on producing a new and
distinct type. One of the branches was quite different from all the
others on the tree. It was pressed down and layered in the soil
beneath; when lo! a new tree was produced, set out beside its parent,
whom it soon surpassed in size, beauty, and general vigor. Although
still maintaining its green and golden hues, it was so distinct that no
one would dream that it was but a "sport" from the adjacent dwarf and
modest tree. Indeed, it reminded one of Beatrix Esmond beside her
gentle and retiring mother. If it should not in the future emulate in
caprice the fair subject of comparison, it may eventually become one of
the best-known ornaments of our lawns. At present it appears nowise
inclined to hide its golden light under a bushel.

What I have said about forming the acquaintance of deciduous trees and
shrubs before planting to any great extent, applies with even greater
force to the evergreen, family. There is a large and beautiful variety
from which to choose, and I would suggest that the choice be made
chiefly from the dwarf-growing kinds, since the space of one acre is
too limited for much indulgence in. Norway spruces, the firs, or pines.
An hour with a note-book spent in grounds like those of Mr. Fuller
would do more in aiding a satisfactory selection than years of reading.
Moreover, it should be remembered that many beautiful evergreens,
especially those of foreign origin, are but half hardy. The amateur may
find that after an exceptionally severe winter some lovely specimen,
which has grown to fill a large space in his heart, as well as on his
acre, has been killed. There is an ample choice from entirely hardy
varieties for every locality, and these, by careful inquiry of
trustworthy nurserymen, should be obtained.

Moreover, it should be remembered that few evergreens will thrive in a
wet, heavy soil. If Nature has not provided thorough drainage by means
of a porous subsoil, the work must be done artificially. As a rule,
light but not poor soils, and warm exposures, are best adapted to this
genus of trees.

I think that all authorities agree substantially that spring in our
climate is the best time for the transplanting of evergreens; but they
differ between early and advanced spring. The late Mr. A. J. Downing
preferred early spring; that is, as soon as the frost is out, and the
ground dry enough to crumble freely. Mr. A. S. Fuller indorses this
opinion. Mr. Josiah Hoopes, author of a valuable work entitled "The
Book of Evergreens," advises that transplanting be deferred to later
spring, when the young trees are just beginning their season's growth;
and this view has the approval of the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder and Mr.
S. B. Parsons, Jr., Superintendent of City Parks. Abundant success is
undoubtedly achieved at both seasons; but should a hot, dry period
ensue after the later planting--early May, for instance--only abundant
watering and diligent mulching will save the trees.

It should be carefully remembered that the evergreen families do not
possess the vitality of deciduous trees, and are more easily injured or
killed by removal. The roots of the former are more sensitive to
exposure to dry air and to sunlight; and much more certainty of life
and growth is secured if the transfer can be accomplished in cloudy or
rainy weather. The roots should never be permitted to become dry, and
it is well also to sprinkle the foliage at the time of planting.
Moreover, do not permit careless workmen to save a few minutes in the
digging of the trees. Every fibrous root that can be preserved intact
is a promise of life and vigor. If a nurseryman should send me an
assortment of evergreens with only the large woody roots left, I should
refuse to receive the trees.

What I have said in opposition to the transplanting of large trees
applies with greater force to evergreens. Mr. Hoopes writes: "An error
into which many unpracticed planters frequently fall is that of
planting large trees; and it is one which we consider opposed to sound
common-sense. We are aware that the owner of every new place is anxious
to produce what is usually known as an immediate effect, and therefore
he proceeds to plant large evergreens, covering his grounds with great
unsightly trees. In almost every case of this kind the lower limbs are
apt to die, and thus greatly disfigure the symmetry of the trees.
Young, healthy plants, when carefully taken up and as properly
replanted, are never subject to this disfigurement, and are almost
certain to form handsome specimens."

Any one who has seen the beautiful pyramids, cones, and mounds of green
into which so many varieties develop, if permitted to grow according to
the laws of their being, should not be induced to purchase old and
large trees which nurserymen are often anxious to part with before they
become utterly unsalable.

When the evergreens reach the acre, plant them with the same care and
on the same general principles indicated for other trees. Let the soil
be mellow and good. Mulch at once, and water abundantly the first
summer during dry periods. Be sure that the trees are not set any
deeper in the ground than they stood before removal. If the soil of the
acre is heavy or poor, go to the roadside or some old pasture and find
rich light soil with which to fill in around the roots. If no soil can
be found without a large proportion of clay, the addition of a little
sand, thoroughly mixed through it, is beneficial. The hole should be
ample in size, so that the roots can be spread out according to their
natural bent. If the ground after planting needs enriching, spread the
fertilizer around the trees, not against them, and on the surface only.
Never put manure on or very near the roots.

Fine young seedling evergreens can often be found in the woods or
fields, and may be had for the asking, or for a trifling sum. Dig them
so as to save all the roots possible. Never permit these to become dry
till they are safe in your own grounds. Aim to start the little trees
under the same conditions in which you found them in Nature. If taken
from a shady spot, they should be shaded for a season or two, until
they become accustomed to sunlight. This can easily be accomplished by
four crotched stakes supporting a light scaffolding, on which is placed
during the hot months a few evergreen boughs.

Very pretty and useful purposes can often be served by the employment
of certain kinds of evergreens as hedges. I do not like the arbitrary
and stiff divisions of a small place which I have often seen. They take
away the sense of roominess, and destroy the possibility of pretty
little vistas; but when used judiciously as screens they combine much
beauty with utility. As part of line fences they are often eminently
satisfactory, shutting out prying eyes and inclosing the home within
walls of living green. The strong-growing pines and Norway spruce are
better adapted to large estates than to the area of an acre. Therefore
we would advise the employment of the American arbor vitae and of
hemlock. The hedge of the latter evergreen on Mr. Fuller's place formed
one of the most beautiful and symmetrical walls I have ever seen. It
was so smooth, even, and impervious that in the distance it appeared
like solid emerald.

The ground should be thoroughly prepared for a hedge by deep plowing or
by digging; the trees should be small, young, of even height and size,
and they should be planted carefully in line, according to the
directions already given for a single specimen; the ground on each side
mulched and kept moist during the first summer. In the autumn, rake the
mulch away and top-dress the soil on both sides for the space of two or
three feet outward from the stems with well-decayed manure. This
protects the roots and ensures a vigorous growth the coming season.
Allow no weeds or even grass to encroach on the young hedge until it is
strong and established. For the first year no trimming will be
necessary beyond cutting back an occasional branch or top that is
growing stronger than the others; and this should be done in early
October. During the second season the plants should grow much more
strongly; and now the shears are needed in summer. Some branches and
top shoots will push far beyond the others. They should be cut back
evenly, and in accordance with the shape the hedge is to take. The
pyramidal form appears to me to be the one most in harmony with Nature.
In October, the hedge should receive its final shearing for the year;
and if there is an apparent deficiency of vigor, the ground on both
sides should receive another top-dressing, after removing the summer
mulch. As the hedge grows older and stronger, the principal shearing
will be done in early summer, as this checks growth and causes the
close, dense interlacing of branches and formation of foliage wherein
the beauty and usefulness of the hedge consist.




CHAPTER II

FRUIT-TREES AND GRASS


It is a happy proof of our civilization that a dwelling-place, a
shelter from sun and storm, does not constitute a home. Even the modest
rooms of our mechanics are not furnished with useful articles merely;
ornaments and pictures appear quite as indispensable. Out-of-doors the
impulse to beautify is even stronger; and usually the purchaser's first
effort is to make his place attractive by means of trees and shrubs
that are more than useful--they are essential; because the refined
tastes of men and women to-day demand them.

In the first chapter I endeavored to satisfy this demand in some
degree, and now will ask the reader's attention to a few practical
suggestions in regard to several of the fruits which best supply the
family need. We shall find, however, that while Nature is prodigal in
supplying what appeals to the palate and satisfies hunger, she is also
like a graceful hostess who decks her banquet with all the beauty that
she can possibly bestow upon it. We can imagine that the luscious
fruits of the year might have been produced in a much more prosaic way.
Indeed, we are at a loss to decide which we value the more, the
apple-blossoms or the apples which follow. Nature is not content with
bulk, flavor, and nutriment, but in the fruit itself so deftly pleases
the eye with every trick of color and form that the hues and beauty of
the flower are often surpassed. We look at a red-cheeked apple or
purple cluster of grapes hesitatingly, and are loth to mar the
exquisite shadings and perfect outlines of the vessel in which the rich
juices are served. Therefore, in stocking the acre with fruit, the
proprietor has not ceased to embellish it; and should he decide that
fruit-trees must predominate over those grown for shade and ornament
only, he can combine almost as much beauty as utility with his plan.

All the fruits may be set out both in the spring and the fall seasons;
but in our latitude and northward, I should prefer early spring for
strawberries and peaches.

By this time we may suppose that the owner of the acre has matured his
plans, and marked out the spaces designed for the lawn, garden, fruit
trees, vines, etc. Fruit trees, like shade trees, are not the growth of
a summer. Therefore there is natural eagerness to have them in the
ground as soon as possible, and they can usually be ordered from the
same nursery, and at the same time with the ornamental stock. I shall
speak first of apples, pears, and cherries, and I have been at some
pains to secure the opinions of eminent horticulturists as to the best
selections of these fruits for the home table, not for market. When
there is a surplus, however, there will be no difficulty in disposing
of the fine varieties named.

The Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, the veteran President of the American
Pomological Society, writes as follows: "Herewith is the selection I
have made for family use; but I could put in as many more in some of
the classes which are just as desirable, or nearly so. These have been
made with reference to covering the seasons. Apples--Red Astrakhan,
Porter, Gravenstein, Rhode Island Greening, Baldwin, Roxbury Russet,
and Sweet Bough for baking. Pears--Clapp's Favorite (to be gathered
August 20), Bartlett, Seckel, Sheldon, Beurre Bosc, Buerre d'Anjou, and
Vicar of Winkfield for baking, etc. Cherries--Black Eagle, Black
Tartarian, Downer, Windsor, Cumberland, and Red Jacket."

Mr. Wilder's honored name, like that of the late Charles Downing, is
inseparably linked with American fruits, and the country owes these two
men a debt of gratitude which never can be paid for their lifelong and
intelligent efforts to guide the people wisely in the choice and
culture of the very best varieties. A moment's thought will convince
the reader that I am not giving too much space to this matter of
selection. We are now dealing with questions which wide and varied
experience can best answer. Men who give their lives to the cultivation
and observation of fruits in all their myriad varieties acquire a
knowledge which is almost invaluable. We cannot afford to put out
trees, to give them good culture, and wait for years, only to learn
that all our care has been bestowed on inferior or second-rate
varieties. Life is too brief. We all feel that the best is good enough
for us; and the best usually costs no more in money or time than do
less desirable varieties. Therefore I seek to give on this important
question of choice the opinions of some of the highest authorities in
the land.

Mr. A. S. Fuller is not only a well-known horticultural author, but has
also had the widest experience in the culture and observation of fruit.
He prefaces his opinion with the following words: "How much and how
often we horticulturists have been puzzled with questions like yours!
If we made no progress, were always of the same mind, and if seasons
never changed, then perhaps there would be little difficulty in
deciding which of the varieties of the different kinds of fruit were
really the best. But seasons, our tastes, and even the varieties
sometimes change; and our preferences and opinions must vary
accordingly. Apples--Early Harvest, Fall Pippins, Spitzenburgh, Rhode
Island Greening, Autumn Sweet Bough, and Talman's Sweet.
Cherries--Early Purple Guigne, Bigarreau of Mezel, Black Eagle, Coe's
Transparent, Governor Wood, and Belle Magnifique."

The choice of Mr. E. S. Carmen, editor of the "Rural New Yorker:"
"Apples--Early Harvest, Gravenstein, Jefferis, Baldwin, Mother,
Spitzenburgh. Pears--Seckel, Tyson, Clapp's Favorite, Bartlett, Beurre
d'Anjou, and Dana's Hovey. Cherries--Black Tartarian, Coe's
Transparent, Governor Wood, Mezel, Napoleon Bigarreau."

The authorities appear to differ. And so they would in regard to any
locality; but it should be remembered that President Wilder advises for
the latitude of Massachusetts, Messrs. Fuller and Carmen for that of
New Jersey. I will give now the selection of the eminent horticulturist
Mr. P. O. Berckmans for the latitude of Georgia: "Cherries (this is not
a good cherry-producing region, but I name the following as the best in
order of merit)--Buttners, Governor Wood, Belle de Choisy, Early
Richmond, and May Duke. Pears (in order of maturity)--Clapp's Favorite,
Seckel, Duchesse, Beurre Superfine, Leconte, Winter Nellis, or Glout.
Morceau. Apples--Early Harvest, Red June, Carter's Blue, Stevenson's
Winter, Shockley, Buncombe, Carolina Greening."

He who makes his choice from these selections will not meet with much
disappointment. I am aware, however, that the enjoyment of fruit
depends much upon the taste of the individual; and who has a better
right to gratify his taste than the man who buys, sets out, and cares
for the trees? Some familiar kind not in favor with the fruit critics,
an old variety that has become a dear memory of boyhood, may be the
best one of all for him--perhaps for the reason that it recalls the
loved faces that gathered about the wide, quaint fireplace of his
childhood's home.

It is also a well-recognized fact that certain varieties of fruit
appear to be peculiarly adapted to certain localities. Because a man
has made a good selection on general principles, he need not be
restricted to this choice. He will soon find his trees growing lustily
and making large branching heads. Each branch can be made to produce a
different kind of apple or pear, and the kindred varieties of cherries
will succeed on the same tree. For instance, one may be visiting a
neighbor who gives him some fruit that is unusually delicious, or that
manifest great adaptation to the locality. As a rule the neighbor will
gladly give scions which, grafted upon the trees of the Home Acre, will
soon begin to yield the coveted variety. This opportunity to grow
different kinds of fruit on one tree imparts a new and delightful
interest to the orchard. The proprietor can always be on the lookout
for something new and fine, and the few moments required in grafting or
budding make it his. The operation is so simple and easy that he can
learn to perform it himself, and there are always plenty of adepts in
the rural vicinage to give him his initial lesson. While he will keep
the standard kinds for his main supply, he can gratify his taste and
eye with some pretty innovations. I know of an apple-tree which bears
over a hundred varieties. A branch, for instance, is producing Yellow
Bell-flowers. At a certain point in its growth where it has the
diameter of a man's thumb it may be grafted with the Red Baldwin. When
the scion has grown for two or three years, its leading shoots can be
grafted with the Roxbury Russet, and eventually the terminal bough of
this growth with the Early Harvest. Thus may be presented the
interesting spectacle of one limb of a tree yielding four very distinct
kinds of apples.

In the limited area of an acre there is usually not very much range in
soil and locality. The owner must make the best of what he has bought,
and remedy unfavorable conditions, if they exist, by skill. It should
be remembered that peaty, cold, damp, spongy soils are unfit for
fruit-trees of any kind. We can scarcely imagine, however, that one
would buy land for a home containing much soil of this nature. A sandy
loam, with a subsoil that dries out so quickly that it can be worked
after a heavy rain, is the best for nearly all the fruit-trees,
especially for cherries and peaches. Therefore in selecting the ground,
be sure it is well drained.

If the acre has been enriched and plowed twice deeply, as I have
already suggested, little more is necessary in planting than to
excavate a hole large enough to receive the roots spread out in their
natural positions. Should no such thorough and general preparation have
been made, or if the ground is hard, poor, and stony, the owner will
find it to his advantage to dig a good-sized hole three or four feet
across and two deep, filling in and around the tree with fine rich
surface soil. If he can obtain some thoroughly decomposed compost or
manure, for instance, as the scrapings of a barnyard, or rich black
soil from an old pasture, to mix with the earth beneath and around the
roots, the good effects will be seen speedily; but in no instance
should raw manure from the stable, or anything that must decay before
becoming plant food, be brought in contact with the roots. Again I
repeat my caution against planting too deeply--one of the commonest and
most fatal errors. Let the tree be set about as deeply as it stood
before removal. If the tree be planted early in spring, as it should
be, there will be moisture enough in the soil; but when planting is
delayed until the ground has become rather dry and warm, a pail of
water poured about its roots when the hole has been nearly filled will
be beneficial. Now that the tree is planted, any kind of coarse manure
spread to the depth of two or three inches on the surface as a mulch is
very useful. Stake at once to protect against the winds. Do not make
the common mistake of planting too closely. Observe the area shaded by
fully grown trees, and you will learn the folly of crowding. Moreover,
dense shade about the house is not desirable. There should be space for
plenty of air and sunshine. The fruit from one well-developed tree will
often more than supply a family; for ten or fifteen barrels of apples
is not an unusual yield. The standard apples should be thirty feet
apart. Pears, the dwarfer-growing cherries, plums, etc., can be grown
in the intervening spaces. In ordering from the nurseries insist on
straight, shapely, and young trees, say three years from the bud. Many
trees that are sent out are small enough, but they are old and stunted.
Also require that there should be an abundance of fibrous and
unmutilated roots.

Because the young trees come from the nursery unpruned, do not leave
them in that condition. Before planting, or immediately after, cut back
all the branches at least one-half; and where they are too thick, cut
out some altogether. In removal the tree has lost much of its root
power, and it is absurd to expect it to provide for just as much top as
before.

In many books on fruit-culture much space has been given to dwarf
pears, apples, and cherries, and trees of this character were planted
much more largely some years ago than they are at present. The pear is
dwarfed by grafting it on the quince; the apple can be limited to a
mere garden fruit-tree in size by being grown on a Doucin stock, or
even reduced to the size of a bush if compelled to draw its life
through the roots of the Paradise. These two named stocks, much
employed by European nurserymen, are distinct species of apples, and
reproduce themselves without variation from the seed. The cherry is
dwarfed by being worked on the Mahaleb--a small, handsome tree, with
glossy, deep-green foliage, much cultivated abroad as an ornament of
lawns. Except in the hands of practiced gardeners, trees thus dwarfed
are seldom satisfactory, for much skill and care are required in their
cultivation. Their chief advantages consist in the fact that they bear
early and take but little space. Therefore they may be considered
worthy of attention by the purchasers of small places. Those who are
disposed to make pets of their trees and to indulge in horticultural
experiments may derive much pleasure from these dwarfs, for they can be
developed into symmetrical pyramids or graceful, fruitful shrubs within
the limits of a garden border.

When the seeds of ordinary apples and pears are sown they produce
seedlings, or free stocks, and upon these are budded or grafted the
fine varieties which compose our orchards. They are known as standard
trees; they come into bearing more slowly, and eventually attain the
normal size familiar to us all. Standard cherries are worked on
seedlings of the Mazzard, which Barry describes as a "lofty,
rapid-growing, pyramidal-headed tree." I should advise the reader to
indulge in the dwarfs very charily, and chiefly as a source of fairly
profitable amusement. It is to the standards that he will look for
shade, beauty, and abundance of fruit.

Since we have been dwelling on the apple, pear, and cherry, there are
certain advantages of continuing the subject in the same connection,
giving the principles of cultivation and care until the trees reach
maturity. During the first summer an occasional watering may be
required in long periods of drought. In many instances buds will form
and start along the stem of the tree, or near the roots. These should
be rubbed off the moment they are detected.

One of our chief aims is to form an evenly balanced, open, symmetrical
head; and this can often be accomplished better by a little
watchfulness during the season of growth than at any other time. If,
for instance, two branches start so closely together that one or the
other must be removed in the spring pruning, why let the superfluous
one grow at all? It is just so much wasted effort. By rubbing off the
pushing bud or tender shoot the strength of the tree is thrown into the
branches that we wish to remain. Thus the eye and hand of the master
become to the young tree what instruction, counsel, and admonition are
to a growing boy, with the difference that the tree is easily and
certainly managed when taken in time.

The study of the principles of growth in the young trees can be made as
pleasing as it is profitable, for the readiness with which they respond
to a guiding hand will soon invest them with almost a human interest. A
child will not show neglect more certainly than they; and if humored
and allowed to grow after their own fashion, they will soon prove how
essential are restraint and training. A fruit tree is not like one in a
forest--a simple, unperverted product of Nature. It is a result of
human interference and development; and we might just as reasonably
expect our domestic animals to take care of themselves as our grafted
and budded trees. Moreover, they do not comply with their raison d'etre
by merely existing, growing, and propagating their kind. A Bartlett
pear-tree, like a Jersey cow, is given place for the sake of its
delicious product. It is also like the cow in requiring judicious
feeding and care.

Trees left to themselves tend to form too much wood, like the
grape-vine. Of course fine fruit is impossible when the head of a tree
is like a thicket. The growth of unchecked branches follows the
terminal bud, thus producing long naked reaches of wood devoid of fruit
spurs. Therefore the need of shortening in, so that side branches may
be developed. When the reader remembers that every dormant bud in early
spring is a possible branch, and that even the immature buds at the
axil of the leaves in early summer can be forced into immediate growth
by pinching back the leading shoot, he will see how entirely the young
tree is under his control. These simple facts and principles are worth
far more to the intelligent man than any number of arbitrary rules as
to pruning. Reason and observation soon guide his hand in summer or his
knife in March--the season when trees are usually trimmed.

Beyond shortening in leading branches and cutting out crossing and
interfering boughs, so as to keep the head symmetrical and open to
light and air, the cherry does not need very much pruning. If with the
lapse of years it becomes necessary to take off large limbs from any
fruit-tree, the authorities recommend early June as the best season for
the operation.

It will soon be discovered--quite likely during the first summer--that
fruit-trees have enemies, that they need not only cultivation and
feeding, but also protection. The pear, apple, and quince are liable to
one mysterious disease which it is almost impossible to guard against
or cure--the fireblight. Of course there have been innumerable
preventives and cures recommended, just as we see a dozen certain
remedies for consumption advertised in any popular journal; but the
disease still remains a disheartening mystery, and is more fatal to the
pear than to its kindred fruits. I have had thrifty young trees, just
coming into bearing, suddenly turn black in both wood and foliage,
appearing in the distance as if scorched by a blast from a furnace. In
another instance a large mature tree was attacked, losing in a summer
half its boughs. These were cut out, and the remainder of the tree
appeared healthy during the following summer, and bore a good crop of
fruit. The disease often attacks but a single branch or a small portion
of a tree. The authorities advise that everything should be cut away at
once below all evidence of infection and burned. Some of my trees have
been attacked and have recovered; others were apparently recovering,
but died a year or two later. One could theorize to the end of a volume
about the trouble. I frankly confess that I know neither the cause nor
the remedy. It seems to me that our best resource is to comply with the
general conditions of good and healthy growth. The usual experience is
that trees which are fertilized with wood-ashes and a moderate amount
of lime and salt, rather than with stimulating manures, escape the
disease. If the ground is poor, however, and the growth feeble,
barnyard manure or its equivalent is needed as a mulch. The
apple-blight is another kindred and equally obscure disease. No better
remedy is known than to cut out the infected part at once.

In coping with insects we can act more intelligently, and therefore
successfully. We can study the characters of our enemies, and learn
their vulnerable points. The black and green aphides, or plant-lice,
are often very troublesome. They appear in immense numbers on the young
and tender shoots of trees, and by sucking their juices check or
enfeeble the growth. They are the milch-cows of ants, which are usually
found very busy among them. Nature apparently has made ample provision
for this pest, for it has been estimated that "one individual in five
generations might be the progenitor of six thousand millions." They are
easily destroyed, however. Mr. Barry, of the firm of Ellwanger & Barry,
in his excellent work "The Fruit Garden," writes as follows: "Our plan
is to prepare a barrel of tobacco juice by steeping stems for several
days, until the juice is of a dark brown color; we then mix this with
soap-suds. A pail is filled, and the ends of the shoots, where the
insects are assembled, are bent down and dipped in the liquid. One dip
is enough. Such parts as cannot be dipped are sprinkled liberally with
a garden-syringe, and the application repeated from time to time, as
long as any of the aphides remain. The liquid may be so strong as to
injure the foliage; therefore it is well to test it on one or two
subjects before using it extensively. Apply it in the evening."

The scaly aphis or bark-louse attacks weak, feeble-growing trees, and
can usually be removed by scrubbing the bark with the preparation given
above.

In our region and in many localities the apple-tree borer is a very
formidable pest, often destroying a young tree before its presence is
known. I once found a young tree in a distant part of my place that I
could push over with my finger. In June a brown and white striped
beetle deposits its eggs in the bark of the apple-tree near the ground.
The larvae when hatched bore their way into the wood, and will soon
destroy a small tree. They cannot do their mischief, however, without
giving evidence of their presence. Sawdust exudes from the holes by
which they entered, and there should be sufficient watchfulness to
discover them before they have done much harm. I prefer to cut them out
with a sharp, pointed knife, and make sure that they are dead; but a
wire thrust into the hole will usually pierce and kill them. Wood-ashes
mounded up against the base of the tree are said to be a preventive. In
the fall they can be spread, and they at least make one of the best of
fertilizers.

The codling-moth, or apple-worm, is another enemy that should be fought
resolutely, for it destroys millions of bushels of fruit. In the
latitude of New York State this moth begins its depredations about the
middle of June. Whatever may be thought of the relation of the apple to
the fall of man, this creature certainly leads to the speedy fall of
the apple. Who has not seen the ground covered with premature and
decaying fruit in July, August, and September? Bach specimen will be
found perforated by a worm-hole. The egg has been laid in the calyx of
the young apple, where it soon hatches into a small white grub, which
burrows into the core, throwing out behind it a brownish powder. After
about three weeks of apple diet it eats its way out, shelters itself
under the scaly bark of the tree--if allowed to be scaly--or in some
other hiding-place, spins a cocoon, and in about three weeks comes out
a moth, and is ready to help destroy other apples. This insect probably
constitutes one of Nature's methods of preventing trees from
overbearing; but like some people we know, it so exaggerates its
mission as to become an insufferable nuisance. The remedies recommended
are that trees should be scraped free of all scales in the spring, and
washed with a solution of soft soap. About the 1st of July, wrap
bandages of old cloth, carpet, or rags of any kind around the trunk and
larger limbs. The worms will appreciate such excellent cover, and will
swarm into these hiding-places to undergo transformation into moths.
Therefore the wraps of rags should often be taken down, thrown into
scalding water, dried, and replaced. The fruit as it falls should be
picked up at once and carried to the pigs, and, when practicable,
worm-infested specimens should be taken from the trees before the worm
escapes.

The canker-worm in those localities where it is destructive can be
guarded against by bands of tar-covered canvas around the trees. The
moth cannot fly, but crawls up the tree in the late autumn and during
mild spells in winter, but especially throughout the spring until May.
When, the evil-disposed moth meets the 'tarry band he finds no
thoroughfare, and is either caught or compelled to seek some other
arena of mischief.

We have all seen the flaunting, unsightly abodes of the tent
caterpillar and the foliage-denuded branches about them. Fortunately
these are not stealthy enemies, and the owner can scarcely see his acre
at all without being aware of their presence. He has only to look very
early in the morning or late in the evening to find them all bunched up
in their nests. These should be taken down and destroyed.

Cherry and pear slugs, "small, slimy, dark brown worms," can be
destroyed by dusting the trees with dry wood ashes or air-slacked lime.

Field-mice often girdle young trees, especially during the winter,
working beneath the snow. Unless heaps of rubbish are left here and
there as shelter for these little pests, one or two good cats will keep
the acre free of them. Treading the snow compactly around the tree is
also practiced.

Do not let the reader be discouraged by this list of the most common
enemies, or by hearing of others. After reading some medical works we
are led to wonder that the human race does not speedily die out. As a
rule, however, with moderate care, most of us are able to say, "I'm
pretty well, I thank you," and when ailing we do not straightway
despair. In spite of all enemies and drawbacks, fruit is becoming more
plentiful every year. If one man can raise it, so can another.

Be hospitable to birds, the best of all insect destroyers. Put up
plenty of houses for bluebirds and wrens, and treat the little brown
song-sparrow as one of your stanchest friends.

A brief word in regard to the quince, and our present list of fruits is
complete.

If the quince is cultivated after the common neglectful method, it
would better be relegated to an obscure part of the garden, for, left
to itself, it makes a great sprawling bush; properly trained, it
becomes a beautiful ornament to the lawn, like the other fruits that I
have described. Only a little care, with the judicious use of the
pruning-shears, is required to develop it into a miniature and fruitful
tree, which can be grown with a natural rounded head or in the form of
a pyramid, as the cultivator chooses. It will thrive well on the same
soil and under similar treatment accorded to the pear or the apple.
Procure from a nursery straight-stemmed plants; set them out about
eight feet apart; begin to form the head three feet from the ground,
and keep the stem and roots free from all sprouts and suckers. Develop
the head just as you would that of an apple-tree, shortening in the
branches, and cutting out those that interfere with each other. Half a
dozen trees will soon give an ample supply. The orange and the pear
shaped are the varieties usually recommended. Rea's Mammoth is also
highly spoken of. Remember that the quince equally with the apple is
subject to injury from the borer, and the evil should be met as I have
already described.

There is a natural wish to have as much grass about the dwelling as
possible, for nothing is more beautiful. If there are children, they
will assuredly petition for lawn-tennis and croquet grounds. I trust
that their wishes may be gratified, for children are worth infinitely
more than anything else that can be grown upon the acre. With a little
extra care, all the trees of which I have spoken can be grown in the
spaces allotted to grass. It is only necessary to keep a circle of
space six feet in diameter--the trunk forming the centre--around the
tree mellow and free from any vegetable growth whatever. This gives a
chance to fertilize and work the ground immediately over the roots. Of
course vigorous fruit-trees cannot be grown in a thick sod, while
peaches and grapes require the free culture of the garden, as will be
shown hereafter. In view, however, of the general wish for grass, I
have advised on the supposition that all the ornamental trees, most of
the shrubs, and the four fruits named would be grown on the portions of
the acre to be kept in lawn. It may be added here that plums also will
do well under the same conditions, if given good care.

Grass is a product that can be cultivated as truly as the most delicate
and fastidious of fruits, and I had the lawn is mind when I urged the
generous initial deep plowing and enriching. Nothing that grows
responds more promptly to good treatment than grass; but a fine lawn
cannot be created in a season, any more than a fine tree.

We will suppose that the spring plantings of trees have been made with
open spaces reserved for the favorite games. Now the ground can be
prepared for grass-seed, for it need not be trampled over any more. If
certain parts have become packed and hard, they should be dug or plowed
deeply again, then harrowed and raked perfectly smooth, and all stones,
big or little, taken from the surface. The seed may now be sown, and it
should be of thick, fine-growing varieties, such as are employed in
Central Park and other pleasure-grounds. Mr. Samuel Parsons, Jr.,
Superintendent of Central Park, writes me: "The best grass-seeds for
ordinary lawns are a mixture of red-top and Kentucky blue-grass in
equal parts, with perhaps a small amount of white clover. On very sandy
ground I prefer the Kentucky blue-grass, as it is very hardy and
vigorous under adverse circumstances." Having sown and raked in the
seed very lightly a great advantage will be gained in passing a
lawn-roller over the ground. I have succeeded well in getting a good
"catch" of grass by sowing the seed with oats, which were cut and cured
as hay as soon as the grain was what is termed "in the milk." The
strong and quickly growing oats make the ground green in a few days,
and shelter the slower maturing grass-roots. Mr. Parsons says, "I
prefer to sow the grass-seed alone." As soon as the grass begins to
grow with some vigor, cut it often, for this tends to thicken it and
produce the velvety effect that is so beautiful. From the very first
the lawn will need weeding. The ground contains seeds of strong growing
plants, such as dock, plantain, etc., which should be taken out as fast
as they appear. To some the dandelion is a weed; but not to me, unless
it takes more than its share of space, for I always miss these little
earth stars when they are absent. They intensify the sunshine
shimmering on the lawn, making one smile involuntarily when seeing
them. Moreover, they awaken pleasant memories, for a childhood in which
dandelions had no part is a defective experience.

In late autumn the fallen leaves should be raked carefully away, as
they tend to smother the grass if permitted to lie until spring. Now
comes the chief opportunity of the year, in the form of a liberal
top-dressing of manure from the stable. If this is spread evenly and
not too thickly in November, and the coarser remains of it are raked
off early in April, the results will be astonishing. A deep emerald hue
will be imparted to the grass, and the frequent cuttings required will
soon produce a turf that yields to the foot like a Persian rug. Any one
who has walked over the plain at West Point can understand the value of
these regular autumnal top-dressings. If the stable-manure can be
composted and left till thoroughly decayed, fine and friable, all the
better. If stable-manure can not be obtained, Mr. Parsons recommends
Mapes's fertilizer for lawns.




CHAPTER III

THE GARDEN


We now approach that part of the acre to which its possessor will
probably give his warmest and most frequent thoughts--the garden. If
properly made and conducted, it will yield a revenue which the wealth
of the Indies could not purchase; for whoever bought in market the
flavor of fruit and vegetables raised by one's own hands or under our
own eyes? Sentiment does count. A boy is a boy; but it makes a vast
difference whether he is our boy or not. A garden may soon become a
part of the man himself, and he be a better man for its care. Wholesome
are the thoughts and schemes it suggests; healthful are the blood and
muscle resulting from its products and labor therein. Even with the
purse of a millionaire, the best of the city's markets is no substitute
for a garden; for Nature and life are here, and these are not bought
and sold. From stalls and pedlers' wagons we can buy but dead and dying
things. The indolent epicure's enjoyment of game is not the relish of
the sportsman who has taken his dinner direct from the woods and waters.

I am often told, "It is cheaper to buy fruit and vegetables than to
raise them." I have nothing to say in reply. There are many cheap
things that we can have; experience has proved that one of the BEST
things to have is a garden, either to work in or to visit daily when
the season permits. We have but one life to live here, and to get the
cheapest things out of it is a rather poor ambition.

There are multitudes who can never possess an acre, more or less, and
who must obtain Nature's products at second hand. This is not so great
a misfortune as to have no desire for her companionship, or wish to
work under her direction in dewy mornings and shadowy evenings. We may
therefore reasonably suppose that the man who has exchanged his city
shelter for a rural home looks forward to the garden with the natural,
primal instinct, and is eager to make the most of it in all its
aspects. Then let us plunge in medias res at once.

The ideal soil for a garden is a mellow, sandy loam, underlaid with a
subsoil that is not too open or porous. Such ground is termed
"grateful," and it is not the kind of gratitude which has been defined
as "a lively appreciation of favors to come," which is true of some
other soils. This ideal land remembers past favors; it retains the
fertilizers with which it has been enriched, and returns them in the
form of good crops until the gift is exhausted; therefore it is a
thrifty as well as a grateful soil. The owner can bring it up to the
highest degree of fertility, and keep it there by judicious management.
This sandy loam--Nature's blending of sand and clay--is a safe bank.
The manure incorporated with it is a deposit which can be drawn against
in fruit and vegetables, for it does not leach away and disappear with
one season's rains.

Light, thin, sandy soil, with a porous or gravelly subsoil, is of a
very different type, and requires different treatment. It is a
spendthrift. No matter how much you give it one year, it very soon
requires just so much more. You can enrich it, but you can't keep it
rich. Therefore you must manage it as one would take care of a
spendthrift, giving what is essential at the time, and in a way that
permits as little waste as possible. I shall explain this treatment
more fully further on.

In the choice of a garden plot you may be restricted to a stiff,
tenacious, heavy clay. Now you have a miser to deal with--a soil that
retains, but in many cases makes no proper use of, what it receives.
Skill and good management, however, can improve any soil, and coax
luxuriant crops from the most unpropitious.

We will speak first of the ideal soil already mentioned, and hope that
the acre contains an area of it of suitable dimensions for a garden.
What should be the first step in this case? Why, to get more of it. A
quarter of an acre can be made equal to half an acre. You can about
double the garden, without adding to it an inch of surface, by
increasing the depth of good soil. For instance, ground has been
cultivated to the depth of six or seven inches. Try the experiment of
stirring the soil and enriching it one foot downward, or eighteen
inches, or even two feet, and see what vast differences will result.
With every inch you go down, making all friable and fertile, you add
just so much more to root pasturage. When you wish to raise a great
deal, increase your leverage. Roots are your levers; and when they rest
against a deep fertile soil they lift into the air and sunshine
products that may well delight the eyes and palate of the most
fastidious. We suggest that this thorough deepening, pulverization, and
enriching of the soil be done at the start, when the plow can be used
without any obstructions. If there are stones, rocks, roots, anything
which prevents the treatment which a garden plot should receive, there
is a decided advantage in clearing them all out at the beginning. Last
fall I saw a half-acre that was swampy, and so encumbered with stones
that one could walk all over it without stepping off the rocks. The
land was sloping, and therefore capable of drainage. The proprietor put
three men to work on the lower side with picks, shovels, and
blasting-tools. They turned the soil over to the depth of eighteen
inches, taking out every stone larger than a walnut. Eight or ten feet
apart deep ditches were cut, and the stones, as far as possible, placed
in these. The rest were carted away for a heavy wall. You may say it
was expensive work. So it was; yet so complete a garden spot was made
that I believe it would yield a fair interest in potatoes alone. I
relate this instance to show what can be done. A more forbidding area
for a garden in its original state could scarcely be found. Enough
vegetables and fruit can be raised from it hereafter, with annual
fertilizing, to supply a large family, and it will improve every year
under the refining effects of frost, sun, and cultivation.

It should be remembered that culture does for soil what it does for men
and women. It mellows, brings it up, and renders it capable of finer
products. Much, indeed, can be done with a crude piece of land in a
single year when treated with the thoroughness that has been suggested,
and some strong-growing vegetables may be seen at their best during the
first season; but the more delicate vegetables thrive better with
successive years of cultivation. No matter how abundantly the ground
may be enriched at first, time and chemical action are required to
transmute the fertilizers into the best forms of plant-food, and make
them a part of the very soil itself. Plowing or spading, especially if
done in late autumn, exposes the mould to the beneficial action of the
air and frost, and the garden gradually takes on the refined, mellow,
fertile character which distinguishes it from the ordinary field.

In dealing with a thin, sandy soil, one has almost to reverse the
principles just given. Yet there is no cause for discouragement. Fine
results, if not the best, can be secured. In this case there is
scarcely any possibility for a thorough preparation of the soil from
the start. It can gradually be improved, however, by making good its
deficiencies, the chief of which is the lack of vegetable mould. If I
had such soil I would rake up all the leaves I could find, employ them
as bedding for my cow and pigs (if I kept any), and spread the
compost-heap resulting on the sandy garden. The soil is already too
light and warm, and it should be our aim to apply fertilizers tending
to counteract this defect. A nervous, excitable person should let
stimulants alone, and take good, solid, blood-making food. This
illustration suggests the proper course to be taken. Many a time I have
seen action the reverse of this resulting disastrously. For instance, a
man carts on his light thin soil hot fermenting manure from the
horse-stable, and plows it under. Seeds are planted. In the moist,
cool, early spring they make a great start, feeling the impulse of the
powerful stimulant. There is a hasty and unhealthful growth; but long
before maturity the days grow long and hot, drought comes, and the
garden dries up. Therefore every effort should be made to supply cool
manures with staying qualities, such as are furnished by decayed
vegetable matter composted with the cleanings of the cow-stable. We
thus learn the value of fallen leaves, muck from the swamp, etc.; and
they also bring with them but few seeds of noxious vegetation.

On the other hand, stolid, phlegmatic clay requires the stimulus of
manure from the horse-stable. It can be plowed under at once, and left
to ferment and decay in the soil. The process of decomposition will
tend to banish its cold, inert qualities, and make the ground loose,
open, and amenable to the influences of frost, sun, and rain.

Does the owner of light, warm soils ask, "What, then, shall I do with
my stable-manure, since you have said that it will be an injury to my
garden?" I have not said this--only that it will do harm if applied in
its raw, hot, fermenting state. Compost it with leaves, sod, earth,
muck, anything that will keep it from burning up with its own heat. If
you can obtain no such ingredients, have it turned over and exposed to
the air so often that it will decay without passing through a process
approaching combustion. When it has become so thoroughly decomposed as
to resemble a fine black powder, you have a fertilizer superior to any
high-priced patent compound that can be bought. Further on I will show
how it can be used both in this state and also in its crude condition
on light soils with the best results.

It is scarcely possible to lay too much stress on this subject of
fertilizers. The soil of the garden-plot looks inert: so does heavy
machinery; but apply to it the proper motive power, and you have
activity at once. Manure is the motive power to soil, and it should be
applied in a way and degree to secure the best results. To produce some
vegetables and fruits much is required; in other growths, very little.

In laying out a garden there are several points to be considered. The
proprietor may be more desirous of securing some degree of beauty in
the arrangement than of obtaining the highest condition of
productiveness. If this be true, he may plan to make down its centre a
wide, gravelled walk, with a grape-arbor here and there, and
fruit-trees and flowers in borders on each side of the path. So far
from having any objection to this arrangement, I should be inclined to
adopt it myself. It would be conducive to frequent visits to the garden
and to lounging in it, especially if there be rustic seats under the
arbors. I am inclined to favor anything which accords with my theory
that the best products of a garden are neither eaten nor sold. From
such a walk down the middle of the garden the proprietor can glance at
the rows of vegetables and small fruits on either side, and daily note
their progress. What he loses in space and crops he gains in pleasure.

Nor does he lose much; for if the borders on each side of the path are
planted with grape-vines, peach and plum trees, flowers and shrubs, the
very ground he walks on becomes part of their root pasturage. At the
same time it must be admitted that the roots will also extend with
depleting appetites into the land devoted to vegetables. The trees and
vines above will, to some extent, cast an unwholesome shade. He who has
set his heart on the biggest cabbages and best potatoes in town must
cultivate them in ground open to the sky, and unpervaded by any roots
except their own. If the general fruitfulness of the garden rather than
perfection in a few vegetables is desired, the borders, with their
trees, vines, and flowers, will prove no objection. Moreover, when it
comes to competing in cabbages, potatoes, etc., the proprietor of the
Home Acre will find that some Irishman, by the aid of his redolent
pig-pen, will surpass him. The roots and shade extending from his
borders will not prevent him from growing good vegetables, if not the
largest.

We will therefore suppose that, as the simplest and most economical
arrangement, he has adopted the plan of a walk six feet wide extending
through the centre of his garden. As was the case with the other paths,
it will be greatly to his advantage to stake it out and remove about
four inches of the surface-soil, piling it near the stable to be used
for composting purposes or in the earth-closet. The excavation thus
made should be filled with small stones or cinders, and then covered
with fine gravel. A walk that shall be dry at all times is thus
secured, and it will be almost wholly free from weeds. In these
advantages alone one is repaid for the extra first cost, and in
addition the rich surface soil obtained will double the bulk and value
of the fertilizers with which it is mixed.

Having made the walk, borders five feet wide can be laid out on each
side of it, and the soil in these should be as rich and deep as any
other parts of the garden. What shall be planted in these borders will
depend largely on the tastes of the gardener; but, as has been
suggested, there will assuredly be one or more shadowy grape-arbors
under which the proprietor can retire to provide horticultural
strategy. This brings us to that chef-d'oeuvre of Nature--

The vine. It climbs by its tendrils, and they appear to have clasped
the heart of humanity. Among the best of Heaven's gifts, it has
sustained the worst perversions. But we will refrain from a temperance
lecture; also from sacred and classical reminiscences. The world is not
composed of monks who thought to escape temptation--and vainly too--in
stony cells. To some the purple cluster suggests Bacchanal revelry; to
others, sitting under one's own vine and fig-tree--in brief, a home.
The vine is like woman, the inspiration of the best and the worst.

It may well become one of the dreams of our life to own land, if for no
other reason than that of obtaining the privilege of planting vines. As
they take root, so will we, and after we have eaten their delicious
fruit, the very thought of leaving our acre will be repugnant. The
literature of the vine would fill a library; the literature of love
would crowd many libraries. It is not essential to read everything
before we start a little vineyard or go a-courting.

It is said that about two thousand known and named varieties of grapes
have been and are being grown in Europe; and all these are supposed to
have been developed from one species (Vitis vinifera), which originally
was the wild product of Nature, like those growing in our thickets and
forests. One can scarcely suppose this possible when contemplating a
cluster of Tokay or some other highly developed variety of the
hot-house. Yet the native vine, which began to "yield fruit after his
kind, the third day" (whatever may have been the length of that day),
may have been, after all, a good starting-point in the process of
development. One can hardly believe that the "one cluster of grapes"
which the burdened spies, returning from Palestine, bore "between two
of them upon a staff," was the result of high scientific culture. In
that clime, and when the world was young, Nature must have been more
beneficent than now. It is certain that no such cluster ever hung from
the native vines of this land; yet it is from our wild species, whose
fruit the Indians shared with the birds and foxes (when not hanging so
high as to be sour), that we have developed the delicious varieties of
our out-door vineyards. For about two centuries our forefathers kept on
planting vines imported from Europe, only to meet with failure. Nature,
that had so abundantly rewarded their efforts abroad, quietly
checkmated them here. At last American fruit-growers took the hint, and
began developing our native species. Then Nature smiled; and as a lure
along this correct path of progress, gave such incentives as the
Isabella, the Catawba, and Concord. We are now bewildered by almost as
great a choice of varieties from native species as they have abroad;
and as an aid to selection I will again give the verdict of some of the
authorities.

The choice of the Hon. Norman J. Colman, Commissioner of Agriculture:
"Early Victor, Worden, Martha, Elvira, Cynthiana." This is for the
region of Missouri. For the latitude of New Jersey, A.S. Fuller's
selection: "Delaware, Concord, Moore's Early, Antoinette (white),
Augusta (white), Goethe (amber)." E.S. Carmen: "Moore's Early [you
cannot praise this too much. The quality is merely that of the Concord;
but the vines are marvels of perfect health, the bunches large, the
berries of the largest size. They ripen all at once, and are fully ripe
when the Concord begins to color], Worden, Brighton, Victoria (white),
Niagara (white), El Dorado. [This does not thrive everywhere, but the
grapes ripen early--September 1, or before--and the quality is
perfection--white.]" Choice of P.J. Berckman, for the latitude of
Georgia: "White grapes--Peter Wylie, Triumph, Maxatawny, Scuppernong.
Bed grapes--Delaware, Berckman's, Brighton. Black--Concord, Ives."

As I have over a hundred varieties in bearing, I may venture to express
an opinion also. I confess that I am very fond of those old favorites
of our fathers, the Isabella and Catawba. They will not ripen
everywhere in our latitude, yet I seldom fail to secure a good crop. In
the fall of 1885 we voted the Isabella almost unsurpassed. If one has
warm, well-drained soil, or can train a vine near the south side of a
building, I should advise the trial of this fine old grape. The Iona,
Brighton, and Agawam also are great favorites with me. We regard the
Diana, Wyoming Red, Perkins, and Rogers' hybrids, Lindley, Wilder, and
Amenia, as among the best. The Rebecca, Duchess, Lady Washington, and
Purity are fine white grapes. I have not yet tested the Niagara. Years
ago I obtained of Mr. James Ricketts, the prize-taker for seedling
grapes, two vines of a small wine grape called the Bacchus. To my taste
it is very pleasant after two or three slight frosts.

Our list of varieties is long enough, and one must be fastidious indeed
who does not find some to suit his taste. In many localities the chief
question is, What kind CAN I grow? In our favored region on the Hudson
almost all the out-door grapes will thrive; but as we go north the
seasons become too cool and short for some kinds, and proceeding south
the summers are too long and hot for others. The salt air of the
sea-coast is not conducive to vine-culture, and only the most vigorous,
like the Concord and Moore's Early, will resist the mildew blight. We
must therefore do the best we can, and that will be very well indeed in
most localities.

Because our list of good grapes is already so long, it does not follow
that we have reached the limit of development by any means. When we
remember that almost within a lifetime our fine varieties have been
developed from the wild northern Fox grape (Vitis labrusca), the Summer
grape (oestivalis), Frost (cordifolia), we are led to think that
perhaps we have scarcely more than crossed the stile which leads into
the path of progress. If I should live to keep up my little specimen
vineyard ten years longer, perhaps the greater part of the varieties
now cultivated will have given place to others. The delicious Brighton
requires no more space than a sour, defective variety; while the
proprietor starts with the best kinds he can obtain, he will find no
restraint beyond his own ignorance or carelessness that will prevent
his replacing the Brighton with a variety twice as good when it is
developed. Thus vine-planting and grape-tasting stretch away into an
alluring and endless vista.

When such exchanges are made, we do not recommend the grafting of a new
favorite on an old vine. This is a pretty operation when one has the
taste and leisure for it, and a new, high-priced variety can sometimes
be obtained speedily and cheaply in this way. Usually, however, new
kinds soon drop down within the means of almost any purchaser, and
there are advantages in having each variety growing upon its own root.
Nature yields to the skill of the careful gardener, and permits the
insertion of one distinct variety of fruit upon another; but with the
vine she does not favor this method of propagation and change, as in
the case of pears and apples, where the graft forms a close, tenacious
union with the stock in which it is placed. Mr. Fuller writes: "On
account of the peculiar structure of the wood of the vine, a lasting
union is seldom obtained when grafted above-ground, and is far from
being certain even when grafted below the surface, by the ordinary
method." The vine is increased so readily by easy and natural methods,
to be explained hereafter, that he who desires nothing more than to
secure a good supply of grapes for the table can dismiss the subject.
On the other hand, those who wish to amuse themselves by experimenting
with Nature can find abundant enjoyment in not only grafting old vines,
but also in raising new seedlings, among which he may obtain a prize
which will "astonish the natives." Those, however, whose tastes carry
them to such lengths in vine-culture will be sure to purchase
exhaustive treatises on the subject, and will therefore give no heed to
these simple practical chapters. It is my aim to enable the business
man returning from his city office, or the farmer engrossed with the
care of many acres, to learn in a few moments, from time to time, just
what he must do to supply his family abundantly with fruits and
vegetables.

If one is about to adopt a grape-culture as a calling, common-sense
requires that he should locate in some region peculiarly adapted to the
vine. If the possessor of a large farm purposes to put several acres in
vineyard, he should also aim to select a soil and exposure best suited
to his purpose. Two thousand years ago Virgil wrote, "Nor let thy
vineyard bend toward the sun when setting." The inference is that the
vines should face the east, if possible; and from that day to this,
eastern and southern exposures have been found the best. Yet climate
modifies even this principle. In the South, I should plant my vineyard
on a north-western slope, or on the north side of a belt of woods, for
the reason that the long, hot days there would cause too rapid an
evaporation from the foliage of the vines, and enfeeble, if not kill
them. In the limited space of the Home Acre one can use only such land
as he has, and plant where he must; but if the favorable exposures
indicated exist, it would be well to make the most of them. I can
mention, however, as encouragement to many, that I saw, last fall,
splendid grapes growing on perfectly level and sandy soil in New Jersey.

A low-lying, heavy, tenacious clay is undoubtedly the worst ground in
which to plant a vine; and yet by thorough drainage, a liberal
admixture of sand, and light fertilizers, it can be made to produce
good grapes of some varieties. A light sandy soil, if enriched
abundantly with well-decayed vegetable and barnyard manures, gives
wider scope in choice of kinds; while on the ideal well-drained sandy
loam that we have described, any outdoor grape can be planted hopefully
if the garden is sufficiently removed from the seaboard.

As a general truth it may be stated that any land in a condition to
produce a fine crop of corn and potatoes is ready for the vine. This
would be true of the entire garden if the suggestions heretofore made
have been carried out. Therefore the borders which have been named are
ready to receive the vines, which may be planted in either spring or
fall. I prefer the fall season for several reasons. The ground is
usually drier then, and crumbles more finely; the young vine becomes
well established and settled in its place by spring, and even forms new
roots before the growing season begins, and in eight cases out of ten
makes a stronger growth than follows spring planting; it is work
accomplished when there is usually the greatest leisure. If the ground
is ready in EARLY spring, I should advise no delay. A year's growth is
gained by setting out the vines at once. As a rule I do not advise late
spring planting--that is, after the buds have started on the young
vines. They may live, but usually they scarcely do more, the first year.

In ordering from a nursery I should ask for vigorous, well-rooted
two-year-old vines, and I should be almost as well contented with
first-class one-year-olds. If any one should advertise "extra large,
strong vines, ready to bear at once," I should have nothing to do with
him. That's a nursery trick to get rid of old stock. The first year
after the shock of removal a vine should not be permitted to bear at
all; and a young vigorous vine is worth a dozen old stunted ones.

Having procured the vines, keep them in a cool, moist place until ready
to plant. Never permit the roots to become dry; and if some of them are
long and naked, shorten them to two feet, so as to cause them to throw
out side fibrous roots, which are the true feeders. Excavate holes of
ample size, so that all the roots may be spread out naturally. If you
have reason to think the ground is not very good, two or three quarts
of fine bone-dust thoroughly mixed with the soil that is placed on and
about the roots will give a fine send-off. Usually a good mulch of any
kind of barnyard manure placed on the SURFACE after planting will
answer all purposes. Before filling in the hole over the roots, place
beside the vine a stout stake six or seven feet high. This will be all
the support required the first year. Cut back the young vine to three
buds, and after they get well started, let but one grow. If the
planting is done in the fall, mound the earth up over the little vine
at the approach of winter, so as to cover it at least six inches below
the surface. In spring uncover again as soon as hard frosts are
over--say early April in our latitude. Slow-growing varieties, like the
Delaware, may be set out six feet apart; strong growers, like the
Concord, eight feet. Vines can not be expected to thrive under the
shade of trees, or to fight an unequal battle in ground filled with the
roots of other plants.

Vines may be set out not only in the garden borders, but also in almost
any place where their roots will not be interfered with, and where
their foliage will receive plenty of light and air. How well I remember
the old Isabella vines that clambered on a trellis over the kitchen
door at my childhood's home! In this sunny exposure, and in the
reflected heat of the building, the clusters were always the sweetest
and earliest ripe. A ton of grapes may be secured annually by erecting
trellises against the sides of buildings, walls, and poultry yard,
while at the same time the screening vines furnish grateful shade and
no small degree of beauty. With a little petting, such scattered vines
are often enormously productive. An occasional pail of soapsuds gives
them a drink which eventually flushes the thickly hanging clusters with
exquisite color. People should dismiss from their minds the usual
method of European cultivation, wherein the vines are tied to short
stakes, and made to produce their fruit near the ground. This method
can be employed if we find pleasure in the experiment. At Mr. Fuller's
place I saw fine examples of it. Stubby vines with stems thick as one's
wrist rose about three feet from the ground, then branched off on every
side, like an umbrella, with loads of fruit. Only one supporting stake
was required. This method evidently is not adapted to our climate and
species of grape, since in that case plenty of keen, practical
fruit-growers would have adopted it. I am glad this is true, for the
vine-clad hills of France do not present half so pleasing a spectacle
as an American cornfield. The vine is beautiful when grown as a vine,
and not as a stub; and well-trained, well-fed vines on the Home Acre
can be developed to almost any length required, shading and hiding with
greenery every unsightly object, and hanging their finest clusters far
beyond the reach of the predatory small boy.

We may now consider the vines planted and growing vigorously, as they
will in most instances if they have been prepared for and planted
according to the suggestions already given. Now begins the process of
guiding and assisting Nature. Left to herself, she will give a
superabundance of vine, with sufficient fruit for purposes of
propagation and feeding the birds. Our object is to obtain the maximum
of fruit from a minimum of vine. The little plant, even though grown
from a single bud, will sprawl all over everything near it in three or
four years, if unchecked. Pruning may begin even before midsummer of
the first year. The single green shoot will by this time begin to
produce what are termed "laterals." The careful cultivator who wishes
to throw all the strength and growth into the main shoot will pinch
these laterals back as soon as they form one leaf. Each lateral will
start again from the axil of the leaf that has been left, and having
formed another leaf, should again be cut off. By repeating this process
during the growing season you have a strong single cane by fall,
reaching probably beyond the top of the supporting stake. In our
latitude I advise that this single cane--that is, the vine--be cut back
to within fifteen inches of the surface when the leaves have fallen and
the wood has well-ripened--say about the middle of November--and that
the part left be bent over and covered with earth. When I say "bent
over," I do not mean at right angles, so as to admit of the possibility
of its being broken, but gently and judiciously. I cover with earth all
my vines, except the Concords and Isabellas, just before hard freezing
weather; and even these two hardy kinds I weight down close to the
ground. I have never failed to secure a crop from vines so treated. Two
men will protect over a hundred vines in a day.

In early April the young vine is uncovered again; and now the two
uppermost buds are allowed to grow and form two strong canes, instead
of one, and on this new growth four or five clusters of grapes may be
permitted to mature if the vine is vigorous. If it is feeble, take off
all the fruit, And stimulate the vine into greater vigor. Our aim is
not to obtain half a dozen inferior clusters as soon as possible, but
to produce a vine that will eventually almost supply a family by
itself. If several varieties have been planted, some will be found
going ahead rampantly; others will exhibit a feebler growth, which can
be hastened and greatly increased by enriching the surface of the soil
around them and by a pail of soap-suds now and then in May or June--but
not later, unless there should be a severe drought. There should be no
effort to produce much growth during the latter part of the summer and
early autumn, for then both the wood and roots will be immature and
unripened when frost begins, and thus the vine receive injury. For this
reason it is usually best to apply fertilizers to vines in the fall;
for if given in the spring, a late, unhealthful growth is often
produced. Throughout all subsequent years manure must be applied
judiciously. You may tell the hired man to top-dress the ground about
the vines, and he will probably treat all alike; a vine that is already
growing so strongly that it can scarcely be kept within bounds will
receive as much as one that is slow and feeble in its development. This
is worse than waste. Each vine should be treated in accordance with its
condition and habit of growth. What would be thought of a physician who
ordered a tonic for an entire family, giving as much to one who might
need depleting, as to another who, as country people say, was "puny and
ailin'?" With even an assortment of half a dozen varieties we shall
find after the first good start that some need a curb, and others a
spur.

Stakes will answer as supports to the vines during the first and second
seasons; but thereafter trellises or arbors are needed. The latter will
probably be employed over the central walk of the garden, and may be
constructed after several simple and pretty designs, which I leave to
the taste of the reader. If vines are planted about buildings, fences,
etc., trellises may be made of anything preferred--of galvanized wire,
slats, or rustic poles fastened to strong, durable supports. If vines
are to be trained scientifically in the open garden, I should recommend
the trellises figured on pages 120 and 142 of Mr. Fuller's work, "The
Grape Culturist." These, beyond anything I have seen, appear the best
adapted for the following out of a careful system of pruning and
training. Such a system Mr. Fuller has thoroughly and lucidly explained
in the above-named book.

Unless the reader has had experience, or is willing to give time for
the mastery of this subject, I should advise that he employ an
experienced gardener to prune his vines after the second year. It is a
brief task, but a great deal depends upon it. In selecting a man for
the work I should require something more than exaggerated and personal
assurances. In every village there are terrible butchers of vines and
fruit-trees, who have some crude system of their own. They are as
ignorant of the true science of the subject as a quack doctor of
medicine, and, like the dispenser of nostrums, they claim to be
infallible. Skilful pruning and training is really a fine art, which
cannot be learned in a day or a year. It is like a surgical operation,
requiring but little time, yet representing much acquired skill and
experience. In almost every locality there are trustworthy, intelligent
gardeners, who will do this work for a small sum until the proprietor
has learned the art himself, if so inclined. I should also employ the
same man in spring to tie up the vines and train them.

If one is not ambitious to secure the best results attainable, he can
soon learn to perform both the tasks well enough to obtain fairly good
fruit in abundance. It should be our constant aim not to permit long,
naked reaches of wood, in one part of the vine, and great smothering
bunches of fruit and foliage in another part. Of course the roots,
stem, and leading arms should be kept free from useless shoots and
sprouts; but having reached the trellis, the vine should be made to
distribute bearing fruit-spurs evenly over it. Much can be learned
about pruning from books and by watching an expert gardener while
giving the annual pruning; but the true science of trimming a vine is
best acquired by watching buds develop, by noting what they will do,
where they go, and how much space they will take up in a single summer.
In this way one will eventually realize how much is wrapped up in the
insignificant little buds, and now great the folly of leaving too many
on the vine.

In my next chapter I shall treat briefly of the propagation of the
grape, its insect enemies, diseases, etc.; and also of some other
fruits.




CHAPTER IV

THE VINEYARD AND ORCHARD


He who proposes to plant grape-vines will scarcely fail to take the
sensible course of inspecting the varieties already producing fruit in
his locality. From causes often too obscure to be learned with
certainty, excellent kinds will prove to be well adapted to one
locality, and fail in others. If, therefore, when calling on a neighbor
during August, September, or October, we are shown a vine producing
fruit abundantly that is suited to our taste, a vine also which
manifests unmistakable vigor, we may be reasonably sure that it belongs
to a variety which we should have, especially if it be growing in a
soil and exposure somewhat similar to our garden plot. A neighbor
worthy of the name will be glad to give us a few cuttings from his vine
at the time of its annual pruning; and with, very little trouble we
also may soon possess the desired variety. When the vine is trimmed,
either make yourself or have your friend make a few cuttings of sound
wood from that season's growth. About eight inches is a good length for
these vine-slips, and they should contain at least two buds. Let each
slip be cut off smoothly just under the lowest bud, and extend an inch
or two above the uppermost bud. If these cuttings are obtained in
November or December, they may be put into a little box with some of
the moist soil of the garden, and buried in the ground below the usual
frost-line--say a foot or eighteen inches in our latitude. The simple
object is to keep them in a cool, even temperature, but not a frosty
one. Early in April dig up the box, open a trench in a moist but not
wet part of the garden, and insert the cuttings perpendicularly in the
soil, so that the upper bud is covered barely one inch. In filling up
the trench, press the soil carefully yet firmly about the cuttings, and
spread over the surface just about them a little fine manure. The
cuttings should be a foot apart from each other in the row. Do not let
the ground become dry about them at any time during the summer. By fall
these cuttings will probably have thrown out an abundance of roots, and
have made from two to three feet of vine. In this case they can be
taken up and set out where they are to fruit. Possibly but one or two
of them have started vigorously. The backward ones had better be left
to grow another year in the cutting bed. Probably we shall not wish to
cultivate more than one or two vines of the variety; but it is just as
easy to start several cuttings as one, and by this course we guard
against failure, and are able to select the most vigorous plant for our
garden. By taking good care of the others we soon derive one of the
best pleasures which our acre can afford--that of giving to a friend
something which will enhance the productiveness of his acre, and add to
his enjoyment for years to come.

Not only on our neighbor's grounds, but also on our own we shall
discover that some varieties are unusually vigorous, productive, and
well-adapted to our locality; and we may very naturally wish to have
more vines of the same sort, especially if the fruit is to our taste.
We can either increase this kind by cuttings, as has been described, or
we can layer part of the vine that has won our approval by well-doing.
I shall take the latter course with several delicious varieties in my
vineyard. Some kinds of grapes do not root readily as cuttings, but
there is little chance of failure in layering. This process is simply
the laying down of a branch of a vine in early spring, and covering it
lightly with soil, so that some buds will be beneath the surface, and
others just at or a little above it. Those beneath will form roots, the
others shoots which by fall should be good vines for planting. Every
bud that can reach the air and light will start upward, and thus there
may be a thick growth of incipient vines that will crowd and enfeeble
each other. The probabilities are that only two or three new vines are
wanted; therefore all the others should be rubbed off at the start, so
that the strength of the parent plant and of the new roots that are
forming may go into those few shoots designed to become eventually a
part of our vineyard. If we wish only one vine, then but one bud should
grow from the layer; if two vines, then two buds. The fewer buds that
are permitted to grow, the stronger vines they make.

It must be remembered that this layer, for the greater part of the
growing season, is drawing its sustenance from the parent plant, to
which it is still attached. Therefore the other branches of this vine
thus called upon for unusual effort should be permitted to fruit but
sparingly. We should not injure and enfeeble the original vine in order
to get others like it. For this reason we advise that no more buds be
permitted to grow from the layer than we actually need ourselves. To
injure a good vine and deprive ourselves of fruit that we may have
plants to give away, is to love one's neighbor better than one's
self--a thing permitted, but not required. When our vines are pruned,
we can make as many cuttings as we choose, either to sell or give away.

The ground in which a layer is placed should be very rich, and its
surface round the young growing vines always kept moist and free from
weeds. In the autumn, after the leaves have fallen and the wood is ripe
and hard, cut off the layered branch close to the vine, and with a
garden-fork gently and carefully lift it, with all its roots and young
vines attached, out of the soil. First cut the young vines back to
three or four buds, then separate them from the branch from which they
grew, being sure to give each plant plenty of roots, and the roots BACK
of the point from which it grew; that is, those roots nearest the
parent plant from which the branch was layered. All the old wood of the
branch that is naked, free of roots, should be cut off. The young
shoots thus separated are now independent vines, and may be set out at
once where they are to fruit. If you have a variety that does not do
well, or that you do not like, dig it out, enrich the soil, and put one
of your favorites in its place.

We will now consider briefly the diseases and insect enemies of the
grape. A vine way be doomed to ill-health from its very situation. Mr.
Hussman, a grape-culturist of great experience and wide observation,
writes: "Those localities may generally be considered safe for the
grape in which there are no miasmatic influences. Where malaria and
fevers prevail, there is no safety for the crop, as the vine seems to
be as susceptible to such influences as human beings."

Taking this statement literally, we may well ask, Where, then, can
grapes be grown? According to physicians, malaria has become one of the
most generally diffused products of the country. When a man asserts
that it is not in his locality, we feel sure that if pressed he will
admit that it is "round the corner." Country populations still survive,
however, and so does grape-culture. Yet there are low-lying regions
which from defective drainage are distinctively and, it would almost
seem, hopelessly malarial. In such localities but few varieties of the
vine will thrive, The people who are compelled to live there, or who
choose to do so, should experiment until they obtain varieties so hardy
and vigorous that they will triumph over everything. The best course
with grape-diseases is not to have them; in other words, to recognize
the fact at once that certain varieties of the grape will not thrive
and be productive of good fruit unless the soil and climate suit them.
The proprietor of the Home Acre can usually learn by a little inquiry
or observation whether grapes thrive in his locality. If there is much
complaint of mildew, grape-rot, and general feebleness of growth, he
should seek to plant only the most hardy and vigorous kinds.

As I have said before, our cultivated grapes are derived from several
native species found growing wild, and some now valued highly for
wine-making are nothing but wild grapes domesticated; as, for instance,
Norton's Virginia, belonging to the oestivalis class. The original
plant of this variety was found growing upon an island in the Potomac
by Dr. Norton, of Virginia.

The species from which the greatest number of well-known grapes is
obtained is the Vitis labrusca, the common wild or fox grape, found
growing in woods and thickets, usually where the ground is moist, from
Canada to the Gulf. The dark purple berries, averaging about
three-quarters of an inch in diameter, ripen in September, and they
contain a tough, musky pulp. Yet this "slip of wilderness" is the
parent of the refined Catawba, the delicious Brighton, and the
magnificent white grape Lady Washington--indeed, of all the black, red,
and white grapes with which most people are familiar. Our earliest
grapes, which ripen in August, as well as some of the latest, like the
Isabella, come from the labrusca species. It is said that the labrusca
class will not thrive in the extreme South; and with the exception of
the high mountain slopes, this appears reasonable to the student of the
vine. It is said that but few of this class will endure the long hot
summers of France. But there are great differences among the varieties
derived from this native species. For example, the Concord thrives
almost anywhere, while even here upon the Hudson we can scarcely grow
the Catawba with certainty. It is so good a grape, however, that I
persist in making the effort, with varying success; but I should not
recommend it, or many of its class, for those localities not specially
suited to the grape.

I will now name a few varieties which have proved to be, or promise to
be, the most thrifty and productive whereever grapes can be grown at
all the labrusca class: Black--Concord, Wilder, Worden, Amenia, Early
Canada, Telegraph or Christine, Moore's Early. Red-Wyoming, Goethe,
Lindley, Beauty, Brighton, Perkins (pale red), and Agawam.
White--Rebecca, Martha, Alien's Hybrid, Lady Pocklington, Prentiss,
Lady Washington. These are all fine grapes, and they have succeeded
throughout wide areas of country. Any and all are well worth a trial;
but if the grower finds that some of them are weak and diseased in his
grounds, I should advise that he root them out and replace them with
those which thrive. The Niagara is highly praised, and may make good
all that is claimed for it.

Of the aestivalis class I can recommend the Cynthiana and the
Herbemont, or Warren, for the extreme South. Both of them are black.
There are new varieties of this vigorous species which promise well.

The cordifolia species promises to furnish some fine, hardy, and
productive grapes, of which the Amber is an example. The Elvira, a pale
yellow grape, is highly praised by Mr. Hussman. Although the Bacchus is
distinctively a wine grape, I have already said that its flavor, when
fully ripe, was agreeable to me. The only difficulty in growing it is
to keep the ground poor, and use the pruning-knife freely.

I have enlarged on this point, for I wish to direct the mind of the
reader to the fact that there are many very hardy grapes. I
congratulate those who, with the taste of a connoisseur, have merely to
sample until they find just the varieties that suit them, and then to
plant these kinds in their genial soil and favored locality.

At the same time I should like to prevent others from worrying along
with unsatisfactory varieties, or from reaching the conclusion that
they can not grow grapes in their region or garden. Let them rather
admit that they can not raise some kinds, but may others. If a variety
were persistently diseased, feeble, and unproductive under good
treatment, I should root it out rather than continue to nurse and
coddle it.

When mildew and grape-rot first appear, the evil can often be remedied
in part by dusting the vines with sulphur, and continuing the process
until the disease is cured, if it ever is. I have never had occasion to
do this, and will not do it. A variety that often requires such nursing
in this favored locality should be discarded.

There is one kind of disease, or feebleness rather, to which we are
subject everywhere, and from which few varieties are exempt. It is the
same kind of weakness which would be developed in a fine sound horse if
we drove him until he dropped down every time we took him out.
Cultivated vines are so far removed from their natural conditions that
they will often bear themselves to death, like a peach-tree. To permit
this is a true instance of avarice overreaching itself; or the evil may
result from ignorance or neglect. Close pruning in autumn and thinning
out the crowding clusters soon after they have formed is the remedy. If
a vine had been so enfeebled, I should cut it back rigorously, feed it
well, and permit it to bear very little fruit, if any, for a year.

Of insect enemies we have the phylloxera of bad eminence, which has so
dismayed Europe. The man who could discover and patent an adequate
remedy in France might soon rival a Rothschild in his wealth. The
remedy abroad is also ours--to plant varieties which are
phylloxera-proof, or nearly so. Fortunately we have many which defy
this pestiferous little root-louse, and European vine-growers have been
importing them by the million. They are still used chiefly as stocks on
which to graft varieties of the vinifera species. In California, grapes
of the vinifera or European species are generally cultivated; but the
phylloxera is at its destructive work among them. The wine-grapes of
the future throughout the world may be developed from the hardy
cestivalis and cordifolia classes. In many localities, even in this new
land, varieties like the Delaware succumb to this scourge of foreign
vineyards.

The aphis, or plant-louse, sometimes attacks the young, tender shoots
of the vine. The moment they appear, take off the shoot, and crush it
on a board with the foot. Leaf-rollers, the grape-vine sphinx, and
caterpillars in general must be caught by hand and killed. Usually they
are not very numerous. The horrid little rose-chafers or rose-bugs are
sometimes very destructive. Our best course is to take a basin of water
and jar them off into it--they fall readily--and then scald them to
death. We may discover lady-bugs--small red or yellow and black
beetles--among our vines, and many persons, I fear, will destroy them
with the rest. We should take off our hats to them and wish them
godspeed. In their destruction of aphides and thrips they are among our
best friends. The camel-cricket is another active destroyer of
injurious insects. Why do not our schools teach a little practical
natural history? Once, when walking in the Catskills, I saw the burly
driver of a stage-load of ladies bound out of his vehicle to kill a
garter-snake, the pallid women looking on, meanwhile, as if the earth
were being rid of some terrible and venomous thing. They ought to have
known that the poor little reptile was as harmless as one of their own
garters, and quite as useful in its way. Every country boy and girl
should be taught to recognize all our helpers in our incessant fight
with insect enemies--a fight which must be maintained with more
organized vigor and intelligence than at present, if horticulture is
ever to reach its best development.

Wasps and hornets often swarm about the sweet and early ripe varieties.
A wide-mouthed bottle partially filled with molasses and water will
entrap and drown great numbers of these ugly customers. Some of our
favorite birds try our patience not a little. During the early summer I
never wearied of watching the musical orioles flashing with their
bright hues in and out of the foliage about the house; but when the
early grapes were ripe, they took pay for their music with the
sang-froid of a favorite prima donna. On one occasion I saw three or
four alight on a Diana vine, and in five minutes they had spoiled a
dozen clusters. If they would only take a bunch and eat it up clean,
one would readily share with them, for there would be enough for all;
but the dainty little epicures puncture an indefinite number of
berries, merely taking a sip from each. Then the wasps and bees come
along and finish the clusters. The cardinal, cat-bird, and our
unrivalled songster the wood-thrush, all help themselves in the same
wasteful fashion. One can't shoot wood-thrushes. We should almost as
soon think of killing off our Nilssons, Nevadas, and Carys. The only
thing to do is to protect the clusters; and this can be accomplished in
several ways. The most expeditious and satisfactory method is to cover
the vines of early grapes with cheap mosquito netting. Another method
is to make little bags of this netting and inclose each cluster. Last
fall, two of my children tied up many hundreds of clusters in little
paper bags, which can be procured at wholesale for a trifling sum. The
two lower corners of the paper bags should be clipped off to permit the
rain to pass freely through them. Clusters ripen better, last longer on
the vine, and acquire a more exquisite bloom and flavor in this
retirement than if exposed to light as well as to birds and wasps. Not
the fruit but the foliage of the grape-vine needs the sun.

Few of the early grapes will keep long after being taken from the vine;
but some of the later ones can be preserved well into the winter by
putting them in small boxes and storing them where the temperature is
cool, even, and dry. Some of the wine-grapes, like Norton's Virginia,
will keep under these conditions almost like winter apples. One October
day I took a stone pot of the largest size and put in first a layer of
Isabella grapes, then a double thickness of straw paper, then alternate
layers of grapes and paper, until the pot was full. A cloth was next
pasted over the stone cover, so as to make the pot water-tight. The pot
was then buried on a dry knoll below the reach of frost, and dug up
again on New Year's Day. The grapes looked and tasted as if they had
just been picked from the vine.

For the mysteries of hybridizing and raising new seedlings, grafting,
hot-house and cold grapery culture, the reader must look in more
extended works than this, and to writers who have had experience in
these matters.

We shall next consider three fruits which upon the Home Acre may be
regarded as forming a natural group-peaches, plums, and raspberries, if
any one expresses surprise that the last-named fruit should be given
this relationship, I have merely to reply that the raspberry thrives in
the partial shade produced by such small trees as the peach and plum.
Where there is need of economy of space it is well to take advantage of
this fact, for but few products of the garden give any satisfaction
when contending with roots below and shade above.

We have taken it for granted that some grape-vines would be planted in
the two borders extending through the centre of the garden, also that
there would be spaces left which might be filled with peach and plum
trees and small flowering shrubs. If there is to be a good-sized
poultry-yard upon the acre, we should advise that plums be planted in
that; but we will speak of this fruit later, and now give our attention
to that fruit which to the taste of many is unrivalled--the peach.

With the exception of the strawberry, it is perhaps the only fruit for
which I prefer spring planting. At the same time, I should not hesitate
to set out the trees in autumn. The ground should be good, but not too
highly fertilized. I prefer young trees but one year old from the bud.
If set out in the fall, I should mound up the earth eighteen inches
about them, to protect the roots and stem, and to keep the tree firmly
in the soil. With this precaution, I am not sure but that fall planting
has the greater advantage, except when the climate is very severe and
subject to great alternations. Plant with the same care and on the same
principles which have been already described. If a careful system of
pruning is to be adopted, the trees may be set out twelve feet apart;
but if they are to be left to grow at will, which I regret to say is
the usual practice, they should be planted fifteen feet from each other.

There are many good reasons why the common orchard culture of the peach
should not be adopted in the garden. There is no fruit more neglected
and ill-treated than the beautiful and delicious peach. The trees are
very cheap, usually costing but a few cents each; they are bought by
the thousand from careless dealers, planted with scarcely the attention
given to a cabbage-plant, and too often allowed to bear themselves to
death. The land, trees, and cultivation cost so little that one good
crop is expected to remunerate for all outlay. If more crops are
obtained, there is so much clear gain. Under this slovenly treatment
there is, of course, rapid deterioration in the stamina of the peach.
Pits and buds are taken from enfeebled trees for the purpose of
propagation, and so tendencies to disease are perpetuated and enhanced.
Little wonder that, the fatal malady, the "yellows," has blighted so
many hopes! I honestly believe that millions of trees have been sold in
which this disease existed from the bud. If fine peaches were bred and
propagated with something of the same care that is bestowed on blooded
stock, the results would soon be proportionate. Gardeners abroad often
give more care to one tree than hundreds receive here. Because the
peach has grown so easily in our climate, we have imposed on its
good-nature beyond the limits of endurance, and consequently it is not
easy to get sound, healthful trees that will bear year after year under
the best of treatment, as they did with our fathers with no care at
all. I should look to men who had made a reputation for sending out
sound, healthful stock grown under their own eyes from pits and wood
which they know to be free from disease. Do not try to save a few
pennies on the first cost of trees, for the probabilities are that such
economy will result in little more than the "yellows."

In large orchards, cultivated by horse-power, the stems of the trees
are usually from four to six feet high; but in the garden this length
of stem is not necessary, and the trees can be grown as dwarf
standards, with stems beginning to branch two feet from the ground. A
little study of the habit of growth in the peach will show that, to
obtain the best results, the pruning-shears are almost as essential as
in the case of the grape-vine. More than in any other fruit-tree, the
sap tends strongly toward the ends of the shoots. Left to Nature, only
the terminal buds of these will grow from year to year; the other buds
lower down on the shoots fail and drop off. Thus we soon have long
naked reaches of unproductive wood, or sucker-like sprouts starting
from the bark, which are worse than useless. Our first aim should be to
form a round, open, symmetrical head, shortening in the shoots at least
one-half each year, and cutting out crossing and interlacing branches.
For instance, if we decide to grow our trees as dwarf standards, we
shall cut back the stems at a point two feet from the ground the first
spring after planting, and let but three buds grow, to make the first
three or leading branches. The following spring we shall cut back the
shoots that have formed, so as to make six leading branches. Thereafter
we shall continue to cut out and back so as to maintain an open head
for the free circulation of air and light.

To learn the importance of rigorous and careful pruning, observe the
shoots of a vigorous peach-tree, say three or four years old. These
shoots or sprays are long and slender, lined with fruit-buds. You will
often find two fruit-buds together, with a leaf-bud between them. If
the fruit-buds have been uninjured by the winter, they will nearly all
form peaches, far more than the slender spray can support or mature.
The sap will tend to give the most support to all growth at the end of
the spray or branch. The probable result will be that you will have a
score, more or less, of peaches that are little beyond skin and stones.
By midsummer the brittle sprays will break, or the limbs split down at
the crotches. You may have myriads of peaches, but none fit for market
or table. Thousands of baskets are sent to New York annually that do
not pay the expenses of freight, commission, etc.; while the orchards
from which they come are practically ruined. I had two small trees from
which, one autumn, I sold ten dollars' worth of fruit. They yielded
more profit than is often obtained from a hundred trees.

Now, in the light of these facts, realize the advantages secured by
cutting back the shoots or sprays so as to leave but three or four
fruit-buds on each. The tree can probably mature these buds into large,
beautiful peaches, and still maintain its vigor. By this shortening-in
process you have less tree, but more fruit. The growth is directed and
kept within proper limits, and the tree preserved for future
usefulness. Thus the peach-trees of the garden will not only furnish
some of the most delicious morsels of the year, but also a very
agreeable and light phase of labor. They can be made pets which will
amply repay all kindness; and the attentions they most appreciate,
strange to say, are cutting and pinching. The pruning-shears in March
and early April can cut away forming burdens which could not be borne,
and pinching back during the summer can maintain beauty and symmetry in
growth. When the proprietor of the Home Acre has learned from
experience to do this work judiciously, his trees, like the
grape-vines, will afford many hours of agreeable and healthful
recreation. If he regards it as labor, one great, melting, luscious
peach will repay him. A small apple, pear, or strawberry usually has
the flavor of a large one; but a peach to be had in perfection must be
fully matured to its limit of growth on a healthful tree.

Let no one imagine that the shortening in of shoots recommended
consists of cutting the young sprays evenly all round the trees as one
would shear a hedge. It more nearly resembles the pruning of the vine;
for the peach, like the vine, bears its fruit only on the young wood of
the previous summer's growth. The aim should be to have this young
bearing wood distributed evenly over the tree, as should be true of a
grape-vine. When the trees are kept low, as dwarf standards, the fruit
is more within reach, and less liable to be blown off by high winds.
Gradually, however, if the trees prove healthful, they will get high
enough up in the world.

Notwithstanding the rigorous pruning recommended, the trees will often
overload themselves; and thinning out the young peaches when as large
as hickory nuts is almost imperative if we would secure good fruit. Men
of experience say that when a tree has set too much fruit, if
two-thirds of it are taken off while little, the remaining third will
measure and weigh more than would the entire crop, and bring three
times as much money. In flavor and beauty the gain will certainly be
more than double.

Throughout its entire growth and fruiting life the peach-tree needs
good cultivation, and also a good but not overstimulated soil.
Well-decayed compost from the cow-stable is probably the best barnyard
fertilizer. Wood-ashes are peculiarly agreeable to the constitution of
this tree, and tend to maintain it in health and bearing long after
others not so treated are dead. I should advise that half a peck be
worked in lightly every spring around each tree as far as the branches
extend. When enriching the ground about a tree, never heap the
fertilizer round the trunk, but spread it evenly from the stem outward
as far as the branches reach, remembering that the head above is the
measure of the root extension below. Air-slacked lime is also useful to
the peach in small quantities; and so, no doubt, would be a little salt
from time to time. Bone-meal is highly recommended.

Like other fruit-trees, the peach does not thrive on low, wet ground,
and the fruit-buds are much more apt to be winter-killed in such
localities. A light, warm soil is regarded as the most favorable.

Of course we can grow this fruit on espaliers, as they do abroad; but
there are few localities where any advantage is to be derived from this
course. In our latitude I much prefer cool northern exposures, for the
reason that the fruitbuds are kept dormant during warm spells in
winter, and so late in spring that they escape injury from frost.
Alternate freezing and thawing is more harmful than steady cold. The
buds are seldom safe, however, at any time when the mercury sinks ten
or fifteen degrees below zero.

As we have intimated, abuse of the peach-tree has developed a fatal
disease, known as the "yellows." It manifests itself in yellow, sickly
foliage, numerous and feeble sprouts along the larger limbs and trunk,
and small miserable fruit, ripening prematurely. I can almost taste the
yellows in much of the fruit bought in market. Some regard the disease
as very contagious; others do not. It is best to be on the safe side.
If a tree is affected generally, dig it out by the roots and burn it at
once; if only a branch shows evidence of the malady, cut it off well
back, and commit it to the flames. The only remedy is to propagate from
trees in sound health and vigor.

Like the apple, the peach-tree is everywhere subject to injury from a
borer, named "exitiosa, or the destructive." The eggs from which these
little pests are hatched are laid by the moth during the summer upon
the stem of the tree very near the root; the grubs bore through the
outer bark, and devour the inner bark and sap-wood. Fortunately they
soon reveal their evil work by the castings, and by the gum which
exudes from the hole by which they entered. They can not do much harm,
unless a tree is neglected; in this case, however, they will soon
enfeeble, and probably destroy it. When once within a tree, borers must
be cut out with a sharp-pointed knife, carefully yet thoroughly. The
wounds from the knife may be severe, but the ceaseless gnawing of the
grub is fatal. If the tree has been lacerated to some extent, a plaster
of moistened clay or cow-manure makes a good salve. Keeping the borers
out of the tree is far better than taking them out; and this can be
effected by wrapping the stem at the ground--two inches below the
surface, and five above--with strong hardware or sheathing paper. If
this is tied tightly about the tree, the moth cannot lay its eggs upon
the stem. A neighbor of mine has used this protection not only on the
peach, but also on the apple, with almost complete success. Of course
the pests will try to find their way under it, and it would be well to
take off the wrapper occasionally and examine the trees. The paper must
also be renewed before it is so far decayed as to be valueless. It
should be remembered also that the borer will attack the trees from the
first year of life to the end.

In order to insure an unfailing supply of this delicious fruit, I
should advise that a few trees be set out every spring. The labor and
expense are scarcely greater than that bestowed upon a cabbage patch,
and the reward is more satisfactory.

For this latitude the following choice of varieties will prove, I
think, a good one: Early Alexander, Early Elvers, Princess of Wales,
Brandywine, Old Mixon Free, Stump the World, Picquet's Late, Crawford's
Late, Mary's Choice, White Free Heath, Salway, and Lord Palmerston.

If the soil of one's garden is stiff, cold, adhesive clay, the peach
would succeed much better budded or grafted on plum-stocks. Some of the
finest fruit I have ever seen was from seedlings, the trees having been
grown from pits of unusually good peaches. While the autumn planting of
pits lightly in the soil and permitting them to develop into bearing
trees is a pleasing and often profitable amusement, there is no great
probability that the result will be desirable. We hear of the
occasional prizes won in this way, but not of the many failures.

By easy transition we pass to the kindred fruit the plum, which does
not generally receive the attention it deserves. If one has a soil
suited to it--a heavy clay or loam--it can usually be grown very
easily. The fruit is so grateful to the taste and useful to the
housekeeper that it should be given a fair trial, either in the garden
borders or wherever a tree can be planted so as to secure plenty of
light and air. The young trees may be one or two years old from the
bud; I should prefer the former, if vigorous. Never be induced to
purchase old trees by promises of speedy fruit. It is quite possible
you may never get any fruit at all from them worth mentioning. I should
allow a space of from ten to fifteen feet between the trees when they
are planted together, and I should cut them back so that they would
begin to branch at two feet from the ground. Long, naked stems are
subject to the gum-disease.

In the place of general advice in regard to this fruit I shall give the
experience of Mr. T. S. Force, of Newburgh, who exhibited seventy
varieties at the last annual Orange County fair.

His plum-orchard is a large poultry-yard, containing half an acre, of
which the ground is a good loam, resting on a heavy clay subsoil. He
bought trees but one year from the bud, set them out in autumn, and cut
them back so that they began to form their heads at two feet from the
ground. He prefers starting with strong young plants of this age, and
he did not permit them to bear for the first three years, his primal
aim being to develop a healthy, vigorous tree with a round, symmetrical
head. During this period the ground about them was kept mellow by good
cultivation, and, being rich enough to start with, received no
fertilizers. It is his belief that over-fertilization tends to cause
the disease so well known as the "black knot," which has destroyed many
orchards in this vicinity. If the garden has been enriched as I have
directed, the soil will probably need little, if anything, from the
stables, and certainly will not if the trees are grown in a
poultry-yard. During this growing and forming period Mr. Force gave
careful attention to pruning. Budded trees are not even symmetrical
growers, but tend to send up a few very strong shoots that rob the rest
of the tree of sustenance. Of course these must be cut well back in
early spring, or we have long, naked reaches of wood and a deformed
tree. It is far better, however, not to let these rampant shoots grow
to maturity, but to pinch them back in early summer, thus causing them
to throw out side-branches. By summer pinching and rubbing off of
tender shoots a tree can be made to grow in any shape we desire. When
the trees receive no summer pruning, Mr. Force advises that the
branches be shortened in at least one half in the spring, while some
shoots are cut back even more rigorously. At the age of four or five
years, according to the vigor of the trees, he permits them to bear.
Now cultivation ceases, and the ground is left to grow hard, but not
weedy or grassy, beneath the boughs. Every spring, just as the blossoms
are falling, he spreads evenly under the branches four quarts of salt.
While the trees thrive and grow fruitful with this fertilizer, the
curculio, or plum-weevil, does not appear to find it at all to its
taste. As a result of his methods, Mr. Force has grown large and
profitable crops, and his trees in the main are kept healthy and
vigorous. His remedy for the black knot is to cut off and burn the
small boughs and twigs affected. If the disease appears in the side of
a limb or in the stem, he cuts out all trace of it, and paints the
wound with a wash of gum shellac and alcohol.

Trees load so heavily that the plums rest against one another. You will
often find in moist warm weather decaying specimens. These should be
removed at once, that the infection may not spread.

In cutting out the interfering boughs, do not take off the
sharp-pointed spurs which are forming along the branches, for on these
are slowly maturing the fruit-buds. In this case, as in others, the
careful observer, after he has acquired a few sound principles of
action to start with, is taught more by the tree itself than from any
other source.

Mr. Force recommends the following ten varieties, named in the order of
ripening: Canada; Orleans, a red-cheeked plum; McLaughlin, greenish,
with pink cheek; Bradshaw, large red, with lilac bloom; Smith's
Orleans, purple; Green Gage; Bleeker's Gage, golden yellow; Prune
d'Agen, purple; Coe's Golden Drop; and Shropshire Damson for preserves.

If we are restricted to very light soils, we shall probably have to
grow some of the native varieties, of the Canada and Wild-Goose type.
In regard to both this fruit and peaches we should be guided in our
selection by information respecting varieties peculiarly suited to the
region.

The next chapter will treat of small fruits, beginning with the
raspberry.




CHAPTER V

THE RASPBERRY


The wide and favorable consideration given to small fruits clearly
marks one of the changes in the world's history. This change may seem
trifling indeed to the dignified chroniclers of kings and queens and
others of high descent--great descent, it may be added, remembering the
moral depths attained; but to those who care for the welfare of the
people, it is a mutation of no slight interest. I am glad to think, as
has been shown in a recent novel, that Lucrezia Borgia was not so black
as she has been painted; yet in the early days of June and July, when
strawberries and raspberries are ripening, I fancy that most of us can
dismiss her and her kin from mind as we observe Nature's alchemy in our
gardens. When we think of the luscious, health-imparting fruits which
will grace millions of tables, and remember that until recent years
they were conspicuous only by their absence, we may not slightingly
estimate a great change for the better. Once these fruits were wildings
which the vast majority of our forefathers shared sparingly with the
birds. Often still, unless we are careful, our share will be small
indeed; for the unperverted taste of the birds discovered from the
first what men have been so slow to learn--that the ruby-like berries
are the gems best worth seeking. The world is certainly progressing
toward physical redemption when even the Irish laborer abridges his
cabbage-patch for the sake of small fruits--food which a dainty Ariel
could not despise.

We have said that raspberries thrive in partial shade; and therefore
some advice in regard to them naturally follows our consideration of
trees. Because the raspberry is not so exacting as are many other
products of the garden, it does not follow that it should be marked out
for neglect. As it is treated on many places, the only wonder is that
even the bushes survive. Like many who try to do their best in
adversity, it makes the most of what people term "a chance to get
ahead."

Moreover, the raspberry is perhaps as often injured by mistaken
kindness as by neglect. If we can imagine it speaking for itself, it
would say: "It is not much that I want, but in the name of common-sense
and nature give me just what I do want; then you may pick at me to your
heart's content."

The first need of the raspberry is a well-drained but not a very dry,
light soil. Yet such is its adaptability that certain varieties can be
grown on any land which will produce a burdock or a mullien-stalk. In
fact, this question of variety chiefly determines our chances of
success and the nature of our treatment of the fruit. The reader, at
the start, should be enabled to distinguish the three classes of
raspberries grown in this country.

As was true of grapes, our fathers first endeavored to supply their
gardens from foreign nurseries, neglecting the wild species with which
our woods and roadsides abounded. The raspberry of Europe (Rubus
idaeus) has been developed, and in many instances enfeebled, by ages of
cultivation. Nevertheless, few other fruits have shown equal power to
adapt themselves to our soil and climate, and we have obtained from
foreign sources many valuable kinds--as, for instance, the Antwerp,
which for weeks together annually taxed the carrying power of Hudson
River steamers. In quality these foreign kinds have never been
surpassed; but almost invariably they have proved tender and
fastidious, thriving well in some localities, and failing utterly
(except under the most skilful care) in others. The frosts of the North
killed them in winter, and Southern suns shrivelled their foliage in
summer. Therefore they were not raspberries for the million, but for
those who resided in favored regions, and were willing to bestow upon
them much care and high culture.

Eventually another process began, taking place either by chance or
under the skilful manipulation of the gardener--that of hybridizing, or
crossing these foreign varieties with our hardier native species. The
best results have been attained more frequently, I think, by chance;
that is, the bees, which get more honey from the raspberry than from
most other plants, carried the pollen from a native flower to the
blossom of the garden exotic. The seeds of the fruit eventually
produced were endowed with characteristics of both the foreign and
native strains. Occasionally these seeds fell where they had a chance
to grow, and so produced a fortuitous seedling plant which soon matured
into a bearing bush, differing from, both of its parents, and not
infrequently surpassing both in good qualities. Some one
horticulturally inclined having observed the unusually fine fruit on
the chance plant, and believing that it is a good plan to help the
fittest to survive, marked the bush, and in the autumn transferred it
to his garden. It speedily propagated itself by suckers, or young
sprouts from the roots, and he had plants to sell or give away. Such, I
believe, was the history of the Cuthbert--named after the gentleman who
found it, and now probably the favorite raspberry of America.

Thus fortuitously, or by the skill of the gardener, the foreign and our
native species were crossed, and a new and hardier class of varieties
obtained. The large size and richness in flavor of the European berry
has been bred into and combined with our smaller and more insipid
indigenous fruit. By this process the area of successful raspberry
culture has been extended almost indefinitely.

Within recent years a third step forward has been taken. Some
localities and soils were so unsuited to the raspberry that no variety
containing even a small percentage of the foreign element could thrive.
This fact led fruit-growers to give still closer attention to our
native species. Wild bushes were found here and there which gave fruit
of such good quality and in such large quantities that they were deemed
well worthy of cultivation. Many of these wild specimens accepted
cultivation gratefully, and showed such marked improvement that they
were heralded over the land as of wonderful and surpassing value. Some
of these pure, unmixed varieties of our native species (Rubus
strigosus) have obtained a wide celebrity; as, for instance, the
Brandywine, Highland Hardy, and, best of all, the Turner. It should be
distinctly understood, however, that, with the exception of the
last-named kind, these native varieties are decidedly inferior to most
of the foreign berries and their hybrids or crosses, like the Cuthbert
and Marlboro. Thousands have been misled by their praise, and have
planted them when they might just as easily have grown far better
kinds. I suppose that many wealthy persons in the latitudes of New York
and Boston have told their gardeners (or more probably were told by
them): "We do not wish any of those wild kinds. Brinckle's Orange,
Franconia, and the Antwerp are good enough for us." So they should be,
for they are the best; but they are all foreign varieties, and scarcely
will live at all, much less be productive, in wide areas of the country.

I trust that this preliminary discussion in regard to red raspberries
will prepare the way for the advice to follow, and enable the
proprietor of the Home Acre to act intelligently. Sensible men do not
like to be told, "You cannot do this, and must not do that"--in other
words, to be met the moment they step into their gardens by the
arbitrary dictum of A, B, or C. They wish to unite with Nature in
producing certain results. Understanding her simple laws, they work
hopefully, confidently; and they cannot be imposed upon by those who
either wittingly or unwittingly give bad advice. Having explained the
natural principles on which I base my directions, I can expect the
reader to follow each step with the prospect of success and enjoyment
much enhanced.

The question first arising is, What shall we plant? As before, I shall
give the selection of eminent authorities, then suggest to the reader
the restrictions under which he should make a choice for his own
peculiar soil and climate.

Dr. F. M. Hexamer, the well-known editor of a leading horticultural
journal, is recognized throughout the land as having few, if any,
superiors in recent and practical acquaintance with small fruits. The
following is his selection: "Cuthbert, Turner, and Marlboro." The Hon.
Marshall P. Wilder's choice: "Brinckle's Orange, Franconia, Cuthbert,
Herstine, Shaffer." The Hon. Norman J. Colman, Commissioner of
Agriculture: "Turner, Marlboro, Cuthbert." P. J. Berckmans, of Georgia:
"Cuthbert, Hansel, Lost Rubies, Imperial Red." A. S. Fuller: "Turner,
Cuthbert, Hansel."

In analyzing this list we find three distinctly foreign kinds named:
the Orange, Franconia, and Herstine. If the last is not wholly of
foreign origin, the element of our native species enters into it so
slightly that it will not endure winters in our latitude, or the summer
sun of the South. For excellence, however, it is unsurpassed.

In the Cuthbert, Marlboro, and Lost Rubies we have hybrids of the
foreign and our native species, forming the second class referred to;
in the Turner and Hansel, examples of our native species unmixed. To
each of these classes might be added a score of other varieties which
have been more or less popular, but they would serve only to distract
the reader's attention. I have tested forty or fifty kinds side by side
at one time, only to be shown that four or five varieties would answer
all practical purposes. I can assure the reader, however, that it will
be scarcely possible to find a soil or climate where some of these
approved sorts will not thrive abundantly and at slight outlay.

Throughout southern New England, along the bank of the Hudson, and
westward, almost any raspberry can be grown with proper treatment.
There are exceptions, which are somewhat curious. For instance, the
famous Hudson River Antwerp, which until within a very few years has
been one of the great crops of the State, has never been grown
successfully to any extent except on the west bank of the river, and
within the limited area of Kingston on the north and Cornwall on the
south. The Franconia, another foreign sort, has proved itself adapted
to more extended conditions of soil and climate.

I have grown successfully nearly every well-known raspberry, and
perhaps I can best give the instruction I desire to convey by
describing the methods finally adopted after many years of observation,
reading, and experience. I will speak of the class first named,
belonging to the foreign species, of which I have tested many
varieties. I expect to set out this year rows of Brinckle's Orange,
Franconia, Hudson River Antwerp, and others. For this class I should
make the ground very rich, deep, and mellow. I should prefer to set out
the plants in the autumn--from the middle of October to the tenth of
November; if not then, in early spring--the earlier the better--while
the buds are dormant. I should have the rows four feet apart; and if
the plants were to be grown among the smaller fruit-trees, I should
maintain a distance from them of at least seven feet. I should use only
young plants, those of the previous summer's growth, and set them in
the ground about as deeply as they stood when taken up--say three or
four inches of earth above the point from which the roots branched. I
should put two well-rooted plants in each hill, and this would make the
hills four feet apart each way. By "hills" I do not mean elevations of
ground. This should be kept level throughout all future cultivation. I
should cut back the canes or stems of the plants to six inches.
Thousands of plants are lost or put back in their growth by leaving two
or three feet of the canes to grow the first year. Never do this. The
little fruit gained thus prematurely always entails a hundred-fold of
loss. Having set out the plants, I should next scatter over and about
them one or two shovelfuls of old compost or decayed manure of some
kind. If the plants had been set out in the fall, I should mound the
earth over them before freezing weather, so that there should be at
least four inches of soil over the tops of the stems. This little mound
of earth over the plants or hill would protect against all injury from
frost. In the spring I should remove these mounds of earth so as to
leave the ground perfectly level on all sides, and the shortened canes
projecting, as at first, six inches above the surface. During the
remainder of the spring and summer the soil between the plants chiefly
requires to be kept open, mellow, and free from weeds. In using the
hoe, be careful not to cut off the young raspberry sprouts, on which
the future crop depends. Do not be disappointed if the growth seems
feeble the first year, for these foreign kinds are often slow in
starting. In November, before there is any danger of the ground
freezing, I should cut back the young canes at least one-third of their
length, bend them gently down, and cover them with earth to the depth
of four or five inches. It must be distinctly remembered that very few
of the foreign kinds would endure our winter unprotected. Every autumn
they must be covered as I have directed. Is any one aghast at this
labor? Nonsense! Antwerps are covered by the acre along the Hudson. A
man and a boy would cover in an hour all that are needed for a garden.

After the first year the foreign varieties, like all others, will send
up too many sprouts, or suckers. Unless new plants are wanted, these
should be treated as weeds, and only from three to five young canes be
left to grow in each hill. This is a very important point, for too
often the raspberry-patch is neglected until it is a mass of tangled
bushes. Keep this simple principle in mind: there is a given amount of
root-power; if this cannot be expended in making young sprouts all over
the ground, it goes to produce a few strong fruit-bearing canes in the
hill. In other words, you restrict the whole force of the plant to the
precise work required--the giving of berries. As the original plants
grow older, they will show a constantly decreasing tendency to throw up
new shoots, but as long as they continue to grow, let only those
survive which are designed to bear the following season.

The canes of cultivated raspberries are biennial. A young and in most
varieties a fruitless cane is produced in one season; it bears in July
the second year, and then its usefulness is over. It will continue to
live in a half-dying way until fall, but it is a useless and unsightly
life. I know that it is contended by some that the foliage on the old
canes aids in nourishing the plants; but I think that, under all
ordinary circumstances, the leaves on the young growth are abundantly
sufficient. By removing the old canes after they have borne their
fruit, an aspect of neatness is imparted, which would be conspicuously
absent were they left. Every autumn, before laying the canes down, I
should shorten them in one-third. The remaining two-thirds will give
more fruit by actual measurement, and the berries will be finer and
larger, than if the canes were left intact. From first to last the soil
about the foreign varieties should be maintained in a high degree of
fertility and mellowness. Of manures from the barnyard, that from the
cow-stable is the best; wood-ashes, bone-dust, and decayed leaves also
are excellent fertilizers. During all this period the partial shade of
small trees will be beneficial rather than otherwise, for it should be
remembered that sheltered localities are the natural habitat of the
raspberry.

By a little inquiry the reader can learn whether varieties of the
foreign class are grown successfully in his vicinity. If they are, he
can raise them also by following the directions which have been given.
Brinckle's Orange--a buff-colored berry--is certainly one of the most
beautiful, delicate, and delicious fruits in existence, and is well
worth all the care it requires in the regions where it will grow; while
the Franconia and others should never be permitted to die out by fruit
connoisseurs. If the soil of your garden is light and sandy, or if you
live much south of New York, I should not advise their trial. They may
be grown far to the north, however. I am told that tender varieties of
fruits that can be covered thrive even better in Canada than with us.
There deep snow protects the land, and in spring and autumn they do not
have long periods when the bare earth is alternately freezing and
thawing.

In the second class of raspberries, the crosses between the foreign and
native species, we now have such fine varieties that no one has much
cause for regret if he can raise them; and I scarcely see how he can
help raising them if he has sufficient energy to set out a few plants
and keep them free from weeds and superabundant suckers. Take the
Cuthbert, for instance; you may set it out almost anywhere, and in
almost any latitude except that of the extreme Southern States. But you
must reverse the conditions required for the foreign kinds. If the
ground is very rich, the canes will threaten to grow out of sight. I
advise that this strong-growing sort be planted in rows five feet
apart. Any ordinary soil is good enough for the Cuthbert to start in,
and the plants will need only a moderate degree of fertilizing as they
begin to lose a little of their first vigor. Of course, if the ground
is unusually light and poor, it should be enriched and maintained in a
fair degree of fertility. The point I wish to make is that this variety
will thrive where most others would starve; but there is plenty of land
on which anything will starve. The Cuthbert is a large, late berry,
which continues long in bearing, and is deserving of a place in every
garden. I have grown it for many years, and have never given it any
protection whatever. Occasionally there comes a winter which kills the
canes to the ground. I should perhaps explain to the reader here that
even in the case of the tender foreign kinds it is only the canes that
are killed by the frost; the roots below the surface are uninjured, and
throw up vigorous sprouts the following spring. The Cuthbert is so
nearly hardy that we let it take its chances, and probably in eight
winters out of ten it would stand unharmed. Its hardiness is greatly
enhanced when grown on well-drained soils.

It now has a companion berry in the Marlboro--a variety but recently
introduced, and therefore not thoroughly tested as yet. Its promise,
however, is very fine, and it has secured the strong yet qualified
approval of the best fruit critics. It requires richer soil and better
treatment than the Cuthbert, and it remains to be seen whether it is
equally hardy. It is well worth winter protection if it is not. It is
not a suitable berry for the home garden if no other is grown, for the
reason that it matures its entire crop within a brief time, and thus
would give a family but a short season of raspberries. Cultivated in
connection with the Cuthbert, it would be admirable, for it is very
early, and would produce its fruit before the Cuthberts were ripe.
Unitedly the two varieties would give a family six weeks of
raspberries. There are scores of other kinds in this class, and some
are very good indeed, well worth a place in an amateur's collection;
but the two already named are sufficient to supply a family with
excellent fruit.

Of the third class of red raspberries, representing our pure native
species, I should recommend only one variety--the Turner; and that is
so good that it deserves a place in every collection. It certainly is a
remarkable raspberry, and has an unusual history, which I have given in
my work "Success with Small Fruits." I doubt whether there is a hardier
raspberry in America--one that can be grown so far to the north, and,
what is still more in its favor, so far to the south. In the latter
region it is known as the Southern Thornless. The fact that it is
almost wholly without spines is a good quality; but it is only one
among many others. The Turner requires no winter protection whatever,
will grow on almost any soil in existence, and in almost any climate.
It yields abundantly medium-sized berries of good flavor. The fruit
begins to ripen early, and lasts throughout a somewhat extended season.
It will probably give more berries, with more certainty and less
trouble, than any other variety. Even its fault leans to virtue's side.
Set out a single plant, leave it to Nature, and in time it will cover
the place with Turner raspberries; and yet it will do this in a quiet,
unobtrusive way, for it is not a rampant, ugly grower. While it will
persist in living under almost any circumstances, I have found no
variety that responded more gratefully to good treatment. This consists
simply in three things: (1) rigorous restriction of the suckers to four
or five canes in the hill; (2) keeping the soil clean and mellow about
the bearing plants; (3) making this soil rich. Its dwarf habit of
growth, unlike that of the Cuthbert, enables one to stimulate it with
any kind of manure. By this course the size of the bushes is greatly
increased, and enormous crops can be obtained.

I prefer to set out all raspberries in the fall, although as a matter
of convenience I often perform the task in the early spring. I do not
believe in late spring planting, except as one takes up a young sprout,
two or three inches high, and sets it out as one would a tomato-plant.
By this course time is often saved. When it is our wish to increase the
quality and quantity of the fruit, I should advise that the canes of
all varieties be cut back one-third of their length. A little
observation will teach us the reason for this. Permit a long cane to
bear throughout its natural length, and you will note that many buds
near the ground remain dormant or make a feeble growth. The sap,
following a general law of nature, pushes to the extremities, and is,
moreover, too much diffused. Cut away one-third, and all the buds start
with redoubled vigor, while more and larger fruit is the result. If,
however, earliness in ripening is the chief consideration, as it often
is, especially with the market-gardener, leave the canes unpruned, and
the fruit ripens a few days sooner.

In purveying for the home table, white raspberries offer the
attractions of variety and beauty. In the case of Brinckle's Orange,
its exquisite flavor is the chief consideration; but this fastidious
foreign berry is practically beyond the reach, of the majority. There
is, however, an excellent variety, the Caroline, which is almost as
hardy as the Turner, and more easily grown. It would seem that Nature
designed every one to have it (if we may say IT of Caroline), for not
only does it sucker freely like the red raspberries, but the tips of
the canes also bend over, take root, and form new plants. The one thing
that Caroline needs is repression, the curb; she is too intense.

I am inclined to think, however, that she has had her day, even as an
attendant on royalty, for a new variety, claiming the high-sounding
title of Golden Queen, has mysteriously appeared. I say mysteriously,
for it is difficult to account for her origin. Mr. Ezra Stokes, a
fruit-grower of New Jersey, had a field of twelve acres planted with
Cuthbert raspberries. In this field he found a bush producing white
berries. In brief, he found an Albino of the Cuthbert. Of the causes of
her existence he knows nothing. All we can say, I suppose, is that the
variation was produced by some unknown impulse of Nature. Deriving her
claims from such a source, she certainly has a better title to royalty
than most of her sister queens, who, according to history, have been
commonplace women, suggesting anything but nature. With the exception
of the Philadelphians, perhaps, we as a people will not stand on the
question of ancestry, and shall be more inclined to see how she "queens
it."

Of course the enthusiastic discoverer and disseminators of this variety
claim that it is not only like the Cuthbert, but far better. Let us try
it and see; if it is as good, we may well be content, and can grace our
tables with beautiful fruit.

There is another American species of raspberry (Rubus occidentalis)
that is almost as dear to memory as the wild strawberry--the
thimble-berry, or black-cap. I confess that the wild flavor of this
fruit is more to my taste than that of any other raspberry. Apparently
its seeds have been sown broadcast over the continent, for it is found
almost everywhere, and there have been few children in America whose
lips have not been stained by the dark purple juice of its fruit. Seeds
dropped in neglected pastures, by fence and roadsides, and along the
edges of the forest, produce new varieties which do not propagate
themselves by suckers like red raspberries, but in a manner quite
distinct. The young purple canes bend over and take root in the soil
during August, September, and October. At the extreme end of the tip
from which the roots descend a bud is formed, which remains dormant
until the following spring. Therefore the young plant we set out is a
more or less thick mass of roots, a green bud, and usually a bit of the
old parent cane, which is of no further service except as a handle and
a mark indicating the location of the plant. After the ground has been
prepared as one would for corn or potatoes, it should be levelled, a
line stretched for the row, and the plants set four feet apart in the
row. Sink the roots as straight down as possible, and let the bud point
upward, covering it lightly with merely one or two inches of soil.
Press the ground firmly against the roots, but not on the bud. The soil
just over this should be fine and mellow, so that the young shoot can
push through easily, which it will soon do if the plants are in good
condition. Except in the extreme South, spring is by far the best time
for planting, and it should be done early, while the buds are dormant.
After these begin to grow, keep the ground mellow and free from weeds.
The first effort of the young plant will be to propagate itself. It
will sprawl over the ground if left to its wild impulses, and will not
make an upright bearing bush. On this account put a stake down by the
young sprout, and as it grows keep it tied up and away from the ground.
When the side-branches are eight or ten inches long, pinch them back,
thus throwing the chief strength into the central cane. By keeping all
the branches pinched back you form the plant into an erect, sturdy bush
that will load itself with berries the following year. No fruit will be
borne the first season. The young canes of the second year will incline
to be more sturdy and erect in their growth; but this tendency can be
greatly enhanced by clipping the long slender branches which are thrown
out on every side. As soon as the old canes are through bearing, they
should be cut out and burned or composted with other refuse from the
garden. Black-caps may be planted on any soil that is not too dry. When
the plant suffers from drought, the fruit consists of little else than
seeds. To escape this defect I prefer to put the black-caps in a moist
location; and it is one of the few fruits that will thrive in a cold,
wet soil. One can set out plants here and there in out-of-the-way
corners, and they often do better than those in the garden. Indeed,
unless a place is kept up very neatly, many such bushes will be found
growing wild, and producing excellent fruit.

The question may arise in some minds, Why buy plants? Why not get them
from the woods and fields, or let Nature provide bushes for us where
she will? When Nature produces a bush on my place where it is not in
the way, I let it grow, and pick the fruit in my rambles; but the
supply would be precarious indeed for a family. By all means get plants
from the woods if you have marked a bush that produces unusually fine
fruit. It is by just this course that the finest varieties have been
obtained. If you go a-berrying, you may light on something finer than
has yet been discovered; but it is not very probable. Meanwhile, for a
dollar you can get all the plants you want of the two or three best
varieties that have yet been discovered, from Maine to California.
After testing a great many kinds, I should recommend the Souhegan for
early, and the Mammoth Cluster and Gregg for late. A clean, mellow soil
in good condition, frequent pinchings back of the canes in summer, or a
rigorous use of the pruning-shears in spring, are all that is required
to secure an abundant crop from year to year. This species may also be
grown among trees. I advise that every kind and description of
raspberries be kept tied to stakes or a wire trellis. The wood ripens
better, the fruit is cleaner and richer from exposure to air and
sunshine, and the garden is far neater than if the canes are sprawling
at will. I know that all horticulturists advise that the plants be
pinched back so thoroughly as to form self-supporting bushes; but I
have yet to see the careful fruit-grower who did this, or the bushes
that some thunder-gusts would not prostrate into the mud with all their
precious burden, were they not well supported. Why take the risk to
save a two-penny stake?

If, just before the fruit begins to ripen, a mulch of leaves, cut
grass, or any litter that will cover the ground slightly, is placed
under and around the bushes, it may save a great deal of fruit from
being spoiled. The raspberry season is also the hour and opportunity
for thunder-showers, whose great slanting drops often splash the soil
to surprising distances. Sugar-and-cream-coated, not mud-coated,
berries, if you please.

In my remarks on raspberries I have not named many varieties, and have
rather laid stress on the principles which may guide the reader in his
present and future selections of kinds. Sufficient in number and
variety to meet the NEEDS of every family have been mentioned. The
amateur may gratify his taste by testing other sorts described in
nurserymen's catalogues. Moreover, every year or two some new variety
will be heralded throughout the land. The reader has merely to keep in
mind the three classes of raspberries described and their
characteristics, in order to make an intelligent choice from old and
new candidates for favor.

It should also be remembered that the raspberry is a Northern fruit. I
am often asked in effect, What raspberries do you recommend for the
Gulf States? I suppose my best reply would be, What oranges do you
think best adapted to New York? Most of the foreign kinds falter and
fail in New Jersey and Southern Pennsylvania; the Cuthbert and its
class can be grown much further south, while the Turner and the
black-caps thrive almost to Florida.

Raspberries, especially those of our native species, are comparatively
free from disease. Foreign varieties and their hybrids are sometimes
afflicted with the curl-leaf. The foliage crimps up, the canes are
dwarfed, and the whole plant has a sickly and often yellow appearance.
The only remedy is to dig up the plant, root and branch, and burn it.

A disease termed the "rust" not infrequently attacks old and poorly
nourished black-cap bushes. The leaves take on an ochreous color, and
the plant is seen to be failing. Extirpate it as directed above. If
many bushes are affected, I advise that the whole patch be rooted up,
and healthy plants set out elsewhere.

It is a well-known law of Nature that plants of nearly all kinds appear
to exhaust from the soil in time the ingredients peculiarly acceptable
to them. Skill can do much toward maintaining the needful supply; but
the best and easiest plan is not to grow any of the small fruits too
long in any one locality. By setting out new plants on different
ground, far better results are attained with much less trouble.




CHAPTER VI

THE CURRANT


Who that has ever lived in the country does not remember the old
straggling currant-bushes that disputed their existence with grass,
docks, and other coarse-growing weeds along some ancient fence? Many
also can recall the weary task of gathering a quart or two of the
diminutive fruit for pies, and the endless picking required to obtain
enough for the annual jelly-making. Nor is this condition of affairs a
thing of the past. Drive through the land where you will in early July,
and you will see farmers mowing round the venerable Red Dutch currants
"to give the women-folks a chance at 'em." The average farmer still
bestows upon this fruit about as much attention as the aborigines gave
to their patches of maize. This seems very absurd when we remember the
important place held in the domestic economy by the currant, and how
greatly it improves under decent treatment. If it demanded the
attention which a cabbage-plant requires, it would be given; but the
currant belongs to that small class of creatures which permit
themselves to be used when wanted, and snubbed, neglected, and imposed
upon at other times. It is known that the bushes will manage to exist,
and do the Very best they can, no matter how badly treated; and average
human nature has ever taken advantage of such traits, to its continuous
loss.

The patience of the currant is due perhaps to its origin, for it grows
wild round the northern hemisphere, its chief haunts being the dim,
cold, damp woods of the high latitudes. You may tame, modify, and
vastly change anything possessing life; but original traits are
scarcely ever wholly eradicated. Therefore the natural habitat and
primal qualities of the currant indicate the true lines of development,
its capabilities and limitations. It is essentially a northern fruit,
requiring coolness, moisture, and alluvial soils. It begins to falter
and look homesick even in New Jersey; and one has not to go far down
the Atlantic coast to pass beyond the range of its successful culture.
I do not see why it should not thrive much further south on the
northern slopes of the mountains. From Philadelphia northward, however,
except on light dry soils and in sunny exposures, there is no reason
why it should not give ample returns for the attention it requires.

I shall not lay stress on the old, well-known uses to which this fruit
is put, but I do think its value is but half appreciated. People rush
round in July in search of health: let me recommend the currant cure.
If any one is languid, depressed in spirits, inclined to headaches, and
generally "out of sorts," let him finish his breakfast daily for a
month with a dish of freshly picked currants. He will soon, almost
doubt his own identity, and may even begin to think that he is becoming
a good man. He will be more gallant to his wife, kinder to his
children, friendlier to his neighbors, and more open-handed to every
good cause. Work will soon seem play, and play fun. In brief, the truth
of the ancient pun will be verified, that "the power to live a good
life depends largely upon the LIVER." Out upon the nonsense of taking
medicine and nostrums during the currant-season! Let it be taught at
theological seminaries that the currant is a "means of grace." It is a
corrective; and that is what average humanity most needs.

The currant, like the raspberry, is willing to keep shady; but only
because it is modest. It is one of the fruits that thrive better among
trees than in too dry and sunny exposures. Therefore, in economizing
space on the Home Acre it may be grown among smaller trees, or, better
still, on the northern or eastern side of a wall or hedge. But shade is
not essential, except as we go south; then the requisites of moisture
and shelter from the burning rays of the sun should be complied with as
far as possible. In giving this and kindred fruits partial shade, they
should not be compelled to contend to any extent with the roots of
trees. This will ever prove an unequal contest. No fruit can thrive in
dense shade, or find sustenance among the voracious roots of a tree.

Select, therefore, if possible, heavy, deep, moist, yet well-drained
soil, and do not fear to make and keep it very rich. If you are
restricted to sandy or gravelly soils, correct their defects with
compost, decayed leaves and sods, muck, manure from the cow-stable, and
other fertilizers with staying rather than stimulating qualities.
Either by plowing or forking, deepen as well as enrich the soil. It is
then ready for the plants, which may be set out either in the fall or
in early spring. I prefer the autumn--any time after the leaves have
fallen; but spring answers almost as well, while buds are dormant, or
partially so. It should be remembered that the currant starts very
early, and is in full foliage before some persons are fairly wakened to
garden interests. It would, in this case, be better to wait until
October, unless the plants can be obtained from a neighbor on a cloudy
day; then they should be cut back two-thirds of their length before
being removed, and the transfer made as quickly as possible. Under any
circumstances, take off half of the wood from the plants bought. This
need not be thrown away. Every cutting of young wood six inches long
will make a new plant in a single season. All that is needful is to
keep the wood moist until ready to put it in the ground, or, better
still, a cool, damp place in the garden can be selected at once, and
the cuttings sunk two-thirds of their length into the ground, and the
soil pressed firm around them. By fall they will have a good supply of
roots, and by the following autumn be ready to be set out wherever you
wish them to fruit.

Currant-bushes may be planted five feet apart each way, and at the same
distance, if they are to line a fence. They should be sunk a few inches
deeper in the soil than they stood before, and the locality be such as
to admit of good culture. The soil should never be permitted to become
hard, weedy, or grass-grown. As a rule, I prefer two-year-old plants,
while those of one year's growth answer nearly as well, if vigorous. If
in haste for fruit, it may be well to get three-year-old plants, unless
they have been dwarfed and enfeebled by neglect. Subsequent culture
consists chiefly in keeping the soil clean, mellow, rich, and therefore
moist. I have named the best fertilizers for the currant; but if the
product of the horse-stable is employed, use it first as a mulch. It
will thus gradually reach the roots. Otherwise it is too stimulating,
and produces a rampant growth of wood rather than fruit.

Under any circumstances this tendency to produce an undue amount of
wood must be repressed almost as rigorously as in the grape-vine. The
secret of successful currant-culture is richness beneath, and
restriction above. English gardeners are said to have as complete and
minute systems of pruning and training currants as the grape; but we do
not seem to have patience for such detail. Nor do I regard it as
necessary. Our object is an abundant supply of excellent fruit; and
this result can be obtained at a surprisingly small outlay of time and
money, if they are expended judiciously.

The art of trimming a currant-bush, like that of pruning a grape-vine,
is best learned by observation and experience. One can give principles
rather than lay down rules. Like the vine, the currant tends to choke
itself with a superabundance of wood, which soon becomes more or less
barren. This is truer of some varieties than of others; but in all
instances the judicious use of the pruning-knife doubles the yield. In
view of the supposition that the leading shoot and all the branches
were shortened in one-half when the plant was set out, I will suggest
that early in June it will be observed that much more wood is forming
than can be permitted to remain. There are weak, crowding shoots which
never can be of any use. If these are cut out at this time, the sap
which would go to mature them will be directed into the valuable parts
of the forming bush. Summer pruning prevents misspent force, and it may
be kept up with great advantage from year to year. This is rarely done,
however; therefore early in spring the bushes must receive a good
annual pruning, and the long shoots and branches be cut well back, so
as to prevent naked reaches of wood. Observe a very productive bush,
and you will see that there are many points abounding in little
side-branches. It is upon these that the fruit is chiefly borne. A bush
left to itself is soon a mass of long, slender, almost naked stalks,
with a little fruit at the ends. The ideal bush is stocky, open, well
branched, admitting light, air, and sun in every part. There is no
crowding and smothering of the fruit by the foliage. But few clusters
are borne on very young wood, and when this grows old and black, the
clusters are small. Therefore new wood should always be coming on and
kept well cut back, so as to form joints and side-branches; and as
other parts grow old and feeble they should be cut out. Observation and
experience will teach the gardener more than all the rules that could
be written, for he will perceive that he must prune each bush according
to its own individuality.

For practical purposes the bush form is the best in which to grow
currants; but they can easily be made to form pretty little trees with
tops shaped like an umbrella, or any other form we desire. For
instance, I found, one autumn, a shoot about three feet long. I rubbed
off all the buds except the terminal one and three or four just beneath
it, then sunk the lower end of the shoot six inches into the soil, and
tied the part above the ground to a short stake. The following spring
the lower end took root, and the few buds at the top developed into a
small bushy head. Clumps of miniature currant-trees would make as
pretty an ornament for the garden border as one would wish to see. It
should be remembered that there is a currant as well as an apple borer;
but the pests are not very numerous or destructive, and such little
trees may easily be grown by the hundred.

Clean culture has one disadvantage which must be guarded against. If
the ground under bushes is loose, heavy rains will sometimes so splash
up the soil as to muddy the greater part of the fruit. I once suffered
serious loss in this way, and deserved it; for a little grass mown from
the lawn, or any other litter spread under and around the bushes just
before the fruit ripened, would have prevented it. It will require but
a very few minutes to insure a clean crop.

I imagine that if these pages are ever read, and such advice as I can
give is followed, it will be more often by the mistress than the master
of the Home Acre. I address him, but quite as often I mean her; and
just at this point I am able to give "the power behind the throne" a
useful hint. Miss Alcott, in her immortal "Little Women," has given an
instance of what dire results may follow if the "jelly won't jell." Let
me hasten to insure domestic peace by telling my fair reader (who will
also be, if the jelly turns out of the tumblers tremulous yet firm, a
gentle reader) that if she will have the currants picked just as soon
as they are fully ripe, and before they have been drenched by a heavy
rain, she will find that the jelly will "jell." It is overripe,
water-soaked currants that break up families and demolish household
gods. Let me also add another fact, as true as it is strange, that
white currants make red jelly; therefore give the pearly fruit ample
space in the garden.

In passing to the consideration of varieties, it is quite natural in
this connection to mention the white sorts first. I know that people
are not yet sufficiently educated to demand white currants of their
grocers; but the home garden is as much beyond the grocer's stall as
the home is better than a boarding-house. There is no reason why free
people in the country should be slaves to conventionalities,
prejudices, and traditions. If white currants ARE sweeter, more
delicious and beautiful than the red, why, so they are. Therefore let
us plant them abundantly.

If there is to be a queen among the currants, the White Grape is
entitled to the crown. When placed upon the table, the dish appears
heaped with translucent pearls. The sharp acid of the red varieties is
absent, and you feel that if you could live upon them for a time, your
blood would grow pure, if not "blue."

The bush producing this exquisite fruit is like an uncouth-looking poet
who gives beauty from an inner life, but disappoints in externals. It
is low-branching and unshapely, and must be forced into good form--the
bush, not the poet--by the pruning-knife. If this is done judiciously,
no other variety will bear more profusely or present a fairer object on
a July day.

The White Dutch has the well-known characteristics in growth of the
common Red Dutch currant, and is inferior only to the White Grape in
size. The fruit is equally transparent, beautiful, mild, and agreeable
in flavor, while the bush is enormously productive, and shapely in
form, if properly trained and fertilized.

While the white currants are such favorites, I do not undervalue the
red. Indeed, were I restricted to one variety, it should be the old
Dutch Red of our fathers, or, more properly, of our grandmothers. For
general house uses I do not think it has yet been surpassed. It is not
so mild in flavor as the white varieties, but there is a richness and
sprightliness in its acid that are grateful indeed on a sultry day.
Mingled with the white berries, it makes a beautiful dish, while it has
all the culinary qualities which the housekeeper can desire. If the
bush is rigorously pruned and generously enriched, it is unsurpassed in
productiveness, and the fruit approaches very nearly to the Cherry
currant in size.

I do not recommend the last-named kind for the home garden, unless
large, showy fruit counts for more than flavor. The acid of the Cherry
currant, unless very ripe, is harsh and watery. At best it never
acquires an agreeable mildness, to my taste. The bushes also are not so
certainly productive, and usually require skilful pruning and constant
fertilizing to be profitable. For the market, which demands size above
all things, the Cherry is the kind to grow; but in the home garden
flavor and productiveness are the more important qualities. Fay's
Prolific is a new sort that has been very highly praised.

The Victoria is an excellent late variety, which, if planted in a
sheltered place, prolongs the currant-season well into the autumn.
Spurious kinds are sold under this name. The true Victoria produces a
pale-red fruit with tapering clusters or racemes of berries. This
variety, with the three others recommended, gives the family two red
and two white kinds--all that are needed. Those who are fond of black
currants can, at almost any nursery, procure the Black Naples and Lee's
Prolific. Either variety will answer all practical purposes. I confess
they are not at all to my taste.

From the currant we pass on naturally to the gooseberry, for in origin
and requirements it is very similar. Both belong to the Ribes family of
plants, and they are to be cultivated on the same general principles.
What I have written in regard to partial shade, cool, sheltered
localities, rich, heavy soils, good culture, and especially rigorous
pruning, applies with even greater force to this fruit, especially if
we endeavor to raise the foreign varieties, in cultivating this fruit
it is even more important than was true of raspberries that the reader
should distinguish between the native and foreign species. The latter
are so inclined to mildew in almost every locality that there is rarely
any certainty of satisfactory fruit. The same evil pursues the seedling
children of the foreign sorts, and I have never seen a hybrid or cross
between the English and native species that was with any certainty free
from a brown disfiguring rust wholly or partially enveloping the
berries. Here and there the fruit in some gardens will escape year
after year; again, on places not far away, the blighting mildew is sure
to appear before the berries are fully grown. Nevertheless, the foreign
varieties are so fine that it is well to give them a fair trial. The
three kinds which appear best adapted to our climate are Crown Bob,
Roaring Lion, and Whitesmith. A new large variety, named Industry, is
now being introduced, and if half of what is claimed for it is true, it
is worth a place in all gardens.

In order to be certain of clean, fair gooseberries every year, we must
turn to our native species, which has already given us several good
varieties. The Downing is the largest and best, and the Houghton the
hardiest, most productive and easily raised. When we remember the
superb fruit which English gardeners have developed from wild kinds
inferior to ours, we can well understand that the true American
gooseberries are yet to be developed. In my work "Success with Small
Fruits" those who are interested in this fruit will find much fuller
treatment than is warranted in the present essay.

Not only do currants and gooseberries require similar treatment and
cultivation, but they also have a common enemy that must be vigilantly
guarded against, or the bushes will be defoliated in many localities
almost before its existence is known. After an absence of a few days I
have found some of my bushes stripped of every leaf. When this happens,
the fruit is comparatively worthless. Foliage is as necessary to a
plant as are lungs to a man. It is not essential that I should go into
the natural history of the currant worm and moth. Having once seen the
yellowish-green caterpillars at their destructive work, the reader's
thoughts will not revert to the science of entomology, but will at once
become bloody and implacable. I hasten to suggest the means of rescue
and vengeance. The moment these worms appear, be on your guard, for
they usually spread like fire in stubble. Procure of your druggist
white hellebore, scald and mix a tablespoonful in a bowl of hot water,
and then pour it in a full watering-can. This gives you an infusion of
about a tablespoonful to an ordinary pail of water at its ordinary
summer temperature. Sprinkle the infected bushes with this as often as
there is a worm to be seen. I have never failed in destroying the pests
by this course. It should be remembered, however, that new eggs are
often hatched out daily. You may kill every worm to-day, yet find
plenty on the morrow. Vigilance, however, will soon so check the evil
that your currants are safe; and if every one would fight the pests,
they would eventually be almost exterminated. The trouble is that,
while you do your duty, your next-door neighbor may grow nothing on his
bushes but currant-worms. Thus the evil is continued, and even
increased, in spite of all that you can do; but by a little vigilance
and the use of hellebore you can always save YOUR currants. I have kept
my bushes green, luxuriant, and loaded with fruit when, at a short
distance, the patches of careless neighbors were rendered utterly
worthless. Our laws but half protect the birds, the best insecticides,
and there is no law to prevent a man from allowing his acres to be the
breeding-place of every pest prevailing.

There are three species of the currant-borer, and their presence is
indicated by yellow foliage and shrivelling fruit. The only remedy is
to cut out and burn the affected stems. These pests are not often
sufficiently numerous to do much harm.

I earnestly urge that virulent poisons like Paris green, London purple,
etc., never be used on fruit or edible vegetables. There cannot be
safety in this course. I never heard of any one that was injured by
white hellebore, used as I have directed; and I have found that if the
worms were kept off until the fruit began to ripen, the danger was
practically over. If I had to use hellebore after the fruit was fit to
use, I should first kill the worms, and then cleanse the bushes
thoroughly by spraying them with clean water.

In treating the two remaining small fruits, blackberries and
strawberries, we pass wholly out of the shade and away from trees.
Sunshine and open ground are now required. Another important difference
can also be mentioned, reversing former experience. America is the home
of these fruits. The wild species of the blackberry abroad has never,
as far as I can learn, been developed into varieties worthy of
cultivation; and before importations from North and South America
began, the only strawberry of Europe was the Alpine, with its slight
variations, and the musky Hautbois.

I do not know whether any of our fine varieties of blackberries are
cultivated abroad, but I am perfectly certain that they are worthy of
the slight attention required to raise them in perfection here.

Like the blackcaps, all our best varieties are the spontaneous products
of Nature, first discovered growing wild, and transferred to the
garden. The blackberry is a fruit that takes kindly to cultivation, and
improves under it.

The proper treatment is management rather than cultivation and
stimulation. It requires a sunny exposure and a light, warm soil, yet
not so dry as to prevent the fruit from maturing into juicy berries. If
possible, set the blackberries off by themselves, for it is hard to
prevent the strong roots from travelling all over the garden. The
blackberry likes a rich, moist, mellow soil, and, finding it, some
varieties will give you canes sixteen feet high. You do not want rank,
thorny brambles, however, but berries. Therefore the blackberry should
be put where it can do no harm, and, by a little judicious repression,
a great deal of good. A gravelly or sandy knoll, with a chance to mow
all round the patch, is the best place. The blackberry needs a deep,
loose soil rather than a rich one. Then the roots will luxuriate to
unknown depths, the wood ripen thoroughly, and the fruit be
correspondingly abundant.

Let the rows be six feet apart; set out the plants in the fall, if
possible, or EARLY spring; put two plants in the hills, which may be
four feet apart. If the ground is very poor, give the young plants a
shovelful of old compost, decayed leaves, etc. Any fertilizer will
answer, so that it is spread just over the roots to give the plants a
good send-off.

As a rule, complete success in blackberry culture consists in a little
judicious work performed in May, June, and July. The plants, having
been set out as I have advised in the case of raspberries, throw up the
first season strong green shoots. When these shoots are three feet
high, pinch off the top, so as to stop upward growth. The result of
this is that branches start on every side, and the plant forms a low,
stocky, self-supporting bush, which will be loaded with fruit the
following season.

The second year the plants in the hill will send up stronger canes, and
there will be plenty of sprouts or suckers in the intervening spaces.
When very young, these useless sprouts can be pulled out with the least
possible trouble. Left to mature, they make a thorny wilderness which
will cause bleeding hands and faces when attacked, and add largely to
the family mending. That which a child could do as play when the
suckers were just coming through the ground, is now a formidable task
for any man. In early summer you can with the utmost ease keep every
useless blackberry sprout from growing. More canes, also, will usually
start from the hill than are needed. Leave but three strong shoots, and
this year pinch them back as soon as they are four feet high, thus
producing three stocky, well-branched bushes, which in sheltered places
will be self-supporting. Should there be the slightest danger of their
breaking down with their load of fruit, tie them to stakes by all
means. I do not believe in that kind of economy which tries to save a
penny at the risk of a dollar.

I believe that better and larger fruit is always secured by shortening
in the side branches one-third of their length in spring. Fine
varieties like the Kittatinny are not entirely hardy in all localities.
The snow will protect the lower branches, and the upper ones can
usually be kept uninjured by throwing over them some very light litter,
like old pea or bean vines, etc.--nothing heavy enough to break them
down. As soon as the old canes are through bearing, they should be cut
out. If the blackberry patch has been left to its own wild will, there
is nothing left for us but to attack it, well-gloved, in April, with
the pruning-shears, and cut out everything except three or four young
canes in the hill. These will probably be tall, slender, and
branchless, therefore comparatively unproductive. In order to have any
fruit at all, we must shorten them one-third, and tie them to stakes.
It thus may be clearly seen that with blackberries "a stitch in time"
saves almost ninety-nine. Keep out coarse weeds and grass, and give
fertilizers only when the plants show signs of feebleness and lack of
nutrition.

A rust similar to that which attacks the black-cap is almost the only
disease we have to contend with. The remedy is the same--extirpation of
the plant, root and branch.

After testing a great many kinds, I recommend the three following
varieties, ripening in succession for the family--the Early Harvest,
Snyder, and Kittatinny. These all produce rich, high-flavored berries,
and, under the treatment suggested, will prove hardy in nearly all
localities. This fruit is not ripe as soon as it is black, and it is
rarely left on the bushes until the hard core in the centre is mellowed
by complete maturity. I have found that berries picked in the evening
and stood in a cool place were in excellent condition for breakfast. To
have them in perfection, however, they must be so ripe as to drop into
the basket at the slightest touch; then, as Donald Mitchell says, they
are "bloated bubbles of forest honey."

I fancy the reader is as impatient to reach the strawberry as I am
myself. "Doubtless God could have made a better berry"--but I forbear.
This saying has been quoted by the greater part of the human race, and
attributed to nearly every prominent man, from Adam to Mr. Beecher.
There are said to be unfortunates whom the strawberry poisons. The
majority of us feel as if we could attain Methuselah's age if we had
nothing worse to contend with. Praising the strawberry is like
"painting the lily;" therefore let us give our attention at once to the
essential details of its successful culture.

As we have intimated before, this fruit as we find it in our gardens,
even though we raise foreign kinds, came originally from America. The
two great species, Fragaria chilensis, found on the Pacific slope from
Oregon to Chili, and Fragaria virginiana, growing wild in all parts of
North America east of the Rocky Mountains, are the sources of all the
fine varieties that have been named and cultivated. The Alpine
strawberry (Fragaria vesca), which grows wild throughout the northern
hemisphere, does not appear capable of much variation and development
under cultivation. Its seeds, sown under all possible conditions,
reproduce the parent plant. Foreign gardeners eventually learned,
however, that seeds of the Chili and Virginia strawberry produced new
varieties which were often much better than their parents. As time
passed, and more attention was drawn to this subject, superb varieties
were originated abroad, many of them acquiring a wide celebrity. In
this case, as has been true of nearly all other fruits, our nursery-men
and fruit-growers first looked to Europe for improved varieties.
Horticulturists were slow to learn that in our own native species were
the possibilities of the best success. The Chili strawberry, brought
directly from the Pacific coast to the East, is not at home in our
climate, and is still more unfitted to contend with it after
generations of culture in Europe. Even our hardier Virginia strawberry,
coming back to us from England after many years of high stimulation in
a moist, mild climate, is unequal to the harsher conditions of life
here. They are like native Americans who have lived and been pampered
abroad so long that they find this country "quite too rude, you
know--beastly climate." Therefore, in the choice varieties, and in
developing new ones, the nearer we can keep to vigorous strains of our
own hardy Virginia species the better. From it have proceeded and will
continue to come the finest kinds that can be grown east of the
Rockies. Nevertheless, what was said of foreign raspberries is almost
equally true of European strawberries like the Triomphe de Gand and
Jucunda, and hybrids like the Wilder. In localities where they can be
grown, their beauty and fine flavor repay for the high culture and
careful winter protection required. But they can scarcely be made to
thrive on light soils or very far to the south.

So many varieties are offered for sale that the question of choice is a
bewildering one. I have therefore sought to meet it, as before, by
giving the advice of those whose opinions are well entitled to respect.

Dr. Hexamer, who has had great and varied experience, writes as
follows: "A neighbor of mine who has for years bought nearly every new
strawberry when first introduced, has settled on the Duchess and
Cumberland as the only varieties he will grow in the future, and thinks
it not worth while to seek for something better. Confined to two
varieties, a more satisfactory selection could scarcely be made. But
you want six or seven, either being, I think, about the right number
for the home garden. I will give them in the order of desirability
according to my judgment--Cumberland, Charles Downing, Duchess, Mount
Vernon, Warren, Sharpless, Jewell."

The selection which places the Cumberland Triumph at the head of the
list is but another proof how kinds differ under varied conditions. On
my place this highly praised sort is but moderately productive and not
high-flavored, although the fruit is very large and handsome. I regard
the list, however, as a most excellent one for most localities.

The Hon. Marshall P. Wilder's choice for the latitude of Massachusetts:
"Charles Downing, Wilder, Hervey Davis, Sharpless, Cumberland,
Kentucky. Jewell is very promising." A. S. Fuller, for latitude of New
York: "Charles Downing, Sharpless, Miner's Prolific, Wilson's Albany,
Champion." P. C. Berckmans, for the latitude of Georgia: "Wilson,
Sharpless, Charles Downing, Triomphe de Gand, Glendale." The Hon.
Norman J. Colman's choice for Missouri and the West: "Crescent, Captain
Jack, Cumberland, Champion, Hart's Minnesota, Cornelia."

If I gave a hundred other lists, no two of them probably would agree in
all respects. Mr. Downing often said to me, "Soil, climate, and
locality make greater differences with the strawberry than with any
other fruit." This is far more true of some varieties than others. I
believe that the excellent kind named after Mr. Downing, if given
proper treatment, will do well almost anywhere on the continent. It
will be noted that it is on all the lists except one. I should place it
at the head of garden strawberries. It is a kind that will endure much
neglect, and it responds splendidly to generous, sensible treatment.
Its delicious flavor is its chief recommendation, as it should be that
of every berry for the home garden.

I have tested many hundreds of kinds, and have grown scores and scores
that were so praised when first sent out that the novice might be
tempted to dig up and throw away everything except the wonderful
novelty pressed upon his attention. There is one quiet, effective way
of meeting all this heralding and laudation, and that is to make trial
beds. For instance, I have put out as many as seventy kinds at nearly
the same time, and grown them under precisely the same conditions. Some
of the much-vaunted new-comers were found to be old varieties re-named;
others, although sold at high prices and asserted to be prodigies, were
seen to be comparatively worthless when growing by the side of good old
standard sorts; the majority never rose above mediocrity under ordinary
treatment; but now and then one, like the Sharpless, fulfilled the
promises made for it.

In my next chapter I shall venture to recommend those varieties which
my own experience and observation have shown to be best adapted to
various soils and localities, and shall also seek to prove that proper
cultivation has more to do with success than even the selection of
favored kinds.

Nor would I seek to dissuade the proprietor of the Home Acre from
testing the many novelties offered. He will be sure to get a fair
return in strawberries, and to his interest in his garden will add the
pleasure and anticipation which accompany uncertain experiment. In
brief, he has found an innocent form of gambling, which will injure
neither pocket nor morals. In slow-maturing fruits we cannot afford to
make mistakes; in strawberries, one prize out of a dozen blanks repays
for everything.




CHAPTER VII

STRAWBERRIES


There is a very general impression that light, dry, sandy soils are the
best for the strawberry. Just the reverse of this is true. In its
desire for moisture it is almost an aquatic plant. Experienced
horticulturists have learned to recognize this truth, which the Hon.
Marshall P. Wilder has suggested in the following piquant manner: "In
the first place, the strawberry's chief need is a great deal of water.
In the second place, it needs more water. In the third place, I think I
should give it a great deal more water."

While emphasizing this truth the reader should at the same time be
warned against land whereon water stands above the surface in winter
and spring, or stagnates beneath the surface at any time. Moisture is
essential to the best results; good drainage is equally so. The
marvellous crops of strawberries raised in California under
well-directed systems of irrigation should teach us useful lessons. The
plants, instead of producing a partially developed crop within a few
brief days, continue in bearing through weeks and months. It may often
be possible to supply abundantly on the Home Acre this vital
requirement of moisture, and I shall refer to this point further on.

My first advice in regard to strawberries is to set them out
immediately almost anywhere except upon land so recently in grass that
the sod is still undecayed. This course is better than not to have the
fruit at all, or to wait for it A year without strawberries is a lost
year in one serious respect. While there is a wide difference between
what plants can do under unfavorable conditions and what they can be
made to do when their needs are fully met, they will probably in any
event yield a fair supply of delicious fruit. Secure this as soon as
possible. At the same time remember that a plant of a good variety is a
genius capable of wonderful development. In ordinary circumstances it
is like the "mute, inglorious" poets whose enforced limitations were
lamented by the poet Gray; but when its innate powers and gifts are
fully nourished it expands into surprising proportions, sends up
hundreds of flowers, which are followed by ruby gems of fruit whose
exquisite flavor is only surpassed by its beauty. No such concentrated
ambrosia ever graced the feasts of the Olympian gods, for they were
restricted to the humble Fragaria vesca, or Alpine species. In
discovering the New World, Columbus also discovered the true
strawberry, and died without the knowledge of this result of his
achievement.

I can imagine the expression on the faces of those who buy the "sour,
crude, half-ripe Wilsons," against which the poet Bryant inveighed so
justly. The market is flooded with this fruit because it bears
transportation about as well as would marbles. Yes, they are
strawberries; choke-pears and Seckels belong to the same species. There
is truth enough in my exaggeration to warrant the assertion that if we
would enjoy the possible strawberry, we must raise it ourselves, and
pick it when fully matured--ready for the table, and not for market.
Then any man's garden can furnish something better than was found in
Eden.

Having started a strawberry-patch without loss of time wherever it is
handiest, we can now give our attention to the formation of an ideal
bed. In this instance we must shun the shade of trees above, and their
roots beneath. The land should be open to the sky, and the sun free to
practice his alchemy on the fruit the greater part of the day. The most
favorable soil is a sandy loam, verging toward clay; and it should have
been under cultivation sufficiently long to destroy all roots of grass
and perennial weeds. Put on the fertilizer with a free hand. If it is
barnyard manure, the rate of sixty tons to the acre is not in excess. A
strawberry plant has a large appetite and excellent digestion. It
prefers decidedly manure from the cow-stable, though that from the
horse-stable answers very well; but it is not advisable to incorporate
it with the soil in its raw, unfermented state, and then to plant
immediately. The ground can scarcely be too rich for strawberries, but
it may easily be overheated and stimulated. In fertilizing, ever keep
in mind the two great requisites--moisture and coolness. Manure from
the horse-stable, therefore, is almost doubled in value as well as bulk
if composted with leaves, muck, or sods, and allowed to decay before
being used.

Next to enriching the soil, the most important step is to deepen it. If
a plow is used, sink it to the beam, and run it twice in a furrow. If a
lifting subsoil-plow can follow, all the better. Strawberry roots have
been traced two feet below the surface.

If the situation of the plot does not admit the use of a plow, let the
gardener begin at one side and trench the area to at least the depth of
eighteen inches, taking pains to mix the surface, subsoil, and
fertilizer evenly and thoroughly. A small plot thus treated will yield
as much as one three or four times as large. One of the chief
advantages of thus deepening the soil is that the plants are insured
against their worst enemy--drought. How often I have seen beds in early
June languishing for moisture, the fruit trusses lying on the ground,
fainting under their burden, and the berries ripening prematurely into
little more than diminutive collections of seeds! When ground has been
deepened as I have said, the drought must be almost unparalleled to
arrest the development of the fruit. Even in the most favorable
seasons, hard, shallow soils give but a brief period of strawberries,
the fruit ripens all at once, and although the first berries may be of
good size, the later ones dwindle until they are scarcely larger than
peas. Be sure to have a deep, mellow soil beneath the plants.

Such a bed can be made in either spring or fall--indeed, at any time
when the soil is free from frost, and neither too wet nor dry. I do not
believe in preparing and fertilizing ground during a period of drought.

We will suppose the work has been done in the spring, as early as the
earth was dry enough to crumble freely, and that the surface of the bed
is smooth, mellow, and ready for the plants. Stretch a garden line down
the length of the plot two feet from the outer edge, and set the plants
along the line one foot apart from each other. Let the roots be spread
out, not buried in a mat, the earth pressed FIRMLY against them, and
the crown of the plant be exactly even with the surface of the soil,
which should also be pressed closely around it with the fingers. This
may seem minute detail, yet much dismal experience proves it to be
essential. I have employed scores of men, and the great majority at
first would either bury the crowns out of sight, or else leave part of
the roots exposed, and the remainder so loose in the soil that a sharp
gale would blow the plants away. There is no one so economical of time
as the hired man whose time is paid for. He is ever bent on saving a
minute or half-minute in this kind of work. On one occasion I had to
reset a good part of an acre on which my men had saved time in
planting. If I had asked them to save the plants in the year of '86,
they might have "struck."

The first row having been set out, I advise that the line be moved
forward three feet. This would make the rows three feet apart--not too
far in ground prepared as described, and in view of the subsequent
method of cultivation. The bed may therefore be filled up in this
ratio, the plants one foot apart in the row, and the rows three feet
apart. The next point in my system, for the kind of soil named (for
light, sandy soils another plan will be indicated), is to regard each
plant as an individual that is to be developed to the utmost. Of course
only young plants of the previous season's growth should be used. If a
plant has old, woody, black roots, throw it away. Plants set out in
April will begin to blossom in May. These buds and blossoms should be
picked off ruthlessly as soon as they appear. Never does avarice
overreach itself more completely than when plants are permitted to bear
the same season in which they are set out. The young, half-established
plant is drained of its vitality in producing a little imperfect fruit;
yet this is permitted even by farmers who would hold up their hands at
the idea of harnessing a colt to a plow.

The plants do not know anything about our purpose in regard to them.
They merely seek to follow the law of Nature to propagate themselves,
first by seeds which, strictly speaking, are the fruit, and then by
runners. These slender, tendril-like growths begin to appear early in
summer, and if left unchecked will mat the ground about the parent with
young plants by late autumn. If we wish plants, let them grow by all
means; but if fruit is our object, why should we let them grow?
"Because nearly every one seems to do it," would be, perhaps, the most
rational answer. This is a mistake, for many are beginning to take just
the opposite course even when growing strawberries by the acre.

Let us fix our attention on a single plant. It has a certain amount of
root pasturage and space in which to grow. Since it is not permitted to
produce an indefinite number of young plants, it begins to develop
itself. The soil is rich, the roots are busy, and there must be an
outlet. The original plant cannot form others, and therefore begins to
produce fruit-crowns for the coming year. All the sap, all the
increasing power of root and foliage, are directed to preparation for
fruit. In brief, we have got the plant in traces; it is pulling in the
direction we wish, it will eventually deliver a load of berries which
would surprise those who trust simply to Nature unguided.

Some one may object that this is a troublesome and expensive way of
growing strawberries. Do not the facts in the case prove the reverse? A
plant restricted to a single root can be hoed and worked around like a
hill of corn or a currant-bush. With comparatively little trouble the
ground between the rows can be kept clean and mellow. Under the common
system, which allows the runners to interlace and mat the ground, you
soon have an almost endless amount of hand-weeding to do, and even this
fails if white clover, sorrel, and certain grasses once get a start.
The system I advocate forbids neglect; the runners must be clipped off
as fast as they appear, and they continue to grow from June till frost;
but the actual labor of the year is reduced to a minimum. A little boy
or girl could keep a large bed clipped by the occasional use of a
shears or knife before breakfast; and if the ground between the plants
is free of runners, it can be hoed over in an hour. Considering,
therefore, merely the trouble and expense, the single-plant system has
the facts in its favor. But our object is not to grow strawberry plants
with the least trouble, but to have strawberries of the largest and
finest quality.

In addition to ease and thoroughness of cultivation, there are other
important advantages. The single narrow row of plants is more easily
protected against winter's frosts. Light, strawy manure from the
horse-stable serves well for this purpose; but it should be light and
free from heat. I have seen beds destroyed by too heavy a covering of
chunky, rank manure. It is not our purpose to keep the beds and plants
from freezing, but from alternately freezing and thawing. If snow fell
on the bed in December and lasted till April, no other protection would
be needed. Nature in this latitude has no sympathy for the careless
man. During the winter of 1885, in January, and again in February and
March, the ground was bare, unprotected plants were badly frozen, and
in many instances lifted partly out of the ground by midday thawing and
night freezing. The only safe course is to cover the rows thoroughly,
but not heavily, early in December. If then light stable-manure is not
at hand, leaves, old bean-vines, or any dry refuse from the garden not
containing injurious seeds will answer. Do not employ asparagus-tops,
which contain seed. Of course we want this vegetable, but not in the
strawberry bed. Like some persons out of their proper sphere, asparagus
may easily become a nuisance; and it will dispossess other growths of
their rights and places as serenely as a Knight of Labor. The proper
balance must be kept in the garden as well as in society; and therefore
it is important to cover our plants with something that will not
speedily become a usurper. Let it be a settled point, then, that the
narrow rows must be covered thoroughly out of sight with some light
material which will not rest with smothering weight on the plants or
leave among them injurious seeds. Light stable-manure is often objected
to for the reason that employing it is like sowing the ground with
grass-seed. If the plants had been allowed to grow in matted beds, I
would not use this material for a winter covering, unless it had been
allowed to heat sufficiently to destroy the grass and clover seed
contained in it. I have seen matted beds protected with stable-manure
that were fit to mow by June, the plants and fruit having been over run
with grass. No such result need follow if the plants are cultivated in
a single line, for then the manure can be raked off in early
spring--first of April in our latitude--and the ground cultivated.
There is a great advantage in employing light manure if the system I
advocate is followed, for the melting snows and rains carry the
richness of the fertilizer to the roots, and winter protection serves a
double purpose.

We will now consider the proper management for the second year, when a
full crop should be yielded. I know that many authorities frown upon
cultivation during the second spring, before plants bear their fruit. I
can not agree with this view, except in regard to very light soils, and
look upon it as a relic of the old theory that sandy land was the best
for strawberries. Take the soil under consideration, a sandy loam, for
instance. After the frost is out, the earth settled, and the winter
covering raked off, the soil under the spring sun grows hard, and by
June is almost as solid as a roadbed. Every one knows that land in such
condition suffers tenfold more severely from drought than if it were
light and mellow from cultivation. Perennial weeds that sprouted late
in the fall or early spring get a start, and by fruiting-time are
rampant. I do advocate EARLY spring cultivation, and by it I almost
double my crop, while at the same time maintaining a mastery over the
weeds.

As soon as the severe frosts are over, in April, I rake the coarsest of
the stable-manure from the plants, leaving the finer and decayed
portions as a fertilizer. Then, when the ground is dry enough to work,
I have a man weed out the rows, and if there are vacant spaces, fill in
the rows with young plants. The man then forks the ground lightly
between the rows, and stirs the surface merely among the plants. Thus
all the hard, sodden surface is loosened or scarified, and opened to
the reception of air and light, dew and rain. The man is charged
emphatically that in this cultivation he must not lift the plants or
disturb the roots to any extent. If I find a plant with its hold upon
the ground loosened, I know there has been careless work. Before
digging along the row the fork is sunk beside the plants to prevent the
soil from lifting in cakes, and the plants with them. In brief, pains
are taken that the plants should be just as firm in the soil after
cultivation as before. Let the reader carefully observe that this work
is done EARLY in April, while the plants are comparatively DORMANT.
Most emphatically it should not be done in May, after the blossoms
begin to appear. If the bed has been neglected till that time, the
SURFACE MERELY can be cultivated with a hoe. When the plants have
approached so near to the fruiting, the roots must not be disturbed at
all. EARLY cultivation gives time for new roots to grow, and stimulates
such growth. Where the rows are sufficiently long, and the ground
permits it, this early loosening of the soil is accomplished with a
horse-cultivator better than with a fork, the hoe following and
levelling the soil and taking out all weeds.

My next step during the second season is to mulch the plants, in order
to keep the fruit clean. Without this mulch the fruit is usually unfit
for the table. A dashing shower splashes the berries with mud and grit,
and the fruit must be washed before it is eaten; and strawberries with
their sun-bestowed beauty and flavor washed away are as ridiculous as
is mere noise from musical instruments. To be content with such fruit
is like valuing pictures by the number of square inches of canvas! In
perfecting a strawberry, Nature gives some of her finest touches, and
it is not well to obliterate them with either mud or water. Any light
clean material will keep the fruit clean. I have found spring rakings
of the lawn--mingled dead grass and leaves--one of the best. Leaves
from a grove would answer, were it not for their blowing about in an
untidy way. Of course there is nothing better than straw for the
strawberry; but this often costs as much as hay. Any clean litter that
will lie close to the ground and can be pushed up under the plants will
answer. Nor should it be merely under the plants. A man once mulched my
rows in such a way that the fruit hung over the litter on the soil
beyond. A little common-sense will meet the requirement of keeping the
berries well away from the loose soil, while at the same time
preserving a neat aspect to the bed. Pine-needles and salt-hay are used
where these materials are abundant.

Make it a rule to mulch as soon as possible after the plants begin to
blossom, and also after a good soaking rain. In this case the litter
keeps the ground moist. If the soil immediately about the plants is
covered when dry, the mulch may keep it dry--to the great detriment of
the forming berries. It is usually best to put on the mulch as soon as
the early cultivation is over in April, and then the bed may be left
till the fruit is picked. Of course it may be necessary to pull out
some rank-growing weeds from time to time. If the hired man is left to
do the mulching very late in the season, he will probably cover much of
the green fruit and blossoms as well as the ground.

After the berries have been picked, the remaining treatment of the year
is very simple. Rake out the mulch, cultivate the soil, and keep the
plants free of weeds and runners as during the previous year. Before
hard freezing weather, protect again as before, and give the plants
similar treatment the following spring and summer. Under this system
the same plants may be kept in bearing three, four, and five years,
according to the variety. Some kinds maintain their vigor longer than
others. After the first year the disposition to run declines, and with
the third year, in most instances, deterioration in the plant itself
begins. I would therefore advise that under this system a new bed be
made, as described, every third year; for, it should be remembered, the
new bed is unproductive the first year. This should never be forgotten
if one would maintain a continuous supply of berries, otherwise he will
be like those born on the 29th of February, and have only occasional
birthdays.

If the old bed is just where you wish, and has been prepared in the
thorough manner described, it can be renewed in the following manner:
When the old plants begin to decline in vigor--say the third or fourth
spring--a line of well-decayed compost and manure from the cow-stable a
foot wide may be spread thickly down between the rows, dug under
deeply, and young plants set out just over the fertilizer. The old
plants can be treated as has already been described, and as soon as
they are through bearing, dug under. This would leave the young plants
in full possession of the ground, and the cultivation and management
for three or more years would go on as already directed. This course
involves no loss of time or change of ground for a long periods. If,
however, a new bed can be made somewhere else, the plants will thrive
better upon it. Unless there are serious objections, a change of ground
is always advantageous; for no matter how lavishly the plot is
enriched, the strawberry appears to exhaust certain required
constituents in the soil. Continued vigor is better maintained by
wood-ashes perhaps than by any other fertilizer, after the soil is once
deepened and enriched, and it may be regarded as one of the very best
tonics for the strawberry plant. Bone-meal is almost equally good.
Guano and kindred fertilizers are too stimulating, and have not the
staying qualities required.

As has been intimated before, the strawberry bed may often be so
located on the Home Acre as to permit of irrigation. This does not mean
sprinkling and splattering with water, but the continuous maintenance
of abundant moisture during the critical period from the time the fruit
begins to form until it ripens. Partial watering during a drought is
very injurious; so also would be too frequent watering. If the ground
could be soaked twice a week in the evening, and then left to the
hardening and maturing influence of the sun and wind, the finest
results would be secured. I am satisfied that in most localities the
size of the berries and the number of quarts produced might be doubled
by judicious irrigation.

The system given above applies not only to sandy loam, but also to all
varieties of clay, even the most stubborn. In the latter instance it
would be well to employ stable-manure in the initial enriching, for
this would tend to lighten and warm the soil. Care must also be
exercised in not working clay when it is too wet or too dry. Mulch also
plays an important part on heavy clay, for it prevents the soil from
baking and cracking. One of the best methods of preventing this is to
top-dress the ground with stable-manure, and hoe it in from time to
time when fighting the weeds. This keeps the surface open and mellow--a
vital necessity for vigorous growth. Few plants will thrive when the
surface is hard and baked. Nevertheless, if I had to choose between
heavy clay and light sand for strawberries, I should much prefer the
clay. On the last-named soil an abundant winter protection is
absolutely necessary, or else the plants will freeze entirely out of
the ground.

The native strain of cultivated strawberries has so much vigor and
power of adaptation that plenty of excellent varieties can be grown on
the lightest soil. In this instance, however, we would suggest
important modifications in preparation and culture. The soil, as has
been already shown, must be treated like a spendthrift. Deep plowing or
spading should be avoided, as the subsoil is too loose and leachy
already. The initial enriching of the bed should be generous, but not
lavish. You cannot deposit fertilizers for long-continued use. I should
prefer to harrow or rake in the manure, leaving it near the surface.
The rains will carry it down fast enough. One of the very best methods
is to open furrows, three feet apart, with a light corn-plow, half fill
them with decayed compost, again run the plow through to mix the
fertilizer with the soil, then level the ground, and set out the plants
immediately over the manure. They thus get the benefit of it before it
can leach away. The accomplished horticulturist Mr. P. T. Quinn, of
Newark, N. J., has achieved remarkable success by this plan.

It is a well-known fact that on light land strawberry plants are not so
long-lived and do not develop, or "stool out," as it is termed, as on
heavier land. In order to secure the largest and best possible crop,
therefore, I should not advise a single line of plants, but rather a
narrow bed of plants, say eighteen inches wide, leaving eighteen inches
for a walk. I would not allow this bed to be matted with an indefinite
number of little plants crowding each other into feeble life, but would
leave only those runners which had taken root early, and destroy the
rest. A plant which forms in June and the first weeks in July has time
to mature good-sized fruit-buds before winter, especially if given
space in which to develop. This, however, would be impossible if the
runners were allowed to sod the ground thickly. In principle I would
carry out the first system, and give each plant space in which to grow
upon its own root as large as it naturally would in a light soil, and I
would have a sufficient number of plants to supply the deficiency in
growth. On good, loamy soil, the foliage of single lines of plants,
three feet apart, will grow so large as to touch across the spaces; but
this could scarcely be expected on light soil unless irrigation were
combined with great fertility. Nevertheless, a bed with plants standing
not too thickly upon it will give an abundance of superb fruit.

Strawberries grown in beds may not require so much spring mulching to
keep the fruit clean, but should carefully receive all that is needed.
Winter protection also is not so indispensable as on heavier soils, but
it always well repays. A thick bed of plants should never be protected
by any kind of litter which would leave seeds of various kinds, for
under this system of culture weeds must be taken out by hand; and this
is always slow, back-aching work.

When plants are grown in beds it does not pay to continue them after
fruiting the third year. For instance, they are set out in spring, and
during the first season they are permitted to make a limited number of
runners, and prepare to fruit the following year. After the berries are
picked the third year, dig the plants under, and occupy the ground with
something else. On light soils, and where the plants are grown in beds
instead of narrow rows, new beds should be set out every alternate year.

In order to have an abundant supply of young plants it is only
necessary to let one end of a row or a small portion of a bed run at
will. Then new plants can be set out as desired.

While more strawberries are planted in spring than at any other time,
certain advantages are secured by summer and fall setting. This is
especially true of gardens wherein early crops are maturing, leaving
the ground vacant. For instance, there are areas from which early peas,
beans, or potatoes have been gathered. Suppose such a plot is ready for
something else in July or August, the earlier the better. Unless the
ground is very dry, a bed can be prepared as has been described. If the
soil is in good condition, rich and deep, it can be dug thoroughly, and
the plants set out at once in the cool of the evening, or just before a
shower. During the hot season a great advantage is secured if the
plants are set immediately after the ground is prepared, and while the
surface is still moist. It is unfortunate if ground is made ready and
then permitted to dry out before planting takes place, for watering, no
matter how thorough, has not so good an influence in starting new
growth as the natural moisture of the soil. It would be better,
therefore, to dig the ground late in the afternoon, and set out the
plants the same evening. Watering, however, should never be dispensed
with during warm weather, unless there is a certainty of rain; and even
then it does no harm.

Suppose one wishes to set a new bed in July. If he has strawberries
growing on his place, his course would be to let some of his favorite
varieties make new runners as early as possible. These should be
well-rooted young plants by the middle of the month. After the new
ground is prepared, these can be taken up, with a ball of earth
attached to their roots, and carried carefully to their new
starting-place. If they are removed so gently as not to shake off the
earth from the roots, they will not know that they have been moved, but
continue to thrive without wilting a leaf. If such transplanting is
done immediately after a soaking rain, the soil will cling to the roots
so tenaciously as to ensure a transfer that will not cause any check of
growth. But it is not necessary to wait for rain. At five in the
afternoon soak with water the ground in which the young plants are
standing, and by six o'clock you can take up the plants with their
roots incased in clinging earth, just as successfully as after a rain.
Plants thus transferred, and watered after being set out, will not
wilt, although the thermometer is in the nineties the following day. If
young plants are scarce, take up the strongest and best-rooted ones,
and leave the runner attached; set out such plants with their balls of
earth four feet apart in the row, and with a lump of earth fasten down
the runners along the line. Within a month these runners will fill up
the new rows as closely as desirable. Then all propagation in the new
bed should be checked, and the plants compelled to develop for fruiting
in the coming season. In this latitude a plant thus transferred in July
or August will bear a very good crop the following June, and the
berries will probably be larger than in the following years. This
tendency to produce very large fruit is characteristic of young plants
set out in summer. It thus may be seen that plants set in spring can
not produce a good crop of fruit under about fourteen months, while
others, set in summer, will yield in nine or ten months. I have set out
many acres in summer and early autumn with the most satisfactory
results. Thereafter the plants were treated in precisely the same
manner as those set in spring.

If the plants must be bought and transported from a distance during hot
weather, I should not advise the purchase of any except those grown in
pots. Nurserymen have made us familiar with pot-grown plants, for we
fill our flowerbeds with them. In like manner strawberry plants are
grown and sold. Little pots, three inches across at the top, are sunk
in the earth along a strawberry row, and the runners so fastened down
that they take root in these pots. In about two weeks the young plant
will fill a pot with roots. It may then be severed from the parent, and
transported almost any distance, like a verbena. Usually the ball of
earth and roots is separated from the pot, and is then wrapped in paper
before being packed in the shallow box employed for shipping purposes.
A nurseryman once distributed in a summer throughout the country a
hundred thousand plants of one variety grown in this manner. The earth
encasing the roots sustained the plants during transportation and after
setting sufficiently to prevent any loss worth mentioning. This method
of the plant-grower can easily be employed on the Home Acre. Pots
filled with earth may be sunk along the strawberry rows in the garden,
the runners made to root in them, and from them transferred to any part
of the garden wherein we propose to make a new bed. It is only a neater
and more certain way of removing young plants with a ball of earth from
the open bed.

Some have adopted this system in raising strawberries for market. They
prepare very rich beds, fill them with pot-grown plants in June or
July, take from these plants one crop the following June, then plow
them under. As a rule, however, such plants cannot be bought in
quantities before August or September.

As we go south, September, October, or November, according to lowness
of latitude, are the favorite months for planting. I have had excellent
success on the Hudson in late autumn planting. My method has been to
cover the young plants, just before the ground froze, with two or three
inches of clean earth, and then to rake it off again early in April.
The roots of such plants become thoroughly established during the
winter, and start with double vigor. Plants set out in LATE autumn do
best on light, dry soils. On heavy soils they will be frozen out unless
well covered. They should not be allowed to bear the following season.
A late-set plant cannot before winter in our climate become strong and
sturdy enough to produce much fruit the following season. I make it a
rule not to permit plants set out after the first of October to bear
fruit until a year from the following June.

In setting out plants, the principle of sex should be remembered. The
majority of our favorite varieties are bisexual; that is, the blossoms
are furnished with both stamens and pistils. A variety with this
organization, as the Sharpless, for instance, will bear alone with no
other kind near it. But if one set out a bed of Champions--another fine
variety--well apart from any staminate kind, it would blossom
profusely, but produce no fruit. When I was a boy, Hovey's Seedling was
the great strawberry of the day, and marvellous stories were told of
the productiveness of the plants and the size of the berries. How well
I remember the disappointment and wrath of people who bought the plants
at a high price, and set them out with no staminate varieties near to
fertilize the pistillate blossoms. Expectations were raised to the
highest pitch by profuse blossoming in May, but not a berry could be
found the ensuing June. The vigorous plants were only a mockery, and
the people who sold them were berated as humbugs. To-day the most
highly praised strawberry is the Jewell. The originator, Mr. P. M.
Augur, writes me that "plants set two feet by eighteen inches apart,
August 1, 1884, in June, 1885, completely covered the ground, touching
both ways, and averaged little over a quart to the plant for the centre
patch." All runners were kept off, in accordance with the system
advocated in this paper. "At Boston a silver medal was awarded to this
variety as the best new strawberry introduced within five years."
People reading such laudation--well deserved, I believe--might conclude
the best is good enough for us, and send for enough Jewell plants to
set out a bed. If they set no others near it, their experience would be
similar to that which I witnessed in the case of Hovey's Seedling
thirty odd years ago. The blossom of the Jewell contains pistils only,
and will produce no fruit unless a staminate variety is planted near. I
have never considered this an objection against a variety; for why
should any one wish to raise only one variety of strawberry? All danger
of barrenness in pistillate kinds is removed absolutely by planting
staminate sorts in the same bed. In nurserymen's catalogues pistillate
varieties are marked "P.," and the purchaser has merely to set out the
plants within a few feet of some perfect flowering kind to secure
abundant fruit.

As a result of much experience, I will now make some suggestions as to
varieties. In a former paper I have given, the opinions of others upon
this important subject, and one can follow the advice of such eminent
authorities without misgiving. The earliest strawberry that I have ever
raised, and one of the best flavored, is the Crystal City. It is
evidently a wild variety domesticated, and it has the exquisite flavor
and perfume of the field-berry. It rarely fails to give us fruit in
May, and my children, with the unerring taste of connoisseurs, follow
it up until the last berry is picked. It would run all over the garden
unchecked; and this propensity must be severely curbed to render a bed
productive. Keeping earliness and high flavor in view, I would next
recommend the Black Defiance. It is not remarkably productive on many
soils, but the fruit is so delicious that it well deserves a place. The
Duchess and Bidwell follow in the order of ripening. On my grounds they
have always made enormous plants, and yielded an abundance of
good-flavored berries. The Downing is early to medium in the season of
ripening, and should be in every collection. The Indiana is said to
resemble this kind, and to be an improvement upon it. Miner's Prolific
is another kindred berry, and a most excellent one. Among the latest
berries I recommend the Sharpless Champion, or Windsor Chief, and
Parry. If one wishes to raise a very large, late, showy berry, let him
try the Longfellow. The Cornelia is said to grow very large and ripen
late, but I have not yet fruited it. As I said fifteen or twenty years
ago, if I were restricted to but one variety, I should choose the
Triomphe de Gand, a foreign kind, but well adapted to rich, heavy
soils. The berries begin to ripen early, and last very late. The
Memphis Late has always been the last to mature on my grounds, and,
like the Crystal City, is either a wild variety, or else but slightly
removed. The Wilson is the great berry of commerce. It is not ripe when
it is red, and therefore is rarely eaten in perfection. Let it get
almost black in its ripeness, and it is one of the richest berries in
existence. With a liberal allowance of sugar and cream, it makes a dish
much too good for an average king. It is also the best variety for
preserving.

It should be remembered that all strawberries, unlike pears, should be
allowed to mature fully before being picked. Many a variety is
condemned because the fruit is eaten prematurely. There is no richer
berry in existence than the Windsor Chief, yet the fruit, when merely
red, is decidedly disagreeable.

The reader can now make a selection of kinds which should give him six
weeks of strawberries. At the same time he must be warned that plants
growing in a hard, dry, poor soil, and in matted beds, yield their
fruit almost together, no matter how many varieties may have been set
out. Under such conditions the strawberry season is brief indeed.

While I was writing this paper the chief enemy of the strawberry came
blundering and bumping about my lamp--the May beetle. The larva of this
insect, the well-known white grub, has an insatiable appetite for
strawberry roots, and in some localities and seasons is very
destructive. One year I lost at least one hundred thousand plants by
this pest. This beetle does not often lay its egg in well-cultivated
ground, and we may reasonably hope to escape its ravages in a garden.
If, when preparing for a bed, many white grubs are found in the soil, I
should certainly advise that another locality be chosen. The only
remedy is to dig out the larvae and kill them. If you find a plant
wilting without apparent cause, you may be sure that a grub is feeding
on the roots. The strawberry plant is comparatively free from insect
enemies and disease, and rarely disappoints any one who gives it a
tithe of the attention it deserves.

There are many points in connection with this fruit which, in a small
treatise like this, must be merely touched upon or omitted altogether.
I may refer those who wish to study the subject more thoroughly to my
work, "Success with Small Fruits."




CHAPTER VIII

THE KITCHEN-GARDEN


The garden should be open to the sky, and as far as possible unshaded
by adjacent trees from the morning and afternoon sun. It is even more
essential that the trees be not so near that their voracious roots can
make their way to the rich loam of the garden.

Now for the soil. We should naturally suppose that that of Eden was a
deep sandy loam, with not too porous a subsoil. As we have already seen
again and again, such a soil appears to be the laboratory in which we
can assist Nature to develop her best products. But Nature has a
profound respect for skill, and when she recognizes it, "lends a hand"
in securing excellent crops from almost drifting sand or stubborn clay.
She has even assisted the Hollander in wresting from the ocean one of
the gardens of the world.

We must again dwell on the principles already emphasized, that soils
must be treated according to their nature. If too damp, they must be
drained; if of the fortunate quality of a sandy loam resting on a clay
subsoil, they can be abundantly deepened and enriched from the start,
if of a heavy clay, inclined to be cold and wet in spring, and to bake
and crack in summer, skill should aim to lighten it and remove its
inertia; finally, as we have shown, a light, porous soil should be
treated like a spendthrift. All soils, except the last-named, are much
the better for being enriched and deeply plowed or forked in October or
November. This exposes the mould to the sweetening and mechanical
action of frost, and the fertilizers incorporated with it are gradually
transformed into just that condition of plant food which the rootlets
take up with the greatest ease and rapidity. A light soil, on the
contrary, should not be worked in autumn, but be left intact after the
crops are taken from it.

In one respect a light soil and a stiff, heavy one should be treated in
the same way, but for different reasons. In the first instance,
fertilizers should be applied in moderation to the surface, and rains
and the cultivation of the growing crops depended upon to carry the
richness downward to the roots. The porous nature of the earth must
ever be borne in mind; fertilizers pass through it and disappear, and
therefore are applied to the surface, to delay this process and enable
the roots to obtain as much nutriment as possible during the passage.
Equal and even greater advantages are secured by a top-dressing of
barnyard manures and composts to the heaviest of clay. The surface of
such soils, left to Nature, becomes in hot, dry weather like pottery,
baking and cracking, shielding from dew and shower, and preventing all
circulation of air about the roots. A top-dressing prevents all this,
keeps the surface open and mellow, and supplies not only fertility, but
the mechanical conditions that are essential.

If we are now ready to begin, let us begin right. I have not much
sympathy with finical, fussy gardening. One of the chief fascinations
of gardening is the endless field it affords for skilful sleight of
hand, short-cuts, unconventional methods, and experiments. The true
gardener soon ceases to be a man of rules, and becomes one of strategy,
of expedients. He is prompt to act at the right moment. Like the
artist, he is ever seeking and acting upon hints from Nature. The man
of rules says the first of July is the time to set out winter cabbage;
and out the plants go, though the sky be brazen, and the mercury in the
nineties. The gardener has his plants ready, and for a few days watches
the sky. At last he perceives that rain is coming; then he sets out his
plants, and Nature's watering starts them, unwilted, on their new
growth.

At the same time I protest against careless, slovenly gardening--ground
imperfectly prepared, crooked rows, seed half covered, or covered so
deeply that the germs are discouraged long before they reach light. One
of the best aids to success is a small compost-heap composed equally of
manure from the horse-stable, the cow-stable, and of leaves. This
should be allowed to stand so long, and be cut down and turned so
often, that it becomes like a fine black powder, and is much the better
for being kept under shelter from sun and rain.

All who hope to have a permanent garden will naturally think first of
asparagus--one of the vegetables that have bee a longest in
cultivation, and one which is justly among the most valued. It was
cultivated hundreds of years before the Christian era, and is to-day
growing in popular esteem among civilized peoples.

In the matter of preparation I shall take issue with many of the
authorities. I have read and known of instances wherein extraordinary
expense and pains have been bestowed upon the asparagus-bed. The soil
has been dug out to the depth of two or more feet, the bottom paved,
and the homely, hardy roots, accustomed to roughing it the world over,
set out and tended with a care which, if given to a potato, would make
it open its eyes. There are few more hardy or widely distributed
species of vegetables than asparagus. It is "a native of the sea-coasts
of various countries of Europe and Asia." According to Loudon, it is
abundant on the sandy steppes in the interior of Russia. In Southern
Russia and Poland the horses and cows feed upon it. It grows freely in
the fens of Lincolnshire, and is indigenous to Cornwall. On the borders
of the Euphrates the shoots are so extraordinarily large and vigorous
that Thompson thinks it would be to the advantage of gardeners to
import roots from that region. These facts may indicate that too much
stress may have been laid on its character as a marine plant. Yet it is
true that it grows naturally on the coast of Holland, in the sandy
valleys and on the downs, while off Lizard Point it flourishes
naturally on an island where, in gales, the sea breaks over the roots.
In this country also it has escaped cultivation, and is establishing
itself along our coasts, The truth is that it is a plant endowed with a
remarkable power of adaptation to all soils and climates, and does not
need the extravagant petting often given it. On different portions of
my place chance seeds have fallen, and annually produce almost as fine
heads as are cut from the garden. Nature therefore teaches what
experience verifies--that asparagus is one of the most easily grown and
inexpensive vegetables of the garden. From two small beds we have
raised during the past eight years twice as much as we could use, and
at the cost of very little trouble either in planting or cultivation.

In my effort to show, from the hardy nature of the asparagus plant,
that extravagant preparation is unnecessary, let no one conclude that I
am opposed to a good, thorough preparation that accords with
common-sense. It is not for one year's crop that you are preparing, but
for a vegetable that should be productive on the same ground thirty or
forty years. What I said of strawberries applies here. A fair yield of
fruit may be expected from plants set out on ordinary corn-ground, but
more than double the crop would be secured from ground generously
prepared.

When I first came to Cornwall, about twelve years ago, I determined to
have an asparagus bed as soon as possible. I selected a plot eighty
feet long by thirty wide, of sandy loam, sloping to the southwest. It
had been used as a garden before, but was greatly impoverished. I gave
it a good top-dressing of barnyard manure in the autumn, and plowed it
deeply; another top-dressing of fine yard manure and a deep forking in
the early spring. Then, raking the surface smooth, I set a line along
its length on one side. A man took a spade, sunk its length in the
soil, and pushed it forward strongly. This action made an almost
perpendicular wedge-shaped aperture just back of the spade. The
asparagus plant, with its roots spread out fan-shape, was sunk in this
opening to a depth that left the crown of the plant between three and
four inches below the surface. Then the spade was drawn out, and the
soil left to fall over the crown of the plant. Rapidly repeating this
simple process, the whole plot was soon set out. The entire bed was
then raked smooth. The rows were three feet apart, and plants one foot
apart in the row. A similar plot could scarcely have been planted with
potatoes more quickly or at less expense, and a good crop of potatoes
could not have been raised on that poor land with less preparation. A
few years later I made another and smaller bed in the same way. The
results have been entirely satisfactory. I secured my object, and had
plenty of asparagus at slight cost, and have also sold and given away
large quantities. A bit of experience is often worth much more than
theory.

At the same time it is proper that some suggestions should follow this
brief record. The asparagus bed should be in well-drained soil; for
while the plant will grow on wet land, it will start late, and our aim
is to have it early.

Again, with asparagus as with nearly everything else, the deeper and
richer the soil, the larger and more luxuriant the crop. Listen to
Thompson, the great English gardener: "If the ground has been drained,
trenched, or made good to the depth of THREE feet, as directed for the
kitchen-garden generally [!], that depth will suffice for the growth of
asparagus." We should think so; yet I am fast reaching the conclusion
that under most circumstances it would in the end repay us to secure
that depth of rich soil throughout our gardens, not only for asparagus,
but for everything else. Few of the hasty, slipshod gardeners of
America have any idea of the results secured by extending root
pasturage to the depth of three feet instead of six or seven inches;
soil thus prepared would defy flood and drought, and everything planted
therein would attain almost perfection, asparagus included. But who has
not seen little gardens by the roadside in which all the esculents
seemed growing together much as they would be blended in the pot
thereafter? Yet from such patches, half snatched from barrenness, many
a hearty, wholesome dinner results. Let us have a garden at once, then
improve it indefinitely.

I will give in brief just what is essential to secure a good and
lasting asparagus bed. We can if we choose grow our own plants, and
thus be sure of good ones. The seed can be sown in late October or
EARLY spring on light, rich soil in rows eighteen inches apart. An
ounce of seed will sow fifty feet of drill. If the soil is light, cover
the seed one inch deep; if heavy, half an inch; pack the ground
lightly, and cover the drill with a good dusting of that fine compost
we spoke of, or any fine manure. This gives the young plants a good
send-off. By the use of the hoe and hand-weeding keep them scrupulously
clean during the growing season, and when the tops are killed by frost
mow them off. I should advise sowing two or three seeds to the inch,
and then when the plants are three inches high, thinning them out so
that they stand four inches apart. You thus insure almost the certainty
of good strong plants by autumn; for plants raised as directed are
ready to be set out after one season's growth, and by most gardeners
are preferred.

In most instances good plants can be bought for a small sum from
nurserymen, who usually offer for sale those that are two years old.
Strong one-year-olds are just as good, but under ordinary culture are
rarely large enough until two years of age. I would not set out
three-year-old plants, for they are apt to be stunted and enfeebled.
You can easily calculate how many plants you require by remembering
that the rows are to be three feet apart, and the plants one foot apart
in the row.

Now, whether you have raised the plants yourself, or have bought them,
you are ready to put them where they will grow, and yield to the end of
your life probably. Again I substantiate my position by quoting from
the well-known gardener and writer, Mr. Joseph Harris: "The old
directions for planting an asparagus bed were well calculated to deter
any one from making the attempt. I can recollect the first I made. The
labor and manure must have cost at the rate of a thousand dollars an
acre, and, after all was done, no better results were obtained than we
now secure at one-tenth of the expense."

If the ground selected for the bed is a well-drained sandy loam, is
clean, free from sod, roots, stones, etc., I would give it a
top-dressing of six inches of good barnyard manure, which by trenching
or plowing I would thoroughly mix with the soil to the depth of at
least two feet. If the ground is not free from stones, roots, and sod,
I should put on the manure, as directed, in the autumn, and begin on
one side of the prospective bed and trench it all over, mingling the
fertilizer through the soil. The trencher can throw out on the surface
back of him every stone, root, and weed, so that by the time he is
through there is a sufficient space of ground amply prepared.

On all soils except a wet, heavy clay I prefer autumn planting. During
the latter part of October or early November put in the plants as
explained above, or else make a straight trench that will give room for
the spreading of the roots, and leave the crowns between three and four
inches below the surface. Then level the ground, and cover the row with
a light mulch of stable-manure as you would strawberries. If more
convenient to set out the plants in spring, do so as soon as the ground
is dry enough to crumble freely when worked. In the spring rake off the
mulch, and as early as possible fork the ground over lightly, taking
pains not to touch or wound the crowns of the plants. The young,
slender shoots will soon appear, and slender enough they will be at
first. Keep them free of weeds and let them grow uncut all through the
first year; mow off the tops in late October, and cover the entire bed
with three or four inches of coarse barnyard manure. In spring rake off
the coarsest of this mulch, from which the rains and melting snows have
been carrying down richness, dig the bed over lightly once (never
wounding the roots or crowns of the plants), and then sow salt over the
bed till it is barely white. Let the tops grow naturally and uncut the
second year, and merely keep clean. Take precisely the same action
again in the autumn and the following spring. During the latter part of
April and May a few of the strongest shoots may be cut for the table.
This should be done with a sharp knife a little below the surface, so
that the soil may heal the wound, and carefully, lest other heads just
beneath the surface be clipped prematurely. Cut from the bed very
sparingly, however, the third year, and let vigorous foliage form
corresponding root-power. In the autumn of the third and the spring of
the fourth year the treatment is precisely the same. In the fourth
season, however, the shoots may be used freely to, say, about June 20,
after which the plants should be permitted to grow unchecked till fall,
in order to maintain and increase the root-power. Every year thereafter
there should be an abundant top-dressing of manure in the fall, and a
careful digging of the ground in the early spring. Light, sandy soil,
clear of stones, is well adapted to asparagus, but should be treated on
the principles already indicated in this work. There should be no
attempt, by trenching, to render a porous subsoil more leaky. It is
useless to give the bed a thorough initial enriching. Put on a generous
top-dressing every autumn and leave the rains to do their work, and
good crops will result.

If, on the contrary, a cold, heavy clay must be dealt with, every
effort should be made to ameliorate it. Work in a large quantity of
sand at first, if possible; employ manures from the horse-stable, or
other light and exciting fertilizers, and there will be no failure.

In regard to the use of salt, Mr. Harris writes: "It is a popular
notion that common salt is exceedingly beneficial to asparagus. I do
not know that there is any positive proof of this, but, at any rate,
salt will do no harm, even if applied thick enough to kill many of our
common weeds. Salt is usually sown broadcast, at the rate of ten
bushels to the acre."

Until recently I have grown asparagus without salt. Hereafter I shall
employ it in sufficient degree to kill all weeds except the strongest.
I shall sow it every spring after the bed is dug until the ground is as
white as if a flurry of snow had passed over it. I think salt is a good
manure for asparagus, and many other things. At any rate, we secure a
great advantage in keeping our beds free of weeds.

I have written thus fully of asparagus because when a man makes a bed
as directed he makes it for a lifetime. He can scarcely find another
investment that will yield a larger return. We have asparagus on our
table every day, from the middle of April to July 1; and the annual
care of the crop is far less than that of a cabbage-patch. I do not
advise severe cutting, however, after the middle of June, for this
reason: it is well known that the most pestiferous perennial weed can
be killed utterly if never allowed to make foliage. As foliage depends
upon the root, so the root depends on foliage. The roots of asparagus
may therefore be greatly enfeebled by too severe and long-continued
cutting. Avarice always overreaches itself.

In some localities the asparagus beetle destroys whole plantations.
Thompson, the English authority, says: "The larvae, beetles, and eggs
are found from June to the end of September. Picking off the larvae and
beetles, or shaking them into receptacles, appears to be the only
remedy."

Peter Henderson, in his valuable book, "Gardening for Profit," figures
this insect and its larvae accurately, and says: "Whenever the eggs or
larvae appear, cut and burn the plants as long as any traces of the
insect are seen. This must be done if it destroys every vestige of
vegetation." He and other authorities speak of the advantage of cooping
a hen and chickens in the bed. Most emphatically would I recommend this
latter course, for I have tried it with various vegetables. Active
broods of little chickens here and there in the garden are the best of
insecticides, and pay for themselves twice over in this service alone.

We will next speak of the ONION, because it is so hardy that the
earlier it is planted in spring the better. Indeed, I have often, with
great advantage, sown the seed on light soils the first of September,
and wintered over the young plants in the open ground. Nature evidently
intended the onion for humanity in general, for she has endowed the
plant with the power to flourish from the tropics to the coldest limit
of the temperate zone.

While onions are grown in all sorts of careless ways, like other
vegetables, it is by far the best plan to select a space for an annual
and permanent bed, just as we do for asparagus. Unlike most other
crops, the onion does not require change of ground, but usually does
better on the same soil for an indefinite number of years. Therefore I
would advise that upon the Home Acre the onion, like the asparagus bed,
should be made with a view to permanence.

Not much success can be hoped for on rough, poor land. The onion, like
the asparagus bed, should be made and maintained with some care. If
possible, select a light, well-drained, but not dry plot. Make the soil
rich, deep, mellow, to the depth of twenty inches, taking out all
stones, roots, etc.; cover the land with at least six inches of good
strong barnyard manure. This should be done in the autumn. Sow the
ground white with salt, as in the case of asparagus, and then mingle
these fertilizers thoroughly with the soil, by forking or plowing it at
once, leaving the surface as rough as possible, so that the frost can
penetrate deeply. Just as soon as the ground is dry enough to work in
the spring, fork or plow again, breaking every lump and raking all
smooth, so that the surface is as fine as the soil in a hot-bed. You
cannot hope for much in heavy, lumpy ground. Sow at least three seeds
to the inch in a shallow drill one inch deep, and spat the earth firmly
over the seed with the back of a spade or with your hand. In subsequent
culture little more is required than keeping the MERE SURFACE stirred
with a hoe, and the rows clean of weeds. Onions are not benefited by
deep stirring of the soil, but the surface, from the start, should be
kept clean and scarified an inch or two deep between the rows during
the growing season. I prefer to have my onions growing at the rate of
one or two to every inch of row, for I do not like large bulbs. I think
that moderate-sized onions are better for the table. Those who value
largeness should thin out the plants to three or four inches apart; but
even in the market there is less demand for large, coarse onions. When
the tops begin to fall over from their own weight, in August or
September, leave them to mature and ripen naturally. When the tops
begin to dry up, pull them from the soil, let them dry thoroughly in
the sun, and then spread them thinly in a dry loft till there is danger
of their freezing. Even there they will keep better, if covered deeply
with straw, hay, etc., than in a damp cellar. Wherever the air is damp
and a little too warm, onions will speedily start to grow again, and
soon become worthless. After the crop has been taken, the ground should
be treated as at first--thoroughly enriched and pulverized late in
autumn, and left to lie in a rough state during the winter, then
prepared for planting as early as possible. I prefer March sowing of
the seed to April, and April, by far, to May. In England they try to
plant in February. Indeed, as I have said, I have had excellent success
by sowing the seed early in September on light soils, and letting the
plants grow during all the mild days of fall, winter, and early spring.
By this course we have onions fit for the table and market the
following May. In this latitude they need the protection of a little
coarse litter from December 1 to about the middle of March. Only the
very severest frost injures them. Most of us have seen onions,
overlooked in the fall gathering, growing vigorously as soon as the
thaws began in spring. This fact contains all the hint we need in
wintering over the vegetable in the open ground. If the seed is sown
late in September, the plants do not usually acquire sufficient
strength in this latitude to resist the frost. It is necessary,
therefore, to secure our main crop by very early spring sowings, and it
may be said here that after the second thorough pulverization of the
soil in spring, the ground will be in such good condition that, if well
enriched and stirred late in autumn, it will only need levelling down
and smoothing off before the spring sowing. Onions appear to do best on
a compact soil, if rich, deep, and clean. It is the SURFACE merely that
needs to be stirred lightly and frequently.

If young green onions with thin, succulent tops are desired very early
in spring, it will be an interesting experiment to sow the seed the
latter part of August or early in September. Another method is to leave
a row of onions in the garden where they ripened. When the autumn rains
begin, they will start to grow again. The winter will not harm them,
and even in April there will be a strong growth of green tops. The seed
stalk should be picked off as soon as it appears in spring, or else the
whole strength will speedily go to the formation of seed.

It should be remembered that good onions can not be produced very far
to the south by sowing the small gunpowder-like seed. In our own and
especially in warmer climates a great advantage is secured by employing
what are known as "onion sets." These are produced by sowing the
ordinary black seed very thickly on light poor land. Being much
crowded, and not having much nutriment, the seed develop into little
onions from the size of a pea to that of a walnut, the smaller the
better, if they are solid and plump. These, pressed or sunk, about
three inches apart, into rich garden soil about an inch deep, just as
soon as the frost is out, make fine bulbs by the middle of June. For
instance, we had in our garden plenty of onions three inches in
diameter from these little sets, while the seed, sown at the same time,
will not yield good bulbs before August. There is but little need of
raising these sets, for it is rather difficult to keep them in good
condition over the winter. Any seedsman will furnish them, and they are
usually on sale at country stores. Three or four quarts, if in good
condition, will supply a family abundantly, and leave many to be used
dry during the autumn. Insist on plump little bulbs. If you plant them
early, as you should, you will be more apt to get good sets. Many
neglect the planting till the sets are half dried up, or so badly
sprouted as to be wellnigh worthless. They usually come in the form of
white and yellow sets, and I plant an equal number of each.

The chief insect enemies are onion maggots, the larvae of the onion
fly. These bore through the outer leaf and down into the bulb, which
they soon destroy. I know of no remedy but to pull up the yellow and
sickly plants, and burn them and the pests together. The free use of
salt in the fall, and a light top-dressing of wood-ashes at the time of
planting, tend to subdue these insects; but the best course is
prevention by deeply cultivating and thoroughly enriching in the fall,
leaving the ground rough and uneven for the deep action of frost, and
by sowing the seed VERY early in spring. I have found that the insect
usually attacks late-sown and feeble plants. If the maggot were in my
garden, I should use the little sets only.

Some special manures have been employed in attaining the greatest
success with this vegetable. In England, pigeon-dung and the cleanings
of the pigsty are extensively employed. In this country the sweepings
of the hen-roost are generally recommended. It should be remembered
that all these are strong agents, and if brought in contact with the
roots of any vegetable while in a crude, undiluted state, burn like
fire, especially in our climate. What can be done in safety in England
will not answer under our vivid sun and in our frequent droughts. These
strong fertilizers could be doubled in value as well as bulk by being
composted with sods, leaves, etc., and then, after having been mixed,
allowed to decay thoroughly. Then the compost can be used with great
advantage as a top-dressing directly over the drills when either sets
or seeds are planted. The spring rains will carry the richness from the
surface to the roots, and insure a very vigorous growth. When the
compost named in the early part of this paper is used, I sow it thickly
IN the drill, draw a pointed hoe through once more, to mingle the
fertilizer with the soil, and then forthwith sow the seeds or put in
the sets one inch deep; and the result is immediate and vigorous
growth. Wood-ashes and bone-dust are excellent fertilizers, and should
be sown on the surface on the row as soon as planted, and gradually
worked in by weeding and cultivation during the growing season. Manure
from the pigsty, wherein weeds, litter, sods, muck, etc., have been
thrown freely during the summer, may be spread broadcast over the onion
bed in the autumn, and worked in deeply, like the product of the
barnyard. The onion bed can scarcely be made too rich as long as the
manure is not applied in its crude, unfermented state at the time of
planting. Then, if the seed is put in very early, it grows too strongly
and quickly for insects to do much damage.

Varieties.--Thompson in his English work names nineteen varieties with
many synonyms; Henderson offers the seed of thirteen varieties;
Gregory, of seventeen kinds. There is no need of our being confused by
this latitude of choice. We find it in the great majority of fruits and
vegetables offered by nurserymen and seedsmen. Each of the old
varieties that have survived the test of years has certain good
qualities which make it valuable, especially in certain localities.
Many of the novelties in vegetables, as among fruits, will soon
disappear; a few will take their place among the standard sorts. In the
case of the kitchen, as well as in the fruit, garden, I shall give the
opinion of men who have a celebrity as wide as the continent for actual
experience, and modestly add occasionally some views of my own which
are the result of observation.

As a choice for the home-garden, Mr. Henderson recommends the following
varieties of onions: Extra Early Red, Yellow Globe Danvers, White
Portugal or Silver Skin, and Southport Yellow Globe. Mr. Joseph Harris,
the well-known and practical author: Yellow Danvers, Extra Early Large
Bed, and White Globe. Mr. J. J. H. Gregory: New Queen, Early Yellow
Acker, Yellow Danvers, Early Red Globe Danvers, Large Red Wethersfield.
They all recommend onion sets. The Queen onion is quite distinct. For
the home table, where earliness, as well as quality, size and quantity
is desired, I think the Queen deserves a place. It is admirably fitted
for pickling. I have tried all the varieties named, with good success,
and grown some of the largest kinds to six inches in diameter.




CHAPTER IX

THE KITCHEN-GARDEN (concluded)


In the last chapter I dwelt somewhat at length on two vegetables for
which thorough and enduring preparation is profitable. There is one
other very early garden product which requires our attention during the
first warm days of spring--rhubarb; sold in some instances under the
name of "wine-plant." Wine is made from the juicy stalks, but it is an
unwholesome beverage. The people call rhubarb "pie-plant;" and this
term suggests its best and most common use, although when cooked as if
it were a fruit, it is very grateful at a season when we begin to crave
the subacid in our food.

Its cultivation is very simple. Those who propose to produce it largely
for market will find it to their advantage to raise this plant from the
seed; but for the Home Acre enough plants can be procured, at a
moderate cost, from almost any nurseryman. In this instance, also,
thorough preparation of the soil is essential, for the rhubarb bed,
under good care, will last eight or ten years. A rich, deep, clean,
warm soil is the chief essential. It belongs to that class of
vegetables known as "gross feeders." During the first year, however, I
would apply the fertiliser directly to the hills or plants. These are
obtained by dividing the old roots, which may be cut to pieces downward
so as to leave a single bud or "eye" surmounting a long tapering
portion of root. Each division will make a new, vigorous plant, which
should be set out so that the bud or crown is three inches below the
surface in light soils, and two inches in heavy soils. The plants
should be four feet apart each way, and two or three shovelfuls of rich
compost worked into the soil where the plant is to stand. You cannot
make the ground too rich; only remember that in this, as in all other
instances, light, fermenting manures should not be brought into
immediate contact with the roots. Plant in either autumn or spring. In
this latitude and southward I should prefer autumn; northward, perhaps
spring is the best season. Keep the intervening ground clean and
mellow, and pull no stalks the first year, unless it be in the autumn
if the plants have become very strong. In the fall, when the foliage
has died down, cover the crowns with two or three shovelfuls of rich
manure--any kind will do in this instance--and work in a heavy
top-dressing all over the ground early in spring. Unless seed is
required, always cut down the seed-stalks as soon as they appear. The
best early variety is the Linnaeus. The Victoria is a little later, but
much larger, and is the kind that I have usually grown.

Radish-seed may be sown one inch deep as soon as the ground is dry
enough in spring, and if the vegetable is a favorite, the sowing may be
repeated every two weeks. A common error is to sow the seed too
thickly. A warm, RICH soil is all that is necessary to secure a crop.

What has been said about radishes applies equally to early turnips,
with the exception that the plants when three inches high should be
thinned so as to stand four inches apart. The ground for these
vegetables should be very rich, so as to secure a very rapid growth;
for otherwise they are attacked by a little white worm which soon
renders them unfit for use. Mr. Harris recommends the following
varieties of early radishes, and his selection coincides with my own
experience: Bound Scarlet Turnip, French Breakfast, Rose
(olive-shaped), Long Scarlet Short-top. Winter radishes: California
Mammoth White, and Chinese Rose. For spring sowing of turnips, Mr.
Henderson recommends Red-top Strap-leaf, and Early Flat Dutch. The
earlier they are sown the better.

Beets--a much more valuable vegetable--require similar treatment. The
ground should be clean, well pulverized, and very rich. I prefer to sow
the seed the first week in April, unless the soil is frozen, or very
cold and wet. The seed may be sown, however, at any time to the first
of July; but earliness is usually our chief aim. I sow two inches deep
and thickly, pressing the soil firmly over the seed. Let the rows be
about fifteen inches apart. Referring to the manure which had been left
to decay in a sheltered place until it became like fine dry powder, let
me say here that I have always found it of greater advantage to sow it
with the beet-seed and kindred vegetables. My method is to open the
drill along the garden-line with a sharp-pointed hoe, and scatter the
fertilizer in the drill until the soil is quite blackened by it; then
draw the pointed hoe through once more, to mingle the powdery manure
with the soil and to make the drill of an even depth; then sow the seed
at once. This thoroughly decayed stable-manure has become the best of
plant-food; it warms the ground, and carries the germinating seed and
young plants with vigor through the first cold, wet weeks.

In the home garden there are several reasons for sowing beet-seed
thickly. Unfavorable weather and insects will be less apt to cause a
thin, broken stand of plants. In order to produce good roots, however,
the plants should be thinned out so as to stand eventually three or
four inches apart I do not advise very large, coarse roots for the
table. For home use I think only three varieties are essential. The
Egyptian Turnip Beet is the best very early variety, and can be planted
closely, as it has a small top; the Bassano is next in earliness, and
requires more room; the Early Blood Turnip is the best for a general
crop and winter use. The beet is a root which deteriorates rapidly from
age; I therefore advise that the seed of the winter supply be sown the
last of June or first of July in our latitude.

Parsnips should be sown at the same time with early beets and in the
same way, with the exception that the seed should be covered only an
inch deep. I doubt whether there are any marked distinctions in
variety, and would advise that only the Long Smooth or Hollow-crowned
be sown.

The carrot is not quite so hardy as the parsnip, and the seed may be
sown a week or two later, or indeed at any time up to the middle of
June. Its culture and treatment are precisely like those of the
parsnip; but the roots should be gathered and stored before a severe
frost occurs. For home use a short row of the Early Horn will answer;
for the general crop, sow the Long Orange.

Vegetable-oyster, or salsify, is another root-crop which may be treated
precisely like the parsnip, and the seed sown at the same time. The
seed should be sown in a deep, rich, mellow soil, which is all the
better for being prepared in autumn. Plant, as early in April as
possible, in the same manner as described for beets, thin out to four
inches apart, and keep the soil clean and mellow throughout the entire
season; for this vegetable grows until the ground freezes. There is
only one variety.

The pea is another crop which may be put into the ground as soon as the
frost is out--the earlier the better, if the smooth, hardy varieties
are sown. There are so many varieties that the novice to-day may well
be excused for perplexity in choice. Thompson, the English authority,
gives forty kinds, and one hundred and forty-eight synonyms. Mr.
Gregory recommends the American Wonder, Bliss's Abundance, Bliss's
Ever-bearing, McLean's Advancer, Yorkshire Hero, Stratagem, and
Champion of England. Mr. Henderson's list includes Henderson's First of
All, American Wonder, Bliss's Abundance, Champion of England, and Pride
of the Market. Mr. Harris in his catalogue marks first and best,
American Wonder, and also says, "For the main crop there is nothing
better than the Champion of England." My own experience would lead me
to plant the Tom Thumb either just before the ground froze in the fall,
or as early in March as possible. It is almost perfectly hardy, and
gives me the earliest picking. I should also plant Henderson's First of
All as soon as the frost was out, on a warm, well-drained soil. For
second crops, American Wonder and Premium Gem; and for the main and
most satisfactory crop of all, Champion of England. The Champion
requires brush as a support, for it grows from four to six feet high;
but it is well worth the trouble. I plant the other kinds named because
they are much earlier, and so dwarf as to need no brush; they are also
productive, and excellent in quality if not left to grow too old. For
the dwarf kinds the soil cannot be too rich, and the warmer the ground
and exposure, the earlier the crop. For the tall late sorts the soil
may easily be made too fertile; they should also be planted in cooler,
moister, and heavier ground. In the case of the dwarfs I put a
fertilizer in with the seed as I have already explained. Cover the
dwarfs about two and a half inches deep, and the tall late sorts from
three to four inches according to the nature of the soil. Plant the
Champion of England every ten days until the middle of June, and thus
secure a succession of the best of all.

We all know how numerous have been the varieties of potato introduced
into this country of late years--many kinds sent out at first at the
rate of one or more dollars per pound. I amuse myself by trying several
of these novelties (after they become cheap) every year, and one season
raised very early crops of excellent potatoes from the Vanguard and
Pearl of Savoy. The Early Rose and Early Vermont have long been
favorites. They resemble each other very closely. I have had excellent
success with the Beauty of Hebron. It is a good plan to learn what
varieties succeed well in our own neighborhood, and then to plant
chiefly of such kinds; we may then add to our zest by trying a few
novelties.

Not only much reading on the subject, but also my own observation, and
the general law that "like produces like," lead me to indorse the
practice of planting large tubers cut into sets containing one or more
eyes, or buds. The eye of a potato is a bud from which the plant grows;
and the stronger backing it has, the stronger and more able is the
plant to evolve new fine tubers through the action of its roots and
foliage. A small potato has many immature buds, which as a rule produce
feeble plants.

The potato will grow on almost any soil; but a dry, rich, sandy loam
gives the best, if not the largest, yield. I do not think the potato
can be planted too early after the ground is fit to work. One spring I
was able to get in several rows the 15th of March, and I never had a
finer yield. I observe that Mr. Harris strongly indorses this plan.

Nearly every one has his system of planting. There is no necessity for
explaining these methods. I will briefly give mine, for what it is
worth. I prefer warm, well-drained soils. Plow deeply in autumn, also
in spring; harrow and pulverize the ground as completely as possible;
then open the furrows with the same heavy plow, sinking it to the beam,
and going twice in the furrow. This, of course, would make too deep a
trench in which to place the sets, but the soil has been deepened and
pulverized at least fourteen inches. A man next goes along with a cart
or barrow of well-decayed compost (not very raw manure), which is
scattered freely in the deep furrows; then through these a corn-plow is
run, to mingle the fertilizer with the soil. By this course the furrows
are partially filled with loose, friable soil and manure, and they
average four or five inches in depth. The sets are planted at once
eight inches apart, the eye turned upward, and the cut part down. The
sets are then covered with three or four inches of fine soil, not with
sods and stones. When the plants are two or three inches high, they
receive their first hoeing, which merely levels the ground evenly. The
next cultivation is performed by both corn-plow and hoe. In the final
working I do not permit a sharp-slanting slope from the plants
downward, so that the rain is kept from reaching the roots. There is a
broad hilling up, so as to have a slope inward toward the plants, as
well as away from them. This method, with the deep, loosened soil
beneath the plants, secures against drought, while the decayed
fertilizers give a strong and immediate growth.

Of course we have to fight the potato, or Colorado, beetle during the
growing season. This we do with Paris green applied in liquid form, a
heaping teaspoonful to a pail of water.

In taking up and storing potatoes a very common error is fallen into.
Sometimes even growing tubers are so exposed to sun and light that they
become green. In this condition they are not only worthless, but
poisonous. If long exposed to light after being dug, the solanine
principle, which exists chiefly in the stems and leaves, is developed
in the tubers. The more they are in the light, the less value they
possess, until they become worse than worthless. They should be dug, if
possible, on a dry day, picked up promptly and carried to a dry, cool,
DARK cellar. If stored on floors of outbuldings, the light should be
excluded. Potatoes that are long exposed to light before the shops of
dealers are injured. Barrels, etc., containing them should be covered;
if spread on the barn-floor, or in places which can not be darkened,
throw straw or some other litter over them.

There is no occasion to say much about lettuce. It is a vegetable which
any one can raise who will sow the seed a quarter of an inch deep. I
have sowed the seed in September, wintered the plants over in
cold-frames, and by giving a little heat, I had an abundance of heads
to sell in February and March. For ordinary home uses it is necessary
only to sow the seed on a warm, rich spot as soon as the frost is out,
and you will quickly have plenty of tender foliage. This we may begin
to thin out as soon as the plants are three or four inches high, until
a foot of space is left between the plants, which, if of a cabbage
variety, will speedily make a large, crisp head. To maintain a supply,
sowings can be made every two weeks till the middle of August. Hardy
plants, which may be set out like cabbages, are to be obtained in March
and April from nurserymen. Henderson recommends the following
varieties: Henderson's New York, Black-seeded Simpson, Salamander, and
All the Year Round. I would also add the Black-seeded Butter Lettuce.

We have now, as far as our space permits, treated of those vegetables
which should be planted in the home garden as early in spring as
possible. It is true the reader will think of other sorts, as cabbage,
cauliflower, spinach, etc. To the professional gardener these are
all-the-year-round vegetables. If the amateur becomes so interested in
his garden as to have cold-frames and hot-beds, he will learn from more
extended works how to manage these. He will winter over the cabbage and
kindred vegetables for his earliest supply, having first sown the seed
in September. I do not take the trouble to do this, and others need
not, unless it is a source of enjoyment to them. As soon as the ground
is fit to work in spring, I merely write to some trust-worthy dealer in
plants and obtain twenty-five very early cabbage, and twenty-five
second early, also a hundred early cauliflower. They cost little, and
are set out in half an hour as soon as the ground is fit to work in
spring. I usually purchase my tomato, late cabbage, and cauliflower,
celery and egg-plants, from the same sources. Cabbages and cauliflowers
should be set out in RICH warm soils, free from shade, as soon as the
frost is out. After that they need only frequent and clean culture and
vigilant watchfulness, or else many will fall victims to a dirty brown
worm which usually cuts the stem, and leaves the plant lying on the
ground. The worm can easily be found near the surface the moment it
begins its ravages, and the only remedy I know is to catch and kill it
at once. In this latitude winter cabbage is set out about the fourth of
July. I pinch off half the leaves before setting. Good seed, deep
plowing or spading, rich soil, and clean culture are usually the only
requisites for success. Experience and consultation of the books and
catalogues enable me to recommend the Jersey Wakefield for first early,
and Henderson's Summer Cabbage and Winningstadt as second early. As a
late root I ask for nothing better than Premium Flat Dutch. The Savoy
is the best flavored of the cabbage tribe. Henderson recommends the
Netted Savoy, which may be treated like other late cabbage.

The cauliflower is ranked among the chief delicacies of the garden, and
requires and repays far more attention than cabbage. Even the early
sorts should have a richer, moister soil than is required for very
early cabbage. I advise two plantings in spring, of first and second
early; I also advise that late varieties be set out on RICH ground the
last of June. As with cabbage, set out the plants from two and a half
to three feet apart, according to the size of the variety, from trial I
recommend Early Snowball, Half-early Paris, and Large Late Algiers.

Spinach thrives in a very rich, well-drained, fine, mellow soil. I
prefer a sunny slope; but this is not necessary. Sow the seed from the
first to the fifteenth of September, so as to give the plants time to
become half grown by winter. Cover the seeds--three to an inch--two
inches deep, and pack the ground well over them; let the rows be three
inches apart. When the plants are three inches high, thin out to three
inches apart, and keep the soil clean and mellow about them. Just
before hard freezing weather, scatter about three inches of straw, old
pea-vines, or some light litter over the whole bed. As soon as the days
begin to grow warm in spring, and hard frost ceases, rake this off. The
hardy vegetable begins to grow at once, and should be cut for use so as
to leave the plants finally six inches apart, for as fast as space is
given, the plants fill it up. By those who are fond of spinach it may
be sown in spring as soon as the frost is out. It quickly runs to seed
in hot weather, and thinnings of young beets may take its place where
space is limited. The Round or Summer is good for fall or spring
planting.

Those who need much instruction in regard to bush-beans should remain
in the city and raise cats in their paved back yards. We shall only
warn against planting too early--not before the last of April in our
region. It does not take much frost to destroy the plants, and if the
soil is cold and wet, the beans decay instead of coming up. If one has
a warm, sheltered slope, he may begin planting the middle of April. As
a rule, however, bush-beans may be planted from the first of May till
the middle of July, in order to keep up a succession. Cover the first
seed planted one inch deep; later plantings two inches deep. I think
that earliest Red Valentine, Black Wax or Butter, Golden Wax, and the
late Refugee are all the varieties needed for the garden.

The delicious pale Lima bean requires and deserves more attention. I
have always succeeded with it, and this has been my method: I take a
warm, rich, but not dry piece of ground, work it deeply early in
spring, again the first of May, so that the sun's rays may penetrate
and sweeten the ground. About the tenth of May I set the poles firmly
in the ground. Rough cedar-poles, with the stubs of the branches
extending a little, are the best. If smooth poles are used, I take a
hatchet, and beginning at the butt, I make shallow, slanting cuts
downward, so as to raise the bark a little. These slight raisings of
the bark or wood serve as supports to the clambering vines. After the
poles are in the ground I make a broad, flat hill of loose soil and a
little of the black powdery fertilizer. I then allow the sun to warm
and dry the hill a few days, and if the weather is fine and warm, I
plant the seed about the fifteenth, merely pressing the eye of the bean
downward one inch. If planted lower than this depth, they usually
decay. If it is warm and early, the seed may be planted by the fifth of
May. After planting, examine the seed often. If the beans are decaying
instead of coming up, plant over again, and repeat this process until
there are three or four strong plants within three or four inches of
each pole. Let the hills be five feet apart each way, hoe often, and do
not tolerate a weed. The Long White Lima and Dreer's Improved Lima are
the only sorts needed.

The Indians in their succotash taught us long ago to associate corn
with beans, and they hit upon a dish not surpassed by modern invention.
This delicious vegetable is as easily raised as its "hail-fellow well
met," the bean. We have only to plant it at the same time in hills from
three to four feet apart, and cover the seed two inches deep. I have
used the powdery fertilizers and wood-ashes in the hill to great
advantage, first mingling these ingredients well with the soil. We make
it a point to have sweet-corn for the table from July 1 until the
stalks are killed by frost in October. This is easily managed by
planting different varieties, and continuing to plant till well into
June. Mr. Gregory writes: "For a succession of corn for family use, to
be planted at the same time, I would recommend Marblehead Early,
Pratt's, Crosley's, Moore's, Stowell's Evergreen, and Egyptian Sweet."
Mr. Harris names with praise the Minnesota as the best earliest, and
Hickox Improved as an exceedingly large and late variety. Mr.
Henderson's list is Henderson Sugar, Hickox Improved, Egyptian, and
Stowell's Evergreen. Let me add Burr's Mammoth and Squantum Sugar--a
variety in great favor with the Squantum Club, and used by them in
their famous clam-bakes.

The cucumber, if grown in the home garden and used fresh, is not in
league with the undertaker. The seed may be planted early in May, and
there are many ways of forcing and hastening the yield. I have had
cucumbers very early in an ordinary hotbed. Outdoors, I make hills in
warm soil the first of May, mixing a little of my favorite fertilizer
with the soil. After leaving the hill for a day or two to become warm
in the sun, I sow the seed in a straight line for fifteen inches, so
that the hoe can approach them closely. The seed is covered an inch
deep, and the soil patted down firmly. It is possible that a cold storm
or that insects may make partial planting over necessary; if so, this
is done promptly. I put twenty seeds in the hill, to insure against
loss. For a succession or long-continued crop, plant a few hills in
rich moist land about the last of May. The young plants always run a
gauntlet of insects, and a little striped bug is usually their most
deadly enemy. These bugs often appear to come suddenly in swarms, and
devour everything before you are aware of their presence. With great
vigilance they may be kept off by hand, for their stay is brief. I
would advise one trial of a solution of white hellebore, a
tablespoonful to a pail of water. Paris green--in solution, of
course--kills them; but unless it is very weak, it will kill or stunt
the plants also. My musk and watermelons were watered by too strong a
solution of Paris green this year, and they never recovered from it.
Perhaps the best preventive is to plant so much seed, and to plant over
so often, that although the insects do their worst, plenty of good
plants survive. This has usually been my method. When the striped bug
disappears, and the plants are four or five inches high, I thin out to
four plants in the hill. When they come into bearing, pick off all the
fruit fit for use, whether you want it or not. If many are allowed to
become yellow and go to seed, the growth and productiveness of the
vines are checked. The Early White Spine and Extra Long White Spine are
all the varieties needed for the table. For pickling purposes plant the
Green Prolific on moist rich land. The other varieties answer quite as
well, if picked before they are too large.

The cultivation of the squash is substantially the same as that of the
cucumber, and it has nearly the same enemies to contend with. Let the
hills of the bush sorts be four feet apart each way, and eight feet for
the running varieties. The seed is cheap, so use plenty, and plant over
from the first to the twenty-fifth of May, until you have three good
strong plants to the hill. Three are plenty, so thin out the plants,
when six or seven inches high, to this number, and keep the ground
clean and mellow. I usually raise my running squashes among the corn,
giving up one hill to them completely every seven or eight feet each
way. Early bush sorts: White Bush Scalloped, Yellow Bush Scalloped. The
Perfect Gem is good for both summer and winter, and should be planted
on rich soil, six feet apart each way. The Boston Marrow is one of the
best fall sorts; the Hubbard and Marblehead are the best winter
varieties.

When we come to plant musk-melons we must keep them well away from the
two above-named vegetables, or else their pollen will mix, producing
very disagreeable hybrids. A squash is very good in its way, and a
melon is much better; but if you grow them so near each other that they
become "'alf and 'alf," you may perhaps find pigs that will eat them.
The more completely the melon-patch is by itself, the better, and the
nearer the house the better; for while it is liable to all the insects
and diseases which attack the cucumber, it encounters, when the fruit
is mature, a more fatal enemy in the predatory small boy. Choose rich,
warm, but not dry ground for musk-melons, make the hills six feet apart
each way, and treat them like cucumbers, employing an abundance of
seed. As soon as the plants are ready to run, thin out so as to leave
only four to fruit. Henderson recommends Montreal Market, Hackensack,
and Netted Gem. Gregory: Netted Gem, Boston Pet, Bay View, Sill's
Hybrid, Casaba, and Ward's Nectar. He also advocates a remarkable
novelty known as the "Banana." Harris: Early Christiana and Montreal
Market.

Water-melons should be planted eight feet apart; but if one has not a
warm, sandy soil, I do not advise their culture. The time of planting
and management do not vary materially from those of the musk variety.
The following kinds will scarcely fail to give satisfaction where they
can be grown: Phinney's Early, Black Spanish, Mammoth Ironclad,
Mountain Sprout, Scaly Bark, and Cuban Queen.

The tomato has a curious history. Native of South America like the
potato, it is said to have been introduced into England as early as
1596. Many years elapsed before it was used as food, and the botanical
name given to it was significant of the estimation in which it was held
by our forefathers. It was called Lycopersicum--a compound term meaning
wolf and peach; indicating that, notwithstanding its beauty, it was
regarded as a sort of "Dead Sea fruit." The Italians first dared to use
it freely; the French followed; and after eying it askance as a novelty
for unknown years, John Bull ventured to taste, and having survived,
began to eat with increasing gusto. To our grandmothers in this land
the ruby fruit was given as "love-apples," which, adorning quaint old
bureaus, were devoured by dreamy eyes long before canning factories
were within the ken of even a Yankee's vision. Now, tomatoes vie with
the potato as a general article of food, and one can scarcely visit a
quarter of the globe so remote but he will find that the tomato-can has
been there before him. Culture of the tomato is so easy that one year I
had bushels of the finest fruit from plants that grew here and there by
chance. Skill is required only in producing an early crop; and to
secure this end the earlier the plants are started in spring, the
better. Those who have glass will experience no difficulty whatever.
The seed may be sown in a greenhouse as early as January, and the
plants potted when three inches high, transferred to larger pots from
time to time as they grow, and by the middle of May put into the open
ground full of blossoms and immature fruit. Indeed, plants started
early in the fall will give in a greenhouse a good supply all winter.
Tomatoes also grow readily in hot-beds, cold-frames, or sunny windows.
We can usually buy well-forwarded plants from those who raise them for
sale. If these are set out early in May on a sunny slope, they mature
rapidly, and give an early yield. The tomato is very sensitive to
frost, and should not be in the open ground before danger from it is
over. Throughout May we may find plants for sale everywhere. If we
desire to try distinct kinds with the least trouble, we can sow the
seed about May 1, and in our climate enjoy an abundant yield in
September, or before. In the cool, humid climate of England the tomato
is usually grown en espalier, like the peach, along sunny walls and
fences, receiving as careful a summer pruning as the grape-vine. With
us it is usually left to sprawl over the ground at will. By training
the vines over various kinds of supports, however, they may be made as
ornamental as they are useful. The ground on which they grow should be
only moderately fertile, or else there is too great a growth of vine at
the expense of fruit. This is especially true if we desire an early
yield, and in this case the warmest, driest soil is necessary.

But comparatively a few years ago the tomato consisted of little more
than a rind, with seeds in the hollow centre. Now, the only varieties
worth raising cut as solid as a mellow pear. The following is Gregory's
list of varieties: Livingston's Beauty, Alpha, Acme, Canada Victor,
Arlington, General Grant. I will add Trophy and Mikado. If a yellow
variety is desired, try Golden Trophy.

If the tomato needs warm weather in which to thrive, the egg-plant
requires that both days and nights should be hot. It is an East
Indiaman, and demands curry in the way of temperature before it loses
its feeble yellow aspect and takes on the dark green of vigorous
health. My method is simply this: I purchase strong potted plants
between the twentieth of May and the first of June, and set them out in
a rich, warm soil. A dozen well-grown plants will supply a large family
with egg-fruit. Of course one can start the young plants themselves, as
in the case of tomatoes; but it should be remembered that they are much
more tender and difficult to raise than is the tomato. Plants from seed
sown in the open ground would not mature in our latitude, as a rule.
The best plan is to have the number you need grown for you by those who
make it their business. Eggplants are choice morsels for the
potato-beetle, and they must be watched vigilantly if we would save
them. There is no better variety than the New York Improved.

The pepper is another hot-blooded vegetable that shivers at the
suggestion of frost. It is fitting that it should be a native of India.
Its treatment is usually the same as that of the egg-plant. It matures
more rapidly, however, and the seed can be sown about the middle of
May, half an inch deep, in rows fifteen inches apart. The soil should
be rich and warm. When the plants are well up, they should be thinned
so that they will stand a foot apart in the row. The usual course,
however, is to set out plants which have been started under glass,
after all danger from frost is over. Henderson recommends New Sweet
Spanish and Golden Dawn, The Large Bell is a popular sort, and Cherry
Red very ornamental.

From the okra is made the famous gumbo soup, which ever calls to vision
a colored aunty presiding over the mysteries of a Southern dinner. If
Aunt Dinah, so well known to us from the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
could have left her receipt for this compound, her fame might have
lasted as long as that of Mrs. Stowe. The vegetable furnishing this
glutinous, nutritious, and wholesome ingredient is as easily raised as
any product of the garden. We have only to sow the seed, from the first
to the tenth of May, two inches deep, and let the plants stand from two
to three feet apart each way, in order to have an abundant supply. The
new Dwarf Prolific is about the best variety.

Fall turnips are so easily grown that they require but few words. They
are valuable vegetables for utilizing space in the garden after early
crops, as peas, beans, potatoes, etc., are removed. The seed of
ruta-baga, or Swedish turnips, should be planted earliest--from the
twentieth of June to the tenth of July in our latitude. This turnip
should be sown in drills two feet apart, and the plants thinned to
eight inches from one another. It is very hardy, and the roots are
close-grained, solid, and equally good for the table and the family
cow. The Yellow Aberdeen is another excellent variety, which may be
sown EARLY in July, and treated much the same as the foregoing. The
Yellow Stone can be sown on good ground until the fifteenth of July in
any good garden soil, and the plants thinned to six inches apart. It is
perhaps the most satisfactory of all the turnip tribe both for table
use and stock. The Bed-top Strap-leaf may be sown anywhere until the
tenth of August. It is a general custom, in the middle of July, to
scatter some seed of this hardy variety among the corn: hoe it in
lightly, and there is usually a good crop. Every vacant spot may be
utilized by incurring only the slight cost of the seed and the sowing.
It may be well, perhaps, to remember the advice of the old farmer to
his son. He said, "Stub your toe and spill half the seed before sowing
it; for scattered broadcast it is usually much too thick." If this
proves true, thin out the plants rigorously. This turnip is good for
table and stock as long as it is solid and crisp; but it grows pithy
toward spring. There are other kinds well worth a trial.

Perhaps no vegetable is more generally appreciated than celery. Like
asparagus, it was once, and is still by some, regarded as a luxury
requiring too much skill and labor for the ordinary gardener. This is a
mistake. Few vegetables in my garden repay so amply the cost of
production. One can raise turnips as a fall crop much easier, it is
true; but turnips are not celery, any more than brass is gold. Think of
enjoying this delicious vegetable daily from October till April! When
cooked, and served on toast with drawn butter sauce, it is quite
ambrosial. In every garden evolved beyond the cabbage and potato phase
a goodly space of the best soil should be reserved for celery, since it
can be set out from the first to the twentieth of July in our latitude;
it can be grown as the most valuable of the second crops, reoccupying
space made vacant by early crops. I find it much easier to buy my
plants, when ready for them, than to raise them. In every town there
are those who grow them in very large quantities, and, if properly
packed, quickly transported, and promptly set out in the evening
following their reception, and watered abundantly, they rarely fail.

There are decided advantages, however, in raising our own plants,
especially if midsummer should prove dry and hot, or the plants must be
long in transit. When they are growing in our own garden, they can be
moved with very slight check to their growth. In starting the seed
there is no necessity for hot-bed or cold-frame. It may be put in the
ground the first week of April, and the best plants are thus secured.
Much is gained by preparing a warm but not dry plot of ground in
autumn, making it very rich with short, half-decayed stable-manure.
This preparation should be begun as soon as possible after the soaking
September rains. Having thoroughly incorporated and mixed evenly in the
soil an abundance of the manure described, leave the ground untouched
for three weeks. The warm fertilizer will cause great numbers of
weed-seeds to germinate. When these thrifty pests are a few inches
high, dig them under and bring up the bottom soil. The warmth and light
will immediately start a new and vigorous growth of weeds, which in
turn should be dug under. If the celery seed bed be made early enough,
this process can be repeated several times before winter--the oftener
the better; for by it the great majority of weed-seeds will be made to
germinate, and thus are destroyed. The ground also becomes exceedingly
rich, mellow, and fine--an essential condition for celery seed, which
is very small, and germinates slowly. This thorough preparation does
not involve much labor, for the seed-bed is small, and nothing more is
required in spring but to rake the ground smooth and fine as soon as
the frost is out. The soil has already been made mellow, and certainly
nothing is gained by turning up the cold earth in the bottom of the
bed. Sow the seed at once on the sunwarmed surface. The rows should be
nine inches apart, and about twelve seeds sown to every inch of row.
The drills should be scarcely an eighth of an inch deep. Indeed, a firm
patting with the back of a spade would give covering enough. Since
celery germinates so slowly, it is well to drop a lettuce-seed every
few inches, to indicate clearly just where the rows are. Then the
ground between the rows can be hoed lightly as soon as the weeds start,
also after heavy rains, so as to admit the vivifying sun-rays and air.
Of course when the celery plants are clearly outlined, the lettuce
should be pulled out.

If the bed is made in spring, perform the work as early as possible,
making the bed very rich, mellow, and fine. Coarse manures, cold, poor,
lumpy soil, leave scarcely a ghost of a chance for success. The plants
should be thinned to two inches from one another, and when five inches
high, shear them back to three inches. When they have made another good
growth, shear them back again. The plants are thus made stocky. In our
latitude I try to set out celery, whether raised or bought, between the
twenty-fifth of June and the fifteenth of July. This latitude enables
us to avoid a spell of hot, dry weather.

There are two distinct classes of celery--the tall-growing sorts, and
the dwarf varieties. A few years ago the former class was grown
generally; trenches were dug, and their bottoms well enriched to
receive the plants. Now the dwarf kinds are proving their superiority,
by yielding a larger amount of crisp, tender heart than is found
between long coarse stalks of the tall sorts. Dwarf celery requires
less labor also, for it can be set on the surface and much closer
together, the rows three feet apart, and the plants six inches in the
row. Dig all the ground thoroughly, then, beginning on one side of the
plot, stretch a line along it, and fork under a foot-wide strip of
three or four inches of compost, not raw manure. By this course the
soil where the row is to be is made very rich and mellow. Set out the
plants at once while the ground is fresh and moist. If the row is ten
feet long, you will want twenty plants; if fifteen, thirty plants; or
two plants to every foot of row. Having set out one row, move the line
forward three feet, and prepare and set out another row in precisely
the same manner. Continue this process until the plot selected is
occupied. If the plants have been grown in your own garden, much is
gained by SOAKING the ground round them in the evening, and removing
them to the rows in the cool of the morning. This abundant moisture
will cause the soil to cling to the roots if handled gently, and the
plants will scarcely know that they have been moved. When setting I
usually trim off the greater part of the foliage. When all the leaves
are left, the roots, not established, cannot keep pace with the
evaporation. Always keep the roots moist and unshrivelled, and the
heart intact, and the plants are safe. If no rain follows setting
immediately, water the plants thoroughly--don't be satisfied with a
mere sprinkling of the surface--and shade from the hot sun until the
plants start to grow. One of the chief requisites in putting out a
celery plant, and indeed almost any plant, is to press the soil FIRMLY
ROUND, AGAINST, AND OVER THE ROOTS. This excludes the air, and the new
rootlets form rapidly. Neither bury the heart nor leave any part of the
root exposed.

Do not be discouraged at the rather slow growth during the hot days of
July and early August. You have only to keep the ground clean and
mellow by frequent hoeings until the nights grow cooler and longer, and
rains thoroughly moisten the soil. About the middle of August the
plants should be thrifty and spreading, and now require the first
operation, which will make them crisp and white or golden for the
table. Gather up the stalks and foliage of each plant closely in the
left hand, and with the right draw up the earth round it. Let no soil
tumble in on the heart to soil or cause decay. Press the soil firmly,
so as to keep all the leaves in an upright position. Then with a hoe
draw up more soil, until the banking process is begun. During September
and October the plants will grow rapidly, and in order to blanch them
they must be earthed up from time to time, always keeping the stalks
close and compact, with no soil falling in on the developing part. By
the end of October the growth is practically made, and only the deep
green leaves rest on the high embankments. The celery now should be fit
for use, and time for winter storing is near. In our region it is not
safe to leave celery unprotected after the tenth of November, for
although it is a very hardy plant, it will not endure a frost which
produces a strong crust of frozen soil. I once lost a fine crop early
in November. The frost in one night penetrated the soil deeply, and
when it thawed out, the celery never revived. NEVER HANDLE CELERY WHEN
IT IS FROZEN. My method of preserving this vegetable for winter use is
simply this. During some mild, clear day in early November I have a
trench ten inches wide dug nearly as deep as the celery is tall. This
trench is dug on a warm dry slope, so that by no possibility can water
gather in it. Then the plants are taken up carefully and stored in the
trench, the roots on the bottom, the plants upright as they grew, and
pressed closely together so as to occupy all the space in the
excavation. The foliage rises a little above the surface, which is
earthed up about four inches, so that water will be shed on either
side. Still enough of the leaves are left in the light to permit all
the breathing necessary; for plants breathe as truly as we do. As long
as the weather keeps mild, this is all that is needed; but there is no
certainty now. A hard black frost may come any night. I advise that an
abundance of leaves or straw be gathered near. When a bleak November
day promises a black frost at night, scatter the leaves, etc., thickly
over the trenched celery, and do not take them off until the mercury
rises above freezing-point. If a warm spell sets in, expose the foliage
to the air again. But watch your treasure vigilantly. Winter is near,
and soon you must have enough covering over your trench to keep out the
frost--a foot or more of leaves, straw, or some clean litter. There is
nothing better than leaves, which cost only the gathering. From now
till April, when you want a head or more of celery, open the trench at
the lower end, and take out the crisp white or golden heads, and thank
the kindly Providence that planted a garden as the best place in which
to put man, and woman also.

GARNISHING AND POT HERBS

"There's fennel for you; there's rue for you." Strange and involuntary
is the law of association! I can never see the garnishing and seasoning
herbs of the garden without thinking of the mad words of distraught
Ophelia. I fancy, however, that we are all practical enough to remember
the savory soups and dishes rendered far more appetizing than they
could otherwise have been by these aromatic and pungent flavors. I will
mention only a few of the popular sorts.

The seeds of fennel may be sown in April about three-quarters of an
inch deep, and the plants thinned to fifteen inches apart. Cut off the
seed-stalks to increase the growth of foliage.

Parsley, like celery seed, germinates slowly, and is sometimes about a
month in making its appearance. The soil should therefore be made very
rich and fine, and the seed sown half an inch deep, as early in spring
as possible. When the plants are three inches high, thin them to eight
inches apart.

Sweet-basil may be sown in early May, and the plants thinned to one
foot apart. The seeds of sweet-marjoram are very minute, and must be
covered very thinly with soil finely pulverized; sow in April or May,
when the ground is in the best condition. Sage is easily raised from
seeds gown an inch deep the latter part of April; let the soil be warm
and rich; let the plants stand about one foot apart in the row. Thyme
and summer-savory require about the same treatment as sage. I find that
some of the mountain mints growing wild are quite as aromatic and
appetizing as many of these garden herbs.

THE END











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