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Book
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT
PLEASANT TALK
ABOUT
FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING.
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
NEW EDITION,
WITH ADDITIONAL MATTER FROM RECENT WRITINGS,
PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED.
NEW YORK: a
i BS PORD AND COMPANY
1874.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873,
BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Libranan of Congress, at Wasbingtom.
University Press: Wercu, Broriow, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGR.
PREPA TORY.
Tuer Pretice to the first edition of this volume, which
follows these few words, will give some idea of the book’s
origin. Much of the material is of ouly passing importance,
und is retained now rather from retrospective imterest. A
considerable addition has been made, however, consisting
of articles contributed to Mr. Bonner’s New York Ledger,
bearing upon rural affiirs, and also an unpublished address
upon The Apple. This was delivered at Tona Island, on
a fiir summer day, when ladies and gentlemen, several
score,—editors, pomologists, singers, preachers, poets, and
inventors,—gathered under Dr. ©. W. Grant’s hospitable
trees,—for the house was too small to hold them,—to eat
apples and pears, to discuss grapes solid and liquid, and to
listen to the venerable poet, Mr. Bryant, to Horace Greeley,
to Charles Downing, and to notable songsters, whose war-
bles put the birds to envious silence,—at any rate, so the
compliments ran at the time.
The address had better luck at Iona than its great subject
did in Paradise ; though it will never give rise to such a
literature of results.
H. W. BEECHER.
Brooktyn, February, 1874.
ait
aie
PR ALO
TO THE FIRST EHDITION.
No one of our readers will be half so curious to know
what this book contains as the author himself. For it is
more than twelve years since these pieces were begun, and
it is more than ten years since we have looked at them.
The publishers have taken the trouble to dig them out from
what we supposed to be their lasting burial-place, in the
columns of the Western Farmer and Gardener, and they
have gone through the press without our own revision.
It is now twenty years since we settled at Indianapolis, the
capital of Indiana, a place then of fowr, and now of twenty-
Jive thousand inhabitants. At that time, and for years
afterward, there was not, within our knowledge, any other
than political newspapers in the State—no educational
journals, no agricultural or family papers. The Indiana
Journal at length proposed to introduce an agricultural
department, the matter of which should every month
be printed, in magazine form, under the title, Indiana
Farmer and Gardener, which was afterward changed to
the more comprehensive title, Western Farmer and G'ardener.
Vi PREFATORY.
It may be of some service to the young, as showing how
valuable the fragments of time may become, if mention is
made of the way in which we became prepared to edit this
journal.
The continued taxation of daily preaching, extending
through months, and once through eighteen consecutive
months, without the exception of a single day, began to
wear upon the nerves, and made it necessary for us to seek
some relaxation. Accordingly we used, after each week-
night’s preaching, to drive the sermon out of our heads
by some alterative reading.
In the State Library were Loudon’s works—his encyclo-
pedias of Horticulture, of Agriculture, and of Architecture.
We fell upon them, and, for years, almost monopolized them.
In our little one-story cottage, after the day’s work was
done, we pored over these monuments of an almost incredi-
ble industry, and read, we suppose, not only every line, but
much of it many times over; until, at length, we had a
topographical knowledge of many of the fine English estates
quite as intimate, we dare say, as was possessed by many
of their truant owners. There was something exceedingly
pleasant, and is yet, in the studying over mere catalogues
of flowers, trees, fruits, etc.
A seedsman’s list, a nurseryman’s catalogue, are more
fascinating to us than any story. In this way, through
several years, we gradually accumulated materials and
became familiar with facts and principles, which paved the
way for our editorial labors. Lindley’s Horticulture and
Gray’s Structural Botany came in as constant companions,
Aud when, at length, through a friend’s liberality, we be-
PREFATORY. Vil
came the recipients of the London Gardener’s Chronicle,
edited by Prof. Lindley, our treasures were inestimable.
Many hundred times have we lain awake for hours, unable
to throw off the excitement of preaching, and beguiling
the time with imaginary visits to the Chiswick Garden, to
the more than oriental magnificence of the Duke of Devon-
shire’s grounds at Chatsworth. We have had long discus-
sions, in that little bedroom at Indianapolis, with Van
Mons about pears, with Vibert about roses, with Thompson
and Knight of fruits and theories of vegetable life, and
with Loudon about everything under the heavens in the
horticultural world.
This employment of waste hours not only answered a
purpose of soothing excited nerves then, but brought us
into such relations to the material world, that, we speak
with entire moderation, when we say that all the estates
of the richest duke in England could not have given us
half the pleasure which we have derived from pastures,
waysides, and unoccupied prairies.
If, when the readers of this book shall have finished it,
they shall say, that these papers, well enough for the cir-
cumstances in which they originally appeared, have no such
merit as to justify their republication in a book form, we beg
leave to tell them that their judgment is not original. {t is
just what we thought ourselves! But Publishers are willful
and must be obeyed |
BROOKLYN, June 1, 1859.
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COON TENTS.
PaGE PAGE
Political Economy of the Apple........ 1) Country and City...................-. 133
A few Flowers easily raised............ 16| Lime upon Wheat............-..----- 134
Oe 21 | Culture of Hops...........-....06<.s< 136
A Letter from the Farm............... 25 | White Cloyer..-...2.< <<< 2... hess 138
The Cost of Flowers ....-............. an) OWI AGTH ope ea ee 139
DTD Ee SS gos Ss Se So 31 | Clean out your Cellars..........-....- 142
The Value of Robins.................. 34 | When is Haying over? .............:.. 144
DTC Pe ee een 39 | Laying down Land to Grass........... 145
Unveiled Nonsense. .............-..--- 43 Theory of Manure... .~.\<5<- «000-<=- 149
Natural Order of Flowers............-- 46 | Fodder for Cattle. ...............+2.-- 151
itt Sth sho RRS en Bs Sea ee 49 | The Science of Bad Butter ........... 153
DEPOSI So ee ene ee 51 | Cincinnati, the Queen City............ bi
SUPETE TOS Ae a5 Seepage sees oes 55 | Care of Animals in Winter........ 161, 243
Hens.... .. © PSA aR sag Detects Sek ae 58 | Winter Nights for Reading............ 163
2 Soe SSS ea ae eo fl) Meniigerntss sc seus ee eee eee 163
Gardening under Difficulties eee 63 Nail up your ae Be Nhs os bane usw ieeeete oe 165
RMI chet Gina ac shen sh, oxcau ss ena 66 | | Ashes and their Use ...........-s2.+.+ 168
PUCEP TUE Ta v2 2 2 RT Bee eee ae ee Seay eae 69 | Bard) Warmers oi /.chs San ls <nnaveeens oes 170
How to beautify Homes............... 72 | | Gypsum eee nates tye pe Ome ae 171
Birch and Aspen .-......-.<<-c020<.-s 75 | Acclimating a Plow...........-...-.-- 171
MA MEIN eee nS Sh en 78 | Scour your Plows bright.............. 173
TE a Os eee a 81 Plow till it is Dry and plow till it is Wet 174
Farewell to “‘ Summer Rest’... ........ 84) Siar the Soul she cee eee 175
TP ery $7 | Sabosoil Plowing. «.. <<. <<<509<225---= 176
Coo TASS Th Soe aaa ta een 88 | Fire-Blight and Winter Killing........ li7
Almanac for the Year. ................ ong Sites Palio Fos is ace aesben = 179
Educated Farmers.................... gg | “‘ Shut your Mouth ”. ...............- 181
An Acre of Words about Aker. ........ 101 Spring Work on the Farm............. 182
Farmer’s Library.............---...-- 105 Spring Work in the Garden....... 185, 292
OA Pe 107 | Fall Work in the Garden.............. 190
Agricultural Societies.>............... 108 | Guarding Cherry-trees from Cold.. ...- 191
Bhuftless Tricks. .........5..-2-s000--- Vii | Stunde Trees =... hes a2 192, 252
Mins Paltere® 2-2) Se 114 | A Plea for Health and Floriculture..... 195
Single-Crop Farming.................. 117 | Keeping Young Pigs in Winter........ 198
Improved Breeds of Hogs and Cattle... 119 Sweet Potatoes... ........-....+-.-.+- 199
Absorbent Qualities of Flour.......... 122 Management of Bottom Lands......... 199
Portrait of an Anti-Book Farmer...... 194 Cultivation of Wheat................. 202
Good Breeds of Cows...............-. 198 | Pleasures of Horticulture............. 214
Cutting and curing Grass ............. 131 | Practical Use of Leaves ............... 215
x CONTENTS.
PAGE Pace
Spring Work for Public-spirited Men... 218 | Wine and Horticulture ............... 346
Farmers and Farm Scenes in the West. 220) Do Varieties of Fruit run out? ........ 349
Ornamental Shrubs..............-+- = 224} StrayDerries «ules licislc + ss clay 353, 359, 364
(Gleajeieriey GSiont op coumacanodpttuoodoon 227 | Raspberries, Gooseberries, Currants.... 364
Pulling off Potato Blossoms........... 229 | Spring Work in the Orchard .......... 367
Blading and topping Corn............. 230 | Grapes and Grape Vines........... 372, 3873
WUE STEM a anbno saadodode sWassodene 231) Autumnal Management of Fruit-trees.. 374
ILOWin CE Seesdbaudooapocaont doadoneerc 237 | Pears grafted upon the Apple Stock.... 376
Geological Definitions. ................ 238 | Seedlings from Budded Peaches........ 378
Draining Wet Lands.............se000 240 | Care of Peach-trees...............+... 381
O dear! shall we ever be done Lying?.. 242| Renovating Peach-trees............... 382
PRE ME ATTLIE clojete Lets ele)arniiiele'sivis/siaterss fee 245 | An Apologue or Apple-logue........... 384
Corn and Millet for Fodder............ 245 | Select List of Apples.................. 885
Sanil Siiptelsy ong addossG0000 0b MoggDecE 246 | Origin of some Varieties of-Fruit...... 401
RI BALD Sie cic cosas s sisleiwis e.stelsje.ecre 248, 286!) Phe Quince joa nc aie «ole leis wioiieeeteteetets 403
LEGS S oan Gdd Seino oR Ga GH COcO SACO PDUSGA 250 | Cutting and keeping Grafts. .......... 404
TOUCHES: fot idstots fotale's. o's Favcialelsre atalticlgers 258) | Mrost! Blight.) sre ote) sie o'sle sfa'steleteteleteieta 405
Original Recipes........-.+-++++seeee 254 | Seedling Fruits..........02-sccceceess 407
Cooking Vegetables.....-..++-++-e+--- 256 | Time for Pruning.....0......c..c.ceees 410
Farmers, take a Hint...............-. 260 | Plums and their Enemies............. 413
Mixing Paint and laying it on......... 262)| Reot Grastingy.- +1. :: occ sete 417
Garden! WEEUS oh2cecislscecelecie eam ce's Sie 267/| Blightand: Insects.../..0)- ss osmeem ene 419
Niu Aa oeabomeanoodode Sscessaa sore 269'| Apples for ‘Efops:. . (-.1<csmeuss ioe seieee eles 424
Family Government ........-....0.-0¢ 270 | The Flower Garden....'......-.ceees-s 495
List of Flowers, Seeds, and Fruits...... 271) Preparation of Seed for Sowing........ 429
ARANDENUSECUS siscres sic iets ss Sele cece caine 274 | Sowing Flower Seeds—Transplanting... 481
Hammers? ARAeNs (-\.:.ic 1c nee eieineiee 277 | Parlor Plants and Flowers in Winter... 482
Barly Days of Spring ..............--.- 279 | Protecting Plants in Winter........... 439
FAITE DTAROWELBicis <.<ios/e\p crs oi siels +/are'slaieiaye 280} To preserve Dahlia Roots.............- 440
PAM NSMECLDE tiers cicisie's wi siclclslslevers eisieiersiels 281) | CAPER); 015 /s cia late sists eee eae eee 441
iiltume tof Celery ceri. ccciiele ars/cls Helm 282 | Watering Treés, etc........-.0---0s20e 443
Sun-Alower Seed.c 00... 0cceece sce 290'|\Labels'for Trées..« ... 5 .sics sie «tea tee 444
RACING ae OOM MANE 25:2) 215 «2.0 ciate cee a 294 | Transplanting Evergreens............. 445
Getting ready for Winter.............. 295 | Flowers, Ladies, and Angels........... 446
Bsculent Vegetables ..........0..-e0- 297 | Horticultural Curiosities........... .. 447
Mela Root OLOpsie sch 0s «01 ie cs sisi oc 3038)| Phe 'Gorn'Crop:*.’.>.. lessee ealeeieeeeeneens 451
Cultivation of Fruit-trees............. 804) Potato Crop: =< iat tieceeeee ne eee 460
A List of Choice Fruits........--.2.+. 316 | Potting Garden Plants for Winter Use.. 468
The Nursery Business............- ..-- 319! Mary Howitt’s Use of Flowers......... 469
The Breeding of Fruits............... 3822) What are Flowers good for?........... 470
Pruning Orchards...) -2- ees ocer 327 | The Blight in the Pear-tree ........... 471
Slitting the Bark of Trees............. 330 | Progress of Horticulture in Indiana.... 489
Downing’s Fruits of America.......... 832| Browne's Poultry Yard ............... 495
Letter from A. J. Downing............ 889 | Close Of the Year..ccccesecececesesses 497
Attention to Orchards .......+seeceees 344
LATE: PAPERS.
[-
POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE APPLE.
{In the Hudson River, nearly opposite Peekskill, and in
the very jaws of the “Race” (as the narrow passage through
the Highlands is called), there is a small, rocky island, by
the name of Iona. The name was borrowed from across
the water, by Dr. C. W. Grant’s father-in-law, who owned
this gem,—for gem it was and is for those who love rocks,
glades, fine old trees, and absolute seclusion.
But who ever would have thought of such a place for
vineyards? Yet, Iona became the very Jerusalem of grape-
vines. Dr. C. W. Grant, formerly of Newburgh, purchased
the island, and, adopting the then new grape,—the Dela-
ware,—commenced propagating it for commercial purposes.
It may be fairly said that no man in America ever gave to
grape culture a greater impulse than Dr. Grant. Abundant
sales at length brought in abundant revenues. But his ideas
expanded with his means, and outran them.
The island was to become another Paradise. Here the
magnolia was to be propagated in such numbers that every
man in America could have it in his yard, holding white
cups filled with perfume to his windows. The rhododen-
dron was to be sent forth to every farm. New grapes were
originated. Every year developed its own marvel. But
whether it was pear, Downing’s mulberry, grape, or orna-
mental tree, the good democratic heart of Dr. Grant intended
2 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
no narrower field than the continent. Men were to be
raised to a higher level by familiarity with better and better
grapes. The taste was to be refined. Every creature under
the western heavens was to sit under his own grape-vine,
and not under one alone, but a whole vineyard of them.
Health failed. Business got tangled. The kind doctor
sold out. He is gone from his vineyards. The island re-
mains. One of these days, in the hands of some one who
unites taste and thrift with abundant means, it will become
a marvel of beauty.
But it will hardly have a pleasanter day than when, in
1864, were gathered there two score or more of ladies and
gentlemen,—not a few of them famous in art, in literature, in
music, in pomology, and in sanguine plans of fruit culture,—
for a good time. Among the contributions to the general
amusement, I was appointed Orator to discourse upon The
Apple, and the address was to have been published, together
with minutes of the proceedings, other speeches, and various
interesting matter. But years passed on without progress
toward publication. What has become of other things I
know not, but this apple-talk has been fished up and saved.
I fear it will never again be as fresh or as powerful as in its
first estate. For there now hangs upon my cellar wall a
huge pan, lacking but a few inches of three feet in diameter,
upon which the ladies who had heard the address established
and perfected an apple-pie,—sent to me for New Year’s Day
of 1865,—of so rare a spirit that every one of the hundreds
who tasted it declared it to be as good as it was large.
Alas! the pan remains, and the poetry which came singing
its merits; but the pie——where is it? So, too, the island of
the Hudson stands secure; but where are the joyous people
that thronged it on that autumn day ?]
THE ADDRESS.
I am to discourse of the apple to an audience, many of
whom know much more about it than I do, and all of them
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 3)
full as much. It does not, on that account, follow that I
should not speak. What a terrible blow would fall upon all
professions if a teacher should be forbidden to speak upon
things of which he knew nothing, and to an audience who
knew more about them than he! One large part of the
duty of a teacher is to remind his hearers of how much they
know, and tempt them to a better use of their knowledge.
Instruction is one thing, and important in its place ; but the
inspiration of men to a good use of the things that they
already know is far more needed.
While the character of the ladies and gentlemen present
makes it proper for me to hide, with due modesty, my
knowledge of the apple in the department of culture, there
is what may be called the Political Economy of the Apple,
by which I mean the apple in its relation to domestic com-
fort and commerce ; and on that subject I think I can speak,
if not to edification, at least without fear of being tracked
and cornered.
The apple is, beyond all question, the American fruit. It
stands absolutely alone and unapproachable, grapes not-
withstanding. Originating in another hemisphere, neither
in its own country, nor in any other to which it has been
introduced, has it flourished as in America. It is conceded
in Europe that, for size, soundness, flavor, and brilliancy
of coloring, the American apple stands first,—a long way
first.
But it is American in another sense. This is a land in
which diffusion is the great law. This arises from our insti-
tutions, and from the character which they have imprinted
upon our people. In Europe, certain classes, having by their
intelligence and wealth and influence the power to attract
all things to themselves, set the current from the center
toward the surface. In America, the simple doctrines that
the common people are the true source of political power,
that the government is directly responsible to them, and
therefore that moral culture, intelligence, and training in
4 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
politics are indispensable to the common people, on whom
every state is to rest safely, have wrought out such results
that in all departments of justice and truth, as much as in
politics, there is a tendency toward the popularizing of every-
thing, and learning, or art, or any department of culture, is
made to feel the need of popularity ; a word which is very
much despised by classicists, but which may be used in a
sense so large as to make it respectable again. Things that
reach after the universal, that include in them all men in
their better and nobler nature, are in a proper sense pop-
ular ; and in this country, amusement and refinement and
wealth itself, first or last, are obliged to do homage to the
common people, and so to be popular. Nor is it otherwise
in respect to horticulture. Of fruits, I think this, above all
others, may be called the true democratic fruit. There is
some democracy that I think must have sprung from the first
apple. Of all fruits, no other can pretend to vie with the
apple as the fruit of the common people. This arises from
the nature of the tree and from the nature of the fruit.
First, as to the tree. Itis so easy of propagation, that any
man who is capable of learning how to raise a crop of corn
can learn how to plant, graft or bud, transplant, and prune
an apple-tree, — and then eat the apples. It is a thoroughly
healthy and hardy tree; and that under more conditions and
under greater varieties of stress than perhaps any other tree.
It is neither dainty nor dyspeptic. It can bear high feeding
and put up with low feeding. It is not subject to gout and
scrofula, as plums are; to eruptions and ruptures, as the
cherry is; or to apoplexy, as the pearis. The apple-tree may
be pampered, and may be rendered effeminate in a degree;
but this is by artificial perversion. It is naturally tough as
an Indian, patient as an ox, and fruitful as the Jewish
Rachel. The apple-tree is among trees what the cow is
among domestic animals in northern zones, or what the camel
of the Bedouin is.
And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 5
things, it is homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable
to good dispositions. (I am talking to the ladies now.)
There seems to be some dissent; but this is the orthodox
view. It seems as if the evil incident to human nature had
struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair;
while the homely are so because the virtue within has purged
and expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. Have you
never seen a maiden that lovers avoided because she was
not comely, who became, nevertheless, and perhaps on that
account, the good angel of the house, the natural inter-
cessor for afflicted children, the one to stay with the lonely
when all the gay had gone a-gadding after pleasure, the soft-
handed nurse, the story-teller and the book-reader to the
whole brood of eager eyes and hungry ears in the nursery ;
in short, the child’s ideal of endless good-nature, self-sacri-
fice, and intercessorship, the Virgin Mary of the household,—
mother of God to their love, in that she brings down to them
the brightest conceptions of what God may peradventure
be? And yet, such are stigmatized o/d maids, though more
fruitful of everything that is good (except children) than all
others. One fault only do we find with them,—that they
are in danger of perverting our taste, and leading us to call
homeliness beautiful. All this digression, ladies and gentle-
men, is on account of my dear Aunt Esther, who brought me
up,—a woman so good and modest that she will spend ages
in heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got
there, and that the angels will always be wondering why
she was not there from all eternity.
I have said, with some digressions, that the apple-tree is
homely; but it is also hardy, and not only in respect to
climate. It is almost indifferent to soil and exposure. We
should as soon think of coddling an oak-tree or a chest-
nut ; we should as soon think of shielding from the winter
white pine or hemlock, as an apple-tree. If there is a lot
too steep for the plow or two rocky for tools, the farmer
dedicates it to an apple orchard. Nor do the trees betray
6 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
histrust. Yet, the apple loves the meadows. It will thrive
in sandy loams, and adapt itself to the toughest clay. It
will bear as much dryness as a mullein stalk, and as much
wet, almost, as a willow. In short, it isa genuine democrat.
It can be poor, while it loves to be rich; it can be plain,
although it prefers to be ornate; it can be neglected,
notwithstanding it welcomes attention. But, whether
neglected, abused, or abandoned, it is able to take care of
itself, and to be fruitful of excellences. That is what I call
being democratic.
The apple-tree is the common people’s tree, moreover,
because it is the child of every latitude and every longitude on
this continent. It will grow in Canada and Maine. It will
thrive in Florida and Mexico. It does well on the Atlantic
slope; and on the Pacific the apple is portentous. Newton
sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head,
started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us.
Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would
have saved him the trouble of much thinking there-
after, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us.
Wherever Indian corn will grow, the apple will thrive;
and wherever timothy-grass will ripen its seed, the apple
will exist fruitfully.
Nor is the tree unworthy of special mention on account
of health and longevity. It is subject to fewer diseases than
almost any tree of our country. The worms that infest it
are more easily destroyed than those upon the currant or
the rose. The leaf is subject to blight in so small a degree,
that not one farmer in a hundred ever thinks of it. The
trunk is seldom winter-killed. It never cracks. It has no
trouble, as the cherry does, in unbuckling the old bark and
getting rid of it. The borer is the only important enemy ;
and even this is a trifle, if you compare the labor required
to destroy it with the pains which men willingly take to
secure a crop of potatoes. Acre for acre, an apple orchard
will, on an average of years, produce more than half as many
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 7
bushels of fruit as a potato-field,— will it not? And yet,
in plowing and planting and after-plowing and hoeing and
digging, the potato requires at least five times the annual
labor which is needed by the apple. An acre of apple-trees
can be kept clean of all enemies and diseases with half the
labor of once hoeing a crop of potatoes. And if you have
borers it is your own fault, and you ought to be bored!
The health of the apple-tree is so great that farmers never
think of examining their orchards for disease, any more than
they do cedar posts or chestnut rails. And the great lon-
gevity of the apple-tree attests its good constitution. Two
hundred years it sometimes reaches. I have a tree on my
own place in Peekskill that cannot be less than that. Two
ladies, one about eighty years of age, called upon us about
three years ago, saying that they were brought up on that
farm, and inquiring if the old apple-tree yet lived. They
said that in their childhood it was called the old apple-
tree, and was then a patriarch. It must now be a Methu-
selah. And, not to recur to it again, I may say that it is
probably the largest recorded apple-tree of the world. I
read in no work of any tree whose circumference is greater
than twelve or thirteen feet. This morning I measured
the Peekskill apple-tree, and found that six inches above the
ground it was fourteen feet and six inches, and, at about
four feet, or the spring of the limbs, fourteen feet and ten
inches. I am sorry to add that the long-suffering old tree
gives unmistakable signs of yielding to the infirmities of age.
The fruit is sweet, but not especially valuable, except for
stock. I do not expect to live to see any of my other trees
attain to the size and age of this solitary lingerer of other
centuries! I cannot lrelp reverencing a tree whose leaves
have trembled to the cannonading of the guns of our Revo-
lution, which yielded fruit to Putnam’s soldiers when that
hill was a military post, and under whose shadow Washing-
ton himself—without any stretch of probability—may have
walked,
_- > oe ee
8 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
I ought not to omit the good properties of the apple-tree
for fuel and cabinet-work. I have for five autumns kept up
the bright fire required by the weather in an old-fashioned
Franklin fireplace, using apple-wood, procured from old
trees pruned or cut up wholly; and, when it is seasoned, I
esteem it nearly as good as hickory, fully as good as maple,
and far better than seasoned beech. I have also for my best
bureau one of apple-wood. It might be mistaken for cherry.
It is fine-grained, very hard, solid as mahogany, and grows
richer with every year of age.
In Europe, the streets and roads are often shaded by fruit
trees, the mulberry and the cherry being preferred. In some
parts, the public are allowed to help themselves freely.
When the fruit of any tree is to be reserved, a wisp of straw
is placed around it, which suffices. Upright-growing apple-
trees might be employed, with pears and cherries, in our
streets and roads, and by their very number, and their abun-
dance of fruit, might be taken away one motive of pilfering
from juvenile hands. He must be a preordained thief who
will go miles to steal that which he can get in broad day-
light, without reproach, by his door. One way to stop
stealing is to give folks enough without it.
I have thus far spoken of the apple tee. Inow pass to the
Srwit,—to the apple itself. The question whether it sprang
from the wild crab I do not regard as yet settled. It is not
known from any historical evidence to have had that origin.
You cannot prove that this, that, or the other man, of any
age or nation, planted the seed and brought forward the
fruit. Nor am I aware that any man has conducted experi-
ments on it like those of Van Mons on the pear, or those
which Dr. Grant has made on the grape that is cultivated in
this country, to show that it sprang from the wild grape of
Europe. Until that is done, it will be only a theory, a
probable fact, but not a fact proved. And, by the way, it
might be worth some man’s while, at his leisure, to take the
seeds of the American wild grape, and see if, by any horti-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 9
cultural Sunday school, he can work them up into good
Christian vines.
The apple comes nearer to universal uses than any other
fruit of the world. Is there another that has such a range
of season? It begins in July, and a good cellar brings the
apple round into July again, yet unshrunk, and in good
flavor. It belts the year. What other fruit, except in the
tropics, where there is no winter, and where there are suc-
cessive growths, can do that?
It is a luxury, too. Kinds may be had so tender, so deli-
eate, and,as Dr. Grant—the General Grant of the vineyards
—would say, so refreshing, that not the pear, even, would
dare to vie with it, or hope to surpass it. The Vanderveer
of the Hudson River, the American Golden Russet, need not,
in good seasons, well ripened, fear a regiment of pears in
pomological convention, even in the city of Boston. It may
not rival the melting qualities of the peach, eating which
one knows not whether he is eating or drinking. But the
peach is the fruit of a day,—ephemeral; and it is doubtful
whether one would carry through the year any such relish
as is experienced for a few weeks. It is the peculiarity of
the apple that it never wearies the taste. It is to fruit what
_wheaten bread is to grains. It is a life-long relish. You
may be satisfied with apples, but never cloyed. Do you
remember your boyhood feats? I was brought up in a
great old-fashioned house, with a cellar under every inch of
it, through which an ox-cart might have been wheeled after
all the bins were full. In this cellar, besides potatoes, beets,
and turnips, were stored every year some hundred bushels
of apples,—the Rhode Island Greening, the Roxbury Russet,
the Russet round the Stem, as it was called, and the Spitzen-
berg; not daintily picked, but shaken down; not in aristo-
cratic barrels set up in rows, but ox-carts full; not handled
softly, but poured from baskets into great bins, as we poured
potatoes into their resting-place. If they bruised and rot-
ted, let them. We had enough and to spare. Two
10 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
seasons of picking over apples—a sort of grand assizes—
put the matter all right. In all my boyhood I never
dreamed of apples as things possible to be stolen. So abun-
dant were they, so absolutely open to all comers,—who went
down into the cellar by the inside stairs instead of the out-
side steps,—that we should as soon have thought of being
cautioned against taking turnips, or asking leave to take a
potato. Apples were as common as air. And that was
early in December and January; for I noticed that the sun
was no more fond than I was of staying out a great while
on those Litchfield hills, but ran in early to warm his fingers,
as I did mine. When the day was done, and the candles
were lighted, and the supper was out of the way, we all
gathered about the great kitchen fire; and soon after
George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it
was Henry. A boy’s hat is a universal instrument. It is a
bat to smack butterflies with, .a bag to fetch berries in, a
basket for stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring
up apples in. And a big-headed boy’s old felt hat was not
stingy inits quantities; and when its store ended, the errand
could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve
apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young
lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than
the neighborhood mill, through whose body passed thou-
sands of bushels of corn, leaving it no fatter at the end of
the year than at the beginning. Cloyed with apples? To
eat an apple is to want to eat another. We tire of cherries,
of peaches, of strawberries, of figs, of grapes, (I say it with
reverence in this presence!) but never of apples. Nay, when
creature comforts fail, and the heart—hopeless voyager on
the troubled sea of life—is sick, apples are comforters ; or,
wherefore is it written :—
“ As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my
beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with
great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He
brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. il
me was love. Stay me with flagons,’—undoubtedly of
cider !—“ comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.”
If this is the cure of love, we may the better understand
why the popular instinct should have resorted to the apple-
tree as a cure for ambition, singing,
‘‘We ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour-apple tree.”
There is, in this toothsomeness of the apple, together with
its utter harmlessness, a provision for nurses and mothers.
There is a growing period when children are voracious.
They must be filled; and it is a matter of great account to
know what to fill them with. If you give them but bread,
that seems meager. Pies, cakes, and sweetmeats are mis-
chievous; and yet more so are candies and confections.
Apples just hit the mark. They are more than a necessary
of life, and less than a luxury. They stand just half-way
between bread and cake, as wholesome as one and as good
as the other.
But now I enter upon the realm of uses, culinary and
domestic, where, were I an ancient poet, I should stop and
invoke all the gods to my aid. But the gods are all gone;
and next to them is that blessing of the world, the housewife.
Her I invoke, and chiefly one who taught me, by her kitchen
magic, to believe that the germ of civilization is in the art
and science of the kitchen. Is there, among fruits, one
other that has so wide a range, or a range so important, so
exquisite, so wonderful, as the range of the apple in the
kitchen ?
First, consider it as a fruit-vegetable. It might with
great advantage take its place upon the table as regularly
as the potato or the onion. Far more odorous is the onion,
but, I think, far more blessed is the apple. It is an admi-
rable accompaniment of meat, which always craves a piquant
acid for relish. And when meat is wanting,a scrap of pork
in the frying-pan, with sliced apples, will serve the economic
table almost as well as if it had been carved from a beef
or cut from a sheep.
12 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
We do not use the apple enough in our cooking. As a
fruit upon the table it may be used for breakfast, for supper,
for dessert. Roasted apples! Baked apples! What visions
come before my mind! Not the baked apples of the modern
stove, which has humbled their glory. They are still worth
eating, but they have lost the stature, the comeliness, and
the romance of the old roasted apples, that were placed in
due order between the huge andirons, and turned duly by
the careful servant, drinking in heat on one side and oxygen
on the other, and coming to a degree of luxurious nicety
that will never be attained till we go back again to the old
fireplace. It was a real pleasure to be sick,—I mean on
the hither border of sickness; so that we might not go to
school, and so that, while we took a little magnesia, we might
feast on delicious roasted apples. And as for baked apples
and milk, how can I adequately speak of that most excel-
lent dish!
Then, again, the apple may be regarded as a confection,
serving in the form of tarts, pies,—blessed be the unknown
person who invented the apple-pie! Did I know where the
grave of that person was, methinks I would make a devout
pilgrimage thither, and rear a monument over it that should
mark the spot to the latest generations. Of all pies, of every
name, the apple-pie is easily the first and chief. And what
shall I say of jellies, dumplings, puddings, and various pre-
serves, that are made from the apple?
It might seem hard, in this enumeration of the many forms
in which the apple is made to contribute to the benefit of
mankind, not to notice that form in which it defies age, I.
refer to the dried apple. No festoons are more comely than
were those half-circles that used to decorate the rafters of
the old-fashioned kitchen. I confess that no dried fruit is
worthy to be called fruit, whether it be huckleberry, or peach,
or pear, or apple’ Once dried, these things have lost the
soul of their flavor; and no coddling, no soaking, no experi-
menting, will ever bring them back to what they were in
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 13
their original fresh life. You cannot give youth to old age
in apples any more than among men. And yet, as a sowve-
nir, as a sad remembrancer of days gone by, dried apples are
very good.
Next, we naturally consider the use of apples as food
for stock,—for swine, for horses, and for cattle. This
use of them is known; but it seems to me that they
are not thus employed near so much as their benefits
would justify.
Last of all, let me speak of cider; for, although the days
of temperance have banished cider from its former and
almost universal position upon the farmer’s table, it is creep-
ing back again. Not daring to come in its own name, it
comes in the name of a neighbor, and is called champagne.
But whether it comes in one form or another, it still is
savory of the orchard ; still it brings warmth to chilly veins;
stillit is a contribution to many a homely domestic festival.
And though I cannot, as a temperance man, exhort you to
make it, I must say, that if you wil/ make it, you had better
make it good!
But woe to him who takes another step in that direction!
Cider-brandy is a national disgrace. How great is the calam-
ity that impends over a community that makes cider-brandy
may be known by the recent history of the Shenandoah
valley; it being declared by several of the Richmond papers
that the defeat of Early was owing to the abundance of
apple-jack there.
It only remains that I should say a single word on the
subject of the apple as an article of commerce. Whether
fresh or dried, it is still, in that relation, a matter of no small
importance. The home market is enlarging every year; and
as soon as the apple shall become so cheap that all men may
have it no matter how poor they may be, the market must
of necessity have become very much augmented. Many
men suppose that as orchards increase and fruit multiplies
the profits diminish. Such is not the tact. As the com-
14 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
moner kinds multiply, and the common people learn to use
them as dhily food, the finer kinds will bear proportionally
higher prices ; and cheapness is one of the steps to profit in
all things that are consumed in the community. And I
should be glad to see the day when, for a few pence, every
drayman, every common laborer in every city, should be able
to bring as much fruit to his house every day as his family
could consume in that day. I should be glad to see in our
cities, what is to be seen to some extent in the cities of
Europe, the time when a penny or two will enable a man to
bring home enough flowers to decorate his table of food
twice a day.
We have not merely in view the profits of raising fruit
when we exhort you to bestow your attention on the apple
more and more as an article of commerce; we have also
in view the social influence which it may be made to exert.
I hold that when in any respect you lift the common
people up, whether by giving them a better dwelling, by
placing within their reach better furniture, or by enabling
them to furnish their table better, you are raising them to-
ward self-respect ; you are raising them toward the higher
positions in society. For, although all men should start with
the democracy, all men have a right to stop with the aris-
tocracy. Let all put their feet on the same level; and then
let them shoot as high as they please. Blessed is the man
that knows how to overtop his neighbors by a fair devel-
opment of skill and strength. And every single step of
advance in general cultivation, even though it is brought
about by so humble an instrumentality as the multiplication
of fruit, or anything else that augments the range of healthful
enjoyment among the common people, not only stimulates
their moral growth, but, through that growth, gives the
classes above them a better chance to grow. One of the
most eflicient ways of elevating the whole community is to
multiply the means of livelihood among the poorest and
commonest.
es .
re,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 15
I will not finish my remarks with those elaborate statis-
tics or with those admirable and eloquent periods with
which I should be pleased to entertain you, for two reasons:
first, because I would not consume your time at so late an
hour ; and, secondly, because I have none of these things at
hand!
16 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Il.
A FEW FLOWERS EASILY RAISED.
February 22d, 1868.
Tue love of flowers is steadily increasing among the com-
mon people of America, and anything which shall increase
the knowledge and skill of the plain people in the manage-
ment of flowers will be a contribution to the public welfare.
Those that are rich can command the services of expert
gardeners, and need no advice from me. But there are
thousands who have ground enough around their dwellings,
and yet have little knowledge in the selection of plants and
flowers, and little skill in the cultivation of them, to whom
I may be of some service if I give such hints as have been
derived chiefly from my own experience.
Assuming, then, that my reader has given but little atten-
tion to the cultivation of flowers, and that he needs to be
told the simplest things, I would begin by recommending
him to send for a catalogue of flowers to Mr. Vick, Roches-
ter, N. Y., or to Mr. B. K. Bliss, of Park Place, New York,
or Mr. Thorburn, John Street, also New York; not, as
might at first be supposed, for the sake of the list of seeds,
but because each catalogue contains brief directions how to
prepare the ground, how to sow various kinds of seeds, ete.,
etc. With such hints as these catalogues afford, one can
begin. The very first step is to succeed the first year in
admirably raising one or two things. If one undertakes
too much before having practical experience he will fail,
become disgusted, and give up the whole effort at flowers in
discouragement. But the exquisite delight of seeing a bed
of flowers, of your own raising, and thoroughly good, will be
apt to inspire a real ambition, and lay the foundation for
future success with more difficult flowers.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Li
I will suppose a young lady, who never has cultivated
flowers, but who can afford to hire a man’s services for one
or two days in the spring. She is to perform all the rest of
the work herself. What shall she plant ?
Morning-glories. If possible, select a place which the
morning sun will not reach before nine or ten o’clock in the
forenoon, in order to save the daily bloom from withering
before you have had half enough enjoyment. Let the
ground be made mellow, and enriched with black dirt from
the woods, or with old and well-decayed barn-yard manure,
or, if neither are convenient, with a pint of saperphos-
phate of lime to each square yard of ground, well mixed
into the soil. This can now be bought in almost every
large town, or the merchant who sells seeds will procure it
for you.
The common sorts of morning-glories, if combined, will
answer well. But one who would do the best should have
two beds, one of the Convolvulus, and the other of Zpomea.
The difference is of importance only to a botanist. To the
common eye the flowers are the same. Of Jpomeas there
is a puce-colored one, which blossoms late in the afternoon,
named Buona Now; a mazarine-blue, shading to red
(Learii); a sky-blue with white edge, called in the catalogue
—don’t be afraid!—Jpomea hederacea superba grandi-
flora, i. e. the superb great-flowering ivy-leaved ZJpomea.
And then there is a very fine variety of this same one, whose
Latin name you will get by adding to the above the com-
pound word Afro-violacea. One more name, viz. pomea
limbata elegantissima.
Plant the seeds as soon as the frost is finally out of the
ground. Let there be pales, or strings, or trellis, arranged
for them to climb upon, and you will have all summer long,
and till the frost kills them, a magnificent show of exquisite
blossoms every morning; Sundays as well as week-days, for
flowers wear their Sunday clothes all through the week. We
have derived as much pleasure from these morning-glories
=
18 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
as from any one thing in our garden. They are healthy
and hearty growers, not infested with insects, profuse in
bloom, surpassing all blossoms in exquisite form and delicacy,
and, what is of prime importance, holding forth thyough the
whole summer, whether hot or cold, wet or dry.! -
The common morning-glory will sow itself, and ‘come up
every year in the same place; but the seed of the Jpomea
must be saved and planted every spring anew. Now, let
some sweet girl begin her flower-life with morning-glories—
nothing else—the first year, and see if she will ever let a
summer go by afterward without flowers!
A bed of China Aster, although blossoming for only a
few weeks, may be had with so little trouble that one may
well undertake it. Send for the best kind, say Zruffants
Giant Emperor, or his new Peony-flowered. Plant them
in rows six inches apart, in a seed-bed. Keep them clean
from all weeds. When grown from an inch to two inches
high, transplant them to a prepared bed, placing them about
fifteen inches apart each way. The ground should be rich,
light, and gently hoed, at least once a week, to keep the
surface open. If very large flowers are wanted, not more
than three blooms should be allowed to one root. We prefer,
however, to give the plant a rich soil and let it yield its
flowers, large and small, to suit itself, The seed should be
saved from the largest blossoms only.
A particular favorite with us is the Petunia. If fine seed
is secured, a bed of seedlings may be easily grown which
will be splendid the whole summer long. The directions
for the aster may be followed for Petunias, except that the
plants should stand two feet apart. Select a place where
they will have air and sun all day. They are generous, and
will roll out billows of color through the whole summer, and
even after.the light early frosts have cut down many other
things.
There are two other beds on which we depend for color
every summer, and could no more afford to miss than we
— ee ee a
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 19
could the sunsets, viz. Dwarf Convolvulus and Esch-
scholizia. A bed of Dwarf or Convolvulus Minor, say six
by twelve feet, will be an object of pleasure all summer long.
They are to be planted where they are to stand, as they will
not bear transplanting good-naturedly. Sow in rows eight
inches apart, and when well up thin out, leaving the plants
a foot apart. There are five or six varieties, and the mixed
seed, from a reputable seedsman, should contain them all.
No one will be willing to go without a bed of Dwarf Con-
volvulus who has once seen how easily they are raised,
and how splendid and long-continued is their blossom-
ing.
Manage the Eschscholizia in almost exactly the same
way. There are three shades of color,—pale yellow,
bright yellow, and orange. The foliage is extremely deli-
cate. The buds are very shapely, and the full bloom gives
brilliancy to the whole region where the bed is planted.
No one knows this flower who has not seen its effect in
beds, or on long borders. In a similar way the Poppy
should be raised. Get seed of the Carnation Poppy
and the Peony-flowered Poppy. It will not bear trans-
planting well.
A bed of Portulacca will be so brilliant that it will almost
put your eyes out when the sun shines; and it is so easy to
raise, that success is no credit. Prepare a bed, say four by
six feet, or larger if you choose, and rake it off smoothly.
The seeds are extremely minute. Take a pinch of them
as if they were snuff, and then do by them what everybody
ought to do by snuff;—sift them evenly all over the ground.
Then just touch the ground with the tips of the rake-teeth,
stirring it very lightly. Take a spade and spat the surface
gently, so as to bring the soil home to the seed. Keep
weeds away, and for the rest do nothing but enjoy the
labor of your hands. It will come up of itself every year,
and become a weed if you wish it to.
There, we have mentioned enough flowers for a beginning.
20 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
They are all hardy, profuse bloomers, and, with the excep-
tion of the aster, last all summer, and form masses of color
which will charm the eye every time you look out of your
window. A girl can do all that is to be done, except work-
ing the ground, and even that ought not to be so hard as it
would be to go without flowers.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. _ 21
1g0e
FLOWER-FARMING.
February 29th, 1868.
I ACKNOWLEDGE the merits of flower-gardening, but a
kind of necessity has compelled me to practice flower-farm-
ing. Ido not live upon my little farm, on the Hudson, ex-
cept for a few months in midsummer. To keep a professional
gardener befits more ample means than mine. Yet I must
have flowers; I am as set and determined to have flowers
as my farmer, Mr. Turner, is to have vegetables; and there
is a friendly quarrel on hand all the season, a kind of border
warfare, between flowers and vegetables, which shall have
this spot, and which shall secure that nook; whether in this
southern slope it shall be onions or gladioluses; whether a
row of lettuce shall edge that patch, or of asters. I think,
on a calm review, that I have rather gained on Mr. Turner.
The fact is, I found that he had me at advantage, being
always on the place, and having the whole spring to himself.
So I shrewdly tampered with the man himself, and before
he knew what he was about, I had infected him with the
flower mania (and this is a disorder which I have never
known cured); so that I had an ally in the very enemy’s
camp. Indeed, I begin to fear that my manager will get
ahead of me yet in skill and love of flowers!
I can see many and sufficient reasons for parterres of
flowers, for borders of mixed plants, for clumps and ribbons ;
but I can see no reason for supposing that flowers grow to
advantage on/y in these formal methods.
In a plantation of tomatoes, if every alternate plant in the
outer row is a petunia you will find a charming effect in the
red fruit of the one and the profuse blossoming of the other ;
and on these outer rows the tomatoes may be left to ripen
ee, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
for seed, as being more exposed to the sun, thus adding the
beauty of their rich color.
I do not know why a square plat of beets or onions may
not be edged with asters, or with balsams. Sometimes I
plant a few alternate rows of flowers with my root crops,
and find that carrots and stocks, alternated, are admirable
friends. When the main crops are in, there are always some
outlying edges, some places about the walls, which would be
surely filled in with cabbages, if I did not jump at the
chance. I have great luck with tropealums, nasturtiums,
and particularly with labias, which are as easy of culture,
on a farm, asa bean. And I have a fancy that when one
comes upon a heap of stones in a corner, covered over
with all varieties of tropealum, he takes more pleasure
in them than if found just where one would look for them,
in a flower-bed.
If I should lay down a rule, it would be that, in arable
land, or in shrubbery and forest, no man should have to
walk more than twenty paces to find a flower. If a lady
should meet you on any acre on your farm, you ought to be
able then and there to make up for her an acceptable
bouquet.
In an unexpected way, I am like to have my rule kept for
me. For, in autumn, the stems and haulms of flowers go
to the barn-yard and join all other stuff fit for compost ; and
when, in the spring, it is hauled out, I find, on every part of
the farm, that stray seeds have shaken out, and sown them-
selves, and produced volunteer flowers. Indeed, the primrose
family are getting too familiar; larkspurs are everywhere ;
coreopsis glitters all over the fields; poppies have turned
vagrants; and the portulacca has fairly become a weed.
Farms should be carried on for profit and pleasure; and, as
I fail in the former, I am determined to make up in the
latter element.
Now and then, on the outer row of Indian corn, a convol-
vulus, climbing to the very top and full of blossoms, will
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 23
cheat nothing and enrich the eye a great deal. There is
always a spot or two, amidst field crops, where a Kicinus
sanguineus (castor bean) will do bravely; and I will aftirm
that no fancier will be able to get past it without stopping
to look at its generous palms.
Where stone-walls prevail, what can be less expensive and
what more beautiful than to cover them with the Chinese
honeysuckles, with, now and then, the new and hardy
golden-veined honeysuckle, with other hardy sorts, easily
propagated? There is also our own wild clematis, and to
this may be joined, at little expense, several of the new
varieties in this charming family, which may be obtained of
nurserymen.
If one has young evergreen trees,—say the Norway
spruce,—a few of the finer kinds of morning-glory (Jpo-
meas), planted near and suffered to run up among the
branches and peep out of the green openings, will have a
beautiful effect all summer long, and the tree will suffer no
harm, as it sometimes does when the bitter-sweet, the ampe-
lopsis, and other woody vines, take possession of them.
Stumps are not deemed ornamental, and yet I have seen
them turned to an admirable account. [If still standing on
their own roots, but decayed at the core, let them be hol-
lowed out, deeply as may be, filled with good soil, and
flowers planted in them, nasturtiums or petunias or the
linums or dwarf morning-glories. Stumps that have been
pulled up by the roots, and rolled into a corner, may be
dressed out with ferns, vines, and mosses, and a tasteful hand
will array them in such beauty that the farmer will be re-
luctant another season to give them up to the axe and the
stove.
Flowers peeping out of unlikely spots give a surprise of
pleasure. Therefore stick in a flower just where it would
not be expected. No matter if it “was never done before,”
or if “farmers don’t do so in these parts,” or if “flowers are
a trouble, and don’t bring any money.” They bring what
24 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
money often fails to bring,—refinement and _ pleasure.
There is no use, my old friend under a rough coat, in mak-
ing believe that you don’t like flowers. I know that you
do. Somewhere in you is a spot, if the rubbish can be
cleared away, which a flower always touches. There is no
reason why rich gentlemen should own all the flowers.
Hard-working farmers and mechanics have as much right to
them as if they lived without working.
What shall I say of the gladiolus? It is the flower for
the million! It is as easy to manage as a potato. It blos-
soms long, and better if cut and carried into the house than
if left out doors. Its varieties of color are endless. It is
healthy; multiplies its corms rapidly, can be kept in winter
in a common cellar, if dried off a little first; and is calculated
to return as much pleasure for a small outlay as any flower
in vogue. A few dozen to start with will convince any man
of the truth of my words.
Let me dissuade you, my dear readers, from too great an
addiction to mere profit. Don’t wait for a regular garden
of flowers, but stick them in, in nooks and corners, all about
the homestead.
eee SS lee ee ee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 25
IV.
A LETTER FROM THE FARM.
PEEKSKILL, May 28th, 1868.
My pear Mr. Bonner: You must expect no article
from me this week. Iam engaged. I was never more busy
in my life. Let me relate my occupations. At about half
past three in the morning, I wake. The light is just com-
ing. I do not care for that, as Ido not propose to get up
at such an hour. But the birds do care. They evidently
wind up their singing apparatus overnight. For, when the
first bird breaks the silence, in an instant the rest go off, as
if a spring had been touched which moved them all. Was
ever such noise! There are robins without count, wood-
thrushes, orioles, sparrows, bobolinks, meadow-larks, blue-
birds, yellow-birds, wrens, warblers, catbirds (as the North-
ern mocking-bird is called), martins, twittering swallows.
Think of the noise made by mixing all these bird-notes to-
gether! Add a rooster, and a solemn old crow to carry the
bass. Then consider that of each kind there are scores, and
of some kinds hundreds, within ear reach, and you will have
some faint conception of the opening chant of the day.
You may not believe that I wake so early. But I do.
You may be still less inclined to believe that, after listening
for ten minutes to this mixture, I again go to sleep. But I
solemnly do. Nor do I think of getting up before six
o'clock. Whether I should emerge even then, if it were
not for the savory odor that begins to steal through my
cottage, I cannot tell. After breakfast, there are so many
things to be donegfirst that I neglect them all. The morn-
ing is so fine, the young leaves are so beautiful, the bloom
on the orchards is so gorgeous, the sounds and sights are so
many and so winning, that I am apt to sit down on the
2
26 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
veranda, for just a moment, and for just another, and for a
series of them, until an hour goes by. Do not blame me!
Do not laugh at such farming and such a farmer. The soil
overhead bears larger and better crops, for a sensible man,
than does the soil under feet. There are blossoms in the
clouds. There is fruit upon invisible trees, to those who
know how to pluck it.
But then sky-gazing and this dallying with the landscape
will not do. What crowds of things require the eye and
hand! Flowers must be transplanted. Flower-seeds must
be sown; shrubs and trees pruned; vines looked after;
a walk taken over the hill to see after some evergreens,
with many pauses to gaze upon the landscape, and many
birds watched as they are confidentially exhibiting their
domestic traits before you. The kittens, too, at the barn,
must be visited, the calf, the new cow. Then every gar-
dener knows how much time is consumed in noticing the
new plants; for instance, I have some eight new strawber-
ries that need watching, each one purporting to be a world’s
wonder. I am quite anxious about eight or ten new kinds
of clematis; two new species of honeysuckle; eight or ten
new and rare evergreens; and ever so many other things,—
shrubs and flowers. What shall I say of the new peas, new
beans, rare cucumbers, early melons, extraordinary pota-
toes?
Speaking of potatoes, do you know anything of the Harly
Rose? Let me tell you. One hundred bushels were sold
this spring, to one man, for eighty dollars a bushel! Since
then, they have been selling by the pownd, at the increasing
prices of one, two, and three dollars a pound. It takes about
three potatoes to make a pound.
Now for a story—true, for I had it from Timothy Tit-
comb’s lips. A friend sent him this potato, with injunctions
to give it the utmost care. He planted it in his garden, and
when it ripened, last summer, not informed of its exceeding
preciousness, he proceeded to eat. In a reasonable time he
OO ee ee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 27
consumed three barrels, which at the lowest price were
worth about seven hundred dollars!
I have a very nice plat of these potatoes, and should like
to sell them to you in advance. As an inducement, I offer
mine at fifty dollars a bushel! But this is confidential. I
do not wish to be overrun with purchasers, scrambling for a
chance!
Do you not see that it is impossible for me, amid such in-
cessant and weighty cares, to compose an article? The air
is white with apple-blossoms; the trees are all singing; the
steaming ground beseeches me to grant it a portion of
flower-seeds; by night the whippoorwills, and by day the
wood-thrush and mocking-bird, fill my imagination with all
sorts of fancies, and how can I write?
28 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Wi:
THE COST OF FLOWERS.
June 18th, 1868.
Tue charms of flowers have been sung ever since letters
have existed. But in our day the passion for flowers has
wonderfully increased, and the cultivation of them, which
is a thing very different from the sentiment of admiration,
has become so common that it is considered as an evidence
of bad taste for one having any ground not to have flowers
about the dwelling-house.
But how few who only receive flowers as gifts, or pur-
chase them, know the pains and penalties of flower-raising !
It may be imagined that one has only to scratch open the
ground, bury the seed, and then patiently wait for nature
to do the rest. Listen! First comes the seed-buying. We
do not think seedsmen any less honest than other men. In-
deed, the conduct of those with whom we have dealt for
ten years past leads us to think that they are honorable and
honest in intent. But that does not insure good seeds.
They buy of other seedsmen, in foreign lands, who may
not be honest, or are obliged to trust seed-raisers. And so it
comes to pass that seeds, like thousands of other articles
in this wicked and adulterous generation, are adulterated.
Italian carnation seed come up miserable single pinks, of
very poor colors; balsams are not half so choice as is the
price at which the seed is sold; not one in ten of this year’s
ipomea seed (convolvulus) will stir out of the ground,—
and so of stock, sweet-william, ete.
But, that past, and our seed well planted, there often
comes a deluge, and washes the seed-beds to pieces, or a
long wet spell rots the seed in the ground.
At length we gather up what we can, and transplant the
a a i i
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 29
remnant, and patiently wait for the flowers. But we are
not the only ones waiting for them. A legion of various
insects seem to think that all our flowers were pianted for
them. We have been often asked why were insects cre-
ated? If it is fair to say that the cause of their existence
may be learned from the effects which they produce, we
boldly aver that they were made to humble man’s arro-
gance, and to teach him how much mightier is insect weak-
ness than human power. A grasshopper is contemptible.
The farmer can crush him at a step. But let the plague
of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be deluged
with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that
are individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his
labor!
We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is
waged between man and insects. It seems in late years as
if horticulture might as well be abandoned. Cherries and
plums go down before the curculio; apples before the can-
ker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm; currants
before a worm peculiar to itself; melons before half a dozen
kinds of enemies (not including roguish boys).
Among flowers the destruction is equally great. As soon
as the rose fairly shakes out its leaves it is attacked: one
bug cuts circles out of the leaves, as if busy with a pair of
scissors making diagrams; then comes the ¢hrip, that can
neither be caught, nor wet with soapsuds, nor dusted with
lime, nor pinched with the fingers,—a nimble fellow, mi-
nute as a speck of flour, but numerous as dust. Close upon
its heels comes the s/ug, whose remorseless appetite leaves
nothing behind it but the ribs and frame of the leaf. Next
come the rose-bugs proper, of a finer appetite, disdaining
anything less delicate than rose-petals. Of these the num-
ber is surpassing; their devastation pitiable. There stand
my bushes stripped of leaves and blighted in flowers.
Of course there are remedies enough. One rose-bush
may be treated with hand-picking, or pinching, or washes,
30 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
but one or two hundred rose-bushes would require formida-
ble engineering.
Year by year the number of insects increases. New
flowers come into the blighted circle. Aphides, grubs,
worms, moles, flies—at the root, or on the top—resist your
labor at every step. They never tire. They seem never
to be full. They get up before you do, and eat on all night,
after you are asleep.
Well, we are born into a world which pays few premiums
to lazy men. Whatever is worth having is worth working
for. At any rate, Providence seems to design that no man
shall gather who does not sow and tend. Of every lazy
man it may well be said, What does he in this world? This
is a place for workers. “He that will not work shall not
eat,” is an inspired command. It is as true of the garden
as of the field, of flowers as of fruit and grain. God sends
millions of insects over all our gardens and flower-beds,
saying, “ We are sent to make you work.” Every insect is
some malignant enchanter, and every fair-faced flower, like
a maiden lost in the wilderness, beseeches us to deliver it
from its enemies!
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 31
VE
HAYING.
July 2d, 1868.
Atas for the poetry of farming! All the songs of milk-
maids must be now listened for in the old English poets.
The whetting of the mower’s scythe is almost over—quite
over on my farm! Instead of that, one hears the sharp
rattle of the mower, and sees the driving-man quite at his
ease riding round and round the meadow, for all the world
as if he were out airing. Whereas, heretofore, two acres
would be counted a large day’s work, ten and twelve are
easily accomplished now!
Nor is the contrast less remarkable in all the after-work.
When I was a boy, I was placed in line with all the men
that could be mustered, to shake out the hay with forks;
and after a few hours, all hands were called to go over the
ground and turn it. To do this rapidly, and yet so that
the bottom side should really come to the top, was no small
knack. Now, a tedder, with one man riding, will literally
do the work of ten men, and do it far better than the most
expert can. Have you ever seen atedder? I have a per-
fect one. The grass rolls up behind it and foams, I was going
to say, like water behind the wheels of a steamer. The
grass leaps up and whirls as if it were amazingly tickled
with such dealings. The result is, that unless the grass is
very heavy, and the weather very bad, you may cut your
hay in the morning and get it into your barn before night,
in far better condition than it used to be when it required
never less than two, and generally a part of three days to
cure it.
But I have forgotten the horse-rake, Instead of the old-
fashioned, long-handled rake, and the five or six men pull-
ou PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ing and hauling to get the grass into windrows, that same
fellow, with that same horse, rides his luxurious rake, and in
a fifth part of the time formerly required puts it into equally
good shape. Indeed, haying, if it has lost its poetry, has
also lost its drudgery. A man can now manage a hundred
acres of grass easier than he formerly could twenty.
The only thing that remains to be made easy is pitching
on and off the load. It is true that horse-forks have been
invented, but I have never seen any that did their work
well; and in my barn, at any rate, the old work of pitching
and mowing remains; and if you wish to know what fun
is, get on to the mow, under the slate roof of my barn, on a
hot day, and let Tim pitch off hay as he will if I give him
the wink. You will have to step lively, and even then you
will often be seen emerging from heaps of hay thrown over
you, like a rat from a bunch of oakum. And then it is so
pleasant, when a man is all a-sweat, to have his shirt filled
with hay-seed, each particular particle of which makes be-
lieve that it is a flea, and wiggles and tickles upon every
square inch of his skin, until he is half desperate.
It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last
load is rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet
it smells! How jolly the children are that have been
mounted on the top of the load! And their little scarlet
jackets peep out from their nest while Tim stands guard
and nurse. A child that has not ridden up from the mead-
ow to the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the
luxuries of exultant childhood. What care they for jolts,
when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring? The
more the wagon jounces the better they like it! Then come
the bars, leading into the lane with maple-trees on each side.
The limbs reach down, and the green leaves kiss the children
over and over again. So would I, if I were a green leaf,
and not consider myself so green after all! And so the —
load slowly rolls up the hiil. There is no such thing as mo-
mentum in an ox. He is always at a dead pull and at the
i =a
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 33
very hardest. But the children like it. The slower they
move the longer is the ride! Let them take all the comfort
they can. By and by they will be grown, and own fine car-
riages, and roll in style through the streets. But there is
many a fair face that rides in a silk-lined coach, with a sad
heart, and would go back if she could, O, how gladly, to
her joyous ride on a load of hay!
34 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
VIL.
THE VALUE OF ROBINS.
October 10th.
Tue game-law has relaxed its authority. The gun is set
free. I hear it in the woods, in the fields, on the hills,
Sundays and week-days, bang! bang! bang! as if it could
not express its joy, and even celebrating its own emancipa-
tion.
Well, let them fire, only so they keep off my hill. It is
true that the birds have finished their service, and are now
of little use, either as songsters or as worm-exterminators
—more’s the pity! But are their past services to be for-
gotten ?
Let me speak of the robin.
He is an immense feeder, and omnivorous. Nothing seems
to come amiss—fruit, worm, or seed. Glutton he is not,
for he does not eat more than he really needs; but he needs
more than most birds of his size.
It is a disputed question, among farmers, whether the
robin is a profitable bird. Whether he does not damage
the fruit crop out of all proportion to his services in the
crusade against insects. I grieve to say, that my own
household is divided, and that Iam the only one that is
openly and wholly a friend to the robin. He is an early
riser, and no sooner has he sung his morning hymn than he
begins breakfast. Now, in the month of June cherries
ripen. I havea cherry orchard. When fully grown, there
will be enough for robins and men. But at present my
trees are like precocious children; they blossom enormously,
but set little fruit. The question now is, Whose is that
fruit? The people in the house declare that it belongs to
us. The robins out of doors say little about it, but actions
>.
'
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 35
speak louder than words. Rising earlier than we do, they
get their breakfast before the smoke rises from my chimneys.
I will not permit them to be driven away, and still less to
be shot. I plead their services. I recount their deeds of
valor against insects; their service of song. But it is all in
vain. Iam voted down. All manner of threats are thrown
out by the boys, “if I would only let them.” But I won’t
let them !
There are two distinct grounds on which these birds are to
be preserved and encouraged. The first ground is the refin-
ing pleasure which they give to every person of true suscep-
tibility. Thousands there are who live in the country who
will regard this as sheer sentimentality. They are robust
people, who drive around all day with vigorous industry,
and have always done so, until at length their very standard
of manhood is made up of some kind of physical force. He
is a man that can lift the largest weight, run the longest and
fastest, cut the most grain, climb most lithely, wrestle the
most dextrously. And if he can make a shrewd bargain,
has an eye for the points in an ox or horse, has the knack
of making money, and a good-natured way of pushing
about among men, he is considered, and considers himself,
to be a real up-and-down man!
But where are the finer traits? God made blossom bulbs
in every nature, and if men do not blossom they are deficient
in the higher elements.
To disregard qualities of beauty, in form, color, motion,
and song, is so far to indicate a deformity of one’s own na-
ture. We never think one to be more manly who cares
nothing for the unmarketable graces of the natural world,
than he who makes them a part of his daily enjoyment.
The argument is conclusive to a fine nature, when one
says, “ Birds are too beautiful to be killed.” It may be re-
plied that noxious insects and animals are beautiful, too, and
yet are destroyed by the humane and refined, because they
are mischievous. We admit the statement, and are willing
36 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
to apply it to birds. When they are really destructive to
crops, or when they are, at proper seasons, needful for food,
it is no inhumanity to take their lives. They must take
their part and lot with the whole creation, which every-
where eats and is eaten.
But to return to our robin. There is no season of the
year when the robin does not prevent more mischief than
he accomplishes. He is an enormous eater, and, for the
most part, he prefers a meat diet. No one who has not
taken pains to observe and estimate can form any. conception
of the insects and worms devoured by the robin between
March and August—that is, during the whole nesting pe-
riod. One robin eats, in a single season, what, if built into
a solid form, would be more than a whole ox. Fruit is but
a small part of his diet; cherries, strawberries, and grapes,
for a while, suffer from his depredations. Yet, if there were
no birds these very things would suffer far more. Insects
are more to be dreaded than birds. They elude our vigi-
lance, they work secretly, they swarm in such numbers as to
defy man’s power. But birds keep them down. They de-
stroy myriads of eggs, of grubs, of tender worms, and of
fruit-loving insects. To destroy birds for the sake of saving
fruit is like throwing down the fence about one’s garden to
keep the pigs out! Even admit, as some do and we do not,
that blackbirds and crows deserve to be shot for destroying
the planter’s seed. We claim that the robin does not be-
long to their company. He preserves a hundred-fold more
than he destroys.
On every ground, then, of humanity, of good taste, and
of thrift, robins should be spared. They are our best
friends. They are, beyond all question, the finest song-bird
of the temperate zone. They are a watch and guard against
insect depredations in orchard and garden, and, with other
birds, they make possible the raising of fruit, which, with-
out them, it is no exaggeration to say, would be utterly im-
possible. They are, next to the wren and sparrows, the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 37
most companionable of birds, hovering about the dwellings
of man, and following him, step by step, as he subdues the
wilderness, and singing the song of triumph for the axe and
the plow.
One word as to the robin’s song. Whoever has read Au-
dubon’s description of the wood-thrush’s song, and the still
more glowing account by a writer in the Atlantic Monthly
of two or three years ago, will surely be disappointed on first
hearing it. In any proper sense, it has no song, but only a
few sweet sentences, which it utters in a sad and almost
melancholy way, sitting solitary in some forest edge, or tree
overhanging a brook. The bird is a recluse. So, one im-
agines a tender-hearted woman, disappointed in love, yet
not embittered, might sing from the casement of a nunnery
a hymn of mingled resignation and regret. But, to com-
pare this monosyllabic song of the wood-thrush to the rob-
in’s, is like comparing a ballad to an oratorio, or the tinkling
of a guitar to the sweet tone of a piano-forte under the
hands of some Perabo.
The robin is an out-door bird. He lives in the sunshine.
He attracts no sympathy by delicate ways. He is alto-
gether robust, and full of dashing life. When twenty or
thirty robins between three and four o’clock in a June
morning are at full voice, it would be no exaggeration to
compare it to arain of music. It is no dainty thrumming,
—no parceling out of a sweet note or two, with more rests
than notes. It is a musical rush, the exultation of a healthy,
hearty bird, that sings by the half-hour, without pause, and
is ever ready to sing again.
The evening song of the robin I most love to hear.
Heard from the top of some orchard tree, or of some
meadow maple, while his note has the fire and brilliancy of
his morning song, there is in it a slight undertone of sad-
ness. Indeed, this evening song seems to be a mate-call.
For ten or fifteen minutes the bird will send out its mellow
call over all the region, if peradventure the truant mother
tt,
38 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
may come home. A slight impatience mixes with its clos-
ing notes. He flies to a neighboring tree, utters two or
three sharp single notes, and then, beginning again, swells
out his long call louder than before, warbling five to ten
minutes. He pauses. No bird returns. He sits silent.
Perhaps he remembers that there had been a little domes-
tic quarrel during the day, and if his mate is dead, he may
never be able to say to her, “I am sorry.” A nest full of
little birds needs the mother. The twilight is deepening.
Once more, its brilliance now toned down by.an unmistak-
able sadness, he sends out far and near through the dew-
damp air a song which is more a lamentation than a call.
If there be no response, he flies silently away, and the air
rests.
But, sometimes, just as his song is ending, it breaks out
into a sharp note of surprise. A flutter is heard, and two
birds fly hastily away. The wanderer has come home
again !
Can one, all summer long, follow birds with sympathy,
and enter into their gentle life, throwing around it, by the
imagination, the charm of the affections, and then consent
to their destruction as if they had been mere birds from a
coop? Shoot and eat my birds? It is but a step this side
of cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would
hanker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 39
VITl.
SOUNDS OF TREES.
July 24th.
THE sounds and motions of trees constitute subtle but
important elements of pleasure. It is not epough that a
tree have a comely form as a whole; that it cast a dense
shade in the sultry days of summer; that, perhaps, it yield
a nut or fruit; and that, finally, when it gives up its life to
the inevitable ax, its prostrate trunk shall furnish good
timber. Besides these uses of bodily comfort and of econ-
omy, a tree, like a rich-hearted person, has a hundred name-
less ways which we hardly stop to analyze, but which, were
they suddenly taken away, we should miss.
The murmuring of trees is profoundly affecting to a sen-
sitive spirit. In some moods of imagination one cannot
help feeling that trees have a low song, or a conversation
of leaves. They whisper, or speak, or cry out, and even
roar. No one knows this last quality so well as those who
have been in old oak forests in a storm, with violent wind.
A dense forest opposes such a resistance to the free passage
of the air, that the sound is much deadened. But in a park
or oak-opening, where spaces are left for the motion of the
air, and among open-branched trees, a storm moves with
such power and majesty, that not even the battles of thun-
der-clouds are more sublime, and, under certain circum-
stances, it becomes terrific. At the beginning of the tem-
pest, the trees sway and toss as if seeking to escape; as the
violence increases, the branches bounce back, the leaves,
turning their white under sides to the light, fairly scream.
The huge boughs creak and strain like a ship in a storm.
Now and then some branches which have grown across
each other are drawn back and forth, as if demons were
40 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
scraping infernal bass-viols. Occasionally a branch breaks
with a wild crash, or some infirm tree, caught unawares in
a huge puff of the storm, goes down with crashing as it
falls, and with a thunder-stroke when it reaches the ground.
I would go farther to hear a storm-concert in an old forest,
than any music that man ever made. No one who is famil-
iar with forest sounds but is sure, when he hears Beetho-
ven’s music, that much of it was inspired by the sounds of
winds among trees.
There are milder joys, however, in tree converse. Only
this morning I awakened to hear it rain. That steady splash
of drops which a northeast wind brings on is not easily
mistaken. I flatter myself that my ear is too well trained
to all the ordinary sounds of nature to be easily deceived.
I rise, and throw back the blinds, when lo! not a drop is fall-
ing. It is the wind in my maple-trees. I had thought of
that, and listened with the most discriminating attention,
and was sure that it was rain!
Twice in our life we lived in houses built on the edge
of the original forests. These had been thinned out, and
recesses opened up. It happened in both cases that an ash
and a hickory had been left, which shot up, without side
branches, to a great height. The trunks were supple and
tough. Whenever the winds moved gently, these long and
lithe trees moved with singular grace and beauty. As there
was no perceptible wind along the ground, their movements
seemed voluntary. And yet there was in it that kind of
irresolution which one sees in sleep-walking. But as soon
as the breath became a breeze, the wide circles through
which these rooted gymnasts moved was wonderful. They
seemed going forth in every direction, and yet surely and
quickly springing back to position again. And in every
motion, such was their elasticity, they manifested the ut-
‘ most grace. The sighing of winds in a pine forest has no
-paralle] sound except upon the sea-shore. Of all sounds of
leaves it is the sweetest and saddest, to certain moods of
summer leisure.
aii
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 41
The pine sings, like the poet, with no every-day voice,
but in a tone apart from all common sounds. It has the
power to change the associations, and to quicken the poetic
sensibility, as no other singing tree can do. Every one
should have this old harper, like a seer or a priest among
trees, about his dwelling. Under an old pine would natu-
rally be found the young maiden, whose new lover was far
across the seas. In the sounds that would descend she
could not fail to hear the voices of the sea,—the roar of
winds, the plash of waves running in upon the shore. A
young mother, whose first-born had returned to God who
gave it, would go at twilight to the pines; for, to her ear,
the whole air must needs seem full of spirit voices. They
would sing to her thoughts in just such sad strains as soothe
sorrow. Nor would it be strange if; in the rise and fall of
these sylvan syllables, she should imagine that she heard
her babe again, calling to her from the air.
Every country place should have that very coquette among
trees, the aspen. It seems never to sleep. Its twinkling
fingers are playing in the air at some arch fantasy almost
without pause. If you sit at a window with a book, it will
wink and blink, and beckon, and coax, till you cannot help
speaking to it! That must be a still day that does not see
the aspen quiver! A single leaf sometimes will begin to
wag, and not another on the whole tree will move. Some-
times a hidden breath will catch at a lower branch, then,
shifting, will leave that still, while it shakes a topmost twig.
Though the air may move so gently that your cheek does
not feel it, this sensitive tree will seem all a shiver, and turn
its leaves upward with shuddering chill. It is the daintiest
fairy of all the trees. One should have an aspen on every
side of his house, that no window should be without a
chance to look upon its nods and becks, and to rejoice in its
innocent witcheries. I have seen such fair sprites, too, in’
human form. But one does not get off so easily, if he sports
too much with them. The aspen leaf makes no wounds.
42 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Its frolics spin no silken threads which one cannot follow,
and which will not break!
The musical qualities of trees have not been considered
enough, in planting around our dwellings. The great-leaved
magnolias have no fine sound. Willows have but little.
Cedars, yew-trees, and Lombardy poplars are almost silent.
It is said that the Lombardy poplar is the male tree, the
female having never come over. It is very likely. It is stiff
enough to be an old bachelor. It spreads out no side
branches. Its top dies early. It casts a penurious shadow.
But my hand is tired. The winds move; all the leaves
call me. Let me go forth. ?
This ocean above me is sure to cure trouble. The winds
sound, the trees sing. My soul yearns. Its thoughts and
moods below may roll like a disturbed sea; but, drawn up
into the heavenly air, like the waters of the sea, they forget
their wrath, and descend again in gentle dews and nourish-
ing rains.
AROUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 45
IX.
UNVEILED NONSENSE.
August 28th.
My pear Mr. Bonner: Are you not a censor of all
your contributors? Do you not read cautiously all matter
sent to the Ledger, to prevent the entrance thereinto of any
injurious sentiments? And yet you have allowed blasphemy
in your columns? Youhave! Or else the Christian In-
telligencer, the Dutch Reformed religious journal of New
York, by one of its contributors, is greatly mistaken. An
article appears there signed “ Puritan,” and entitled “ Veiled
Profanity.” It begins with an extract from an article of
one of your contributors :— 2
“Henry Ward Beecher says, ‘The only way to exterminate the
Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose to make money
out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs will bite it, beetles will
bore it, aphides will suck it, birds will peck it, heat will scorch it,
rains will drown it, and mildew and blight will cover it.’ ”
And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in
these words. Put on your spectacles. Nothing wrong, do
you say? O, but there is! Yow, a Scotch-Irish-Presby-
terian, and can’t see heresy! Fie, for shame, to be beaten
by a Dutchman! Now, let our Jntelligencer’s man express
himself. The italics are his, not mine :—
“These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are the
messengers of God. If they are sent, they are on an errand for
God! Now, if the above extract has a point, it is that when man-
kind plant a crop of any kind of grain or seed, God takes a mali-
cious pleasure in defeating such schemes.”
This is exquisite! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, it
is on an errand for God, and if I sprinkle it with sulphur
as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face of God’s
44 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
messenger! When it rains—is not rain, too, God’s mes-
senger?—does “Puritan” dare to open a blasphemous
umbrella, and push it up in the very face of this divine
messenger? When a child is attacked by one of “God’s
messengers ”—measles, canker-rash, dysentery, scarlet-fever
—would it be a very great sin to send for a doctor on pur-
pose that he might resist these divine messengers? There
are insects which attack men, against one of which we
set up combs, and against another sulphur. “ Nay,” says
Puritan. “If they are sent, they are on an errand for God”
“Puritan” goes on :—
“ Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere murmur.
Especially as Mr. Beecher’s farm at Fishkill is well known to be
cultivated with reference to making money.”
Yes, we confess it. A “murmur” very imperfectly ex-
presses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or squirt
whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of “ Puritan’s ” divine mes-
sengers, called aphides. A grumble would not be too strong
a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the reverend gentle-
man has been known to say, in a paroxysm of horticultural
impiety, “I wish every rose-bug on the place was dead!”
which must seem to “ Puritan” a piece of horrible de-
pravity.
I did not before know that I had a farm in Fishkill. My
experience with the farm at Peekskill, “ which is well known
to be cultivated with reference to making money,” is such,
that if it be true that I own another farm at Fishkill, I
shall consider myself on the straight road to the poor-
house!
But there is more coming :—
“The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this,—that
whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, flax, or grass,
God sends beetles, bugs, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew, to blast his
designs.
“ This has the ring of Cain when his sacrifice was rejected. That
primeval sinner vented his anger towards God on his holy brother.
Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger towards the real cause of his
ee ee eee a
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 45
mildewed crops, by charging the innocent instruments in their Mak-
er’s hand. If this is not blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr.
Beecher is, we have read his words amiss.
“ PURITAN.”
' I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me that
every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has had
swarms of “messengers” sent upon it. But, until now, I
never suspected that God sent them, in any other sense than
that in which he sends diseases, famines, tyrants, literary
“ Puritans,” and all other evils which afflict humanity.
But what is to be done about this matter? If it be “blas-
phemy ” to speak against bugs, it can be little short of sacri-
lege to smash them. Here have I been, in the blindness of
unrepented depravity, slaughtering millions of “the messen-
gers of God” called aphides! I have ruthlessly slain those
other angelic “messengers” called mosquitoes, who came
singing to me with misplaced confidence. I have even railed
at fleas, and spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone fur-
ther: on a sultry summer’s day, after dinner, I have turned
out of my room every one of those “messengers of God”
which wicked boys call flies—every one but one, I mean;
and, just as the sounds grew faint and sight dim, and I was
sinking into that entrancing experience, the first virgin mo-
ments of slumber, an affectionate fly settled on my nose, ran
down to kiss my lips, and, like a traveler on a new conti-
nent, set about exploring my whole face. Instead of greet-
ing this “messenger” divine as “ Puritan” would, I confess
to a lively vexation. And if speaking of flies in a very
disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to the
charge!
But soberly, Mr. Bonner, is it not pitiable to have among
us men pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into
discredit by such hopeless stupidity ?
In the velocipede rinks, besides those for speed, premiums
are offered to the men who can ride the slowest. “ Puritan”
should enter himself. If anybody can go slower, he must
be a marvel of torpidity.
46 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
X.
NATURAL ORDER OF FLOWERS.
May 21st.
He must have an artist’s eye for color and form who can
arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as
by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there
one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental
order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every
summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill
with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only
she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of
flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain
as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table,
divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know
not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and
grace which they first had.
As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about
them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like
innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished!
Squeezed, tied on sticks, formal and pedantic, the flowers
lose their rare charms, their delicacy, their individuality,
their exquisite variety of form, every element of floral beauty
except color. They are used as mere pigments. They are
poor studies in color. There are few who really know any-
thing about flowers by their finer qualities. The elder Park
—who committed the capital crime of leaving Brooklyn and
going back to Scotland to live—loved flowers after the true
sort. We remember one day going to his green-house in
Amity Street, and after a world of talk about all sorts of
things, and looking over all his azaleas, camellias, laurusti-
nus, and what not, he drew us bashfully into a side apart-
ment, and with the diffidence of a girl, said, pointing to an
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 47
exquisite little fern hardly so large as our forefinger, grow-
ing in the border under some orange-plants, “There, I should
not dare to tell anybody but you that I have taken more
real pleasure in that one little thing than in all the whole
establishment.” We perfectly understood him. The fern
was of the most delicate sort. It seemed to hover between
form and spirit,—if there be such a thing as soul in plant-
life. All around it were large and vigorous plants growing
lush and stalwart. This dainty little fairy fern appealed to
the child-loving side of human nature, to the unworldly
and uncommercial faculties. We always respected Park
the better for this weakness. No man can have such a sen-
timent for flowers, who has not in him feelings as fresh and
delicate as the flowers which he admires.
But with what complacency can such a one look upon the
merchandise of flowers which is exhibited at every party,
every wedding, every vulgar jam of rich people, who tor-
ment themselves through untimely hours for the sake of tor-
menting their host?
Look at the atrocious bridal bouquets! The bride, the
bridesmaids, come forth bearing each a huge melange of
orange-blossoms and rosebuds, wedged together into a
pyramidal wart of flowers! If, instead, the bride were to
issue forth bearing in her hand a sprig of orange-blossoms
just as it grew, just as it was plucked from the branch, or
two or three simple rosebuds on the one stem, loosely clus-
tered, and with their own fresh green leaves, or a simple white
lily, would not every one feel how superior flowers were for
such an occasion, in their own simplicity and individuality,
than when, as generally happens, they are smothered up
in an artificial heap, in which all naturalness is utterly lost?
A single blossom of carnation with a geranium leaf; an
exquisite saffrano rosebud just beginning to open, with a
fresh leaf from its own bush for company; a stem of mign-
onette, girt round with a dozen fragrant blue violets; a long
sprig of mauvandia-vine, with its charming blue bells, hang-
48 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ing from a tall wineglass, or carelessly trailing round it,—
these, and such little things, confer a pleasure on those who
have a sensitive eye for grace and simplicity, which nothing
else can.
We would not be understood as objecting to all masses
of flowers, nor to large combinations. For coarser and
more distant effects, they are permissible. But even then,
the more they can be made to have a loose, airy, open habit,
the finer will be their effect.
But first, simplicity, naturalness, singleness, and individ-
ualism in flowers; afterward and inferior, though permis-
sible, artificial structures and combinations.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 49
pa
ROSES.
July 2d.
JUNE is the paradise of roses. In this month they break
forth into unparalleled splendor. All Rosedom is out in
holiday apparel; and roses white and black, green and pink,
scarlet, crimson, and yellow, striped and mottled, double and
single, in clusters and solitary, moss-roses, damask-roses,
Noisette, perpetual, Bourbon, China, tea, musk, and all
other tribes and names, hang in exuberant beauty. The air
is full of their fragrance. The eye can turn nowhere that
it is not attracted to a glowing bush of roses. At first one
is exhilarated. He wanders from bush to bush and cuts the
finest specimens, until there is no room or dish for more.
So many roses, and. so few to see them! What would not
people shut up in cities give to see such luxuriance of
beauty! How strange that those who have ground do not
gather about them these favorites of every sense! The
air and soil that nourish nettles and thistles, plantain and
dock, would bring forth roses with equal kindness. There
is enough ground wasted around country houses to furnish
root-room for a hundred kinds of roses, without detriment
either to fruit trees or ornamental shade trees. Men ad-
mire them when they see them in a friend’s house; they are
always pleased to receive a lapful as a present to their wife
or mother or daughter; but it does not enter their head
that they, too, might have roses to give away.
Roses are easy of culture, easy of propagation, requiring
almost as little care as dandelions or daisies. The wonder
is that every other man is not an enthusiast, and in the
month of June a gentle fanatic. Floral insanity is one of
the most charming inflictions to which man is heir! One
50 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
never wishes to be cured, nor should any one wish to cure
him. The garden is infectious. Flowers are “catching,” or
the love of them is. Men begin with one or two. In afew
years they are struck through with floral zeal. Not bees
are more sedulous in their researches into flowers than
many a man is, and one finds, after the strife and heat and
toil of his ambitious life, that there is more pure satisfac-
tion in his garden than in all the other pursuits that prom-
ise so much of pleasure and yield so little.
It is pleasant to find in men whose hard and loveless
side you see in society, so much that is gentle and beauty-
loving in private. Hard capitalists, sharp politicians, grind-
ing business men, will often be found, at home, in full sym-
pathy with the gentlest aspects of nature. One is surprised
to find how rich and sweet these monsters often turn out to
be! Here is the man whom you have for years heard de-
scribed, in all the newspapers, as a spectacle of wickedness
or a monument of folly. You are, by some convulsion of
nature, thrown into his company, and travel for days with
him. To your surprise his manners are gentle, his conver-
sation pleasing, his attentions to all about him considerate.
This must be artifice. It is a veil to hide that hideous heart
of which you have heard so much. You watch and wait.
But watching and waiting only satisfy you that this sup-
posed monster is a kind man, with a world of sympathy for
beautiful things. And when, in after-months, you have
been at his summer-house, and know him in his vineyard and
his garden, you smile at yourself that you were ever subject
to that illusion which is so often raised about public men.
A man is not always to be trusted because he loves fine
horses, or because he follows the stream or hunts in the fields.
But if a man that loves flowers, and loves them enough to
labor for them, is not to be trusted, where in this wicked
world shall we go for trust? A man that carries a garden
in his heart has got back again a part of the Eden from
which our great forefather was expelled.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 51
XII.
CHESTNUTS.
July 30th.
I Fancy that trees have dispositions. At any rate, they
have those qualities which suggest dispositions to all who
are in sympathy with nature, and who look upon facts as
letters of an alphabet, by which one may spell out the hid-
den meanings of things. Some trees, like the apple, suggest
goodness and humility. They put on no airs. They do
not exalt themselves. They are patient of climate, full of
beauty in blossom, and, in autumn, beautiful in fruit.
The oak, when well grown, has the beauty of rugged
strength, and sometimes it has grandeur. Certain live-oak
trees on Helena Island, near Beaufort, 8. C., with long,
pendant moss, like a Druid’s beard, impressed us with a
feeling of the sublime in vegetation which we never ex-
perience in the presence of any other tree. Down on
our backs we lay, and gazed up into their vast tops with
a pleasure never since renewed. These were the types of
patriarchal dignity.
The American elm is the tree of grace and beauty. It is
stately without stiffness. It carries itself up to such a
height that its drooping boughs do not suggest feebleness,
as the weeping-willow does. And yet, one never has the
feeling of sympathy with it or of personal intercourse. One
may sit under its branches, but no one ever sat on or among
them. We admire, but do not sympathize. Still less did
any one ever love a hickory-tree. They are beautiful and
stately, but self-contained. When young, they are dandies;
and when old, aristocrats.
Not so the chestnut-tree. This darling old fellow is a
very grandfather among trees. What a great, open bosom
De PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
it has! Its boughs are arranged with express reference to
ease in climbing. Nature was in a good mood when the
chestnut-tree came forth. It is, when well grown, a stately
tree, wide-spreading, and of great size. Even in the forest
the chestnut is a noble tree. But one never sees its full
development except when it has grown in the open fields.
It then assumes immense proportions. Having a tendency
when cut down to send up many shoots from the stump,
old trees are often found with four or five trunks springing
from the same root. In such cases, no other American tree
covers so wide a space of ground. Not even the oak at-
tains to greater size or longevity. The Tortworth chestnut,
in England, is supposed to have been standing before the
Conquest, 1066, and must be not far from a thousand years
old. The longest known tree in America is the “Rice”
chestnut, on the estate of Marshall I. Rice, at Newton
Centre, Mass. It measures twenty-four feet and three
tenths in circumference at the base, seventy-six feet in
height, and spreads its limbs ninety-three feet. It is vigor-
ous, and still bears enormous crops. This, however, is a
mere stripling compared with the famous chestnut-tree of
Mount Attna, whose trunk measured about one hundred
and sixty feet in circumference, or some fifty-three feet in
diameter, and which could shelter a hundred horsemen be-
neath its branches! But this tree, long hollow, is about
giving up the ghost, even if it has not already done so,
no doubt dying in the peaceful consciousness of having
spent a virtuous life, and fed thousands of people with two
thousand years’ full of nuts!
There is living in vigor at Sancerre, in France, a tree
which, at six feet from the ground, measures thirty feet in
circumference. Michaux says that he measured several
trees in the Carolina mountains of fifteen or sixteen feet in
circumference; which, if a boy is expected to climb them, is
full large enough.
A chestnut-tree in full bloom is a fine sight. It blos-—
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 53
soms about the first of July, in clusters of long, yellowish-
white filaments, like a tuft of coarse wool-rolls. The whole
top of the tree is silvered over. We have never seen them
so finely in blossom as this year, and we foresee a grand
harvest for the boys. O, those golden days of October!
The thought of them brings back the days of boyhood, the
brilliant foliage of the forest just putting on its regal gar-
ments; the merry sport of squirrels racing on the ground
(if one lies dead-still to watch), or scampering up the trunks,
and leaping from tree to tree with chirk and bark, if dis-
turbed.
It was a great day when, with bag and basket, the whole
family was summoned to go “ a-chestnuting!” There was
frolic enough, and climbing enough, and shaking enough,
and rattling nuts enough, and a sly kiss or two,—but never
enough,—and lunch enough, and appetite enough. The
silver brook on the hillside carried down, on its mur-
muring current, the golden leaves which the trees, with
every puff of wind, sent shimmering down through the air.
Barefooted, as we were all summer long, the prickly chest-
nut burs were too sharp for our little tough feet, and we
were glad to pick our way cautiously under the trees.
Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on
the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic under
their boughs! And long live the winter nights, with the
homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger drink than
cider; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, with here and
there the spectacled old folks; all before a roaring hickory
fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as the western horizon
with the sun going down in it, and with a roguish stick of
chestnut wood in it, which opens such a fusillade of snaps
and cracks as sets the girls to screaming, and throws out
such mischievous coals upon the calico dresses, as. obliges
every humane boy to run to the relief of his sweetheart all
on fire!
‘No doubt many an old gentleman will read this article
54 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
with a face growing more and more full of smiles, and taking
off his spectacles at the end, and, looking kindly over at his
aged dame, will say, “Do you remember, Polly, when we
were at Squire Judson’s—” “ Well, well, father, you are
too old to be talking about such youthful follies.” Never-
theless, she smiles and looks kindly over at the old rogue
who kissed her that night, proposed on the way home, and
was married before Christmas.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 55
XI.
GREEN PEAS.
August 20th.
Wauat a comfort is the consciousness of usefulness! One
may dig on his farm or delve in his library for weeks, with
nothing to show for it, and with no murmuring applause.
But let him once spread the table, put the pot to boiling,
and set forth a meal; and the praise of housekeepers begins
to ascend, sweet as frankincense or new-made apple-pies.
But we are praise-proof in culinary matters. There are
others around here that are liable to the puffing-up of van-
ity, if their domestic performances are loudly applauded.
But we, of the stronger sex, can hear our beefsteak com-
mended without a wrinkle upon our tranquil humility. We
can have our coffee criticised without a flush of indignation.
Even our method of cooking vegetables may be underval-
ued, without exciting us to controversy; so tranquil is our
soul, when once under the inspiration of the ewisine. But
some there are who mingle praise with suggestion—a cup
of criticism with sugar in it. Thus :—
“ We heartily thank him for his descriptions in ‘ Summer Dinners,’
and would mildly suggest, if he would add a pint of nice, thick cream
to a quart of peas, taken from milk that has stood just six hours in a
- cool, airy, and clean cellar—said milk must be milk, to start with;
none of your blue, watery stuff, such as some cows are said to give,
but rich, golden milk, caught in bright tin pails, so polished that
they reflect the happy faces of all who wish to take a peep at them:
—with such a dish, I think we could tempt—well, Henry Ward, to
dine with us; could n’t we? especially if we add an apple-pie made
after a receipt you gave in the Ledger several years ago.
“ Yours, very respectfully,
“ Twenty-year-old Dor
If one wishes a new and composite dish, let the peas be
56 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
smothered in cream. But, if one wishes peas, pure and
simple, in their own flavor,—a flavor chosen out of the
whole vegetable realm, and not repeated in any other grow-
ing thing,—let him not, let her not, audaciously introduce
any rival flavor. Peas are good; cream is good; peas and
cream are good,—each in its own severalty. But let each
one stand in its own name. Do not call peas and cream,
peas. One’s tenderest culinary susceptibility is touched, to
be asked if he will take some green peas, and then to find
himself eating peas and cream!
The Hnolich receipts recommend a sprig or ‘two of mint
to be thrown in while green peas are cooking. We do not
challenge their right to do it. They may put in anise and
cummin too, if they choose. But we do protest, in the
name of kitchen literature, against calling such experimen-
tal compounds by the ever-dear name of “ green peas.”
All smooth peas are tasteless compared with the wrinkled
peas. It is proper that wrinkles should bring sweetness.
The smooth-faced varieties are fairer to look upon. But
they are not inwardly rich. That these should be flavored,
enriched, and spiced with herbs, is not altogether against
nature or analogy.
Still, if on some bright summer day, soon after the twelve
musical strokes on the village bell, we shall find ourselves
the guest of the sprightly “ Dot,” we shall lay aside all pre-
conceived notions and all prejudices ; and ifit prove to be that
peas absorb cream into their bosoms without losing their
peahood—nay, if this wedding shall prove, as all true wed-
dings should, that individuality is developed and established
—we shall gladly repent, confess, and recant our foregoing
protest.
Another fair heart has suffered itself to fall into shocking
doubts.
“Dear Sir: It is with great pleasure that I read your weekly
articles in the Ledger, and I have especially relished your ‘ Summer
Dinner,’ which was got up in such good style. But—and this is
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 57
what is very important—did you have to ask your wife the differ-
ent names of the vegetables, and how to cook them? Or do you
believe in Men’s Rights, and so know how to do your own cooking,
seasoning, and eating?”
The family should be sacred! This attempt to pry into
its secrets must not succeed. This question answered, the
next one would be, whether we wrote our own articles for
the Ledger, or whether some one dictated them to us?
And then would come questions as to who wrote the ser-
mons? Then, when once the stream had broken over the
bounds of proper privacy, it would rush through kitchen
and pantry, closet and cupboard, cellar and attic, until the
slime of curiosity would lie thick on all the sacred places of
the household.
“ Ask our wife,” forsooth! We asked her once for all,
some years ago, and the answer lasts, full and strong, until
this day.
58 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XIV.
HENS.
April 22d.
Tue day is bright and windy. The sky has sunk back to
the uttermost, and the arch seems wonderfully deep above
your head. Little cloud-ships go sailing about in the heay-
ens as busily as if they carried freight to long-expectant
owners. It is a day for the country. The city palls on the
jaded nerve. I long to hear the hens cackle. There are
lively times now in barn and barn-yard, I’ll warrant you.
If I were lying on the east veranda of a cottage that I wot
of, I should see flocks of pure white Leghorns, wind-blown,
shining in the sunlight, searching for a morsel in and out of
the shrubbery, and hear the cocks crowing, and the hens
crooning. The Leghorn, of true blood, leads the race of
fowls for continuous eggs, in season and out of season; eggs
large enough, of fine quality, and sprung from hens that
never think of chickens. For a true Leghorn seldom wants
to sit. They believe in division of labor. They provide
eges; others must hatch them. Other fowls may surpass
them on the spit or gridiron, but, as egg-layers, they easily
take the lead. They are hardy, handsome, and immensely
productive. As it is just as easy to keep good fowls as poor
ones, thrifty housekeepers should secure a good laying breed.
Not every pure white fowl is a Leghorn. There are many
White Spanish sold as Leghorns. They may be known by
their gray or pearl-colored legs. The pure Leghorn has a
yellow leg, a single comb, quite long and usually lapping
down. This breed is well known about New York, but no
description of it can be found in English poultry-books.
Indeed, we are informed that Tegetmayer, the standard au-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 59
thority, but recently knew anything about them, and then
from a coop sent from New York.
The Brahmas and Cochins have good qualities. They are
large, even huge. They are peaceable, and the Cochins do
not scratch,—an important fact to all who have a garden,
and who yet desire to let their poultry run at large. They
are good layers, admirable mothers, and yield a fine carcass
for the table, but the meat is not fine, though fairly good.
But a more ungainly thing than buff Cochins the eye never
saw. A flock of Leghorns is a delight to the eye. One is
never tired of watching them. Their forms are symmet-
rical, and every motion is graceful. But the huge poddy
Cochins waddle before you like over-fat buffoons. They
are grotesque, good-natured, clumsy, useful creatures; but
they have a great love of sitting. Every Cochin hen would
love to bring out two broods in a season; while the white
Leghorns fill their nests with eggs, and then think their
whole duty done. We keep Cochin hens to sit on Leghorn
egos. Better mothers cannot be.
I hear my hens cackle! These bright spring days are
passing, and the concert of the barn-yard is in full play, but
T am tied up to the pen! Currant-bushes are pushing out
their blossom-buds; rhubarb is showing its red knuckles
above the ground; willows are pushing out their silky cat-
kins; birds have come—everything has come but me! I
cannot sprout yet. Patience! I shall be green enough in a
few weeks. The city shall not always prevail. In due sea-
son I shall go to grass. Already I smell it. The odor of
new grass can be perceived but for a few days only in spring.
It should be noticed then, for it is unlike any other perfume,
and will be perceived no more until another year. How
happy are they that dwell among open fields,—or how
happy they might be if they but knew their privileges!
60 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XV.
FARMING.
May 138th.
Ir one wishes to make money out of the soil, upon an
Eastern farm, he must live upon it, study it, watch it, calk
and groove it so that no leak shall be possible, economize
rigidly, work fearfully, sell the best, use the unsalable, — in
short, he must be a drudge or a genius. Not a genius in
literature or art, but in money-making. Only think how
some old-fashioned New England ministers lived on a salary
of four hundred dollars; educated seven or eight children ;
worked their farm during the week, and preached on Sun-
day; and died rich, that is, worth anywhere from fifty
to a hundred thousand dollars, which, fifty years ago, was
as much as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars are now;
for the purchasing power of gold and silver is steadily de-
clining, and of course more of it is required for the same
purposes.
But only now and then did such a man and minister turn
up; and the general impression, even in his case, was, that
the farm was better tilled than the parish.
But the small farmers in the old States north of the Del-
aware have a hard life. If they get on, it is by vigorous
economy following excessive industry. There is a good
deal of sentiment wasted on the delights of farming. But
in New England, we suspect that for every farmer who
lives in abundance or comparative ease, there are five, and
perhaps ten, that fare coarsely, and are not half as well
clothed and housed as the average mechanic. First-rate
farmers are few; third and fourth rate farmers are many,
and a hard time they have. But as one goes westward, to
better soil, larger farms, and more congenial climate, things
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 61
change. Farmers are prosperous without such exacting
toil. Their dwellings grow better, particularly in the
northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and the great
Northwest. If one has money and leisure, he may carry
on a farm in the Eastern States with great enjoyment.
That is as pleasant a way to spend money as can well be
devised, not even excepting the management of fast horses
and fast yachts ; for both of these deteriorate in the using,
and some go under, while the farm steadily rises in value
and force. But with the exception of the owners of un-
commonly good land here and there, not much money is to
be made at farming in the East. The farm is an institution
designed to promote health and comfort in the expenditure
of money. Money is the one manure which the farm
greedily covets.
We say these things, not to discourage farming, but to
dissuade the annual host from going out to make their for-
tunes on a farm, who, in five years, will come back stripped
bare of everything but disgust—not of that. No man
would think of going from the law, or from a store, into a
mechanical trade without having served an apprenticeship,
or having become in some way familiar with it. Lawyers
do not set up at cabinet-making, nor go into steel works,
nor set up for builders or painters. But when business is
dull, and health delicate, many a professional man, many a
clerk or unsuccessful merchant, concludes to buy a “snug
farm,” and retire from the cares of the town or city, to lead
the joyous life of a farmer. He has no knowledge of
farming; but it requires none! Farming is simple. You
rise with the dewy morn; you go forth to your prodigal
acres; you rest under the trees bending with fruit ; you eat
from your bountiful table the food that sprung from your
own soil,—and ever so much more romance of the same
sort.
Prosperous farming requires knowledge, tact at managing
men, skill in laying out work, incessant industry, very close
62 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
calculations, good judgment in buying, and a good capacity
of selling. In short, the qualities which go to make up a
good merchant, a good manufacturer, and a good scientist
ought to be combined in a first-class farmer. There are
more passable orators born every year than there are first-
class farmers. If any one doubts the truth of these views,
let him try a farm for a few years!
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 63
XVI.
GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
Ir is not every one who can toss off his provocations
with so good a grace as our correspondent, whose letter we
insert :—
New York, April 19th.
Dear Mr. BeEcHER: Suppose you were fond of flowers and
shrubs, and thatthe plat of Mother Earth allotted you was at the
back of your city house, say about seventeen feet square,—the most
of it occupied by the space for drying clothes ; the rest a hard clayey
soil, baked by the sun so quickly that you wish the Israelites might
have had it to make brick, and one that no amount of foreign ad-
mixture improves.
Suppose the florist came every spring, hoed and raked, and dis-
tributed roses, verbenas, geraniums, and the like, at regular inter-
vals, also sticks, bare evidence of the burial-place of various cherished
bulbs that never come up, but seem, like your carnations, to disap-
pear with the wheelbarrow.
Suppose the occupants of the tenement-house close to your rear
fence,—who always, in all the stories of the day, nurse a geranium in
a cracked pot,—instead of thanking you for the pleasant sight under
their windows, garnished your bed with egg-shells, old paper collars,
rags, bones, empty spools, and other debris handy for the purpose.
Suppose the nine thousand and ninety cats and their families
roosted on the fence in the twilight, and tried their claws on your
shrubs, and the softness of your soil generally, in the small hours of
the night.
Suppose, with the first green leaves, the worms came also, and the
green lice, and the ants, and made your bushes a sorrow and a vex-
ation.
Suppose the hoop of the laundress was over it all, so to speak, and
the hose always burst when the weather was dry, and your watering-
pot held about a teacupful.
64 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
What would you do, Mr. Beecher? Would you give over the
space to old shoes and ugliness, or would you fly in the face of mani-
Jest destiny and cultivate ?
Dejectedly yours,
BREEZE.
The very first thing to be done with a tenacious and ob-
stinate clay soil is to have it dug out and carted away
bodily, and its place supplied with good fresh loam. This
would be a serious job if there were several acres. But
when there is but a plat of seventeen feet square, and the
larger part of that reserved for laundry purposes, only bor-
ders being used for flowers, the amount to be removed
would be comparatively small, and the satisfaction would
be ample repayment. Any one with a cart can carry off
the clay, but not every one can get good soil. An honest
florist.or garden jobber could put you in the way of that.
If you will have a garden, it is best to be your own
gardener. Adam and Eve set the example.
The cats may be managed in various ways. A black-and-
tan terrier kept in the back yard has a wonderful influence
on cats, arousing in them a strong local prejudice. If the
boys in the neighborhood knew that a premium were offered
for cat scalps, it would be found greatly to interest the cats.
At any rate, their number would grow less.
As to worms and aphides, no one is fit to own flowers
who, in so small a space as seventeen feet square, cannot
exterminate them,—worms by hand picking, and aphides by
whale-oil soapsuds. A vigorous fidelity will in a short time
put the last worm hors de combat. The whale-oil soap may
be had at any large seed-store,—directions for use accom-
panying the little jar. A tin garden syringe may be had
at the same place, costing but little, lasting, with care,
twenty years, and carrying the soapsuds like spray over
every leaf and twig.
We, too, in Brooklyn have lawn dresses with equatorial
hoops, and yet manage to have many a charming patch of
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 69.
flowers. But, of all things in this world, a garden needs
the presence of its owner. If you do not love it enough to
care for it as you would for a baby, better let it alone.
Flowers know who love them. They will not be put off
with arm’s-length cordiality. But, if you love them, you
will easily overcome a hundred obstacles, and rejoice in
your flowers all the more because they are the trophies of
your patience and industry.
66 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XVII.
CORN.
September 19th.
We have artists who give themselves to specialties. One
delights to know fruits. Another loves architecture, or
landscape, or figures, or animals, or grasses and flowers.
Now it has always seemed strange that the noblest of all
grasses, maize, or Indian corn, has never found an enthusi-
astic lover. It has been painted often, but never yet inter-
preted. No one has done by it what has been done by the
lily, the rose, the convolvulus.
And yet, where shall we find any union of strength and
grace more perfect among herbaceous plants? The jointed
stem, robust and stiff, gives off at each articulation the most
gracefully curved sword-leaves, which diminish in length as
the plant goes up to its fimbriated top, forming a symmet-
rical whole not to be equalled among field plants.
If one will wander along the edges of a cornfield, he will
often see an exquisite picture, such as Nature loves to make.
The wild convolvulus, which often fills the fence corners, has
crept out of the grass into the furrow and twined around
the corn, climbing to its very top, and, having power yet to
grow, returns upon itself and fashions festoons of exquisite
leaves and white blossoms, which hang down in every neg-
ligent form of beauty. Other vines too, besides the convol-
vulus, try their arts, and none fail; but none succeed so
charmingly as this queen of twining vines.
A specialist might devote himself to corn without fear of
exhausting the subject. Of all the grains it is the true type
of republicanism. It knows how to live in the community
without losing its individuality. The smaller grains—
wheat, barley, and such like—produce their effects only in
a
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 67
masses. Individual stalks are quite insignificant. It is
the community, and not the individual, that is beautiful.
But a field of corn does not swallow up in itself the stems
which form its mass. Every plant yet retains it nobility.
If corn is sown so thickly that it cannot find room for de-
velopment, the whole degenerates into mere grass, and loses
its proper force and beauty. But the husbandman has
found out what rulers yet but slowly learn, and reluctantly,
—that the force and beauty of the whole is to be sought in
the development and strength of each single plant. Indi-
viduality and community are not only compatible, but each
is the indispensable factor of the other.
Or, turn the subject in another light. Each stalk of corn
is a father and mother. It does not live for itself. When
it hastens on in the hot days of July, it is not its own
beauty that it seeks. It takes that on the way to a higher
end. In the cool juices of that polished stem glows the
sacred fire of parentage. The arched and rustling leaves
borrow of the sun and air food for the coming brood. No
sooner does the tassel break forth at the top, than out peer
the infant ears nestling at the side of the noble stem. Nor
does the parent blossom into its final beauty until the ex-
quisite silk hangs from the nascent ears of corn to feed upon
the parent’s life, and in that find its own.
No sooner do the new-born kernels swell, than the parent
bequeaths itself and all its inward stores to its offspring.
The long leaves swing idly in the air, as things that have
nothing more to do. Every day the winds evoke a shriller
sound from their motions. When the cob has covered
itself with golden kernels, rich and ripe, the parent dies,—
dies mourning sadly, shall we think? What though it shall
live a hundred-fold in its children? All memory or con-
sciousness will be gone. It has spent its life and beauty for
others. But how strong, how fresh, how full, how beautiful
its life, while doing its appointed work! How little does it
really care to live when the end of living is accomplished!
68 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It did the work at hand, and drew all its beauty from that
doing, then took its place in the great economy of nature,
falling back to nothing.
With such thoughts men looked upon the fields thousands
of years ago, and sighed, “As for man, his days are as
grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the
wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof
shall know it no more.”
It was thousands of years afterward that one said, “ As we
have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the
image of the heavenly..... Death is swallowed up in
victory.”
The grass of the field may image forth the secular side of
human life, but it can go no further than the grave. Be-
yond that it cannot point. Only one garden ever was
that set forth the sure hope of immortality. “In the place
where He was crucified, there was a garden... .. There
laid they Jesus.”
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 69
XVIII.
DANDELIONS.
June 8th.
THERE are many charms connected with the ideal life of
the tropics. The chief drawback is, that manhood deli-
quesces and runs out under the equator. This is not paid
for by luscious bananas, oranges, orchids, or ever-blooming
vines and trees. Enjoyment palls when it flows unceasingly
and without break. To live in summer forever, without
one ungarlanded hour in the year, might, for aught we
know, sate us with sweetness.
The tropics were not made to live in all the year. They
are a refuge for one or two months. After frost and snow
have had their full meal, and the northern winds have by
familiarity bred contempt and influenzas, it is a good thing
to go to sleep on the good steamer Moro Castle, and wake
up in Cuba, or Jamaica, or to go on through the Gulf of
Mexico to the Magdalena valley in Northern South Amer-
ica, which the painter Church once told me he regarded as
the most perfect climate that he had ever found in all his
travels.
But as soon as the contrast is satisfied, we are sure that
one in the tropics must long for the northern zones, north-
ern fruits and northern flowers; for calm days without pes-
tilent insects; for grass, and for DANDELIONS!
Now I have got upon my real subject. The foregoing
sentences were in the nature of a rhetorical introduction,—
a sly and adroit way of getting people to listen to the
praises of one of the brightest charms of our northern
spring days.
I am moved to celebrate this brilliant, and yet, I fear, not
much-prized flower, from the glory of my morning view.
70 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Out of my back windows I look down on four or five grassy
yards, all well kept and lying well open to the sun. Soon
after the grass springs you may see such a gorgeous array
of dandelions as might make a florist fairly envious! They
jut out from the edges of the walks, they crowd the narrow
strips of grass at the lower end, they fairly jostle each other
like a crowd pouring out of a public hall, in their strife to
get into the light and open their golden crowns to the
sun.
So brilliant are they and so hardy, that we are apt to
miss the sentiment that lives in them. They are not of
the flowers that impudently push themselves forward,
demanding us to look at them whether we will or no.
With all their amazing brilliancy, they are still coy love-
flowers, that wait for the sun, as a bride for the bridegroom.
For dandelions do not wake up in the morning before we
do. They wait till the sun has long called them, and then
they fling open their golden disks, and shine with a real de-
light of existence, with a cheer and abundance which ought
to strike joy into the heart of a misanthrope.
Soon after noon is at its highest, the dandelion, thinking
that the world is bright enough, and that the sun can man-
age the rest of the day, folds itself up, laces the golden
filaments with the green lepals, and retires to meditation.
Thus it plays courtier in the morning, and nun in the after-
noon.
But what aname! Dens leonis! or Dent-de-lion! Or,
if you fly to the systematic name,—the harsh Taraxacum!
Shall such a home-loving, radiant creature be called Lion’s
Tooth, because some impertinent, prying botanist fancied
that he had espied the shape of a lion’s tooth in its minor
forms ?
Just as soon as we have got politics settled, business
reformed, and human nature elevated, I am determined
to form a society for the reformation of botanical names.
Botany has been the Noah’s Ark of pedants. Every absurd
od
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 71
whim of every pragmatical professor has been turned into
Greek or Latin, and hung about the neck of unhappy flow-
er. One might as well hang a dictionary around a child’s
neck by way of ornament, as to impose on flowers such out-
rageous and outlandish names as now defend the science of
botany from all approach, as a fort is defended by a line of
chevaux-de-frise.
But blessings on those cheery children of the sun! They
are born of brightness; their whole life is like a smile of love.
They are not a flower for the hand; they are not to be
worn in the bosom. They do not love the house, or the
pressure of a close bouquet. Their life is in the free open
air. They shine out on you along your daily walk. They
crowd your yard with golden coin, which, good for nothing
in the market, may yet have the power to confer more en-
joyment than could golden dollars or ducats.
This is my annual tribute. To-day I look out of my
window, and thank God for the gifts which he sends me by
the hand of Dandelions! Do they know my thoughts as I
gaze on them? Is there not some sympathy between things
in nature which wake up the soul to delight, and aid the
soul thus aroused? Behind signs and signals, back of all
articulate utterance, may there not be a subtler relationship
which will yet be discovered, as connecting the inward and
the outward with a living relationship ?
72 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XIX.
HOW TO BEAUTIFY HOMES.
August 25th.
No one needs to be told how much a house is adorned by
vines ; and yet many are averse to their liberal use from
the impression that they make a house damp. It is true
that they may, but it is not necessary that they should.
Vines do not codlect dampness. If any part of the house
wall needs the sun to warm it, and is covered by a vine from
its influence, it may favor dampness. But an ivy vine, on
the other hand, is reputed to make a wall dry, and has
sometimes been employed to correct the undue moisture to
which certain portions of a dwelling are subject. A grape
vine, trained upon slats, which shall have a few inches of
air-space underneath it, will not injure the house. Upon
porches, over trellises, vines may be trained with charming
effect, and without offending those who are superstitiously
prejudiced against vines on the house.
The kinds of vines must be left, in the case of thousands,
to accident. .Men that are obliged to count the very last
penny in their expenses cannot send many orders to florists
for beautiful things, but must take what they can get in
their own neighborhood. We will mention a few things
now generally diffused.
The Glycine, or Wistaria, is one of the noblest. It will
run a hundred feet or more, and grow in time to have a
trunk like a small tree. Nothing can surpass it at its blos-
soming period. It is like a vision of the garden of heaven.
It may be raised by dayers, but will be found somewhat
slow in taking hold after transplantation. Its arms may be
carried out in tier above tier to cover the whole side of the
house, when economy of space is no object; but where one
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 73
desires to spare for other things, the Wéistaria may be
trained upon a corner, or along the eaves.
There is nothing more beautiful in its summer greenness
or gorgeous in its autumn reds and purples, than the Vir-
ginia Creeper—Ampelopsis hederacea. There is a variety
called Ampelopsis Veitchii, or Veitch’s, which is extremely
beautiful. It clings to wood or brick with as much tenacity
as the ivy. Its foliage is fine, and its habit fits it to fill
small spaces. It is a plant that, having once owned, no
one would part with.
If one wishes a dense screen, there is no vine that grows
more rapidly or that is more hardy than the Aristoloicha
sipho, or Dutchman’s pipe. One might as well attempt to
look through a brick wall as through the opaque mass made
by its enormous leaves. But-its coarseness fits it chiefly for
hiding ungainly things or shading from the light.
The Trumpet Creeper is effective at a distance, but its
coarseness excludes it from familiar nearness.
Few people are aware of the vast improvements which
have taken place in the Clematis. Every one knows the
wild white clematis, which is beautiful in blossom, and
almost as fine when its seeds are ripened. It abounds in
our fields, and bears transplantation easily. The new kinds,
or those comparatively new, deserve to be better known.
Fortune’s, Henderson’s, Jackman’s, the Prince of Wales,
Standish’s, together with Helena, Sophia, Lanuginosa, are
obtainable at our first-class nurseries, and may be easily
propagated. Besides these, there are every year new vari-
eties introduced. There is no vine that we should spare
with more reluctance. The sheets of gorgeous bloom,
which, by judicious selection of kinds, will last from June
to September, the perfect hardiness of the plant, and the
ease with which it is trained, fit it eminently for small
places and sunny spots. For it loves the full blaze, and
will not flourish well even when planted with other vines
that at all shade it. Indeed, to have the best effect of
74 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
clematis, it should be trained in a clear and open space
to a trellis of its own.
But, of all vines, none is more popular, and deservedly
so, than the honeysuckle. The kinds are numerous. But
if but one can be had, let it be the Halleana, or Hall’s
Japan honeysuckle. It cannot be distinguished from the
Brachypoda, in leaf or blossom; but it excels that immeas-
urably in the habit of blossoming all summer. The Fleau-
oso, or Chinese, is fine, but we consider it second to Hall’s,
which ought to be better known and more widely diffused
than it is. By planting it on open soil, without support, it
spreads over the ground, and roots at every joint, so that,
hundreds of new plants may be gained every year.
There is a beautiful golden honeysuckle—auwrea reticu-
lata. This ought not to be planted by the side of green-
leaved varieties. It produces the effect of a diseased or
weak branch, rather than of contrast and variety. But the
golden-leaved, if planted by itself, and well grown, is gor-
geous. It is perfectly hardy, and is of good growth and
constitution. If one has a yard of ground, he may have a
vine which will give unfeigned pleasure through the whole
summer.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 75
XX.
BIRCH AND ASPEN.
September 28th.
Looxine out from my window upon the dark sides of the
mountains, upon the massive clouds, upon the wind-blown
trees, I see my pet, the birch, all in a shiver with each blast.
The American white birch has all the grace and delicacy of
its European namesake, and, besides, a sensibility which it
borrows from the aspen, or shares with it.
One should have, on every side of a country house, a
group of aspens and birches. Planted together, they will
give you motion in charming variety. On other trees the
leaves are so rigid in the stem, that a wind strong enough
to set them in full activity is strong enough to set all the
branches in motion. We recognize the force, and, in large
trees, the grandeur of motion. When a strong wind moves
the whole tree, it swings its great boughs hither and thither,
all its leaves and twigs utter their voices, which in chorus
often rise to aroar. Yet, though the whole tree is agitated,
and seems convulsed, one sees that it is only upon the ex-
terior; while the top and sides are in full motion, the trunk
stands firm, and seems motionless. Not till its very roots
give way will it move, and then it does not bend, but goes
down with stiff trunk.
The elastic birch, with long and slender limbs, avoiding
horizontal positions and aiming at the zenith, flexible to the
last degree, moves in the wind with a grace and elasticity
which has no parallel.
The American aspen has a shivering leaf upon a rigid
branch. It stands quite stiff and motionless in bough,
while its leaves are quivering and shivering in the most in-
dustrious manner. Right over against the east door of the
76 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Twin Mountain House, New Hampshire, at a little distance,
is a group of aspens, which are my perpetual delight. They
are my wind-meters, or, rather, zephyr measurers. On a hot
noon, when no air seems stirring, and the trees about them
doze and slumber, like good men at church, these twinklers,
like roguish boys, are dancing in an imaginary breeze, and
playing with themselves, without a particle of wind, so far
‘as I can perceive. Now a shiver runs over them from head
to foot; then the topmost leaves shake and swirl, while the
bottom rests. Gradually the motion dies away all over, and
the frolic ends. No, a single leaf begins to wag; it goes on
in single blessedness, with accelerated pace, up and down,
round and round, until, for the life of me, I cannot help
bursting into a fit of laughter at this solitary dance.
At times, in certain moods, one cannot help thinking that
the aspen is striving to communicate something. It seems
so sigh and pant. It supplicates as one that suffers. Then,
changing suddenly, it coaxes and winks and blinks at you as
if it was only in fun. It will stand perfectly still a minute
as if looking to see what you will do, and then a laughing
ripple runs all over it. It frolics with the same tireless
grace as a kitten. Indeed, it is a kind of compound kitten-
tree, each particular leaf a kitten, all frolicking together;
though there is not one of them, if the rest won’t play, that
is not ready, kitten-like, as it were, to chase its own tail.
Why have landscape gardeners done so little with birches
and aspens? Maples, oaks, ashes, and evergreens are well;
but in what other direction shall we look for such grace in
form, such susceptibility to aerial influences, and such ex-
quisite motion both of branch and leaf, as we find in the
aspen and birch? The birches grow rapidly, are extremely
hardy, and will flourish upon poor soil, though loving a
generous soil better. In ten years, with birch and aspen,
one may rejoice in a thick grove. If the yellow locust be
added to these, and the silver maple, one who plants at sixty
may hope to see high over his head a respectable young
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. {i
forest, dense enough for shade and high enough to begin
to comfort the imagination.
Long live the aspen and the birch! Only the young
have just grounds for prejudice; but even boys soon out-
grow the birch, and watch its sinewy motion without a
thought of moving too, in shivering accord.
78 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XXI.
AUTUMN.
November 2d.
Tue summer is gone. The autumn is here. Not this
year, as last, in the plenitude of color, but more soberly,
frugally, and sedately. The autumn of 1871 was eminently
a color season. Only once in three or four years does Na-
ture make a full pallet. Then the colors are pure, intense,
tender, and fresh. Such was last year. The scarlets were
brilliant, the orange was pure, the crocuses and yellows
were clear and rich. But, as autumnal days steal upon us
now, we see already that we shall have picture-forests of
only second or third rate brilliancy. The hickories are of a
rusty and spotted golden brown. The maples are fine, yet
not exquisite.
The sumach is always brilliant. So are some of the vines.
The pepperidge-tree (Vyssa sylvatica) is very fine. If
any one doubts it, let him go over to Prospect Park, in
Brooklyn, not far from the stone cottage, on the south side,
and he will have an opportunity to review his opinion, and
to wonder why it is that one of the most magnificent
color trees of the American forests is so little known or
introduced into decorated grounds. It ranks among the
very first in merit, and stands among the very last in
use.
By the way, the parks of New York and Brooklyn should
be used for something else and more than mere walking and
driving. They are the best schools that America possesses
for the study of trees and shrubs. There are few things
which our climate will allow to grow that may not be found
here, under circumstances which tend to produce their most
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 79
favorable development. Gentlemen who have country
places may, by some little pains, here see just what things
they need, how to combine them for the best effects, and
how to provide for them soil and site. Once possessed,
the love of trees becomes a passion, and inspires more
pleasure than one can imagine who has never become an
enthusiast in that direction.
One may learn, particularly in the Brooklyn Park, the
value of the new golden evergreens of various sorts. They
are destined to work a revolution in yards and gardens.
Some of the more choice ones are marvels of brilliancy, and
carry their glowing yellows right through the winter. One
may learn in these parks how to decorate rocks. There is
many a place in the country abounding in outcropping
ledges, huge bowlders, or jutting rocks, which the pro-
prietor wishes he could dig out and cart away. But
he is rich who has large rocks upon his grounds. If one
will see what use can be made of them, what a frame
they furnish for mosses, ferns, vines, and various elegant
shrubs, he will cease foolishly spending money to get rid
of that which many men would gladly spend money to
obtain.
It is a fortunate thing for our country that so much atten-
tion is now paid to the planting of trees. We hope to see
the day when no longer ninety-nine in every hundred that
are planted in streets or yards shall be maples and elms.
What a sight would be a road on which one could ride
for a mile through an avenue of scarlet oaks, and then
for a mile through stately avenue of tulip-trees, and then
through lines of scarlet maples, pepperidge-trees, cypress,
or long rows of gentlemanly walnut-trees! The time will
come when, on the great roads, one may travel a whole day
in the shade of stately trees.
It is not enough to plant your own grounds. Every
village should line its streets with shade trees. It is not
enough to plant shade trees in the streets. They ought to
80 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
outrun the town, and reach from village to village, until the
whole region is filled with shadowed roads. In doing this,
we ought to avoid the monotony of a few varieties end-
lessly reproduced, and make a generous use of the noble
sorts that are so abundantly scattered over our forests and
fields.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 81
XXII.
PLANT TREES!
Apnriz is the time for planting trees. Too much cannot
be said to induce people to fill their villages, and the great
roads between village and village, with fine shade trees, and
private grounds with the choicer kinds. To write a g@od
hymn or plant a good tree makes one a benefactor to his
generation.
It is hardly to be expected that the old men, hard-work-
ing, and with enough to do at any rate, will trouble them-
selves to plant trees along public roads. But we may hope
for such service from enterprising young men, and even
more from the public spirit of young women. Several
instances have come to our knowledge in which women
have formed associations for beautifying towns and villages
by tree-planting, and in a few years have transformed the
places. Nor is it unworthy of mention that this has been
done by the influence of articles in the New York Ledger.
A tree-planting week might be made a festival week; or
persons might agree to secure a given number during the
season.
And here it may be well to say, that, although spring and
fall are the best seasons for transplanting, yet trees may be
moved in any month in the year,—in the middle of August,
ifneed be. A long row of maples, in Peekskill, were moved
—in consequence of grading and fence-building—during
the month of July, and only two of them experienced any
permanent injury.
But it should be borne in mind that only smail trees
should be removed in hot months, and after the foliage is
expanded, unless one has a mind to go to great expense.
82 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
But trees six or eight feet high, if taken with ample roots,,
and especially if moved in damp or wet weather, may be
safely transplanted in midsummer. Of course, it will re-
quire twice the care and labor which the same tree would
need in spring, to produce the same result.
The three or four trees usually planted in grounds are
maples, elms, horse-chestnuts, and locusts. These are very
well. But there are many kinds of maple seldom seen
that deserve a place; such as the English field maple (Acer
compestre), and notably the American red maple, called
swamp maple (Acer rubrum), the former for its finely cut
leaves, and the latter for early blossoms and for the exquis-
ite scarlet autumn hues of its leaves.
The cut-leaf or fern-leaf white birch is now common in
nurseries. It grows rapidly, is extremely graceful, has
leaves delicate as a fern, and in winter throws against the
sky a tracery of twigs which is beautiful to look upon. It
ought to be in every small collection. The liguidomen has
a very beautiful leaf, star-like, and changes in autumn to a
purplish bronze, quite distinct from all other leaves. If one
can get the ¢wpelo, which abounds in New England, and
may be found in some nurseries, he will secure a tree much
neglected, but which ought to be universally diffused.
Few people know how beautiful is the sassafras-tree,
when well grown. In the woods it is hardly more than a
shrub, or scrawny tree; but when planted young in an open
space, and in good soil, it has a peculiar beauty of its own
which is not repeated in any other tree.
Why are magnolias so seldom planted? They are as
hardy as maples—some of them at least. The JZ conspicua,
the AL. soulangiana, M. glanca, and MM. tripetala are easily
had, are fine all summer, and are the glory of the spring
when their flowers expand.
The American and the English beech, and also the pur-
ple beech, should be more often planted. An old beech-
tree, grown on good soil, in an open field, and not mutilated,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 83
has nothing to fear when standing among all the kings of
trees. No trees that we saw in England impressed us as
did the beeches at Warwick Castle.
In street planting, and along roadsides, nothing could be
finer than the tulip-tree, which grows rapidly, is clean, and
bears fine blossoms in early summer. They should be trans-
planted when small, as they easily die off if moved when
large. The same is true of chestnuts, walnuts, and pecan-
nuts.
Of evergreens I shall not speak, as they deserve a sepa-
rate mention. But do not plant them in the city, nor in
any close yard. They do not thrive, and become disfigure-
ments rather than ornaments.
84 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
XXII.
FAREWELL TO “SUMMER REST.”
In this bright October day I know, not what Eve felt in
leaving Paradise, but what John Milton imagined that she
felt. To be sure, I have no such garden as hers must have
been, and besides, I leave at a different season of the year;
for she inquires feelingly, “Who now shall train these
flowers?” whereas my flowers are so nearly spent that
there is no need of training them. Tuberoses are gone,
verbenas are gone, phloxes, common roses, and all the
garden tribe, except scarlet sage, faithful marigolds, that
never flinch to the last, and petunias, that are more graceful
than they, and full as constant. Besides, there is the slow-
footed chrysanthemum, too late for summer, often too late
for autumn,—that never gets its Sunday jacket on until it
is time to take it off again. But the amplitude of the floral
harvest has been reaped. Now we only glean. Still one
leaves a home of two months—summer months—not with-
out a fluttermg somewhere about the heart. The still
days, the deep days, the mellow days, without taxation or
excitement, are over. Now for the plunge and rush! Now
for men. Farewell, Nature!
Good by, top of the hill! from which not a dwelling can
be seen, only an horizon of mountains; and where, so often,
just after the sun sets, we have lingered alone, in the mys-
tery and inexplicable delight of an evening solitary hour,
lifted far above the surrounding earth, and almost as one
suspended in the very ether.
Good by, homely stone wall! along which have grown
so many weeds which we naughtily admired and cherished,
contrary to good farming manners; where so many shrubs,
finding good soil, shot up into thickets laced with wild
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 85
grape vines. Old tumble-down stone wall! Every stone
colored and built over with weather-stains of hard moss;
stones covered with brilliant ampelopsis, with the three-
leaved ivy, fair to see, foul to touch, and with the rampant
bitter-sweet! Let no one despise a stone wall, nor judge
of it only from the cow’s point of view. It is the city of
refuge to all the little fry. Squirrels run in and out, with
saucy alertness, every summer’s day. Hares and rabbits find
it a bulwark. The hoary old fat woodchuck rejoices in it
as in a fenced city. Birds, too, wrens and sparrows, creep
in and out, like children playing bo-peep. On these sturdy
stones have we sat hours and hours, asking no softer cush-
ion, and desiring no finer spectacle than God sent down
from the heavens, or displayed upon the earth. The winter
will soon vault into my seat, and a white shroud cover down
the neglected old wall on the hill-top! Good by!
Neither can a sensitive nature forget his summer com-
panions, or stint them in their meed of praise and gratitude.
Worms whose metamorphosis we have watched; spiders’
whose webs glitter along the grass at morning ‘and at
evening, or mark out geometric figures among the trees,
—spiders red, brown, black, green, gray, yellow, and speck-
led; soft-winged moths, gorgeous butterflies, steel-colored
and shining black crickets, locusts, and grasshoppers, and
all the rabble of creaking, singing, fiddling fellows besides,
which swarm in air and earth,—we bid you all a hearty good-
by. Sooth to say, we part from some of you without regret.
But for the million we feel a true yearning,—so much have
we watched your ways, so many hours has our soul been
fed by you through our eyes. Ye area part of the Great
Father’s family.
O, how goodly a book is that which God has opened in
this world! Every day is a separate leaf,—nay, not leaf, but
volume, with text and note and picture, with every dainty
quip and quirk of graceful art, with stores of knowledge
illimitable, if one will only humble himself to receive it!
86 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK ABOUT FRUITS, ETC.
One should not willingly be ungrateful, even to the small-
est creatures, or to inanimate objects, that have served his
pleasure. And so, to reed and grass, bush and tree, stone
and hill, brook and lake, all creeping things and all things
that fly, to early birds and late chir ping locusts, we wave
our hand in grateful thanks!
But to that Providence over all, source of their joy and
mine, what words can express what every manly heart
must feel? Only the life itself can give thanks for life!
PLEASANT TALK
ABOUT
FRUIT, FLOWERS AND FARMING.
PRELIMINARY.
We understand very well that every region must fashion
its system of agriculture upon the nature of its soil, its cli-
mate, etc. The principles of agriculture may be alike in
every zone, but the processes depend upon circumstances.
It would be folly for a new country, without commerce, to
imitate an old country with an active commerce; it would
be folly, where land is cheap, abundant, and naturally fer-
tile, to adopt the habits of those who are stinted in lands,
who have a redundant population, and who find a market
for even the weeds which are indigenous to the soil. The
husbandry of Holland is suited to a wet soil, and of Eng-
land to a humid atmosphere and a very even annual tem-
perature. But our soil is subject to extreme wet in spring
and dryness in summer, to severe cold and intense heat. A
farm whose bottom-lands are reinvigorated by yearly inun-
dations, may thrive under an exacting husbandry that would
exhaust an upland farm in a few years. Modes of agricul-
ture must be suited to circumstances. Nevertheless, the
experiments and discoveries and practices of every land are
worth our careful attention, We do not import clothes—
88 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
but we do cloth, to be made up to suit our own habits and
wants.
The two extremes of husbandry are, the adoption of
every novelty and every experiment indiscriminately, and
the rejection of every new thing and every improvement, as
indiscriminately. Wisdom consists in “ proving all things
and holding fast that which is good.” We do not advocate
large outlays for expensive machines—for fancy cattle, for
every new thing that turns up. But when, after full trial,
it is ascertained what are the best farm horses, the best
breed of cattle, the best milch cows, the most profitable
breed of hogs and sheep, and the most skillful routine of
cultivation, we think our farmers ought to profit by the
knowledge. It is never a good economy to have poor
things when you can just as well have the best. This, then, is
OUR CREED.
We believe in small farms and thorough cultivation.
We believe that soil loves to eat, as well as its owner,
and ought, therefore, to be manured.
We believe in large crops which leave the land better
than they found it—making both the farmer and the farm
rich at once.
We believe in going to the bottom of things and, there-
fore, in deep plowing, and enough of it. All the better it
with a sub-soil plow.
We believe that every farm should own a good farmer.
We believe that the best fertilizer of any soil, is a spirit
of industry, enterprise, and intelligence—without this, lime
and gypsum, bones and green manure, marl and guano will
be of little use.
We believe in good fences, good barns, good farmhouses,
good stock, good orchards, and children enough to gather
the fruit.
We believe in a clean kitchen, a neat wife in it, a spin-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 89
ning-piano, a clean cupboard, a clean dairy, and a clean con-
science.
We firmly disbelieve in farmers that will not improve;
in farms that grow poorer every year; in starveling cattle ;
in farmers’? boys turning into clerks and merchants; in
farmers’ daughters unwilling to work, and in all farmers
ashamed of their vocation, or who drink whisky till honest
people are ashamed of them.
ALMANAC FOR THE YEAR.
1. Work ror January.—lIf you have done as you ought
to have done, you have a snug ice-house, with double walls,
the space between which is filled with non-conducting sub-
stances, as pulverized charcoal, or dried saw-dust, or tan-
bark, which are mentioned in the order of their value. Cut
your blocks of ice of a size and shape with reference to
close packing. Cover over thickly with clean straw when
the stock of ice is all in. Look out not to lose all your
chance in waiting for a better one; sometimes careful folks
mean to have such glorious ice, that an open winter cheats
them out of any at all.
Warmntu.—The best fire in winter is made up of exercise,
and the poorest, of whisky. He that keeps warm on liquor
is like a man who pulls his house to pieces to feed the fire
place. The prudent and temperate use of liquor is to let it
alone. If you don’t touch it, it certainly won’t hurt you;
he that says there is no danger, boasts that he is something
more than other men.
The way to summer your cattle well is to winter them
well; and half the secret of good wintering is to keep them
warm. Animal heat is generated in proportion to the abun-
dance and excellence of their food. Exposure to the cold
air withdraws heat rapidly, and of course makes more food
90 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
necessary to re-supply it, just as an open door makes it
necessary to have more wood in the stove. If your stock
run down in the winter and come out lean and feeble, all
the summer will not fully bring them up again.
2. Work For Frsruary.—Get out rails, both for present
use, and for the fence which you expect to lay in March and
April. Cut, haul and stack up near your house a good sup-
ply of jire-wood ; no matter if the forest is within ten rods
of your door, your wife ought to have her wood chopped
and dried ready for use. Look at every fence upon the
place; see if the corners of your rail fences are rotting
down; if some rails have not broken; if pig-holes have not
been made ; if boys and cattle have not thrown down top-
rails; and in short, put your fences into proper repair.
Of course your tools will now be overhauled; those
with steel blades should be thoroughly cleansed when laid
aside in the fall, and if you rub a little oil over them and
hang them up, all the better. Repair all that are out of
order. These things and all your ordinary work, may be
done, and still leave you leisure for reading. You should
have good books and good papers, and read them carefully
for your own sake and for your children’s. A man who
brings up a family of ignorant children, cheats his children
of their rights, and cheats his country of its rights; it is
therefore a crime.
GarpEN Worxk.—If there be no snow on the ground,
the gardens may be cleared of all rubbish, manure hauled
and stacked carefully ; and if you have a clay soil, and can
catch the ground without frost for a few days, it will mel-
low and ameliorate it to spade it up, leaving it in lumps and
heaps, through which the frost may thoroughly penetrate.
It is time to prepare your hot-bed, if you design having
early plants in your garden.
3. Work ror Marcu.—Begin the year by thorough, deep
plowing, where your fields are in good order for it. De-
pend upon it, that deep plowing is the qnly good plowing.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. OL
Your first crop, generally, will tell you so. But if the sub-
soil is such that the first crop is rather poor, a year’s expo-
sure of the land will ameliorate it so that your second
crop will remunerate all expenses of time and labor laid out
in deep plowing. No farmer should be without a sub-
soil plow who has got his lands clear of stumps and
roots.
Take especial care of cows now just coming in with calf.
See that those which are heavy are carefully handled, well
fed, and warmly sheltered. Mares with foal should be ten-
derly used, exercised a little, but not put to hard or strain-
ing work. Zhe condition of the mother will toa great
extent determine the condition of the offspring. Cows,
mares, sows, ewes, etc. etc., should be kept in a hearty con-
dition, without being fat.
Orcuarp.—Do not trouble your trees with premature
pruning. Let the axe, and knife, and saw alone. Loosen
the dirt or sod around and beneath your trees. The best
manure for your trees is fresh mold, or forest soil and lime
in the proportion of about one part toten. Take soft soap,
dilute it with urine, scrub your trees with it plentifully,
having first scraped off all rough bark. If you would work
easily always, never let your work drive you.
4, Work For Aprit.—Gather from your barn the loose
hay seed, and sow it upon your wheat fields; it will give
good pasturage after harvest, and make fine stuff for plow-
ing under. Push forward your plowing, but look well to
the teams; as cattle and horses are like men, unable in
early spring to endure severe labor all at once. Your
spring wheat should be got in; barley is a better crop, usu-
ally, than rye. The middle and last of the month will keep
you in the corn-field. Plow deep—plow thoroughly;
and after planting, give the plow no rest, if you wish
good corn,
Youne Animats.—You will now begin to have plenty of
calves, colts, pigs, and lambs. If you mean to have pro:
9» PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
fitable pork, you ought to push your pigs from the birth.
Look carefully after your lambs; see that the mothers are
well cared for; have dry and warm pens for any that are
feeble. A little tenderness to the lambs will be well repaid
by and by.
GARDEN.—Your lettuce may be transplanted from the
hot-bed the middle and last of this month. A foot apart
is none too much, if you wish head-lettuce. Sow your
main supplies of radishes, cabbage, tomatoes, ete. Get
your pie-plant seed in early as possible; also carrots, pars-
nips, and salsify or oyster-plant. Prune your gooseberries,
currants, and raspberry bushes. Grapes, which were not
laid in last fall should be pruned and laid in early in March ;
but if neglected then, let them be till the leaves are large
as the palm of your hand. Look out or worms?’ nests, and
destroy them promptly.
5. Work ror May.—Your whole force will be required in
this month. If the season has been late or wet, you still
have your corn to plant. Pastures will be ready for your
stock; remember to salt your stock every week. Weeds
will now do their best to take your crops. Your potato
crop should be put in, as there will be little danger of frost.
After the 15th, you may put out sweet potato slips. If
you have not grass-land for pasturage, try for one season
the system of sodling, 7. e. keeping up your cattle in
the yard or home-lot, and cutting green-fodder for them
every day. An acre or two of corn, sown broad-cast, or
oats and millet, should be tried. Above all other things, if
you have warm, deep sandy loam, put in an acre of lucerne.
During the last of this month, and at the beginning of
the next, pruning may be done. If the limbs be large,
cover the stump with a coat of paint, wax, grafting clay, or
anything that will exclude air and wet.
The garden will require extra labor in all this month,
After the 15th, tender bulbs and tubers may be planted,
dahlias, amaryllises, tuberoses, etc. Peas will require brush;
ABOUT FRUIIS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 93
all your plants from the hot-bed should by this time be well
a growing in open air. Roses will be showing their buds,
If large roses of a favorite sort are required, more than half
the buds should be taken off, and the whole strength of the
plant be given to the remainder. The soil for this best of
all flowers, cannot be too rich, nor too deep.
6. Work ror JuNE.—May, June, and September are the
dairy months, The best butter and the best cheese are
usually made in these months. If you are not neat, you
do not know how to make cheese or butter. Uncleanliness
affects not only the looks, but the quality of butter. Broad,
shallow glass pans are the best, but the most expensive. In
these milk seldom turns sour in summer thunder-storms.
Tin pans are good, but unless the dairy-woman is scrupu-
lously neat, the seams will be filled with residuum of milk
and become very foul, giving a flavor to each successive
panful. The principal requisites for prime butter are,
good cows, good pasture for them, clean pans, cool, airy
cellars, clean churns. Let the cream be churned before it
is sour or bitter; and when the butter comes, at least three
thorough workings will be necessary to drive out all the
butter-milk.
GaRpDEN.—Transplant flowers; destroy all weeds; get
out cabbages; more lettuce; get ready celery trenches;
layer favorite roses, vines, etc.; examine and remove from
the peach-tree root, the grub which is destroying them.
Sow salt under plum-trees—put on a coat two inches
thick.
Transplant flowers; bud roses with fine kinds; see that
large plants are tied neatly to frames or stakes. Every
morning examine your beds of cabbage, ete., for cut-worms,
and destroy them if found; plant succession crops of peas,
corn, radishes, lettuce, etc.
7. Work For Juty.—Great difference of practice and
opinion exists as to the methods and time of harvesting.
Some cut their grass while the dew is on it; others cut it
94 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
when perfectly dry, and say that if so cut it need not be
spread, but will dry in the swath in one or two days. As
to the time of cutting grass, we should avoid both ex-
tremes of very early or very late. Just before the seed of
timothy is ripe, is, upon the whole, the best time for this
best of grasses for the scythe. Clover should be cut when
in full blossom; instead of spreading, the best farmers
make it into small cocks and leave it there to cure, which it
will do without shrivelling or losing its color.
GarpEN Work.—As soon as your roses are done bloom-
ing, if you wish to increase them, take the young shoots,
and about eight inches from the ground, cut, below an eye,
half through, and then slit upward an inch or two through
the pith; put a bit of chip in to keep the slit open; bend
down the branch and cover the portion thus operated
on with an inch or two of earth and put a brick upon
it. It will soon send out roots, and by October may be
separated from the parent plant. Quinces, gooseberries, and
almost all shrubs which branch near the ground, may be
propagated in this way. Still keep down weeds. Sow suc-
cessive crops of corn, peas and salads, for fall use. Begin
to gather such seeds as ripen early. Take up tulips, hya-
cinths, etc., as soon as the tops wither.
8. Work ror Aveust.—If during this hot month you will
clear out fence corners, and cut off vexatious intruders, the
sun will do all it can to help you killthem. If your wheat
is troubled with the weevil, thrash it out and leave it in the
chaff. It will raise a heat fatal to its enemy without injur-
ing itself. Every farmer should have a little nursery row
of apple, pear, peach and plums of his own raising. Plant
the seed; when a year old, transplant into rows eight inches
apart in the row and two feet between the rows. During
July, August, and September, you may bud them with
choice sorts, remembering that a first-rate fruit will live just
as easily as a worthless sort. This is a good month to sow
down fallow fields to grass. Plough thoroughly—harrow
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS aND FARMING. 95
till the earth is fine; be liberal of seed, and cover in with
a harrow and not with a bush, which drags the seeds into
heaps, ot carries them in hollows. The early part of the
month should be improved by all who wish to put in a crop
of buck-wheat or turnips. If your pastures are getting
short, let your milch cows have something every night
in the yard. Corn, sown broadcast, would now render
adxairable service.
If you have neglected to raise your bulbs, lose no time
now. Take cuttings from roses and put in small pots, invert
a glass over them; in two or three weeks they will take
root, and by the next spring make good plants. Gather
flower seeds as soon as they ripen.
9. Work For SrpremMBEeR.—You should finish seeding
your wheat grounds in this month. If sown too early, it
is liable to suffer from the fly ; if too late, from rust. Those
who sow acres by the hundred, must sow early and late
both. But moderate fields should be seeded by the mid-
dle of this month. In preparing the land, if the surface
does not naturally drain itself, it should be so plowed as
to turn the water into furrows between each land. Standing
water, and, yet more, ice upon it, being fatal to it. See
that your cattle are brought into good condition for winter-
ing. Fall transplanting may be performed from the middle
of this month ; take off every leaf—re-set, and stake.
By the latter part of the month, or early in October,
according to the season, it will be necessary to raise and pot
such plants as you intend to keep in the house; to raise and
place in a dry and frost-proof room your dahlias, tube-
roses, amaryllis, tigridia, gladioli, and such other tender
bulbs as you mayhave. Let your seed be gathered,
carefully put away where it will contract no moisture. Go
over your grounds and examine all your /abels, lest the
storms which are approaching should destroy them. Sow
in some warm and sheltered part of your garden, early in
this month, for spring use, spinage, corn salad, lettuce, etc.
96 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
As soon as the leaves fall, take cuttings from currant bushes
and grapes, and plant them out in rows. They will start
off and grow earlier by some six weeks, the next season.
Fill in your celery trenches every ten days.
10. Work For OcroserR.—Push forward your hogs as fast
as possible. If they have had a good clover range in the
summer, they will be ready to start off vigorously from the
moment that you begin to put them upon corn. See that
good paths are made in every direction from your house;
and be sure to have walks through your barn-yards raised
so high as never to be muddy. Your cattle-yards should
slope toward the centre in such a way that horses and cat-
tle need not wade knee deep in going in and out.
Frosts will now begin to strip your trees and stop the
growth of garden shrubs, and all your preparations should
be made for protecting tender trees and shrubs. For
cherry and pear-trees, especially, you should provide good
covering for their trunk, until they have grown quite large.
A good bundle of corn-stalks set round the body so as to
keep out the sun, but not the air, will answer every purpose.
For beds of China and tea, and dwarf roses, we advise
a covering of three inches of halfrotted manure. Cover
this with leaves about six inches. Moss is better, if you
will take the trouble to collect it; and straw will do if you
have neither moss nor leaves. Half cover the part that
remains exposed, with fine brush, or pine branches. For
single plants, drive a stake by their side, and tie the plant
to it; wind loosely about it a wisp of straw or roll
of bass matting, or cloth, so as to exclude the sun and
not the air. The swn, and not the cold, usually destroys
plants.
Li. Work ror Novremsrer.—During this month, if the
ground is not locked by frost, you may plow stiff, tenacious
clay soils to great advantage. By being broken up and
subjected to the keen frosts, your soil will become mellow
and tender. See that every provision is made for shelter.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 97
ing your cattle and horses; be sure that your sheep are not
obliged to lie out in drenching rains.
In THE GARDEN see that your asparagus bed is dressed
if neglected last month. House all your brush, poles,
stakes, frames, etc., which will be fit for use another season.
If your tulips, hyacinths, etc. have not been planted, you
had better reserve them for spring, as they will be liable to
rot in the ground if planted so late in the year. Cover with
brush, or leaves, or straw, your lettuce, spinage, and other
salad plants designed for spring use. If tender plants,
roses, vines, etc., have been left unprotected, cover as
directed last month. If you have no cold frame for half-
hardy plants, they may be laid in by the heels, i. e., taken
up, and the roots laid into a trench, the tops sloping at an
angle of about twenty degrees, and then covered with earth.
The soil should cover about half the stem.
It is now a good season for cutting grafts. Take them
from the outside of the middle of the tree ; let them be done
up in small packages, and set up endwise in the cellar, and
covered with about halfdry sand. Roots may be taken
from pear and apple-trees, and packed in the same way for
root-grafting. }
12. Drcemper.—The year is about to close. Look back
upon your toil. In what respect will your year’s labor bear an
approval when calmly examined? Can you henestly acquit
yourself of indolence and carelessness? and as honestly take
credit for enterprise, activity, and a desire for improve-
ment? Your barns are full—your granary is heavy with
grain—the year’s bounty has followed a year’s labor, and if
you have the heart of a man you will not forget the source
whence your blessings have come. You have perhaps done
well by your stock, and in so far as the body is concerned,
for your children ; but what have you done for their educa-
tion? What have you done to promote popular education ?
Are you doing anything to make your neighborhood bet-
ter? What good newspapers do you provide for your fam-
98 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ily? Do you lay out as much money for books as you do
for tobacco? In looking forward to the next year, you
ought to mark out your personal course by good resolu-
tions, and your business course by a definite plan of opera-
tions. It would be well if a farmer should know before-
hand everything he means to do; and afterwards, if he has
kept such an account that you can tell anything that you
have done.
Sleighing for the young and gay, and warm fire-sides for
the aged, are what are now most thought of. Those who
are best provided with the comforts of life should remem-
ber their less favored brethren.
EDUCATED FARMERS.
Ir is time for those who do not believe ignorance to be a
blessing, to move in behalf of common schools. Many
teachers are not practised even in the rudiments of the
spelling-book; and as for reading, they stumble along the
sentences, like a drunken man on a rough road. Their
“ hand-write,” as they felicitously style the hieroglyphics,
would be a match for Champollion, even if he did decipher
the Egyptian inscriptions. Buta more detestable fact is,
that sometimes their morals are bad; they are intemperate,
coarse, and ill-tempered; and wholly unfit to inspire the
minds of the pupils with one generous or pure sentiment.
We do not mean to characterize the body of the com:
mon schoolmasters by these remarks; but that any con-
siderable portion of them should be such, is a disgraceful
evidence of the low state of education.
Farmers and mechanics! this is a subject which comes
home to you. Crafty politicians are constantly calling you
the bone and sinew of the land; and you may depend upon
it that you will never be anything else but bone and sinew
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 99
without education. There is a law of God in this matter.
That class of men who make the most and best use of their
heads, will, in fact, be the most influential, will stand high-
est, whatever the theories and speeches may say. This is a
“nature of things” which cannot be dodged, nor got over.
Whatever class bestow great pains upon the cultivation of
their minds will stand high. If farmers and mechanics feel
themselves to be as good as other people, it all may be true ;
for goodness is one thing and intelligence is another. If
they think that they have just as much mind as other
classes, that may be true; but can you wse it as well?
Lawyers, and physicians, and clergymen, and literary
men, make the discipline of their intellect a constant study.
They read more, think more, write more than the laboring
classes. The difference between the educated and unedu-
cated portions of society is a real difference. Now a proud
and lazy fellow, may rail and swear at this, and have his
labor for his pains. There is only one way really to get over
it, and that is to rear up a generation of well educated,
thinking, reading farmers and mechanics. Your skill and
industry are felt ; and they put you, in these respects, ahead
of any other class. Just as soon as your heads are felt, as
much as your hands are, that will bring you to the top.
Many of our best farmers are men of great natural
shrewdness; but when they were young they “had no
chance for learning.” They feel the loss, and they are giv-
ing their children the best education they can. Farmers’
sons constitute three-fifths of the educated class. But the
thing is, that they are not educated as farmers. When
they begin to study they leave the farm. They do not ex-
pect to return to it. The idea of sending a boy to the
school, the academy, and the college, and then let him go
back to farming, is regarded as a mere waste of time and
money. You see how it is even among yourselves. Ifa
boy has an education, you expect him to be a lawyer, or a
doctor, or a preacher. You tacitly admit that a farmer
100 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
does not need such an education; and if you think so, you
cannot blame others if they follow your example.
There is no reason why men of the very highest educa-
tion should not go to a farm for their living. If a son of
mine were brought up on purpose to be a farmer, if that
was the calling which he preferred, I still would educate
him, if he had common sense to begin with. He would be
as much better for it as a farmer, as he would as a lawyer.
There is no reason why a thoroughly scientific education
should not be given to every farmer and to every mechanic.
A beginning must be made at the common school. Every
neighborhood ought to have one. But they do not grow
of themselves, like toad-stools. And no decent man will
teach school on wages which a canal boy, or a hostler would
turn up his nose at. You may as well put your money into
the fire as to send it to a “‘ make-believe ” teacher—a great
noodle-head, who teaches school because he is fit for nothing
else! Lay out to get a good teacher. Be willing to pay
enough to make it worth while for “‘ smart? men to become
your teachers. And when your boys show an awakening
taste for books, see that they have good histories, travels,
and scientific tracts and treatises. Above all, do not let a
boy get a notion that if he is educated, he must, of course,
quit the farm. Let him get an education that he may make
a better farmer. Ido not despair of yet seeing a genera-
tion of honest politicians. Educated farmers and educated
mechanics, who are in good circumstances, and do not need
office for a support, nor make politics a trade, will stand
the best chance for honesty. But the Lord deliver us from
the political honesty of tenth-rate lawyers, vagabond doc-
tors, bawling preachers, and bankrupt clerks, turned into
patriotic politicians!
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 101
AN ACRE OF WORDS ABOUT AKER.
Ovr spelling acre according to Webster’s former method*
—aker, has attracted no little attention, in a small way, both
far and near. It is very difficult to fix on any rule for any-
thing in our language. Etymology is chiefly useful in
settling the primitive signification, and is, or ought to be,
scarcely at all authoritative in orthography. Where two
languages are very different, it is absurd to attempt the
forms of the one in the other. In respect to idiom, no one
dreams of transferring it from one to another. Oftentimes
it is equally absurd to transfer mere literation, as in the
Greek-blooded word PAthisic for Tisic, or as Walker would
have spelled it, Phthisick / Who rebels because demesne,
as it is written in our best authors until within a little time,
is now spelled domain? We see no reason why Anglicized
words should, against all our notions of sound, retain a
cumbrous foreign spelling. Words adopted into a lan-
guage by the car, which are spoken before they are
written, generally conform, on being written, to our modes
of spelling. But words introduced first by the eye, as they
are written, for a long time wear the original spelling.
Thus some foreign words are spelled by one method, and
some by another.
Custom is usually regarded as determinate, in the matter
of spelling, pronunciation, idiom, purity, etc. But, in
respect to spelling, custom is not long the same. If one
will examine our literature from the time of Henry VIIL., he
will find a constant succession of changes in spelling, both
for good and for bad. JZ has been generally substituted for
Y, as in Lykwyse, accordynge, beyng, certayne. Sir
Thomas More wrote hym, thynges, desyer, myndes. Skel-
ton, the Poet Laureat, has centencyously, dyd, advysynge
Ayll, etc., ete.
* Two-volume edition, imperial octavo.
TOR. PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
There has, too, and wisely, been a constant tendency to
drop all wnsovnded letters. What earthly use is there of
lugging along letters which are entirely mute? In old but
classic authors we have Godde dydde, nowe, whiche, pulle,
beste, suche, couerte (court) beetwene, begunve, ete.
Within our own memory the final & is lopped off from
words where it had a perfect sinecure, as in musick, ete.
“ Kanvt kum it,” does not look any more odd to our eyes
than our spelling would have looked to those who wrote
one hundred years ago.
If it be asked why we do not spell every word by the
same rule that we do some; we reply, that violent, and
sudden changes in languages are impracticable ; and as in
everything else, are not desirable. We are glad to see
spelling simplified, and shall move along just as fast as we
can do it with a reasonable prospect of carrying the public.
It is not a matter of conscience; we have no necessity
laid upon us to reform the language; no call to be literal
martyrs ; it is a matter of convenience and taste, to be done
or omitted as one pleases. It would be more inconvenient
to stand alone with all writers against us, for the sake of
spelling consistently, than to spell foolishly and super-
fluously in conformity to inveterate practice. Therefore,
for the sake of company, we still spell quite absurdly.
It is called inconsistent ; and by men, too, who spell
trough, cough, enough, though, through, bought, six dis-
similar sounds (ow, ow, 00, 0, uf, off), by the same com-
bination of letters! If consistency be the question, every
English writer that ever lived, is a mere bundle-of incon-
sistencies. Every continental living language, and the dead
classic languages, have thrown in their contributions, and
our tongue comprises the scraps, odds and ends, of all
lands, with all the diverse peculiarities of each language
more or less retained. Under such circumstances, when no
man writes a sentence without spelling inconsistently, it is
quite ridiculous to oppose a simplification of spelling, be
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 103
cause we cannot do, at once, what it is only practicable to
do gradually. As fast as the public is able to bear it, we
shall be glad to reduce all cumbrous spelling to a consistent
simplicity.
An acquaintance declares, that the derivation of AKER
from the Latin and Greek, is “ without the least foundation
in the words as used in the Greek and Latin and in the Eng-
lish, and built entirely on the resemblance of sounds,” ete.
The facts are the other way. In the Greek, and in the
Latin, it meant simply a field, an open, cultivated spot.
Now, this was the meaning of the word in English, until it
was by statutes limited to a particular quantity (31 Ed. IIL. ;
5 Ed. I., 24; Henry VIII., as quoted by Webster) and this
is the meaning yet, of the word in German (acker) Swedish
(acker) Dutch (akker). There is, therefore, ample founda-
tion in the wse of the word; and the sownd our friend
gives up.
In almost all the languages of the Teutonic family, of
which ours is one, the word is still spelled with & ,; and so it
is in the Asiatic languages, from which, probably, both the
Teutonic and the Greek, alike borrowed it.
The spelling acre, as also centre, theatre we, probably,
derived from the French; to which language we owe the
emasculation of many a noble Saxon word.
In the New England Farmer our orthographical sins are
thus set in order before us:
“The Western Farmer and Gardener, is an excellent
journal—very. It has only one feature that we dislike,
viz.—it spells acrE a-k-e-r/ We are somewhat surprised
at Bro. Beecher, who usually evinces such good taste, as
well as such good sense, should adopt such an ugly-looking
substitute for an old word of so much better appearance.
although supported in it by the prince of lexicogra-
phers.
“ Aker! Wheugh! Bro. editors, hoot at it till it
104 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
shall become obselete. In Todd’s, Johnsun’s, and Walke1’s,
and Worcester’s dictionaries, fwel is spelled fewel, as the
most correct way. This is odd enough and bad enough—
but it is hardly so unsightly as aker.”
Nothing becomes obsolete until it has been in vogue.
But pass that: what a sight will the hooting confraternity
present! I imagine Maine Farmer Holmes—a plump,
short, dapper gentleman, giving a long howl, that sounds
so ludicrous, that he draws back from the open window to
laugh. Our more sober Breck performs the euphonious
duty with such conscientious heartiness, that up starts the
man of Buckwheat from his (mis-spelled) Plowghman’s
chair, as also does the Cultivator Cole—a trio not practiced
to sing together. The uproar reaches Albany, and sur-
prises him of the Cultivator, who hoots supplementary,
with such voice as he happens, in his surprise, to have on
hand. Next, toward the west, Dr. Lee shall give a scien-
tific roar or hoot such as will make his laboratory jar again.
Down across the lake the hooting (not hunting) chorus
goes (what will the sailors think is to pay !) to Elliot of the
yard-long-named Magazine, who, hoarse with lake fogs and
winds, shall put in so bass a hoot, that Wight and Wright
of the Prairie Kurmer will howl of mere fright, if for no-
thing else.
Audacious men! we utterly defy you! We shall pass
by the whole crowing brood of Polands, Dorkings and
what-not; and raise a breed of genuine owls, to be our
champions in this dire necessity. We say, peremptorily,
that we will not bet on any match between hooting birds
and hooting editors. But our serious opinion is, that, in
grave solemnity of looks, and in professional hooting, a
half dozen well-trained owls will beat. the whole of you,
However, we are open to conviction.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 105
FARMERS’ LIBRARY.
Iris of the highest importance that farmers should pos-
sess reading habits; and that they should bring up their
children to a love of books. Every farmer should have a
library ; it may, at first, be small; but it should be select.
As soon as a farmer is beforehand enough to own an acre,
he is prosperous enough to begin a library. It is said by
many, books wont make money. Yes they will. To-be-
sure, their best effect is the production of intelligence in the
reader; but a man well informed in his own business is just
the man to make money. Who ever thought of making
money by buying grindstones and whetstones? But they
sharpen the scythe, and sickle, and the axe, and they pro-
duce money. Books are grindstones and whetstones for a
man’s mind,
Many are unwilling to buy a treatise upon the disease of
the horse, although there are several which will prevent most
of the evils which affect this noble animal. In the West, the
horse is used, in town and country, by almost every man.
But very few profess to know how he should be treated!
And, of those who think they are wise, how many have any
knowledge except of a few nostrums for sickness? The
horse, in man’s service, is living in an entirely artificial
state. He takes care of himself ifleft wild. But living in
stables, laboring every month of the year in harness, and
under the saddle, not selecting his own food, but fed at the
will of his master, his own instincts become of little use,
and he is dependent entirely on the mercy and knowledge
of those whose slave he is. It ought not to be thought
unreasonable to say that every man who is willing to own a
horse, ought to be willing to know how to manage him, in
the stable and out of it. There is no work in the English
language containing more, or better instructions than* Stew-
* A Treatise on the management of horses in relation to stabling, groom-
ing, feeding, watering, and working: published by A.O.Moore &Co., N. Y.
106 PLAIN AND PLEASAN] TALK
art’s Stable Economy. It should be read by the farmer ; and
just as much by every man, of whatever calling, who uses a
horse, or owns one. It is of standard authority in England.
Mr. Stewart has long been a professor in veterinary institutes.
Every man ought to know how to treat a sick horse. Sup-
pose a horse to be taken sick on a journey ; most frequently
the driver is the only one at hand'to prescribe. If you are
at a tavern, of what use, generally speaking, are the brag-
ging pretensions of those that crowd around you? Stop-
ping for a night at a wretched hole of a tavern, one of my
horses, at night fell sick. I knew no more than a child
what to do; the landlord (ah me! I shall never forget him!)
was equally ignorant and much more indifferent. <A big,
bragging, English booby was the only one pretending to
know what to do; and to him I yielded the animal. After
sundry manipulations—punching him in the loins; pulling
at his ears, etc.—he rolled up a wad of hair from his tail,
and crammed it down the horse’s throat! presuming, I
suppose, that the hair would find its way back to the place
it came from, and so pilot the disease out! I inwardly
resolved never to go another journey until in possession
of the best remedies for the attacks common to horses on
the road.
Preparine Currmnes In THE Fatzi.—Cuttings of the
currant, gooseberry, and grape are better if cut immedi-
ately on the fall of the leaf, plunged into moist sand two-
thirds of their length, and placed in a cellar. If nature is
as propitious to others as she has been to us, the cuttings
will be found in the spring with the granulations completed
at the lower end, and the roots just ready to push; and on
being planted out, they grow off immediately, forming dur-
ing the season well established plants.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 107
NINE MISTAKES.
Iw so far as instruction is concerned, I esteem my mis-
takes to be more valuable than my successful efforts. They
excite to attention and investigation with great emphasis.
I will record a few.
1. One mistake, which I record once for all, as it will
probably occur every year, has been the attempting of more
than I could do well. The ardor of spring, in spite of expe-
rience, lays out a larger garden, than can be well tended
all summer.
2. In selecting the dargest lima beans for seed, I obtained
most luxuriant vines, but fewer pods. If the season were
longer these vines would ultimately be most profitable; but
their vigor gives a growth too rampant for our latitude.
If planted for a screen, however, the rankest growers are
the best.
3. Of three successive plantings of corn, for table use, the
first was the best, then the second, and the third very poor.
I hoed and thinned the first planting myself, and thorough-
ly; the second, I left to a Dutchman, directing him how to
do it; the third, I left to him without directions.
4, I bought a stock of roses in the fall of the year. All
the loss of wintering came on me. If purchased in the
spring, the nurserymen loses, if there is loss.
5. I planted the silver-leaved abele (Populus alba) in a
rich sandy loam ; in which it made more wood than it could
ripen. The tree was top-heavy, and required constant stak-
ing. <A poorer soil should have been selected.
6. I planted abundantly of flower-seeds—just before a
drought. I neither covered the earth with mats, nor
watered it—supposing that the seeds would come up after
the first rain. But, in a cheerless and barren garden, I
have learned that Aeaé will kill planted seeds, and that he
who will be sure of flowers should not depend upon only
one planting.
108 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
7. In the fall of 1843, I took up the bulbs of tuberoses,
and wintered them safely upon the top of book-cases in a
warm study. Having a better and larger stock in 1844, I
would fain be yet more careful, and packed them in dry
sand, and put them in a closet beyond the reach of frost.
On opening them in the spring all were rotted save about.
halfa dozen. Hereafter, I shall try the book-case.
8. We are told that glazed or painted flower-pots are not
desirable, because, refusing a passage to superfluous moist-
ure, they leave the roots to become sodden. In small
stove-heated parlors, the evaporation is so great that glazed
or painted flower-pots are best, because the danger is of
dryness rather than dampness in all plants growing in
sandy loams or composts.
9. I have resolved every summer for three years, to cut
pea-brush during the winter and stack it in the shed; and
every summer following, not having kept the vow, I have
lacked pea-brush, being too busy to get it when it was
needed, I have allowed the crop to suffer.
AGRICULTURAL SOCIETIES.
Many county societies were formed in 1836 and for some
years flourished; few of them, we believe, exist now. We
hope that the day has come for them to revive ; and, that the
experience of the past may not be lost, it is well to record
the reasons why these county societies declined.
1. Just after their birth, came on the fatal years of ficti-
tious prosperity; when every man expected a railroad on
one side of his farm and a canal on the other—and when
everybody was about to be exceedingly rich; not by legiti-
mate business; not by producing wealth; but by the rise
of property. Now the wealth of a farming community is
always to arise from the products of the farm. Whatever
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 109
withdraws attention from assiduous cultivation, or plants
the hope of gain in other sources than in the herds, the
dairy, the grain and the grass field, will, eventually, insure
disappointment and even poverty, as many of our farmers
can testify. It would be difficult for those who had not
seen it, to imagine the fervent, sanguine, exulting, state of
mind with which the whole community, at the time we
speak of, looked for the wealth. Farms were to quadruple
in value; pork was to be cashed at enormous prices; grain
and grass, stock and fruit, were to swell the golden tide;
and, for once, the world was to see great riches from little
labor. Carelessness, waste, rashness, and incredible pre-
sumption were the result. Societies for the promotion of a
careful and patient cultivation of the soil could not long be
thought worthy of attention in a community which ex-
pected to be rich by a dexterous bargain, by one lucky spec-
ulation, by town lots, and shares, and that mysterious hum-
bug—the rise of property.
2. Succeeding such days came the opposite extreme.
Everybody was poor and expected to be poorer. There
was no money and no market. Hogs were hardly salable,
grain a drug, and all produce unavailable. Nothing was
brisk but debt and debt collecting. Men were discouraged.
Said they, ‘‘if one can sell nothing, there is no use in rais-
ing anything; twenty bushels an acre is as good as forty,
when one can’t sell or use it.” Schools languished, public
spirit died, business was totally deranged, and agricultural
societies became extinct with the downfall of other useful
" institutions.
3. There were some things in the management of the
societies which embarrassed them independently of these
other causes. There was too much talk and pretension—
wind work; the offices were taken for the honor—patient
endurance of drudgery, which somebody must bear, was
shirked off. Men took little pains between the meetings ;
everything was to be done at the time of meeting; and, of
110 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
course, half done. This led to dissatisfaction. The mis-
takes of carelessness were attributed to partiality or preju-
dice. Some dropped off; others relaxed; and, when the
excitement was gone, few cared to take the dull but real
and necessary business.
4. Notwithstanding all these things, the county societies
did a great deal of good. A skillful farmer told me, that
in the county, where he resided, there was hardly a con- .
siderable farmer who did not try a few acres, at least, to
see what he could do; and even many renters exhibited
specimens of fine cultivation. More attention was paid
to every part of the farm; and, for a time, everything felt
the impulse.
A few words to those who may embark again in this good
cause.
1. It is best to begin as you can hold out. A great meet-
ing, a vast roll of by-laws, a regiment of officers, a parade
of speeches, these make a fine meeting, and that’s all. Let
afew stanch friends to improvement put their heads and
hands together, without show or noise; begin at the little
end, and hold fast what is gained.
2. In choosing officers, societies almost invariably steer
upon one rock on which thousands have split. There isa
desire to put great men into offices, to get their influence.
In a mere public meeting of a day, this is well enough; but
in a society which is to exist by efficient labor, it is suicide.
Such men like to be puffed and published as presidents,
chairmen, etc., etc., but that ends the matter. They go
away and are not seen again till the next annual meeting, ©
when, lo! a resurrection takes place ; and they flame again,
a whole year’s zeal exhibited in one day. It is best to
select officers, who are well broken, of a good strain of
blood, and who pull steadily, on hard ground, in the mud,
over bridging, or upon turnpikes. In this way we may not
have quite so large a show, but we shall have a steadily
growing and efficient society.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. ~ Joa
8. In the award of premiums, more or less of dissatisfac-
tion will always be felt. A man who has worked a whole
year for a premium cannot be expected to lose it without
some pain. Premiums should be awarded with great care,
With scrupulous impartiality, and every effort made by the
leading, substantial farmers to soothe and keep down every-
thing like bitterness and faction, in consequence of disap-
pointment.
4. It is indispensable that agricultural papers should go
hand in hand with agricultural societies. We will venture
to say, that no society will long exist prosperously, which
does not have a reading membership; and that a society
can hardly fail to prosper if its members are regular readers
of agricultural papers.
SHIFTLESS TRICKS.
To let the cattle fodder themselves at the stack; they:
pull out and trample more than they eat. They eat till the
edge of appetite is gone, and then daintily pick the choice
parts; the residue, being coarse and refuse, they will not
afterwards touch.
To sell half a stack of hay and leave the lower half open to
rain and snow. In feeding out, a hay knife should be used
on the stack ; in selling, either dispose of the whole, or re-
move that which is left to a shed or barn.
It is a shiftless trick to lie about stores and groceries,
arguing with men that you have no time, in a new country,
for nice farming—for making good fences; for smooth
meadows without a stump; for draining wet patches which
disfigure fine fields.
To raise your own frogs in your own yard; to permit,
year after year, a dirty, stinking, mantled puddle te stand
_ before your fence in the street.
112 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
To plant crchards, and allow your cattle to eat the trees
up. When gnawed down, to save your money, by trying
to nurse the stubs into good trees, instead of getting fresh
ones from the nursery.
To allow an orchard to have blank spaces, where trees
have died, and when the living trees begin to bear, to wake
up and put young whips in the vacant spots.
It is very shiftless to build your barnyard so that every
rain shall drain it; to build your privy and dig your well
close together; to build a privy of more than seven feet
square—some shiftless folks have it of the size of the whole |
yard; to set it in the most exposed spot on the premises;
to set it at the very far end of the garden, for the pleasure
of traversing mud-puddles and labyrinths of wet weeds
in rainy days.
It is a dirty trick to make bread without washing one’s
hands after cleaning fish or chickens; to use an apron for a
handkerchief; to use a veteran handkerchief just from the
wars for an apron; to use milk-pans alternately for wash-
bowls and milk. 'To wash dishes and baby linen in the same
tub, either alternately or altogether; to chew snuff while
you are cooking, for sometimes food will chance to be too
highly spiced. We have a distinct but unutterable remem-
brance of a cud of tobacco in a dish of hashed pork—but
it was before we were married!
A lady of our acquaintance, at a boarding-house, excited
some fears among her friends, by foaming at the mouth, of
madness. In eating a hash (made, doubtless, of every scrap
from the table, not consumed the day before), she found
herself blessed with a mouthful of hard soap, which only
lathered the more, the more she washed at it. It is a filthy
thing to comb one’s hair in a small kitchen in the intervals
of cooking the breakfast; to use the bread trough for
a cradle—a thing which we have undoubtedly seen;
to put trunks, boxes, baskets, with sundry other utensils,
under the bed where you keep the cake for company; we
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 3
have seen a dexterous housewife whip the bed-spread aside,
and bring forth, not what we feared, but a loaf-cake!
It is a dirty trick to wash children’s eyes in the pudding
dish ; not that the sore eyes, but subsequent puddings, will
not be benefited; to wipe dishes and spoons on a hand-
towel; to wrap warm bread in a dirty table-cloth ; to make
and mold bread on a table innocent of washing for weeks ;
to use dirty table-clothes for sheets, a practice of which we
have had experimental knowledge, once at least in our lives,
The standing plea of all slatterns and slovens is, that
“everybody must eat a peck of dirt before they die.” A
peck? that would be a mercy, a mere mouthful, in com
parison of cooked eart-loads of dirt which is to be eaten ix
steamboats, canal-boats, taverns, mansions, huts and hovels.
Toxsacco Tricks.—lIt is a filthy trick to use it at all; and
it puts an end to all our affected squeamishness at the
Chinese taste, in eating rats, cats, and bird’s nests. It is a
filthy trick to let the exquisite juice of tobacco trickle
down the corners of one’s mouth; or lie in splashes on one’s
coat, or bosom; to squirt the juice all over a clean floor,
or upon a carpet, or baptismally to sprinkle a proud
pair of andirons the refulgent glory of the much-scouring
housewife. It is a vile economy to lay up for re-mastica-
tion a half-chewed cud; to pocket a halfsmoked cigar ;
and finally to be-drench one’s self with tobacco juice, to so
be-smoke one’s clothes that a man can be scented as far off
as a whale-ship can be smelt at sea.
It is a shiftless trick to snuff a candle with your fingers,
or your wife’s best scissors, to throw the snuff on the car-
pet, or on the polished floor, and then to extinguish it by
treading on it!
To .borrow a choice book; to read it with unwashed
hands, that have been used in the charcoal bin, and finally
to return it daubed on every leaf with nose-blood spots,
tobacco spatter, and dirty finger-marks—this is a vile
trick!
114 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It is not altogether cleanly to use one’s knife to scrape
boots, to cut harness, to skin cats, to cut tobacco, and then
to cut apples which other people are to eat.
It is an unthrifty trick to bring in eggs from the barn in
one’s coat pocket, and then to sit down on them,
It is a filthy trick to borrow of or lend for others? use, a
tooth-brush, or a tooth-pick; to pick one’s teeth at table
with a fork, or a jack-knife; to put your hat upon the din-
ner table among the dishes; to spit generously into the fire,
or at it, while the hearth is covered with food set to warm;
for sometimes a man hits what he don’t aim at.
It is an unmannerly trick to neglect the scraper outside
the door, but to be scrupulous in cleaning your feet after
you get inside, on the carpet, rug, or andirons; to bring
your drenched umbrella into el entry, where a black
puddle may leave to the housewife melancholy evidence
that you have been there.
It is soul-trying for a neat dairywoman to see her “man”
watering the horse out of her milk-bucket; or filtering
horse-medicine through her milk-strainer; or feeding his
hogs with her water-pail; or, after barn-work, to set the
well-bucket outside the curb and wash his hands out of it,
ELECTRO-CULTURE.
A FEw years ago, all the world was agog about electri-
city applied to vegetation. Sanguine persons grew red in
the face with excitement, and enterprising schemers hoped
to supersede all past processes of culture by this magical
fluid. Things were to be made to grow not only as fast as
lightning but dy lightning. Those migchiatiae bolts which
had played their dangerous pranks with chimneys, oaks,
and towers, were to be regularly harnessed and set to
work in the field like horses or oxen. Many of our readers
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 115
will recollect how widely the agricultural papers copied the
glowing accounts brought from over the «seas; and
nobody was afraid of anything except of not believing
enough.
Well, the lightning has been too smart for them; and the
whole pack which opened loud on the scent, are now heard
just as loud on the back track. It usually takes two fool-
ings to satisfy the public. They first swing to an extreme
folly of injudicious admiration, and them vibrate to the op-
posite extreme of disgust. Everybody was fever-hot with
morus multicaulis; and then they went into chills about it.
Durham stock brought almost their weight in silver at one
time, and then could hardly be sold at butchers’ prices.
Berkshire hogs were all the rage, and now are in great and
unmerited contempt. The guano fever sent hundreds of
ships a-dung-hunting all over the earth: and lucky were
they who espied a precious heap of excrement. How little
did the penguins and sea gulls of the Pacific imagine, that
their unconscious observance of. the laws of nature
was one day to figure so largely on the British Ex-
change, and to raise such a bustle im chemical labor-
atories !
We believed but few of these accounts of electricity,
because we perceived nothing which could be regarded as
settled. And now, we are far from sympathizing with the
recantations and apostasies from the electric faith, Like
all other things driven to extremes, we shall by and by see
it settle upon a middle point.
Editors are not without blame for these actions and re-
actions. Many of our best agricultural papers are cou-
nected with agricultural warehouses which deal largely in
all articles for which there is an agricultural demand.
Without the slightest intention of deception, nay, with a
desire to act cautiously, such pecuniary interest may sen
sibly affect the judgment of sanguine editors. But the
wish to issue a spicy paper, full of life and surprise, inclines
116 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
an editor to publish whatever is new, without a scrutiny of
its truth. With a few honorable exceptions of standard
periodicals, we scarcely take an agricultural paper which
does not contain most absurd stories gravely indited with-
out a word of comment. Now, it seems to us that agri-
cultural papers ought-not to be the common sewers of news,
full of waste and refuse matter; but registers of rigid facts
and scientific expositors of the principles deducible from
facts. Farmers are at fault also in the matter. An editor °
who depends for his support upon the proceeds of his
paper, must be aman of rare independence if he can shield
himself from the selfish influence of those who are his best
supporters. Men that have a novelty, a new and precious
jewel of a flower, a heavy stock of nursery commodities, or
large herds of fancy stock, sheep or swine, can afford to
circulate widely and praise any paper that will circulate
widely and praise their special interest. A sanguine
editor inditing a eulogistic article, with a red-hot specula-
tor whispering at each ear, will be very likely to lead many
simple farmers astray. Such articles, copied by newspapers,
spread the infection beyond the circle of subscribers. Far-
mers that take, and farmers that do not take the paper will
be deceived.
Now, let husbandmen give to their agricultural papers
such a support as shall leave the editors free from tempta-
tions to listen to interested persons ; let them contribute so
freely of their observations that editors will not have to
draw upon their imagination for facts, and the agricultural
press will become sober, stable, accurate, and so, pros
fitable,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. oleg
SINGLE-CROP FARMING.
It is extensively the practice of large farmers, to put
their whole force upon one staple article; a style of farm-
ing as full of risk, as it would be to invest a whole fortune
in one kind of property. At the South, we have cotton
plantations ; nothing but cotton is raised. If the market
and the season happen to be propitious, enormous profits
are made. If markets, or the planting or picking season
are adverse, the year is lost; for it was staked on one
article ; all the risks of the year, instead of being distributed,
were concentrated. Another plantation cultivates sugar
exclusively ; and the ambitious planter has his pockets full
or empty, according to chances which he cannot foresee,
calculate, or overrule.
At the North, some farmers put in nothing but wheat;
others, nothing but corn. One relies on the hay crop;
another makes or loses a year’s profits on cattle. In each
case, if the staple raised happens to Aéé, in every respect
profits roll in like a flood. But such operations leave no
margin for those casualties, and annual changes, which are
inevitable.
Ireland, relying upon the potato as a support for a large
mass of its poverty-stricken people, is visited with famine
if this crop is shaken. The failure of the grain crop, in Eng-.
land, strikes panic into the whole nation.
A perfect system of agriculture should have in itself, a
balancing power. There should be such a distribution of
crops that a farmer may have four or five chances instead
of one. To be sure, a farmer cannot drive so large a bus-
iness—cut such a swath—where five small or moderate
operations take the place of a single great one. Five years
of moderate profits are better than one gaining year, and
four years to eat it up. A farmer has 160 acres—sixty are
m wood: of the one hundred cleared acres, say twenty are
used for home lots, pasture, corn, etc., and eighty are in
118 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
wheat. 'The fall may be bad for planting, the spring may
be bad, the fly may take the crop or the rust may strike it;
escaping all these, the weevil may damage it ; and, after all
this, it may not bring a justifying price when got to mar-
ket. Is it wise for a man to put his yearly support or gains
upon one crop and that one crop depending upon six or seven
contingencies? If there is a large crop and high prices, he
makes largely. Eighty acres at thirty bushels the acre
yields 2,400 bushels, worth, say, seventy cents, or $1,680
gross receipts. Elated beyond measure, the lucky fellow
buys some forty acres more of cleared land, reduces his
pasture, shaves off a portion from his meadow, plants a few
acres only of corn, and puts every inch he can command
into wheat ; a good operation if he can find guaranty for
as good seasons and as good market as before. But there
are at least ten chances against for one in favor.
A farm which depends for its profit on butter, cheese,
fruit, timber, cattle, hogs, corn, wheat, potatoes, flax, etc.,
makes, perhaps, but a little on each crop; but the rains
that come in drops are useful, while those that come in éor-
rents and raise freshets, leave great mischief behind.
Ticks on SureEp.—A clergyman, who was early in life a
regular-built shepherd, after the old-fashioned style, living
with his flock, requests us to call the attention of all interested
in sheep, to the prevention of ticks adopted “in the place
he came from.” A trough, large enough to hold a sheep,
was filled with a decoction of tobacco; as soon as the sheep
are sheared, they are plunged all over in, except the nose
and mouth (these organs being sacred to chewers and snuff
ers). The lambs are treated in the same way, and a world
of trouble to the owner and yet more to the flock, is saved
by this nauseous bath.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 119
IMPROVED BREEDS OF HOGS AND CATTLE.
No farmer ever owns a fine animal withcut being proud
of it. Yet, the same man will have an inveterate prejudice
against what are called improved breeds. The “fancy”
prices which have been extravagantly paid, the miserable
failure which some have made in attempting to stock their
farm with foreign breeds, together with a suspicion of
whatever is new, and a lack of enterprise, have deterred
many farmers from seeking a better stock than the common
run. It is in this way that speculators, besides ruining
themselves, which is of no great consequence, seriously
retard the progress of enlightened husbandry.
Let us take a plain and practical view of the matter.
1. Every,man who has had anything to do with cattle,
horses and swine, knows very well what a difference there
is between different animals, in respect to size, form, and
aptitude to fatten. Among twenty steers there will be a few
that without any reason that the owner can see, out-grow
and out-fatten all the rest. A lot of fifty hogs gathered up
from one neighborhood, will naturally divide itself into
three sorts, those which fatten with remarkable rapidity
and on little food; those that eat voraciously without
taking on fat; and those that lie between these two
extremes and are not remarkable in one way or the other.
Every man that buys a horse knows that some horses re-
quire as much again food as others to keep them fat.
2. It is equally true that these qualities can be trans-
mitted, by careful breeding, from parent to offspring ;
until the qualities become fixed in the breed. A particular
strain of blood, is then said to be established. By this pro-
cess, English breeders of stock, with the greatest persever-
ance and with admirable skill, have established several truly
improved breeds. It isnot mere beauty of form that has
been gained, although this has been eminently attained ;
but also all those qualities which make an ox valuable for
120 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
the yoke or for the knife; all that makes a cow good at
the pail and afterwards for the butcher; all that makes a
hog valuable in flesh and fat. It is a mistake to suppose
that the improved breeds have been formed to please gen-
tlemen farmers and amateur fanciers. They have been per-
fected with an eye mainly to their profitableness to the far-
mer—the real farmer. Nor are they the stock for large
farmers and rich proprietors alone. They are more
peculiarly suited to farmers of small or moderate means
than to any other; a rich farmer can afford to keep poor
stock, if anybody can; but asmall farmer is badly off indeed
if the little that he has is poor.
3. No class of farmers are more interested in having
good stock of all kinds than western farmers. Pork and
beef constitute, probably, three-fifths of their exports. It is
of the last importance that they should possess animals from
which can be made the utmost profit. It is as much more
profitable for an Indiana farmer to drive the very best cat-
tle, as it is for a Massachusetts farmer. If improved breeds
are found on the Mohawk to be vastly more profitable than
common stock, they will be found to be just the same on the
Wabash.
It does not follow, either, because we have more corn
than we can feed, or more grass and hay than can be used,
that we can make up for inferior quality by the greater
quantity of cattle kept. A western farmer may winter a
hundred head of cattle without positive loss, when a New
York farmer would sink money by it. But that is not the
question. Suppose two herds, of a hundred each, of four
year olds, preparing for the shambles. They eat the same
amount of grain, and hay or grass. But when weighing-
time comes, one herd averages a fourth heavier than the
other, and this is clear profit. With no more food, and no
more labor, and no longer time in fattening, they yield the
owner a fourth more profit.
Three men start a hundred hogs apiece for market.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 121
=
The first lot is of the true land-shark breed, and will
average, say one hundred and twenty-five pounds; the
second lot are of a better breed, and will average two hun-
dred pounds; the third hundred are of a choice breed and
average three hundred pounds. If the market happen to
be heavy, the first lot can hardly be sold; the second lot
sells moderately well, the third lot goes promptly and at a
shade higher price. Now what is the difference of profit ?
If pork is selling for two dollars the hundred, the first hun-
dred hogs bring two hundred and fifty dollars. The second,
four hundred dellars; and the third, six hundred dollars.
That is, a difference of breeds makes a difference in profit,
feeding and labor being the same in both cases, between the
first and last lot, of three hundred and fifty dollars. But it
will be more than this, for hogs averaging three hundred
pounds will command twenty-five cents in the hundred more
than those weighing a hundred and twenty-five pounds. The
price which a farmer will get, then, for his hundred acres of
corn, depends upon what his hogs candofor him. One sort
of hogs can make up a fourth more fat than others, and ano-
ther can make up still a fourth more than these. If you
owned a mill, which of two millers would you choose—the
one who could make forty pounds of flour to the bushel,
or the one who could make forty-five—the quality being
equally good? Of two acres of land, which would you
choose—the one which would yield fifteen bushels of
wheat, or the one which, with the same cultivation, would
yield thirty? Our farmers are willing enough to hunt
for good lands; but why, on the same reasons, should they
not hunt for the best breeds of cows, cattle hogs, and
horses ?
4, Asto the different varieties which are cried up, we
have no interest in urging one more than another upon the
public. It is all one to us whether Hereford, Devon, or
Durham, prevail; Woburn, Byfield or Berkshire. All that
we ask is that farmers should aim to procure the best. Their
4
122 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
own experience must determine which that is. One kind
will suit one range of land better than another. Beginning
with moderation, a shrewd farmer will. soon be able to tell
whether any particular breed will suit his farm.
We presume that all farmers work for the sake of profit:
we urge an improvement of stock simply on the ground of
its profitableness.
ABSORBENT QUALITIES OF FLOUR.
Tr has long been known that flour gains in weight on
being made up into bread. The English act of Parliament
allowed 280 Ibs. (a sack) of flour to make 820 lbs. of bread.
But in fact it makes a much greater weight than this. The
average per cent. of water, in English flour, naturally,
according to Johnson, is 15 per cent. But good English
and French wheat bread, according to the same author, con-
tains 44 per cent. of water; i. e. twenty-eight pounds are
absorbed in making. By this estimate, 280 lbs. would gain
nearly seventy-four pounds, while the act of Parliament
allows only forty pounds.
' Tt is understood that American wheat absorbs more water
than English; and that United States southern wheat, absorbs
more than northern. It is also true that good wheat gains
more in baking than poor wheat, and old flour, more than
new. It is not good because it takes up water ; but good
flour has that property, and poor has not; and absorption is,
therefore, an evidence of quality.
This absorption of water is in part mechanical and in
part chemical. 'The difference between these may be illus-
trated; a bushel measure of shelled corn will admit a great
quantity of water into its open spaces ; it stands between the
kernels. When water is thrown upon lime, it does not
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 123
exist between the particles, but combines with them. Flour
absorbs water in both ways.
Absorption, mechanically, depends upon the coarseness of
flour, either from the character of its growth, or from the
manner of its grinding. The want of light and heat, in
unfavorable climates, or in bad seasons, induces sluggish and
imperfect action. The juices are but partially digested and
assimilated. Many vegetable constituents exist, in conse-
quence, -in smaller quantities, or in a crude state. In such
cases the texture is porous and spongy. Grinding breaks
down the organized form without altering the essential
nature of the texture.
It would seem, if this be true, that grain ripened under
unfavorable influences would absorb less rather than more
water. since the watery particles, from the want of rapid
digestion and excretion, remain in the grain. But after
grain. is cut, and put to dry, a literal evaporation takes
place; the water is, in a measure, exhaled.
We are not to suppose that a mechanical absorption pre-
dominates. By far the greatest proportion of water is sup-
posed to combine with the ingredients of the flour—starch,
gluten, etc..—chemically. And as flour is rich in starch and
gluten, it will have the power of taking water into com-
bination. It has been supposed that the absorbing power
of flour depended mainly upon its gluten. But Johnson
holds the position in doubt. Whereas, Webster (of Eng-
land) states that it is with the starch, principally, that water
combines. The per cent. of starch, sugar, and gluten, etc.,
in wheat, depends on the soil and climate;—on the soil,
because it must derive from it, originally, the elements of
its existence; on climate, because these elements require a
certain temperature and quantity of light for their perfect
elaboration. It is on this account, that the wheat of
southern Europe is better than that of England; that that
of Egypt is superior to the Tialian. In each case there is a
superiority of climate which produces the most perfect ela:
boration of all the elements of wheat.
124 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
PORTRAIT OF AN ANTI-BOOK-FARMER.
WHENEVER our anti-book-farmers can show us better
crops at a less expense, better flocks, and better farms, and
better owners on them, than book-farmers can, we shall
become converts to their doctrines. But, as yet, we cannot
see how intelligence in a farmer, should injure his crops.
Nor what difference it makes whether a farmer gets his
ideas from a sheet of paper, or from a neighbor’s mouth, or
from his own experience, so that he only gets good, practi-
cal, sound ideas. A farmer never objects to receive politi-
cal information from newspapers; he is quite willing to
learn the state of markets from newspapers, and as willing
to gain religious notions from reading, and historical know-
ledge, and all sorts of information except that which relates
to his business. He will go over and hear a neighbor tell
how he prepares his wheat-lands, how he selects and puts
in his seed, how he deals with his grounds in spring, in har-
vest and after harvest-time; but if that neighbor should
write it all down carefully and put it into paper, it’s all
poison! it’s book-farming !
“Strange such a difference there should be
*Twixt tweedledum, and tweedledee.”
If I raise a head of lettuce surpassing all that has been
seen hereabouts, every good farmer that loves a salad would
send for a little seed, and ask, as he took it, “‘ How do you
contrive to raise such monstrous heads? you must have
some secret about it.’ But if my way were written down
and printed, he would not touch it. ‘‘ Poh, it’s bookish !”
Now let us inquire in what States land is the best man-
aged, yields the most with the least cost, where are the
best sheep, the best cattle, the best hogs, the best wheat ?
It will be found to be in those States having the most agri-
cultural societies and the most widely-disseminated agricul-
tural papers,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 125
What is there in agriculture that requires a man to be
ignorant if he -will be skillful? Or why may every other
class of men learn by reading except the farmer? Mecha-
nics have their journals; commercial men have their
papers; religious men, theirs; politicians, theirs; there are
magazines and journals for the arts, for science, for educa-
tion, and why not for that grand pursuit on which all these
stand? We really could never understand why farmers
should not wish to have their vocation on a level with
others ; why they should feel proud to have xo paper, while
every other pursuit is fond of having one.
Those who are prejudiced against book-farming are
either good farmers, misinformed of the design of agricul-
tural papers, or poor farmers who only treat this subject as
they do all others, with blundering ignorance. First, the
good farmers; there are in every county many industrious,
’ hard-working men, who know that they cannot afford to
risk anything upon wild experiments. They have a growing
family to support, taxes to pay, lands perhaps on which
purchase money is due, or they are straining every nerve to
make their crops build a barn, that the barn may hold their
crops. They suppose an agricultural paper to be stuffed
full of wild fancies, expensive experiments, big stories made
up by men who know of no farming except parlor-farming.
They would, doubtless, be surprised to learn that ninety-
nine parts in a hundred of the contents of agricultural
papers are written by hard-working practical farmers!
that the editor’s business is not to foist absurd stories upon
credulous readers, but to sift stories, to scrutinize accounts,
to obtain whatever has been abundantly proved to be fact,
and to reject all that is suspected to be mere fanciful theory.
Such papers are designed to prevent imposition; to kill off
pretenders by exposing them; to search out from practical
men whatever they have found out, and to publish it for the
benefit of their brethren all over the Union; to spread
before the laboring classes such sound, well-approved scien-
nee) “Neat
oj
ey. do Rei own farming; indeed, not half so b
rate the paper with their tongue ; but cruelly abuse
ground, for twelve months in the year with both ha
will draw the portrait of a genuine anti-book-farmer 0!
last sort. é
He plows three inches deep lest he should turn
poison that, in his estimation, lies below ; his wheat-lan:
plowed so as to keep as much water on “it as possible ;
sows two bushels to the acre and reaps ten, so that it tak
a fifth of his crop to seed his ground; his corn-land I
never any help from him, but bears just what it pleases,
which is from thirty to thirty-five bushels by measurement, —
though he brags that it is fifty or sixty. His hogs, if not
fenci ahie a fattening qualities, would beat old Doles
at a quarter-race ; and were the man not prejudiced against
deep plowing, hid hogs would work his grounds better with _
their prodigious snouts than he does with his jack-knife-
plow. His meadow-lands yield him from three-qua
of a ton to a whole ton of hay, which is regularly spoiled
in curing, regularly left out for a month, very irregularl eet
stacked up, and left for the cattle to pull out at their p .
ure, and half-eat and halftrample underfoot. His horses —
would excite the avarice of an anatomist in search of osteo-
logical specimens, and returning from their range of pasture
they are walking herbariums, bearing specimens in their
mane and tail of every weed that bears a bur or cockle.
But oh, the cows! If held up in a bright day to the sun,
don’t you think they would be semi-transparent? But he
tells us that good milkers are always poor! His cows get
what Providence sends them, and very little beside, except
in winter, then they have a half-peck of corn on ears a foot
long thrown to them, and they afford lively spectacles of
lc arieties of butter quite sGtctunatee
_ His farm never grows any better, in many respects it gets
is. neighbors have grown rich, he is just where he started,
nly his house is dirtier, his fences more tottering, his soil
poorer, his pride and his ignorance greater. haa when, at
~ last, he sells out to a Pennsylvanian that reads the Farmers’
_ Cabinet, or to some New Yorker with his Cultivator packed
up carefully as if it were gold, or to a Yankee with his New
mgland Farmer, he goes off to Missouri, thanking Heaven
that he’s not a book-farmer !
Unquestionably, there are two sides to this question, and
ae both of them extremes, and therefore both of them deficient
_ in science and in common sense. If men were made accord-
<m ing to our notions, there should not be a silly one alive;
but it is otherwise ordered, and there is no department of
human life in which we do not find weak and foolish men.
This is true of farming as much as of any other calling.
_ But no one dreams of setting down the vocation of agri-
culture because, like every other, it has its proportion of
stupid men.
; Why then should agricultural writers, as a class, be sum-
_ marily rejected because some of them are visionary? Are
we not to be allowed our share of fools as well as every
other department of life? We insist on our rights.
A book or a paper never proposes to take the place of a
farmer’s judgment. Not to read at all is bad enough; put
to read, and swallow everything without reflection, or dis-
crimination, this is even worse. Such a one is not a book-
headed but a block-headed farmer. Papers are designed
to assist. Those who read them must select, modify, and
act according to their own native judgment. So used,
papers answer a double purpose; they convey a great
amount of valuable practical information, and then they stir
128 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
up the reader to habits of thought; they make him more
inquisitive, more observing, more reasoning, and, therefore,
more reasonable.
Now, as to the contents of agricultural papers, whose
fault is it if they are not practical? Who are the prac-
tical men? who are daily conversant with just the things a
cultivator most needs to know? who is stumbling upon
difficulties, or discovermg some escape from them? who is
it that knows so much about gardens, orchards, farms,
cattle, grains and grasses? Why, the very men who won't
write a word for the paper that they read, and then com-
plain that there is nothing practical in it. Yes there is,
There is practical evidence that men are more willing to be
helped than to help others; and also that men sometimes
blame others for things of which they themselves are
chiefly blameworthy.
GOOD BREEDS OF COWS.
THERE is hardly one thing which conduces more to the
comfort of a family than a good cow. A family well sup-
plied with rich milk twice a day cannot have poor fare; for,
besides the use of pure milk by itself, there is no article,
except flour, which enters into so many forms of cooking.
Next in importance to the family, are the relations of the
cow to the dairy; we say neat to the family, for it is more
important that there should be good cows for private fami-
lies than that dairies should have them. All the dairy
herds might be destroyed, and if each family has its cow,
the loss would be bearable. But take from families their
one cow, and all the dairies in the land could not compen-
sate.
The question of a good breed of milch cows is important,
then, to the whole community ; to the dairymen of course;
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 129
but yet more to the families of laborers, mechanics, mer-
chants, ete.
Everybody knows that it costs no more to keep a good
cow than a poor one. But what is the use in talking so
when good ones are not to be had? or to be had only at a
price which not one in fifty can afford? But so far as we are
concerned, and so far as ninety-nine in a hundred are con-
cerned, of what use are these accounts except to make us
dissatisfied with our poor old cow without enabling us to
get a better? It was all right to publish them, but the
sight of such facts reminded us of the low estate of our milk
cows, and of the woeful carelessness of farmers about im-
proving their stock.
It is high time that farmers should endeavor to pro-
cure a good milk breed. It is well known that horses and
oxen are almost bred to order; if a fore shoulder is too
slight, a breeder crosses so that in the next generation it
comes out right; if the animal is too small he is enlarged ;
if too large he is condensed ; if the back is too long, the
leg too heavy, the muscle too spare, the head heavily or
clumsily put on, the breeder has skill, in a great measure,
to remedy the evils. Why then should it not be thought
both possible and worth while to breed for good milking
properties ?
The least trouble, not the best stock, seems to be the
question with most. The discouragement of debt, the low
prices of all farm products, the habits of arrant carelessness
which naturally belong to large farms, of rich lands, re-
moved from a ready market, and on which there is more
than enough for home use, and much waste of the surplus
because a poor sale for it; these things are the causes why
but little attention is paid to good stock. To be sure, in
speculating times, large prices have been paid for animals
of repute. And now, if fancy prices could be realized,
there are thousands who would beg, borrow, or steal enough
to rush madly into the raising of improved br2eds_ Even
130 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
from such extravagance much collateral advantage results,
Many, doubtless, are disappointed, as they expected angelic
cattle, and got nothing but flesh and blood ; those who are
the most furious in one extreme, revolt to the other, and
are as careless and neglectful this year, as they were cattle-
mad the last year. But, some good, notwithstanding, re-
mains. Good breeds have been brought in. Good blood
will run longer in good stock, than perseverance, often, will
in their owners. Here and there a man holds on. His
stock improves. His neighbor’s herds are gradually
leavened. By and by particular counties grow famous for
their fine stock. The farmers feel some pride in it; and
now the thing begins to work rightly. When once the
best stock, of any kind, is a matter of hearty personal pride
with the farmer, over and above the mere price of them in
market, then there will be constant and solid improve-
ment.
These remarks, applying to stock generally, are peculiarly
applicable to the subject of milch cows with which we set
out.
Dauttas.—It is necessary to give your plants a strong
support, for, in good seasons, they grow so thriftily, that
rains and winds break down the branches even when the
main stalk is strongly staked. Those who are willing to be
at the trouble, should put three stakes so as to leave the
stem in the middle. Take a pliant withe, or small hoop, and
encircle the stakes at the top, the middle, and also about a
foot from the ground. In this way the branches will lean
on the hoops, and not be liable to split off; a few weeks’
growth will cover and conceal the stakes and hoops, leay-
ing to the eye only a mass of foliage, apparently, self-sus-
tained.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 131
CUTTING AND CURING GRASS.
THE question when grass ought to be cut, it seems to us,
is to be answered bythe purposes to which we mean to
put it.
Do we wish it for the seed, or for the stem? Are we
anxious to obtain the greatest weight from an acre? or are
we desirous of gaining the largest amount with the least
exhaustion of the soil?
1. If one, regardless of soil, wishes the greatest weight
to an acre, let the grass ripen. It will have become per-
fectly developed; its juices will have perfected the solid
matter, and less loss will ensue in curing. But the stem
will be comparatively hard, and without nutriment.
2. Do we desire, without particular regard to economy,
the most nutricious food for animals? The grass should
ripen and only the upper part of the stem and the head
should be fed out; for, while the buts will be hard and
juiceless, the grain and husk and neighboring parts will
have received, in a concentrated form, the height of the
plant’s juices. Chemistry has recently shown that plants
prepare in themselves, the fatty matter which is afterward
laid on the bones of the cattle. This fatty substance lies
not in the grain, but the husk.
Johnston, the agricultural chemist, says: “ This fact of
the existence of more fat in the husk than in the inner part
of the grain, explains what often seems inexplicable to the
practical man, why bran, namely, which appears to contain
little or no nourishing substance, should yet fatten pigs and
other full grown animals when fed to them in sufficient
quantity, along with their other food.” If, for example, a
horse is to be trained, it has long been the practice (though
hitherto the reason was not understood) to give the racers,
the hunter, etc., only the top joint and head of hay.
Now the principle on which a trained horse is fed, is to give
the most solid nourishment in the most compact form—
132 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
throwing as little unnutricious food as possible into the
stomach consistently with a proper distension of it.
This fact also explains the value of old hay which has
been well cured and well kept. It is known that freshly
gathered nuts are not so oily as those which are old. All
seeds perfect their oil after being thoroughly ripened by
keeping. The seed of old hay will be richer in fatty matter,
then, than new.
3. The most palatable hay for cattle is that which is cut
before it ripens its seed. If the farmer has enough grain to
feed with, he can afford to cut his grass early. Its want of
nutriment will be made up by feeding grain, and his stock
will relish their food better than if it had grown hard with
age before cutting.
4, But for general purposes, grass should be cut when
just out of flower. This is a compromise between the two
extremes. It combines the two advantages of juiciness of
stem and richness of grain more nearly than any other,
The stem will be cut while yet in juice, and the seed will
continue to fill and ripen after it has been cut. This is
well known in respect to wheat, and the best farmers cut it
before it is dead ripe.
The want of barns to store it, the want of markets in
which to sell it, the want of profit in raising it, and lastly,
the want of thrift in making it, has caused thousands of
tons of hay to be most wretchedly put up—curing as it is
sarcastically called; cured, probably, on the principle of
the following story: A physician in England went out with
the gamekeeper to hunt; covey after covey was started,
into which the doctor fired with a strange want of pro-
fessional skill, without killing anything. The gamekeeper
at length lost patience, and snatching the gun, said :
“ Let me take it, Pll doctor them.”
“ What do you mean, sir, by doctoring them ?”
“Why, kill them, to be sure.”
Thus, we think, grass is too often doctored.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 133
COUNTRY AND CITY.
A worrny friend recently said to me: “A gentlemen of
observation from one of our principal cities of the West,
atated to me, that in point of fact, almost all the leading
men of the cities were from the country, and had been
raised farmers’ sons. The reasons seemed to me quite
obvious. The vigorous health, patient industry, thorough
economy, and hard thinking necessary to success, are the
product of the country and but seldom of the town or city.
A large part of the best merit and talent of the country
doubtless remains upon and adorns our farms. Another
portion is drawn by a spirit for enterprise of a different
kind to our towns. When they enter they find an active
competition that brings out their best efforts. Success on
their part takes away the necessity of effort on the part of
their children; and the next result is, that their children
become reduced in means and merit, and every element of
success, and are driven to some refuge in vice or petty em-
ployment. It is therefore the duty of the man who has
been successful in town, to retire to the country again that
his children, who are to succeed him, may partake, as far as
possible, of his advantages.”
The facts stated we believe are undoubted; the business
men—merchants, Jawyers, physicians, and clergymen of
large cities are, to a large degree, drawn from the country.
And there is a system of circulation, if the facts could be
well made out, worth attention. In travelling, one day last
year, the rain drove us into a country tavern, where a fat
man of some fifty years of age was waiting to entertain us
with a dish of philosophy (of which, considermg our accom-
modations, we had special need). But we were led to
notice one part of his remarks: ‘‘ You see, sir, everything
comes round in about four generations, First comes the
enterprising and hard-working fellow who gets the money ;
then his children begin to live in style; but their parents’
134 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
example and stamina keep them pretty well up; but their
children begin to run down; in their hands the property is
wasted and they die poor; and the fourth race begin in pov-
erty, and work upward again.” Now, if our fat and some-
what dogmatical friend has reasoned aright, there is a de-
generating and rejuvenating process going on in society,
having a period of about four or five years. We give the
theory for what it may be worth.
LIME UPON WHEAT.
Lime is used either to prepare the seed for germination,
or to prepare the soil for the better growth of the seed.
This latter operation it does, either by adding itself as a
new ingredient, or by acting chemically upon the ingre-
dients already in the soil.
When lime is applied to the seed (the seed being mone)
the oxygen of the water, combining with ceae of the
seed, forms carbonic acid; which, having a powerful affin-
ity for lime, unites with it, forming a carbonate of lime.
The escape of a portion of its carbon constitutes the natu-
ral preparation of a seed for growth; but why, chemists
have not been abie to explain.
Air-slaked lime, is lime which has combined with carbonic
acid existing in the atmosphere. Unburnt limestone is a
carbonate of lime ; air-slaked lime is the same, and they do
not materially differ. Air-slaked lime, having no longer an
affinity for carbonic acid, withdraws none from the grain to
which it may be applied; and in nothing helps the germi-
nating process. Our readers will therefore see the rea- —
son why wheat does not sprout any quicker when it is
limed, than when it is not. Precisely the same thing
is true of other substances applied to grains. Magnesia,
existing naturally as a carbonate, like lime, has its carbonie
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 135
acid expelled by strong heat, and in that state applied to
seeds, will assist the germination. If exposed to the air it
attracts carbonic acid and becomes again a carbonate, and
useless to seeds.
Where lime is employed upon the soil, it is either as a
mere article of vegetable food, or, as a chemical agent, to
change the condition of other ingredients of the soil. All
good soils contain lime ; of ninety-four different cultivated
soils in Rhode Island, analyzed by Professor C. T. Jackson,
eighty-nine contained lime. Ruffin, in his essay on caleare-
ous manures, says, after a large induction of fact, “that all
soils naturally poor, are certainly destitute of calcareous
earth.” When there exists in the soil, already, enough lime
for the wants of vegetation, the addition of more will pro-
duce no effect upon the crop. New lands, and old land not
run down, and naturally rich in lime, may require none.
But lime is applied not alone as food directly offered to
vegetation, but to act upon and change the soil itself.
It neutralizes free acids which exist in the soil. This is
done with quick-lime or air-slaked; the first combining
directly with the acid—the second by liberating its carbonic
acid and then combining with the acid of the soil, leaving
the carbonic acid to be food for plants. It is very well
known by those accustomed to use peaty substances for
manures, and meadow mud, that they will rather injure than
benefit soils, until their acid has been neutralized.
Lime decomposes vegetable fibre, and reduces tough lig-
neous substances, to a consideration in which they can be
appropriated by plants. For this purpose qwick-lime should
be used and may be applied at the rate of from twenty to
thirty bushels t » the acre.
Lime enters into combination with sand or silex, forming
a substance different from either of them. Even strong
clays will be found to contain much silex ; and lime, by com-
bining with it, makes the soil friable or crumbling.
136 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
CULTURE OF HOPS.
WE shall state such facts as are within our reach, and
leave each one to make his own calculations.
Tue Hop Prant.—The hop belongs to the natural order,
Urticeze, or the nettle and hemp family. Its root is peren-
nial; its stem annual, twining to the height of from fifteen
to twenty feet. They bear male and female flowers on
different plants, and the female is the only one used for
planting.
Som.—Rich, friable clay, and hearty loams, and vege-
table molds are the best soils. A wet subsoilis fatal to their
health. Any rich, light, dry (but not droughty) soil suits
them. <A large crop may be obtained from our rich allu-
vions, or bottom lands; but although uplands yield a less
crop, the quality is regarded as decidedly superior. A wet
clay subsoil is not good.
Piantine.—Plants are set out in rows six to eight feet
apart and six to eight feet from hill to hill in the row.
Rooted plants, but more frequently cuttings from old
plants are employed ; five or six being planted to the hill.
Poles from fifteen to twenty feet in length are placed to
each hill. In England from three to six and even eight are
placed to each hill. But three is about the average number.
Hanrvest.—No crop is more variable than this ; the yield
per acre ranging according to the season from 300 to 2,000
Ibs. On rich bottom lands 2,000 lbs. may be not unfre-
quently raised; but on an average, from 700 to 1,000 Ibs.
may be reckoned.
The plants bloom in July and are ready for harvest by
the first of September. It is necessary t gather them
promptly, as they soon deteriorate if allowed to remain
after they are ripe. As soon as gathered they are kiln-
dried, then placed from ten days to two weeks to cool, and,
finally, they are baled for market.
GrneraL ConsmErations.—A plantation will last in full
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 137
vigor for ten years, and then will decline, but gradually, for
ten more, when it is to be broken up. Fifteen years, per-
haps, is the average duration of the hop plantations. They
exhaust the soil, withdrawing much and returning little to
it. Hops vary exceedingly in price in different years, not
only on account of the varying supply arising from the
uncertainty of yield, but from the quality of the article
in different years. The average price in the United States
is not far from sixteen cents per pound. Sometimes they
rise to thirty, forty, and even fifty cents per pound.
From the moment of sprouting, in the spring, until the
hop is ready for the kiln, they are liable to disaster from
insects or disease. Nowhere has more experience been had
in their cultivation than in England. Brown says, “ they
are exposed to more diseases than any other plant with
which we are acquainted, and the trade offers greater room
for speculation than any other exercised within the British
dominions.” Parkinson, with a quaint play upon the word
hop, says, “the hop is said to be a plant very properly
named, as there is never any certainty in cultivating it.”
If the crop is to be planted largely, it would seem
plain, from the foregoing, that one should have capital
enough to be able to bear some losses, at least, at first. For
ordinary cultivators, if the experiment is to be made, it
would be better to begin with a small plantation at first,
embarking more largely as knowledge and skill increase,
and as experience determines its profitableness.
Grape Vines should be trimmed before the sap begins
to rise, else they will bleed, to their great injury. If it be
neglected till the sap is in motion, let the cultivator wait
till the leaves are about the size of a dollar; then cutting
may be performed without injury.
138 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
WHITE CLOVER.
WE are inclined to suppose that the excellences of white
clover have noi been enough esteemed among our farmers;
indeed, they have adopted a few grasses as special favorites
upon whom all favors are lavished, ana the rest are totally
or very nearly rejected.
In regions where dairies abound, and where, therefore,
the subject of pasturage is of vital interest, those grasses
are sown which spring early in the year and continue late ;
which grow quickly, abundantly, and shoot again rapidly
after being cropped; which are nutritious; which tend to
produce milk, and impart to it high flavor. If any one
grass possessed all these properties, it would be perfect;
and, for pastures, all others might be rejected. As it is,
several grasses must conspire to form a sward possessed of
these diverse excellences. In this joint result white clover
bears no mean place. It is, on congenial soils, of vigorous
growth, eminently conducive to the production of milk,
and milk of fine flavor. These are its peculiar virtues-
Besides these, it possesses in common with other pasture
plants, hardiness, tenacity of life, nutritiousness for beef-
cattle. Thaér, the most eminent practical, and scientific
cultivator of his day, says: “‘ Jt is certainly the most gene-
rally approved of all plants that are cultivated for this
(pasture) purpose.” Sinclair, whose authority in grasses
will not be disputed, says: “nor does it form a good pas-
ture when sown by itself. . . but, combined with other
grasses, it is a valuable plant.” Great quantities of seed
are annually sown in England by the best farmers. Fessen-
den, of New England, says, “it does not contain as much
nutritive matter as red clover; yet its value as a pastwure-
grass is universally admitted.’ This is the experience of
Germany, England, and New England. Has experience
determined that these good qualities are suppressed in
western pastures? Or is there such a prejudice against it
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 139
on account of its prying, intrusive disposition in arable
lands, that our farmers are unwilling to give it a chance?
PLOWING CORN.
Many farmers, because their fathers did so before them,
plow their corn lands very shallow before planting; but
make up for it in deep plowing while dressing the corn-
crop. Why is corn plowed at all ?
1. To pestroy Weerps.—In this climate if a plow is not
kept lively in the early part of the season, weeds will com-
pletely take the crop. The soil is like a table full of food.
Every man who sits down to it makes it less. Every weed
eats up a part of the soil, and takes away, needlessly, so
much from the corn. But it is not merely the nutritive
ingredients which are extracted—but what, on some soils,
in some seasons, is even worse—weeds drink up the moist-
ure. There are many soils which could afford to lose much
mineral and vegetable substance without lessening the sup-
ply for corn; but, in this climate, in ordinary seasons, no
soil can afford to squander its moisture.
But a corn crop is often put in to act as a cleanser of the
soil when it has become foul. This end can only be
answered by a rigid persecution and destruction of the
weeds throughout the whole growing season. Some
farmers, strangely enough, will deal thoroughly with their
fields, but allow the edges and fence rows to swarm with
weeds that luxuriate and ripen seed which the winds
seatter all over the field. This is as if a man should busy
himself all day long, in driving hogs out of his field, but
leave all the holes open where they broke in. The soil
should be thoroughly worked.
2. To preveNT Dryness.—Nothing is wider of the truth,
than letting corn alone in dry weather for fear of “ firmg”
140 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
it. Ifthe plow begins early, and is kept going, no drought
likely to occur in our climate can do much injury; espe-
cially if the ground has been broken up deep before plant-
ing. .
Where the atmosphere is very dry, very hot and windy,
the evaporation of moisture from the plant, and from the
surface of the soil, is excessive. A hill of corn will exhale
many pounds of moisture in a day. There is no remedy
for excessive exhalation from plants; but this renders it yet
more necessary that a supply should be kept up at the
roots. Ifthe soil therefore, is permitted to evaporate from
its surface, the double draught upon its moisture—through
the plant, and from the surface—will soon exhaust its
water.
Everybody knows that if a board or cloth be put upon
the ground, in dry weather, the earth under it will remain
moist—its aqueous particles being checked in their pass-
age upward. If a shovelful of fine manure be laid in a
heap upon a spot of ground, the same effect will be pro-
duced. Gardeners are accustomed to cover the earth about
shrubs with an inch or two of fine sand; experience teach-
ing them that it preserves the moisture of the soil. Now,
if the soil, instead of being covered with sand, or light
manure, be itself pulverized, the same effect will be pro-
duced—and for reasons which will appear. When the soil
is compact the moisture ascends from particle to particle
without obstruction. Every crevice which separates the
particles of earth, checks the passage of the moisture.
This may be more readily seen in an analogous case—the
transmission of heat. Take two nail-rods, lay the end of
one in the fire; divide the other into inch pieces and lay
them in a row from the fire, each piece touching the other.
The transmission of heat in the rod made up of pieces will
be checked at each point of division, while the uncut rod
will heat rapidly. On this principle, an iron chain two feet
long, with one end thrust into fire, will not transmit heat
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 141
through its length near so soon as a solid bar of the same
length.
If this reasoning be true, and experience bears it out, the
plow should be kept running in dry times to save a crop
from drought. But if the farmer has neglected his corn,
waiting for rain, and begins to plow after his ground is
very dry, and plows deep, breaking the roots of his corn,
the crop will be “fired;” for, in this case, besides the
evaporation from the leaves and the dryness of the soil, he
commences breaking the roots by which the crop drinks
what little water there may be left for it. Of course it
despairs when it is attacked on one side by the heat, and
on the other by the foolish farmer, and underneath by a
treacherously dry soil. Begin, then, early, and plow often,
and you may defy dry summers and cram your crib with
hearty crops of corn.
BREAKING THE Roots.—Many farmers study to break
the roots of their corn. We have heard them boast of ripping
them up with a big plow till they clogged it up like bundles
of yarn. It is done by some because others do it; those
who attempt to reason, say, that if a root be broken it
immediately puts out many more from the point of break-
age ; and the practice of root-pruning fruit-trees is cited,
to show that the fruitfulness of a plant is increased by
reducing the root and checking the growth of the wood.
It is not true that the fruitfulness of a tree is increased by
root-pruning, but, it is made to yield its fruit earlier. It is
a device to bring trees rapidly into bearing. <A pear-tree
(grafted) requires from five to eight years before it is
matured enough to commence bearing. By mutilation of
rcot, bending of branches, or by a poor gravelly soil, the
tree is partially forbidden to grow, and obliged to ripen its
wood and fit it for fruit-bearmg. But had it grown to its
natural size, it would then have borne even more fruit than
when dwarfed.
No such practice is required upon annual plants, whose
= SOR
142 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ripening is not delayed through years, but which come up
and ripen and die within the limits of a single season.
They need no artificial treatment to accelerate the fruiting,
because it ordinarily makes no difference whether the corn
crop comes in September or October. It is better to select
varieties of corn which ripen within the limits of the season
natural to the region where it is planted. Then there will
be no occasion to break roots, or to apply any other arti-
ficial and violent process to accelerate maturation.
CLEAN OUT YOUR CELLARS.
I spraK to those who have cellars. If not already done,
thoroughly purge this subterranean story of your house.
Every decayed onion, cabbage stump, potato vine or tuber,
turnip, parsnip, carrot, and all the dirt they have made, all
straw and rubbish, rake them up and out with them. The
cellar is no place for them at any time of year. If you still
retain a few potatoes for table use, let them be picked over
and all decayed onesremoved. One of the best housewives
of our acquaintance, greeted us not long since, with an invi-
tation to come and see her cellar: “I have swept down
every cobweb, whitewashed the walls, swept up the floor,
and sowed it with salt.” Decayed vegetable matter is a
fertiie cause of disease, and there is enough of it out of
doors, in this country, without heaping it up in the cellar
for the special purpose, it would almost seem, of breeding
fevers. Whitewash the walls, for lime purifies as well as
beautifies. Rake down the cobwebs, they are the infallible
marks of a slattern. Every spider that is allowed to peer
out of his corner in a house, up-stairs or down, undisturbed,
points his long black leg in thanksgiving at the house-
wife, “‘ Hurra for folks that are not too particular.” Old
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 148
legends represent witches as addicted to riding brooms. I
wish that many women would get bewitched enough to do
this, something more than they do. Down cellar, then,
with your broom. Look now; the window is perfectly
covered; there is a great sprawling gaunt spider in the
corner and half a dozen empty bugs hung up like scalps to
commemorate his triumphs; next to him is a great over-
swollen potbellied fellow—for all the world he looks like a
huge glutton; then there is a sharp, nimble, enterprising
spider, below him, who has just opened an office and
is keen for business, preparing to inherit, like many other
fellows, his neighbor’s custom, who, having got rich frau-
dulently, will soon burst; there, too, are several pale and
shadowy spiders, who look as if the cobwebs had kept
them from the light until they had become quite sallow and
emaciated ; then there are several little round, shining-black,
pestilent fellows, whose legs are so long in proportion to
their bodies, that they make one think of a little potato
with yard-long sprouts all over it. I say nothing of crab-
spiders on the window-sill, who, like metaphysicians, run
backward just as easy as forwards. Just look, too, my dear
madam, at the various patterns of their webs. Here is one
from point to point resembling a sheet-like shelf of dusty
cotton, and running like a tunnel, into a knot hole, where
stands the venomous old fellow waiting for flies, like a usu-
rer waiting for customers. Another corner is filled up with
a web like a skein of tangled silk; then there is a beautiful
wheel, worked more beautifully than any lace-work, while
there are a multitude of base and lazy little spiders who,
like many of their betters, live on other folk’s webs. Well,
we have talked long enough; dash your brush into that
spider-village, give it a dextrous twirl, and with the whole
population on the end of it, run to the door and crush them !
So much for spiders.
As to salt; the only advantage of salt in a cellar, that
occurs to us, is its effect in destroying snails, bugs, and that
144. PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
fungus vegetation called mold. It will do this. But it
attracts moisture from the atmosphere and renders a cellar
damp. If your cellar is very dry and sandy, you may use
salt without detriment. But if too damp it will make the
matter worse.
WHEN IS HAYING OVER?
In a trip through the country last summer we saw seve-
ral fields of timothy, out of blossom, which had become dry,
seedy, and snuff-colored. Haying was not over, it seems.
Cattle that had been hardened to eat iron-weed stems, jimp-
sum stalks, and packing straw, would probably be willing to
eat this hay.
We saw another sight. Hay which had been cut and
partly cured, was cocked up and had been left, probably for
a week or two already ; and, doubtless, was to stand thus
much longer, for there is a fashion with some to let their
hay lie about the field in little three-feet cocks, until it és
conventent to haul it to the stack, This may be in August,
or September, and sometimes we have seen a farmer (so
called) with a little sled and rope hauling his hay in Octo-
ber. Now, hay thus served is good for nothing but for
litter. The bottom of each little heap molds; the sides are,
by sun and rain, spoiled, and the little wad in the middle
does not, after subtracting the sides and bottom, amount to
much,
Pll venture my head that these are not “ book farmers.”
I have no doubt that ‘book farmers” do some foolish things,
but farmers without books do a great many more. No
book farmer, none but a farmer utterly without books,
would think of leaving his hay in cocks for six weeks or two
months. We see enough of such hay offered for sale every
winter, of a dingy, lack-lustre, straw-colored look, without
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 145
fragrance, or odor of any sort except a faint smell of old
wood, or more pungent odor of mold.
We say, in conclusion, grass should not be left so long
that it will be already dry and cured before it is cut; and,
after grass is once down, it is not to be treated like flax, and
left to bleach and rot, but should be got in as soon as pos-
sible. Farmers whose hay is on the stack or in the mow
may laugh at this article; those whose hay is not stacked or
. in the barn had better do something besides laugh.
LAYING DOWN LAND TO GRASS.
WE shall speak of the kinds and quality of seed, and of
the time and manner of putting them in.
We think our farmers err in not sowing enough kinds of
seed together.
The objects to be secured are very early grass in the
spring, a heavy body of hay, a rapid after-growth, and the
greatest amount which the soil can yield. No one grass can
be found capable of meeting all these ends. Some are very
early, but not heavy enough or sufficiently nutritious for the
main crop; others are admirable for hay, but do not start
readily again after cutting. By judiciously mixing different
sorts of grasses, any one of these objects may be secured
and the meadow be admirable both for the scythe and for
pasturage. Nor can the soil be made to yield all of which
it is capable in any other way; for a square foot of ground
may be able to sustain but a certain number of roots of any
one kind of grass, and yet many support, in addition, as
much more of another kind, since different species of grass
draw their nourishment from different portions of the soil—
the fibrous-rooted grasses from the surface, and tap-rooted
plants from the lower strata of the soil, while broad-leaved
vegetation, as clovers, lucerne, etc., draw very much of
146 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
their support from the air. Indeed, this is the lesson
which Nature teaches us, for a dozen kinds of grass may
oftentimes be found growing wild on a single square foot.
The English farmer sows from four to seven or eight
kinds of grass-seed, and sometimes as high as twelve or
fourteen, each one of which is destined to answer some
special end, and the whole taken together constitute as it
were, a perfect grass.
We subjoin the quantity and kind of seed per acre re-
commended by English authorities, that our readers may
have an idea of the English method, and derive such benefit
* from it as their circumstances will admit of:
Smooth-stalked poa,....... revels (eterarertate Son 6co0eS6 8 quarts.
Rou hestallkked Oa, s c/oieloele eleiel «lel sielelelelele/sfelelelelerelarere ee 9
Meadow fescue,........... siacietaletalofoleleiteletatiate oe eee
Meadow fox-tail,...... aareieieislers or iorelaisieteleseiote elsctes US ise
Crested dog’s-tail,............0.0. doanogqnoacasd 6 as
IRID-OTASS, | occc ss coe e povelalaistelstestcletetelvet= soogoc Siete! ae eee
Timothy-S7Tass, ...0sscccconecee ateie ater slelolareterTever= Bs gh
Yellow oat-grass,.....ceeseseecccsccccececes sees are
Perennial rye-grass,......-+-eee. sisieieiats ctoieis\eloiate) otcimtl o> aia
Cock’s fo0t,....5..cccccevccne Saqpo0ddasdec0a6 «A aes
VON ey GOS OHO D000 alctatelelctotetcvereloteleyelsusie siciets 5: ae
Sweet-scented vernal. als cleiclenre|aissiclateseleloiseisiel=et= 2
Wilt, OtiGeHisnen dncooboodndocod9adsooGcdcacc 6 Ibs.
Cow-grass, ....... : . aS
and annual meadow-grass.
These seeds may, for the most part, be had of eastern
dealers, though not probably in the West.
With blue grass we should join orchard grass, say a
bushel to the acre—white clover five pounds, red clover
ten pounds, and sweet-scented vernal (anthoxanthum odo-
ratum) say three pounds.
This last grass is remarkably early in the spring, and
peculiarly fragrant; indeed, it is supposed that the famous
spring butter of Philadelphia derives its peculiar flavor from
this grass, and we should include it in every mixture to be
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AN’) FARMING. 147
sown for pasturage. The orchard grass is one of our most
valuable; for hay it may be inferior to timothy; but it is
decidedly superior to it for pasturage. Colonel Powell, of
Pennsylvania, after growing it ten years, declares that it
produces more pasturage than any cultivated grass he has
even seen in America. It should be spread on a floor and
sprinkled with water a day or two before sowing, it being
very light, not weighing more than twelve or fourteen
pounds to the bushel.
The following table exhibits the quantity of seed, by
weight, and also on the three kinds of soil :
FOR PERMANENT PASTURE, PER IMPERIAL ACRE.
Licut Soin. MepIvm SoIL, Heavy Soin.
With a |Without a} With a [Without al Witha |Without a
crop. crop. crop. crop. crop. crop.
Ibs Ibs Ibs. Ibs. Ibs Ibs.
Perennial rye-grass. . 12 24 12 24 12 24
Meadow fox-tail...... 1} 24 2 4 8+ 63
Timothy-grass. ....) — _ 14 8 8L 54
Meadow fescue...... 24 4 23 4 24 4
Cock’s-foot. ........2. 5 8 3+ 64 24 4
Rough-stalked poa... _ _ 1: 84 84 6}
Smooth-stalked poa.. 34 63 13 bt _ —
White clover........ 5 8 5 8 5 8
Red clover......<- 0 14 24 14 24 14 2}
Hop-clover, or trefoil 14 24 1} 24 14 24
Cow-grass.......s.0.- 1} 24 13 24 1} 24
834 603 84 63} 864 66
There is a very great difference of opinion respecting the
quantity of seed to be sown to an acre. There can be no
doubt that the question is to be settled by the character
of the soil and climate. In soils and under circumstances
where every seed will vegetate and grow off with unob-
structed vigor, less seed is needed than where a part will
be taken by frosts, a part by drenching rains which are not
well drained off, and a part by severe drought. Every
farmer must employ his best judgment in this matter ; but,
148 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
it is better to err on the side of too much than of too little
seed,
Ture or Srepinc.—We cannot pretend to decide be-
tween the conflicting opinions on this subject. The positive-
ness of those who prefer spring-sowing is only to be
equalled by that of those who prefer fall-planting. Young
says of the month of August, “this is the best season of the
whole year for laying down land to grass, and no other is
admissible for it on strong, wet, or heavy soils.” This,
however, is said of humid England. But if the character
of the season toward the close of summer favors, there can
be no doubt that fall-sowing will advance the crop very
early the next year, in all soils where it is not liable to be
thrown out by the frosts. If the winter proves severe, it
will be prudent to add an additional quantity of seed in the
spring. It is objected to spring sowings, that the grass is
grown in the shade during the early part of the summer,
and is, of course, tender, so that when the grain is cut, it
is enfeebled by the powerful heat, to which, then, it be-
comes exposed. On the whole, we are inclined to prefer
- the month of September, if the season favors, to any other
for sowing grassseed. Since writing these lines, one of our
best farmers informs us that he prefers August to any other
month.
Meruop oF Sowine.—The ground should be very tho.
roughly prepared by deep and fine plowing, and the want
of labor in this respect is want of economy.
If the soil is naturally we.l drained, no further provision
against wet will be required. But if it be flat, it may be
well to lay it off into lands, strike a furrow through the
centre, and then turn the furrows toward the outer on
each side. This will give a slight elevation at the middle
and a drain between each land sufficient to answer the pur-
pose of moderate surface draining. The seed should be sown
with the greatest evenness possible. The English farmer pre-
fers to sow some of the kinds separately on this account ; for
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 149
although he has to sow the whole ground several times
over, experience has taught him, as it will us, that that is
the cheapest which is.done the best. Let it be covered in
well with a harrow, and not with a bush, which last leaves
the soil dead, and tends to drag the seed into patches and
hollows. As a general rule, grass seed may be planted as
deeply as grain. Farmers lose much more seed from shal-
low than from deep planting. For although shallow-planted
seed vegetates sooner, they are more liable to be winter-
killed, or to perish by drought than those which are deeply
covered,
THEORY OF MANURE.
Ir is very well known that a young orchard will not, usu-
ally, flourish on the site of an old one; for the older trees
are supposed to have withdrawn from the soil certain ele-
ments necessary to their growth; and as necessary to the
growth of the young tree, should it be planted there.
There is no “like” or “ dislike” of the soil to the tree; it
is a plain case of starvation. The tree needs, and the soil
cannot supply certain elements of its wood.
But if, after a plant has abstracted from the soil certain
ingredients, the whole plant is decomposed and returned to
the earth, the soil repossesses itself of the lost elements, and
is ready to yield them up again to a plant of the same kind.
If the straw of wheat be burned upon the field, annually, the
soil would yield fine crops for a thousand successive years,
that is so far as the straw is concerned. But if the grain
is removed, and nothing resupplies the drain of phosphates
which it makes from the soil, the soil will in due time,
according to the original quantities in the soil, cease to
yield grain, although the straw may be admirable. But if
both straw and kernel were every year burned upon the
150 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
field, as grass and its seed is upon the prairies, wheat would
grow for a thousand years in succession. The same is true
of corn, of potatoes, and of any annual crop. When the
annual growth is restored to the soil, it is repossessed of all
its treasure which had been loaned for a season. If a part
of the crop is removed, the soil is poorer by just so much
as the portion removed contained within it of the elements
necessary to that crop, and it must be restored artificially,
i.e. by manuring ; or by allowing the earth to prepare
(by disintegration or decomposition of its minerals) a new
supply; z. e. by fallowing. A forest will grow for ages on
the same spot, for it returns annually its leaves, and, grad-
ually, by force of accidents and the elements, its twigs,
branches, trunks, ete., to the soil again. But let the whole
product be gradually removed, and the soil would soon be >
unable to supply the trees their nourishment, except in cases
where the soil was very rich in the materials of growth.
The forests of Germany, like our mines, are under the man-
agement of the government. It was customary, for a time,
to allow the peasants the use of the twigs and smaller
branches ; but analysis has shown that in these, especially,
resides the large proportion of potash entering into the
composition of trees; the annual removal of it debilitated
the trees to an extent that obliged the Conservators to
change their mode of proceeding.
On the other hand, in one of Mr. Horsford’s letters from
Germany, we have the question of growing plants upon
their own ashes, brought, by the ablest chemist of the age,
directly to the test of experiment.
‘In the spring preceding my arrival in Giessen, Professor
Liebig planted some grape scions under the windows of the
laboratory. He fed them, if I may use such an expression,
upon the ashes of the grape vine—or upon the proper inor-
ganic food of the grape, as shown by analyses of its ashes.
The growth has been enormous, and several of the vines
bore large clusters of grapes in the course of the season.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Lot
Indeed, I know not but all, as my attention was drawn to
them particularly only since the fruit has been gathered.
The soil otherwise is little better than a pavement—a kind
of fine gravel, in which scarcely anything takes root.
““T was shown pots of wheat, in different stages of their
growth, that had been fed variously—some upon the inor-
ganic matters they needed, according to the analyses of
their ashes—others had* merely shared the tribute of the
general soil. The results in numbers I don’t yet know. In
appearance, no one could be at a loss to judge of what might
be expected.”
The fact that depopulated forest-grounds change the
character of their growth, is quite familiar to all; and the
reasons of it have been variously debated.
FODDER FOR CATTLE.
AurHoucH the practice of soiling cattle, 7. ¢. of cutting
their food daily and feeding it to them in a green state,
would be profitable to many small farmers, it is especially
to be recommended to those living in towns, where pastur-
age is distant and expensive. Where an immediate supply
is required, corn may be sown broadcast, and cut as wanted,
until it begins to tassel, when all should be cut and cured,
and the ground sown again, and a third time in the same
summer.
But if half that is said of lucerne is true, and we see no
reason to doubt it, it is valuable far above all other kinds
of green fodder. It starts very early in spring; may be
cut four times in a summer, yielding from four to nine tons
to the acre, acccording to the condition of the land. It is
much relished by cattle, imparts no bad flavor to milk, is a
very fattening food, and one sowing will last ten years.
152 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
One acre is sufficient for four or five cows. It may be sown
in drills, if the land is foul, and kept clean by hoeing, the
first year; but on clean ground it may be sown broadcast.
It is hardy under the infliction of severe frosts; and sur-
passes all grasses in endurance of drought, its enormously
land roots affording it moisture from a great depth. An
English writer says, its roots have been found from ten
to fourteen feet below the surface ; and an American writer
says, that it made, on his land, roots three feet long the first
summer, j
Where it is sown broadcast, it is difficult to get it through
the first year. But if sown in drills ten inches apart, and
hoed once or twice, it may be cut twice or thrice the first
season, and be entirely established before winter.
A light, sandy soil is the best; it should not be put upon
heavy and non-friable soils, though it will flourish on even
these, when fully established. Ten pounds of seed to the
acre is enough, if drilled; fifteen pounds, if sown broad-
cast.
The only reason, that we can imagine, why this plant
should not be extensively cultivated, is, the disrelish which
our farmers too often have to any crop requiring much care.
To slash along with a plow is all well enough; but to hoe
and weed is rather tedious. But these operations are
required only during the first part of the first year.
CamPHor FoR FLowErs.—Two or three drops of a satu-
rated solution of camphor in alcohol, put into half an ounce
of soft water, forms a mixture which will revive flowers
that have begun to droop and wilt, and give them freshness
for a long time.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 153
THE SCIENCE OF BAD BUTTER.
We once took occasion to give our opinion of the but-
ter which was largely brought to our market. The article
was deemed severe ; but if they who think so had eaten of
the butter they would have regarded that as the more pun-
gent of the two. We have waited a year; and are now
prepared more fully to testify against that utter abomina-
tion, slanderously called butter, so unrighteously exchanged
in our market for good money. Far the most part, the
cream is totally depraved at the start, and churning, work-
ing, and packing are only the successive steps of an evil
education by which bad inclinations are developed into
overt wickedness. We determined to keep an eye upon
the matter; and now give, from life, the natural history of
the butter sold.
Before doing this, we will express an opinion of what is
good butter.
Good butter is made of sweet cream, with perfect neat-
ness; is of a high color, perfectly sweet, free from butter-
milk, and possesses a fine grass flavor.
Tolerable butter, differs from this only in not having a
fine flavor. It is devoid of all unpleasant taste, but has not
a high relish.
Whatever is less than this is bad butter; the catalogue is
long and the descending scale is marked with more varie-
ties than one may imagine.
Variety 1. BUTTER-MILK Burrer.—This has not been
well worked, and has the taste of fresh buttermilk. It
is not very disagreeable to such as love fresh buttermilk ;
but as it is a flavor not expected in good butter, it is usually
disagreeable.
Variety 2. Srrone Butrer.—This is one step farther
along, and the buttermilk is changing and beginning to as-
sert its right to predominate over the butteraceous flavor ;
154 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
yet it may be eaten with some pleasure if done rapidly,
accompanied with very good bread.
Variety 3. Frowy or rrowsy Butrer.—This is a second
degree of strength attained by the buttermilk. It has
become pungent, and too disagreeable for any but absent-
minded eaters.
Variety 4. Rancrp Butrer.—This is the putrescent stage.
No description will convey, to those who have not tasted it,
an idea of its unearthly flavor; while those who have, will
hardly thank us for stirring up such awful remembrances by
any description.
Variety 5. Brrrer Burrer.—Bitterness is, for the most
part, incident to winter-butter. When one has but little
cream and is long in collecting enough for the churn, he
will be very apt to have bitter butter.
Variety 6. Musry Burrer.—In summer, especially in
damp, unventilated cellars, cream will gather mold ; When-
ever this appears, the pigs should be set to churn it. But
instead, if but just touched, it is quickly churned; or, if
much molded, it is slightly skimmed, as if the flavor of
mold, which has struck through the whole mass, could be
removed by taking off the colored portion! The peculiar
taste arising from this affection of the milk, blessed be the
man who needs to be told it!
Variety 7. Sour-mmK Burrer.—This is made from milk
which has been allowed to sour, the milk and cream being
churned up together. The flavor is that of greasy, sour
milk.
Variety 8. Vinegar Burrer.—There are some who
imagine that all milk should be sowred before it is fit to
churn. When, in cool weather, it delays to change, they
expedite the matter by some acid—usually vinegar. The
butter strongly retains the flavor thereof.
Variety 9. Curesy Butrer.—Cream comes quicker by
being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 155
separate and deposit a whey: if this is strained into the
churn with the cream, the butter will have a strong cheesy
flavor.
Variety 10. GranuLatep Butrer.—When, in winter,
sweet cream is over-heated, preparatory to churning, it pro-
duces butter full of grains, as if there were meal in it.
Variety 11.—In this we will comprise the two opposite
kinds—too salt and unsalted butter. We have seen butter
exposed for sale with such masses of salt in it that one is
tempted to believe that it was put in as a make-weight.
When the salt is coarse, the operation of eating this butter
affords those who have good teeth, a pleasing variety of
grinding.
Variety 12. Larp Butrer.—When lard is cheap and
abundant, and butter rather dear, it is thought profitable to
combine the two.
Variety 18. Mixep Butrer.—When the shrewd house-
wife has several separate churnings of butter on hand, some
of which would hardly be able to go alone, she puts them
together, and those who buy, find out that ‘ Union is
strength! Such butter is pleasingly marbled; dumps of
white, of yellow, and of dingy butter melting into each
other, until the whole is ring-streaked and speckled.
Variety 14, Compounp Burrer.—By compound butter
we mean that which has received contributions from things
animate and inanimate; feathers, hairs, rags of cloth,
threads, specks, chips, straws, seeds ; in short, everything
is at one time or another to be found in it, going to pro-
duce the three successive degrees of dirty, filthy, nasty.
Variety 15. Toueu Burrer.—When butter is worked too
long after the expulsion of buttermilk, it assumes a gluey,
putty-like consistence, and is tough when eaten. But, oh
blessed fault! we would go ten miles to pay our admiring
respects to that much-to-be-praised dairy-maid whose zeal
leads her to work her butter too much! We doubt, how:
ever, if a pound of such butter was ever seen in this place,
156 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Besides all these, whose history we have correctly traced ;
besides butter tasting of turpentine from being made in
pine churns; butter bent on travelling, in hot weather ;
butter dotted, like cloves on a boiled ham, with flies, which
Solomon assures. us causeth the ointment to stink; besides
butter in rusty tin pans, and in dirty swaddling clothes;
besides butter made of milk drawn from a dirty cow, by a
dirtier hand, into a yet dirtier pail, and churned in a churn
the dirtiest of all; besides all these sub-varieties, there are
several others with which we have formed an acquaintance,
but found ourselves baffled at analysis. We could not even
guess the cause of their peculiarities. Oh Dr. Liebig! how
we have longed for your skill in analytic chemistry! What
consternation would we speedily send among the slatternly
butter-makers, revealing the mysteries of their dirty doings
with more than mesmeric facility !
And now, what on earth is the reason that good butter is
so great a rarity? Is it a hereditary curse in some
families? or is it a punishment sent upon us for our ill-
deserts? A few good butter-makers in every neighborhood
av a standing proof that it is nothing but bad housewifery;
mere sheer carelessness which turns the luxury of the churn
into an utterly nauseating abomination.
Select cows for quality and not for quantity of milk;
give them sweet and sufficient pasturage; keep clean your-
self; milk into a clean pail; strain into clean pans—(pans
scalded, scoured, and sunned, and if tin, with every particle
of milk rubbed out of the seams.) While it is yet sweet,
churn it; if it delays to come, add a little saleratus ; work it
thoroughly, three times, salting it at the second working ;
put it into a cool place, and then, when, with a conscience
as clean and sweet as your butter, you have dispatched your
tempting rolls to market, you may sit down and thank God
that you are an honest woman!
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 157
CINCINNATI, THE QUEEN CITY.
WHatEvEerR may have been the squealing celebrity of
- Porkopolis, Cincinnati seems destined to merge the glory
of that name in the more agreeable title, City of Vineyards.
That she is the Queen City none denies. But on account
of what single excellence, it might be difficult, for some, to
say. A queen of slaughter-pens might be a hearty buxom
lass, but, withal, not exactly the personage for which
knights (Sancho always excepted) love to break lances. A
queen of foundries and stithies, she might be, and not neces-
sarily, on that account, a ruddy brunette; inasmuch as Sir
Vulcan was, once before, the husband of Venus—queen of
beauty. A blushing queen of strawberry beds would be
quite romantic; but yet more appropriate if her jurisdic-
tion were extended over vines and purple clusters and vine-
yards and orchards. But whether it be pork, or iron, or
gardens, or vineyards, or observatories, Cincinnati is acknow-
ledged on all hands to be the Queen City.
Leaving her commercial glories out of view, we think
Cincinnati has done more for horticulture than any Ameri-
can city, taking into the account her recent origin and her
means. In all other cities horticulture has been the child
of wealth and leisure. It has followed commercial or manu-
facturing prosperity. But in this city, it began with them
and kept pace with them; so that one wonders which most
to admire, the thrift of industry and skill, or the elegant
taste which is so generally evinced in the cultivation of
fruit, and shrub and flower.
The first volume of the Transactions of the Cincinnati
Horticultural Society, is eminently worthy of that enter-
prising corporation.
The thoughts of several principal friends of horticulture
seem much directed to the subject of vine culture, and the
manufacture of wine. There are more than eighty-three vine-
yards in the vicinity of the city containing not far from 400
158 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
acres of land! From 114 acres during the season of 1845s
more than 23,000 gallons of wine were manufactured, and
there was not more than half a crop obtained in that sea-
son. The average yield of wine per acre, for five years
in succession, is stated to be from 450 to 500 gallons per
annum,
Many think the culture of the grape will be the finishing
stroke to the temperance enterprise; affording a whole-
some beverage from our hills in place of “corn juice” from
our bottoms, and beer from our hop and barley fields.
The arguments urged by some with great sincerity,
are the often-quoted facts, that the inhabitants of wine-
making countries are favorably distinguished for temper-
ance; and that a palatable and wholesome beverage—pure
wine—would supersede the use of violent liquors. If we
thought that our people would become temperate upon
such conditions, we should be glad to see a vineyard on
every hillside, and a wine-vat to every farmhouse. But
there is no reason to expect any such result. Vineyards in
Europe exist among a quiet, comparatively unenterprising
peasantry. They have been trained to moderation; neces-
sity has made them temperate in all things—in food, in
dress, in expense, and in drink. The popular habits are not
so excitable as with us; business runs in quiet streams,
and politics are unknown. With us, business is boisterous,
pleasure obstreperous, and politics outrageous. Our peo-
ple are anything but quiet; they are hot, hot in tongue and
blood. It is wide enough of the mark to suppose that the
same cause existing among two entirely dissimilar people,
would, of course, produce the same results. We might as
well say that vineyards would make our people eat less meat,
less corn and pork, because the residents of wine districts
were known to be addicted to a vegetable diet. The pro-
bable consequences of abundant cheap wine must be
judged, not by what would happen in France, among
abstemious peasants, nor on the Rhine, among economical
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 159
and sober Germans ; but by the tastes, habits, and tenden-
cies of our own people. In this land everything tends to
excitement. Men live upon a higher key, and live faster
and live much more full of exhilaration than the same
ciasses do in foreign lands. Our people drink not for the
taste but for the excitement of liquor; and, so that wine,
beer, or whisky will bring them up to the right key, the
question of wholesomeness is quite unimportant. Our peo-
ple are free and therefore have a right to live in the viols-
tion of natural laws; and a right, constantly exercised, of
having fevers on account of surfeitings, and of dying early
and by thousands by reasons of gross excesses.
Pleasures and business are esteemed by the volume of
blood which they can drive, the pulse they can raise,
the heat of excitement which they can produce. So long
as affairs are fresh and piquant they are stimulants enough,
But in the inequalities and intervals and fatigues of life,
something else is required to hold the spirits up to the high
level upon which everything proceeds. As soon as a man
resorts to alcoholic stimulants to do this, he has embarked
upon a course where all experience shows that he
will drink deeper and deeper to final downright intem-
perance.
Some people think that cheap and wholesome beverage for
the “masses,” for laboring people, is desirable. While it
may be well enough for every gentleman of leisure, it is to be
the poor man’s special blessing, saving him from the swill
of the brewery and the fire of the still. Facts will stand
on the side of the reverse reasoning. If wine is to be
harmless at all, it will be with men who are not prone to
enterprising heats; but given to the relishful pleasure of
sipping just for the delicate flavors, for the aroma, for the
fine bouquet of wime—men who need to have their blood
up, and kept up, and resort to wine to supply the. flagging
stimulus of affairs; such men will not drink for the flavor,
but for the feeling.
160 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It is for the sake of being roused ; it is to be stimulated ;
it is, in plain language, to have the first exhilarations of
drunkenness that laboring men drink, will drink, and have
always drank cider, beer, wine, and brandy. The result of
affording wine in abundance to such people as ours, will be
to prepare them for a stronger drink just as soon as wine,
by frequent use, is no longer stimulating enough. Wine
will play jackal to brandy for the rich, and to whisky for the
poor. We have some facts on hand touching this popular
wine-drinking, which, if necessary, we shall employ at
another time. Meanwhile, we are glad to see grape-cul-
ture spreading for the production of table-grapes; for the
manufacture of wine, in so far as a supply of pure wine is
needed for medicinal purposes. Further than that, we are
opposed to wine-making. And as to cheating whisky out
of its authority over “the dear people” by the blandish-
ments of hock and champagne, or redeeming our barley
and cornfields from the abominable persecutions of the
brew-tub and the still, by the conservative energy or evan-
gelizations of grape juice, we shall believe it when we see
it; and we shall just as soon expect to see fire putting out
fire and frost melting ice, as one degree of alcoholic stimu-
lus curing a higher one.
To PRESERVE GARDEN Sricks.—It is desirable when
one has prepared good sticks for supporting carnations,
roses, dahlias, etc., to preserve them from year to year. The
following preparation will make them last a man’s lifetime :
When they are freshly made, allow them to become tho-
roughly dry; then soak themin linseed oil for some time, say
two or three days. When taken out let them stand to dry
till the oil is perfectly soaked in; then paint with two coats
of verdigris paint. No wet can then penetrate.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 161
CARE OF ANIMALS IN WINTER.
Tue wisest man has said that “the righteous man regard-
eth the life of his beast; but the tender mercies of the
wicked are cruel.” If any one is at a loss to know the
meaning of the latter part, he cannot have made good use
of his eyes. Lean cattle, leaner horses, anatomical speci-
mens of cows, half fed, dirty, drenched by every rain, and
pierced by every winter wind, these are an excellent com-
ment on the passage.
It is time for every merciful man to make provision for
every dumb animal which is dependent upon him.
Cows should be provided with a comfortable stable at
night. No feeding will be a substitute for good shelter.
Both the quantity and quality of the milk will depend upon
bodily comfort in respect to warmth and nutritious food.
Such as are becoming heavy with calf should be specially
cared for. Many farmers let their cows shift for themselves
as soon as their milk dries away. But the health of the
coming calf and the ability of the cow to supply it, and her
owner, copiously with milk depend on the condition in
‘which she is kept during the period of gestation.
Cattle should have a good shed provided for them, under
which they may be dry and sheltered from winds. It is the
curse of western farming that cattle and fodder are so plenty
that it is hardly a loss to waste both.
Where the amount of stock is too great for comfortable
home-quarters, and they are wintered in a stock field, there
should be places of resort for them, so high as to remain
dry, well turfed with blue-grass, and sheltered with cheap
sheds, or by belts of forest.
Sheep should receive special attention. ‘They abhor wet.
They should be permitted to keep their fleece dry, and to
eat their food in a dry stable. The flock should be sorted.
The bucks and wethers by themselves, the ewes by them-
selves; lambs and weak sheep in another division; and a
162 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
fourth compartment should never be wanting for the sick,
where they may be nursed and medically treated.
Horses are more apt to be taken care of than cattle.
But even they are often more mdebted for existence to a
stubborn tenacity of life, than to the care of their keepers.
The horse is a more dainty feeder than ruminating animals.
He should be supplied with a better article af hay; his
grain should never be dirty or musty.
Hardy farm-horses may even rough out the winter with-
out blanketing or any other care than is necessary to sup-
ply good food and enough of it. But carriage horses, and
those highly prized for the saddle—aristocratic horses—
should be more carefully groomed. It is not wise to blan-
ket a horse at all, unless it can be always done. If he is
liable to change hands; to be off on journeys under cir-
cumstances in which he cannot be blanketed at night, it will
be better not to begin it.
Winter is a good time to kill off spirited horses. They
are easily run down by a smashing sleigh-ride pace. Boys
and girls, buzzing in a double sleigh like a hive of bees,
think that the horses enjoy themselves, at the exhilarating
pace of six or eight miles an hour, as much as they do.
But this is not ordinarily the worst of it. The horse stands
out, after a trip of ten or fifteen miles, at a post for an hour
or two until thoroughly chilled; then home he races, and
goes into the stable, steaming with sweat, to stand without
blankets all night. Horses catch cold as much as men do.
And a horse-cold is just as bad as a human cold. As there
has been some difficulty, in the construction of fanning mills,
to gain a strong enough current of wind, we would advise
the builders of them to study the construction of a good
stable.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 163
WINTER NIGHTS FOR READING.
As the winter isa season of comparative leisure, 1t is the
time for farmers to study. It is a good time for them to
make themselves acquainted with the nature of soils, of
manures, of vegetable organization—or structural botany,
Farmers are liable to rely wholly upon their own experi-
ence, and to despise science. Book-men are apt to rely on
scientific theories, and nothing upon practice. If these
two tendencies would only court and marry each other,
what a hopeful family would they rear! How nice it would
look to see in the papers:
Marriep.—By Philosophical Wisdom, Esq., Mr. Prac-
tical Experience, to Miss Sober Science. [We will stand
godfather to all the children. ]
FEATHERS.
Tue quality of feathers depends on their strength, elasti-
city and cleanness; and these, again, depend upon the condi-
tion of the bird, its health, food, and the time of plucking
its feathers. Down is the term applied to under-feathers—
most abundant in water fowl, and in those especially which
live in cold latitudes, being designed to protect them from
wet and cold. The eider-down, from the eider-duck, is of
the most repute. It is brought from extreme northern
latitudes, and is used for coverings to beds, rather than for
beds themselves, as, by being slept upon, it loses its elasti-
city.
Poultry feathers, as those of turkeys, ducks, and chick-
ens, if assorted and the coarse ones rejected, afford very
good beds; but they are not so elastic as-geese-feathers.
164 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Everybody knows that live geese-feathers are the
best. Every one does not think of the reason; which,
as it is the key to the art of having good feathers, we
shall propound.
So long as a bird is alive, the feathers are as much an
object of nutrition as the flesh, the bones, or any other
part of the body.
When dead, put them into hot water to make the feathers
come easy. In pulling, take out large handfuls at a time,
so as to have scraps of meat and shreds of skin adhere
to the quill; let them lie for several days in wet heaps
to ferment a little. Then dry them suddenly by violent
heat, cram them into the bed-tick, and jump on, and if you
have not an odorous bed, and, in a month or two, a bedful
of visitors seeking food, then there is no truth in the laws
of nature.
The care of beds is not understood, often, by even good
housewives. When a bed is freshly made it often smells
strong. Constant airing, will, if the feathers are good, and
only new, remove the scent.
A bed in constant use should be invariably beaten and
shaken up daily, to enable the feathers to retain their elasti-
city.
It should lie after it is shaken up, for two or three hours
a day, in a well ventilated room. The human body is con-
stantly giving off a perspiration; and at night more than
usual, from the relaxed condition of the skin. The bed
will become foul from this cause if not well aired. If the
bed is in a room which cannot be spared for such a length
of time, it should be put out to air two full days in the
week,
In airing beds, the sun should never shine directly upon
them. It is air, not heat, that they need. We have seen
beds lying on a roof where the direct and reflected rays of
the sun had full power, and the feathers, without doubt,
were stewing, and the oil in the quill becoming raneid; so
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 165
that the bed smells worse after its roasting than before.
Always air beds in the shade, and, if possible, in cool and
windy days. And now, if any of our attentive housewife-
readers, and we have not a few, are disposed to reward us
for all this advice, let them give us a bed to sleep on, when
we next visit them, made of growing feathers, from live
and healthy geese, carefully picked, well cured, daily shaken
up and thoroughly aired ; and if we do not dream that the
owner is an angel, it will be because we are too much occu-
pied in sound sleeping.
NAIL UP YOUR BUGS.
“The words of the wise are as goads and as nails fastened by masters
of assemblies.” —Sotomon.
AFTER a great pother about canker worms, peach-tree
worms, and other audacious robber-worms; after smoke,
salt, tar, and tansy, bands of wool, cups of oil, lime, ashes,
and surgery have been set forth as remedies, to the confu-
sion of those who have tried them bootlessly, it now appears
that we are about to nail the rascals. The Boston Cultiva-
tor, contains an article “‘On Destroying Insects on Trees,”
from which we quote:
“T did not intend to give it publicity until I had fully
tested it, but as the ravages are very extensive in the West,
I cannot delay giving you the experiment, hoping that
some of your western readers may now give it a fair trial
and report the result. Iwill give one case which may
ir.duce the experiment wherever the evil is felt. In conver-
sation with a friend in Newburyport, Dr. Watson, last
fall, I mentioned the experiment; he invited me to his
garden, where last year a fruit-tree was infested with the
166 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
nests of caterpillar or canker-worms, as were his neighbors?
trees; he showed me a board nailed for convenience of a
clothes-line upon one of the large limbs of the tree; he said
he noticed a little while afterward that the nests on that limb
dried up, and the worms disappeared, though the cause did
not then occur to him though apparent as it will be to any
scientific mind.
‘**Drive carefully well home, so that the bark will heal
over a, few headless cast iron nails, say some six or eight,
size and number according to the size of the tree, in a ring
around its body, a foot or two above the ground. The
oxidation of the iron by the sap, will evolve ammonia,
which will, of course, with the rising sap, impregnate every
part of the foliage, and prove to the delicate palate of
the patient, a nostrum, which will soon become, as in
many cases of larger animals, the real panacea for the ills of
life, via Tomb. I think if the ladies should drive some
small iron brads into some limbs of any plant infested with
any insect, they would find it a good and safe remedy, and
I imagine in any case, instead of injury, the ammonia will be
found particularly invigorating. Let it be tried upon a
limb of any tree, where there is a vigorous nest of cater-
pillars, and watch it for a week or ten days, and I think the
result will pay for the nails.”
Let our farmers take their hammers and nails and start
for the orchard; if they see a bug on the tree, drive a nail,
and he is a bug no more! If they see a worm, in with
a nail, and the “ammonia evolved” will finish his
functions !
The Southern Planter is out with a backer to the Boston
Cultivator :
“ A singular fact, and one worthy of being recorded, was
mentioned to us a few days since by Mr. Alexander Duke,
of Albemarle. He stated that whilst on a visit to a neigh-
bor, his attention was called to a large peach orchard, every
tree in which had been totally destroyed by the ravages of
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 167
the worm, with the exception cf three, and these three were
probably the most thrifty and flourishing peach-trees he ever
saw. The only cause of their superiority known to his host,
was an experiment made in consequence of observing that
those parts of worm-eaten timber into which nails had been
driven, were generally sound; when his trees were about
a year old he had selected three of them and driven a
tenpenny nail through the body, as near the ground as pos-
sible ; whilst the balance of his orchard has gradually failed,
and finally yielded entirely to the ravages of the worms,
these three trees, selected at random, treated precisely in
the same manner, with the exception of the nailing, had
always been vigorous and healthy, furnishing him at that
very period with the greatest profusion of the most
luscious fruit. It is supposed that the salts of iron afforded
by the nail are offensive to the worm, whilst they are harm-
less, or perhaps even beneficial to the tree.”
We do not wish to interrupt any experiments which the
enterprising may choose to make. To be sure we regard
the facts with some incredulity, and the chemical explana-
tions with something of the mirthful superadded to unbelief.
But if nails are an antidote to worms—a real vermifuge—
let them be administered, whatever may be the explana-
tions; whether they are an electric battery, givig the
insects a little domestic, vegetable lightning, or whether
they afford “salts of iron” to physic them, or “evolve
ammonia” in such potent, pungent strength that vermicular
nostrils are unable to endure it!
While one is fairly engaged in a campaign of experi-
ments, we heartily hope that war will be carried to the very
territory of ignorance, and we will propound several other
important questions of fact and theory, which, if settled,
will crown somebody’s brow with laurels.
It is said that hanging a scythe in a plum-tree, or an iron
hoop, or horse shoes, will insure a crop of plums. This
ought to be investigated.
168 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It is said that pear-trees that are unfruitful, may be made
to bear, by digging under them, cutting the tap root, and
burying a black cat there. We do not know as it makes
any difference as to the sex of the cat, though we should,
if trying it, rather prefer the male cat.
Lastly, that we may contribute our mite to the advance-
ment of science, we will state that, in our youth, we were
informed, that, if we would go into the wood-house once a
day and rub our hands with a chip, without thinking of red
Jux’s tail, the warts would al! go off. We have no doubt
that it would have been successful, but every time we tried
the experiment, whisk came the red fox’s tail into our head
and spoilt the whole affair. But might this not cure warts
on trees ?
ASHES AND THEIR USE.
Some soils contain already the chemical ingredients which
wood ashes supply. If lime be applied to‘a calcareous soil,
it will do no good; there was no want of lime there before;
if potash be added to a soil already abounding in it, no
effect will be seen in the crops. Ashes contain lime and
potash (phosphate of lime and silicate of potash). If a
soil is naturally rich in these, the addition of ashes would
be useless, Such cases show the true benefits of a really
scientific knowledge of soils and manures. Every plant that
grows takes out of the soil certain qualities. Wheat, among
other things, extracts largely of its potash; Indian corn
abstracts but little; potatoes extract phosphate of mag-
nesia, etc. A chemist would say, at once, apply that kind
of manure which is rich in the peculiar property extracted
by your wheat, corn, or potatoes! What manure is that
Here again science must help. It analyzes manures—gives
the farmer the choice among them. The soil being known,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 169
the properties required by different crops being known—
the farmer applies that manure which contains what the soil
lacks. Experiments have seemed to show, that, for purposes
of tillage, leached ashes are just as good as the unleached.
So that housewives may have all the use of their ashes for
soap, and then employ them in the garden. Leached ashes
become better by being exposed for some time in the air
absorbing from the atmosphere fertilizing qualities (car-
bonic acid ?)
So valuable are ashes regarded in Europe, that they are
frequently hauled by farmers from twenty miles’ distance—
and on Long Island they bring eight cents a bushel.
The ashes of different kinds of wood are of very unequal
value—that of the oak the least, and that of beech the
most valuable. The latter wood constitutes two-thirds of
the fire-wood of this region, and the ashes are therefore the
very best.
A coat of ashes may be laid, in the spring, over the whole
garden and spaded in with the barnyard manure.
They may be dug in about gooseberry and currant
bushes.
They are excellent about the trunks of fruit-trees, spread-
ing the old each year, and renewing the deposit.
They may be thinly spread over the grass-plat in the
dooryard, as they will give vigor and deeper color and
strength to the grass.
We have usually added about one shovelful of ashes to
every twenty in making a compost for flowers, roses, shrubs,
etc.
Ashes are peculiarly good for all kinds of melon, squash,
and cucumber vines. This is well known to those who
raise watermelons on burnt fields, on old charcoal pits, ete.
We have seen statements of cucumbers being planted
upon a peck of pure, leached ashes, in a hole in the ground,
and thriving with great vigor. The ashes of vines show a
great amount of potash; and as wood ashes afford this sub-
170 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
stance abundantly, its use would seem to be indicated by
theory as well as confirmed by experiment.
Lastly, whenever ground is liable to suffer severely from
drought, we would advise a liberal use of ashes and salt.
HARD TIMES.
Waar are called hard times produce very different
effects on different individuals. Some are made more
industrious, and some more indolent ; some grow frugal
and careful, others careless and desperate; some never
appear so honest as when brought to the pinch, but many
men seem honest wntil they are brought to the trial, and
then give way. Hard times are gradually passing away.
As a community, are we better or worse off than before ?
A few particulars may help us to form some judgment.
Fewer goods are bought at the store, and more are man-
ufactured at home; spinning-wheels and looms have
renewed their youth—and so have our mothers, who, after
along disuse, may now be seen working as merrily at them,
as they used to do when they spun and wove their wedding
furnishings—although they have not now any such rosy
hope to quicken their aged fingers. Men have been
obliged to rely more upon their own ingenuity—for want
of money to pay the carpenter, the blacksmith, the shoe-
maker, etc. Old clothes, old tools have been made to serve
an additional campaign.
The leisure of dull times has been improved exteisively
in setting out orchards, and we hope this practice will be
continued in busy times. No one has, during the pressure,
suffered for food, raiment, or shelter. Indeed, it is supposed
that not a pound less of sugar, tea and coffee, has been used
by tne farmers than hitherto. Probably the quantity has
increased.
ABOUT FRUITS,- FLOWERS AND FARMING. 171
Debts have been gradually contracted or discharged.
Men have seen the end of speculations to be sudden disaster
—and (of all things on earth) speculation-farming has
received its reward. Men contented with small gains—in-
dustrious, frugal, and prudeut men—have suffered almost
nothing.
Gypsum.—‘ Time and practice” have ascertained the
circumstances under which gypsum should be applied. As
a reason why, after repeated applications, it no longer
benefits, Prof. Liebig says, “‘ when we increase the crop of
hay in a meadow by means of gypsum, we remove a greater
quantity of potash with the hay, than can, under ordinary
circumstances, be restored. Hence it happens that, after
the lapse of several years, the crops of grass on lands
manured with gypsum, diminish, owing to the deficiency of
potash.” In such a case, if spent ashes were employed either
in connection or alternately with gypsum—potash would be
resupplied from the ashes.
x
ee en ae ead
ACCLIMATING A PLOW.
Tuer other day we were riding past a large farm, and
were much gratified at a device of the owner for the preser-
vation of his tools. A good plow, apparently new in the
spring, had been left in one corner of the field, standing in
the furrow, just where, four months before, the boy had
finished his stint. Probably the timber needed seasoning—
it was certainly getting it. Perhaps it was left out for
acclimation. May-be the farmer left it there to save time
in the hurry of the spring-work, in dragging it from the
172 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
shed. Perhaps he covered the share to keep it from the
eiements, and save it from rusting. Or, again, perhaps he
is troubled with neighbors that borrow, and had left it where
it would be convenient for them. He might, at least, have
built a little shed over it. Can any one tell what a farmer
leaves a plow out a whole season for? It is barely possible
that he was an Jrishman, and had planted for a spring crop
of plows.
After we got to sleep that night, we dreamed a dream.
We went into that man’s barn; boards were kicked off,
partitions were half broken down, racks broken, floor a foot
deep with manure, hay trampled under foot and wasted,
grain squandered. The wagon had not been hauled under
the shed, though it was raining. The harness was scattered
about—hames in one place, the breeching in another—the
lines were used for halters. We went to the house. A
shed stood hard by, in which a family wagon was kept for
wife and daughters to go to town in. The hens had appro-
priated it as a roost, and however plain it was once, it was
ornamented ow, inside and out. (Here, by the way, let it
be remembered that hen-dung is the dest manure for melons,
squashes, cucumbers, etc.) We peeped into the smoke-
house, but of all the “ fixings” that‘we ever saw! A Chinese
Museum is nothing to it. Onions, soap-grease, squashes,
hogs’ bristles, soap, old iron, kettles, a broken spinning-
wheel, a churn, a grindstone, bacon, hams, washing tubs, a
barrel of salt, bones with the meat half cut off, scraps of
leather, dirty bags, a chest of Indian meal, old boots,
smoked sausages, the ashes and brands that remained since
the last “smoke,” stumps of brooms, half a barrel of rotten
apples, together with rats, bacon bugs, earwigs, sowbugs,
and other vermin which collect in damp dirt. We started
for the house ; the window near the door had twelve lights,
two of wood, two of hats, four of paper, one of a bunch of
rags, one of a pillow, and the rest of glass. Under it
stood several cooking pots, and several that were not for
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 173
cooking. As we were meditating whether to enter, such a
squall arose from a quarrelling man and woman, that we
awoke—and lo! it was a dream. So that the man who left
his plow out all the season, may live in the neatest house in
the county, for all that we know ; only, was it not strange
that we should have dreamed. all this from just seeing a
plow left out in the furrow.
SCOUR YOUR PLOWS BRIGHT!
FarMERS may be surprised to know that their crops will
depend a good deal on the color of the plows! yet so it is.
Bright plows are found to produce much better crops than
any other. It may be electricity, or magic for aught we
know; we merely state the fact, leaving others to account
for it. But very much depends upon the manner of doing
it, for merely scrubbing it by hand with emery or sand is
not the thing—it must be scoured by the soil. It is found
that the subsoil scours it better for wheat, than the top soil
—for a plow kept bright by very deep plowing affords bet-
ter wheat than a plow brightened by the surface of the soil,
It isthe same with corn. In respect to this last crop, if you
will keep your plow bright as a mirror until the corn is in
the milk, you will find that it will have a wonderful effect.
We appeal to every good farmer if he ever knew arusty plow
to be accompanied with good crops? Iron rust on a plow-
share is poisonous to corn.
A young farmer of about twenty years of age said to us
the other day: “If anybody wants me, he must come to
my corn-field ; I live there—I am at it all the time—I have
harrowed my corn once, plowed five times, and gone over
it with the hoe once.” ‘ Yes,” said his old father, whe
seemed, justly, quite proud of his son—‘‘keep your plows
174 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
agoing if you want to fetch corn. I never let the ground
settle on the top; if it is beaten down by rain, or begins to
look a kind of rusty on the surface, I pitch into it, and keep
it as mealy as flour. The fact is our farmers raise more corn
than they can tend, they can’t go over the corn more than
once or twice, and that’ll never do, and I guess Pll show
old Billy R that it’s so.”
Some ambitious farmers are pleased to “lay by” the corn
very early; but it is not wise; for the grass is always more
forward to grow about this season than any other; and the
ground will become very foul where corn is too early laid
by, and, what is more to the purpose, a great deal of the
nourishment of a crop is derived from the air and dew con-
veyed to the roots. ‘This can be done only when the surface
is kept thoroughly open.
PLOW TILL IT IS DRY, AND PLOW TILL IT IS WET.
SPEAKING of corn, a very intelligent gentleman remarked :
“ Well, by a five minutes’ talk, I made Mr. produce
the best crop he ever had on a certain field.” He was look-
ing over the fence where his corn was, at a flat field, upon
furrows full of water; as I came by he said: ‘ Well, I shall
never get a crop off this piece of land; it’s going just as it
always does when I plant here.” I told him of an old man
in Indiana, who was a good farmer, to whom I once said
when at his house one morning :
“ Deafenbaugh, how is it that you always have good corn
when no one else gets a half crop ?”
“ Why,” said he, ‘when it is wet I plow it till it is dry,
aad when it is dry I plow tt till it is wet?
The man to whom I told this anecdote, says our inform-
ant, tried the practice, and gained a fine crop.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 175
Now the principle is good. Our Dutch friend would not,
we suppose, plow a stif clay in a wet condition, unless, pos-
sibly, to strike a channel through the middle between rows.
But the gist of the story lies in this—constant cultivation.
Stir, séir, str the ground.
STIRRING THE SOIL.
Next to deep plowing we should urge the advantage of
continually stirring the surface of the soil.
Ir propuces CLEANLINESS.—Weeds in a growing crop
are witnesses which no good farmer can afford to have testi-
fying against him. When seed is sown broad-cast, weeding
cannot be performed. In Europe, where labor is cheap and
children plenty, acres of wheat and such-like crops are
weeded by hand. Our only chance is to clear out every
field, to be sown broad-cast, by a thorough previous culture.
In all crops which are drilled, or planted in rows, the hoe, or
plow, or cultivator, should be kept in lively use through
the season. This practice should begin early, that weeds
and grass may not get a start, for often, if they do, it is
nearly impossible to keep them down, especially if the
season is a wet one.
But there are yet some important reasons for constantly
stirring the soil among growing crops. No matter how
thoroughly the earth was pulverized when the seed was
put in, one or two rains will, except in very sandy loam,
beat it down compactly. This crust is injurious in prevent-
ing the ingress of moisture. But that which is the most
material of all is, that dé excludes the air. It is well known
that the air affords much nourishment to vegetation; but,
perhaps, it is not as well known, that it supplies it by the
root as well as by the leaf. If any one wishes to try the
176 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
experiment, and we have done it time and again, let two
patches in a garden be treated in all respects alike, except
in this—let one be hoed or raked every two or three days
and the other not at all, or but once in the season.
The result will satisfy any man better than a paper argu-
ment. Indeed, we have found it impossible (in a garden)
to perfect some vegetables without constantly stirring the
soil.
While these advantages are gained, it is not to be for-
gotten that, in dry seasons, a thorough pulverization of the
surface, will prevent the evaporation of the moisture zm the
carth and prevent deleterious effects of the drought.
SUBSOIL PLOWING.
One of the great improvements of the age is the adoption
in husbandry of the subsoil plow; or, as it is called in Eng-
land, Deanstonizing system, from Mr. Smith, of Dean-
stone, who first brought the implement into general notice.
They are designed to follow in the furrow of a common
plow, and pulverize without bringing up the soil for eight or
ten inches deeper. In ordinary soils two yoke of oxen will
work it with ease, plowing from an acre to an acre and a
quarter a day.
The use of this plow will renovate old bottom-lands, the
surface of which has been exhausted by shallow plowing
and continual cropping. It brings up from below fresh
material, which the atmosphere speedily prepares for crops.
Old fields, a long time in grass, are very much benefited.
Constant plowing at about the same depth will often
form a hard under-floor by the action of the plow, through
which neither roots nor rain can well penetrate ; subsoiling
will relieve a field thus conditioned.
Soils lying upon clay or hard compact gravel are opened
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWEBS AND FARMING. 177
and remarkably improved by the process. The wet, level,
beech-lands would be greatly benefited by deep plowing
in the fall of the year, subjecting the earth, to a consider-
able depth, to the action of the frosts, rains, etc., and giving
a downward drain for superfluous moisture.
Although we have incidentally alluded to the benefits of
subsoiling, they deserve a separate and individual enume-
ration.
1. In very deep molds or loams it brings up a supply of
soil which has not been exhausted by the roots.
2. In soils whose fertility is dependent upon the constant
decomposition of mineral substances, subsoil plowing is
advantageous by bringing up the disintegrated particles
of rock, and exposing them to a more rapid change by con-
tact with atmospheric agents.
3. Subsoiling guards both against too much and too little
moisture in the soil. If there is more water than the soil
can absorb, it sinks through the pulverized under-soil. If
summer droughts exhaust we moisture of the surface they
cannot reach aie subsoil, which affords abundant pasture to
the roots.
FIRE-BLIGHT AND WINTER KILLING.
THESE are two entirely different processes. The Fire
Blight (of the middle and western States), is a disease of
the circulatory system, induced by a freezing of the sap
while the tree is in a growing and excitable state. It
always must occur before the leaves are shed in the autumn-
Winter-killing is of two kinds—resulting from severe cold,
and from untimely heat. The loss of tender shrubs, roses,
etc., at least, before they are fully established, and of half
hardy fruit-trees, is occasioned by the winter sun shining
warmly upon them while frozen, and suddenly thawing
178 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
them. The point of death is usually near the surface of the
ground, where the under-ground bark and upper bark
come together. Whole orchards are destroyed in this
way ; and, if examined, the bark may be found sprung off
from the wood. This may occur at any time during the
winter.
We are in doubt whether the winter-stored sap exists in
a state to be affected by the expansion of the freezing fluids
of the tree. If the expansion of congelation did produce
the effect, it should have been more general, for there are
fluids in every part of the trunk—all congeal or expand—
and the bursting of the trunk in one place would not
relieve the contiguous portions. We should expect, if this
were the cause, that the tree would explode, rather than
split. Capt. Bach, when wintering near Great Slave Lake,
about 63° north latitude, experienced a cold of 70° below
zero. Nor could any fire raise it iz the house more than
12° above zero. Mathematical instrument cases, and boxes
of seasoned fir, split in pieces by the cold. Could it have
been the sap in seasoned fir wood which split them by its
expansion in congealing ?
We quote a paragraph from Loudon—“ The history of
frosts furnishes very extraordinary facts. The trees are
often scorched and burnt up, as with the most excessive
heat, in consequence of the separation of the water from
the air, which is therefore very drying. In the great frost
in 1683, the trunks of oak, ash, walnut, and other trees,
were miserably split and cleft, so that they might be seen
through, and the cracks often attended with dreadful noises
like the explosion of fire-arms.”
We don’t exactly know whether to take the first part as
Loudon’s explanation of the facts in the second.
There can be no doubt that the nature of the summer’s
growth, very much determines the power of a tree to resist
the severity of winter. When there is but an imperfect
ripening in a cold and backward season, the tissues formed
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 179
will be feeble, and the juices stored in them thin. Now
the power to resist cold, among other things, is in propor-
tion to the viscidity of the fluids in a plant.
It is highly desirable that the chemical researches which
have revolutionized the art of cultivation, should be pushed
into the morbid anatomy of vegetation. A close, exact
analysis of all the substances in an injured condition, will-
save a vast deal of bootless ingenuity and fanciful specu-
lation.
WINTER TALK.
Do not be tempted by fine weather to haul out manure
—it will be half wasted by lying in small heaps over the
field; to spread it will be worse yet; manure should lie in
a stack, as little exposed to the weather as possible.
Look to your fences; see that they are in complete order
and leave nothing of this to consume your time in the
spring when you will need all your force for other work,
It is well to haul all the rails you will need for the year.
The timber will last longer cut now. Do not leave rails or
sticks of timber lying where you cleave them, on the damp
ground, they will decay more in six months there, than in
eighteen when properly cared for. Put two rails down and
lay the rest across them so as to have a circulation of air
beneath. If you have five or ten acres of deadening which
you mean to clear up and put to corn, you may as well
roll the logs now. Every good farmer should study
through the winter to make his spring work as light as
possible. Whatever can be done now do not fail to do
it; you will have enough to do when spring opens; and
perhaps the season may be one which will crowd your work
into a week or two. If you have young fruit-trees, or a lit-
180 "PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
tle home-nursery, look out for rabbits. They usually depre-
date just after a light fall of snow.
Overhaul all your plows, carts, shovels, hoes, etc., and
put everything in complete readiness.
While you are moving about and repairing holes in the
fence, putting on a rail here, a stake yonder, a rider in
another place, you may inquire of yourself whether your
character is not in some need of repairs? Perhaps you are
very careless and extravagant—the fence needs rails there ;
perhaps you are lazy—in that case the fence corners may
be said to be full of brambles and weeds, and must be
cleared out; perhaps you are a violent, passionate man—
you need a stake and rider on that spot. And lastly, per-
haps you are not temperate, if so, your fence is all going
down and will soon have gaps enough to let in all the hogs
of indolence, vice, and crime: and they make a large drove
and fatten fast. Now is a good time to plan how to get
out of debt. Don’t be ashamed to save in little things,
nor to earn small gains: “* Many a mickle makes a muckle.”
But set it down, to begin with, that no saving is made by
cheating yourself ont of a good newspaper. No man reads
a good paper a year, without saving by it. Suppose you
put in your wheat a little better for something you see
written by a good farmer and get five bushels more to the
acre. One acre pays for a year’s paper. One recipe, a
hint which betters any crop, pays for the paper fourfold.
Intelligent boys work better, plan better, earn and save
better; and reading a good paper makes them intelligent.
Besides, suppose you took a good paper a year, and found
nothing new during all that time (an incredible supposi-
tion!), yet every two weeks it comes to jog your memory
about things which you may forget, but ought not to forget.
It steps in and asks whether that little store bill is paid ?
Whether that loan drawing a fatal six, seven or ten per cent
(poison! poison! deadly poison!) is being melted down?
whether the children are going to school? whether the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 181
tools are all right ? the fences snug? whether economy, and
industry, and sound morals (the best crop one can put in),
are flourishing? It will look at your orchard—peep over
into your garden, pry into the dairy—nay, into the cup-
board and bureau, and even into your pocket. Now, if you
are a man willing to learn, it will give you hints enough
in a year to pay ten times over for your paper.
(SHUT. YOUR MOUTEY
We heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to another.
It was not very bad advice, though given somewhat roughly.
When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now
away up, and now away down, tossing their heads and roll-
ing their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks
thought of you, yow’d shut your mouth.
We have seen many men ruined because they did not know
how to shut their mouth when tempted to say “ Yes,” to a
bad business.
When we see a man standing before the bar just ready to
drink, we think, Ah! you fine fellow, if you will not keep
your mouth shut before that bar, you will, by and by, find
yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight enough.
When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room rings ;
or tattling from house to house—or scandal-mongering, we
think, Ah, you lady, with all your schooling, you never
learned to shut your mouth.
PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
SPRING WORK ON THE FARM.
THoRouGHLY overhaul your tools; let plows be sharp
ened ; repair their stocks if anywhere started or weakened ;
look after the chains, the swingletrees, the yokes for yow
oxen, or the harness for your horses. Don’t have any
straps to replace, or harness to tie up with tow strings after
you get into the fields, and when time is precious. Now 1s
THE TIME TO SAVE TIME, BY GETTING READY. Old rusty
buckles will give way the moment the plow strikes a root;
stitches which have been longing for some time to fall out
and part, will be likely to do it when you have the least
time to mend them. Then we shall hear talk; you'll be
cursing the old horse or the old rickety harness, and declar-
ing that your “luck is always on the wrong side ;” and
you may depend upon it, that it always will be, so long as
you are not more careful. Good luck is a wary old fish
which nibbles at everybody’s hook, but the shrewd and
skillful angler only catches it.
The opening of spring is usually debilitating both to man
and beast. Your horses cannot stand hard usage at once;
some of them will need physic—all of them should be put
to work carefully; increase their task gradually; favor
them, and you will get abundantly paid for it before their
summer’s work is done.
A good farmer may be known by the way he manages
his spring work. Consider how much there is of it.
Cows are calving; mares foaling; young heifers for the
first time to be broken to milking; all the tools to be
got ready; the ground to be broken up and seeded;
the orchards to be set; or old ones to be attended to;
a garden to be made; and a hundred other things to do.
Now here is a chance for good management, and a yet bet-
ter chance for bad management. There is as much skill in
“laying out” a season’s work for the farmer, as there is in
“laying out ” a frame for a house or barn.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 183
Bethink you of all the mistakes you made last season ;
if you made any good hits, improve upon them this year.
Every farmer should resolve to do all things as well as he
did the last year, and some things a great deal better.
While everything is merry, birds singing, bees at work,
cattle frisky, and the whole animated world is joyous, do
but search and see if, among all beasts, birds, or bugs, you
can find one that needs whisky to do its sprmg or summer
work on?
Look again; seeds are sprouting; trees budding; flowers
peeping out from warm nooks. Everything grows in
spring-time. Youth is spring-time, habits are sprouting,
dispositions are putting out their leaves, opinions are form-
ing, prejudices are getting root. Now take at least as
good care of your children as you do of your farm. If you
don’t want to use the land you let it alone, and weeds grow;
but when you wish to improve a piece, you turn the natural
weeds under, and sow the right seed, and tend the crop.
I have heard good kind of folks object to much “ bringing
up” of their boys. They guessed the lads would come out
about right. You break a colt, and break a steer, and
break a heifer, and break a soil, and if you won’t break
your children, they will be very likely to break you—heart
and pocket.
Fermenting manures should not be hauled or spread
until you are ready to plow them under. [If you spread
manure on meadows it should be fine, and well rotted, and
let ashes be liberally mixed with it.] If you let manure lie
a week or ten days exposed in the fields to the air, it will
waste one half of “its sweetness on the desert air.” Let
the plow follow the cart as fast as possible, and the gases
generated by your manure will then be taken up by the soil.
and held in store for your grain.
Drrer Piow1ne.—There may be some rare cases where,
for special reasons, shallow plowing is advisable. But the
standing rule upon the farm should be deep plowing. A
184 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
good farmer remarked the* other day to us, “One of my
neighbors who is always talking of deep plowing was at it
last summer, and I followed in the furrow, and his depth
did not average more than four inches; he did not measure
on the dand side but on the mold-board side.” The rea-
sons are very strong for deep plowing.
1, When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five
inches df top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all ma-
terials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from
the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it.
2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater
amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the
atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for
vegetation.
3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils;
certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils.
The roots penetrate the mellow mould to a greater depth,
and draw thence moisture when the top is as dry as ashes.
Will not some one who is curious in such matters try two
acres side by side plowed shallow and deep, respectively,
and give us the history of their crop?
QuANTITY OF SEED.—It has been often said that Ameri-
can husbandry was unfavorably peculiar in stinginess of
seed-sowing. It is certai that very much greater quan-
tities are employed in Great Britain and on the Continent
than with us, and that much greater crops are obtained per
acre. In part the crop is owing to a superior cultivation ;
but those who have carefully studied the subject affirm that,
in part, it is attributable to the use of much greater quan-
tities of seed. We give a table showing the average quan-
tity of seed per acre for different grains, in England, Ger-
many, and the United States. The table was formed im
that manufactory of so many valuable articles, the Albany
Cultivator. It must be remembered that the average crop
is not the average of the best farming States, but of the
whole United States.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING.
185
GERMANY, ENGLAND. UNITED STATES,
Seed per acre—Product. Seed per acre—Product. || Seed per acre—Product.
| Wheat, 24 bushels. | 25 bushels. || 24 to 34 bu.| 28 bushels, ||1 to 14bush 1S bushels.
| Rye, 2 us 25 “ 2to2i | 25 ce itogy SSeS ee
Barky, 24 Oe | 35 Kk Qto4 “| 86 ee La tow, ©) 2b as
| Oats, 2to4 49 « dctouie apis Boe arch Bigg iyo:
| Millet, T quarts. | 85 “
Peas, 2: bushels. 26 o: 8to3t “ 380to 40bu.||/2to2s “ 25 fe
| Corn, |20 quarts. (86 | 20 to80qts. 30 =
Turnips, | 80 to 85 tons || 1 to 2 pints. 80to 35tons||1to 2lbs. | 20 tons.
Buckwheat, 1 bushel. 27 bushels. ||/1to14 bush 26 bushels, 16 to 20 qts 15 to 30 bu.
Clover, | 14 pounds, 14 to 18 lbs. 5 to 10 lbs. |
Flax, 2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed. ||2 to 3 bush. 10 bu. seed. |/1to 14 bush 8 to 12 bush
Hemp, 24to38 “ | 650 pounds. || 8 “550 pounds. || 14 to 24 ‘* | 500 pounds.
Potatoes, (5 ‘* | 800 bushels. |}8 to 12 ‘ 250 bushels. ||8 to 20 ‘* | 175 bushels.
5 _
SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN.
WHEN spring comes, everybody begins to think of the
garden. A little of the experience of one who has learned
some by making many mistakes will do you no harm.
Too much Work tarp our.—When the winter lets us
out, and we are exhilarated with fresh air, singing birds,
bland weather, and newly-springing vegetation, our ambi-
tion is apt to lay out too much work. We began with an
acre, in garden; we could not afford to hire help except for
a few days; and we were ambitious to do things as they
ought to be done. By reference to a Garden Journal
(every man should keep one), we find that we planted in
1840, séateen kinds of peas; seventeen kinds of beans; seven
kinds of corn ; siz kinds of squash ; eight kinds of cabbage ;
seven kinds of lettuce; eight sorts of cucumber, and seven
of turnips—seventy-six varieties of only eight vegetables !
Besides, we had fruit-trees to transplant in spring—flowers
to nurture, and all the etceteras of a large garden, Al-
though we worked faithfully, early and late, through the
whole season, the weeds beat us fairly; and every day or
two some lazy loon, who had not turned two spadefuls of
earth during the season, would lounge along and look over,
and seeing the condition of things, would very quietly say:
186 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
“Why, I heard so munch about your garden—whew! what
regiments of weeds you keep. I say, neighbor, do you boil
that parsley for greens?” It nettled us, and we sweat at the
hoe and spade all the harder, but in vain; for we had laid
out more than could be well done. Nobody asked how
much we had done—they looked only at what we had noé
done. To be sure so many sorts were planted only to test
their qualities; but the laying out of so large a work in
spring is not wise. A HALF well done is better than @ WHOLE
half done. Remember there is a July as well as an April;
and day out in April as you can hold out in July and Au-
gust. We have profited by our own mistakes and have no
objections that others should do it.
V nGETaBLE GARDEN.—Before you meddle with the garden,
do two things: first inspect your seeds, assort them, reject-
ing the shrunk, the mildewed, the sprouted, and, generally,
the discolored. Buy early, such as you need to purchase,
Do not wait till the minute of planting before you get your
seeds. Second, make up your mind beforehand just what
you mean to do in your garden for the season.
Preparation—Haul your manure and stack it in a
corner; do not spread it till the day that you are ready to
turn it under; cut your pea-brush and put it under shelter;
inspect your bean-poles and procure such as are necessary to
replace the rotten or broken ones; inspect every panel
of the garden fence; one rail lost, may ruin, in a night, two
months’ labor, and more temper and grace than you can
afford to spare in a whole year. Clean up all the stubble,
haulm, straw, leaves, refuse brush, sticks and rubbish of
every sort, and cast it out, or burn it and distribute the
ashes. If you intend to do your work in the best manner,
see that you have the sorts of manure that you may need
through the season: ashes, fine old barn-yard manure,
green long manure, leafmold from the wood, top-soil
from pastures, etc., etc. Every florist understands the use
of these.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 187
Coarse manure may be put upon your pie-plant bed, as
a strong and succulent leaf-stalk is desirable. Let it be
thoroughly forked, gently near the stools and deeply
between the rows.
With an iron-toothed rake go over your old strawberry
beds that are matted together, and rake them severely.
Strawberries that have een kept in hills and cleanly tended
should be manured between the rows and gently spaded or
forked.
Early Sowings——Tomatoes, egg-plant, early cucumbers,
cabbage, cauliflowers, broccoli, lettuce, melons, celery for
an early crop, should have been, before this, well advanced
in a hot-bed. If not, no time is to be lost; and if a first
sowing is well along, a second sowing should be made.
You cannot get too early into the ground after the frost
is out and the weta little dried, onions for seed or a crop,
lettuce, radishes, peas, spinage, parsnip, early cabbage,
and small salads.
Asparacus.—The beds should be attended to; remove
all weeds and old stalks; give a liberal quantity of salt to
the bed—if you have old brine, or can get fish brine at the
stores, that is better than dry salt. Asparagus is a marine
plant, growing upon sandy beaches along the sea coast, and
is therefore benefited by sait, to which, in its habitat, it was
accustomed, Put about three or four inches of old, thor-
oughly rotted manure upon the bed; fork it in gently, so as
not to wound the crowns of the plant. Directions for form-
ing beds belong to a later period in the season.
Ontons.—Should be sown or set early.
If you prefer seed, sow, across beds four feet wide, in
drills eight inches apart; young gardeners are apt to be-
grudge room—give it freely to everything, and it will repay
you; when they come up, thin out to one for every inch;
as you wish young and tender onions for your table, draw
these, leaving, at least, one every five inches in the row. If
your soil is deep and very rich, onions can be grown in one
188 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
season from the seed as well as from the set—we try it
almost every year and never fail, although told a hundred
times: “You could do that in the old States, but it won’t
do out here.” It had to do, and did do, and always will do,
where there is no lazy men about; but nothing ever does
well in a slack and lazy man’s garden; plants have an invet-
erate prejudice against such, and won’t grow; but he isa
darling favorite among weeds,
The white or silver skin, and the yellow Portugal have
been favorite kinds with us to raise from seed: They are
tender, mild flavored, but do not keep as well as the ed.
Strong onions always keep better than mild ones.
If you prefer top-onion sets, or sets of any other kind,
plant them out at the same distances, viz. eight inches be-
tween the row and five or six between the sets. Inexpe-
rienced gardeners are afraid that /itt/e sets no bigger than
a pea, will not do well. It is a mistake—they will make
large onions; put them @J in, if they are sound. Plant the
sets so that the top shall just appear above the surface.
If you plant out old onions for seed, let them be at least
a foot apart and stake them when they begin to blossom.
If you plant the top-onion for sets you need not stake them,
for they cannot shed out their seed if they fall over. It is
not generally known that the same onions may be kept for
seed for many years.
TRANSPLANTING.—AII fruit-trees, most kinds of shade
trees, shrubs, hardy roses, honeysuckles, pinks, lilacs, peonies,
etc., may be raised, divided, and transplanted in April un-
less your soil is very wet. All hardy plants may be safely
transplanted just as soon as the ground is dry enough to
crumble freely—and not till then. In planting out shrubs,
remember that they will grow ; if you put them near to-
gether, for the sake of present effect, in a year or two they
will be crowded. We set at ample distances and fill up the
spaces with lilies, peonies, phlox, gladiolus, and herbaceous
plants which are easily removed.
ABOU] FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 189
FLower GArDEN.—Remove the covering from your bulb-
beds; as soon as the earth is dry enough to crumble, with a
small hoe carefully mellow the earth between the rows of
bulbs, and work it loose with your hands, in the row itself.
Leave the surface convex, that superfluous rain may flow off.
Transplant roses that are to be moved, Divide the roots
of such lilies, peonies, irises, etc., as are propagated by divi-
sion, and replant.
As fast as the soil allows, spade up your borders, and
flower compartments, giving first a good coating of very
fine, old, pulverized manure.
If you have hot-beds you may bring forward most of your
annuals, so as to turn them out into the open beds as soon
as frosts cease.
But defer sowing in the open air until the first of April ;
and then, sparingly; sow again the middle of April, and on
the first of May. Only thus, will you be sure of a supply.
If you gain more than you need by three sowings, should
all succeed, you have friends and neighbors enough, if you
are a reasonably decent man, who will be glad to receive
the surplus,
Manvure.—Corn and potatoes will bear green and unfer-
mented manure. But all ordinary garden vegetables require
thoroughly rotted manure. If the soil is sandy, leached
ashes may be applied with great profit at the rate of seventy
or eighty bushels the acre. The soil is made more reten-
tive of moisture, and valuable ingredients are secured to it.
Salt may be used with great advantage on all garden soils,
but especially upon light and sandy ones. Thus treated,
soils will resist summer droughts and be moist when other-
wise they would suffer. Salt has also a good effect in
destroying vermin, and it adds very valuable chemical in-
gredients to the soil. Soapsuds should be carefully saved
and poured about currants, gooseberries and fruit-trees,
Charcoal, pulverized, is excellent, as it absorbs ammonia
from the atmosphere, or from any body containing it, and
190 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
yields it to the plants. Let a barrel be set near the house
filled with powdered charcoal. Empty into it all the cham-
ber-ley. 'The ammonia will be taken up by the charcoal, and
the barrel will be without any offensive smell. But as soon
as the charcoal is saturated, it will begin to give out the
peculiar odor of urine. Let the charcoal then be mixed
with about five times its bulk of fresh earth and well worked
together, and it will afford a very powerful manure for vege-
tables and flowers. In Europe, where manure is precious,
it is estimated that the excrementitious matter, slops, suds,
scraps, etc., of a family, will supply one acre, for each mem-
ber, with manure.* There are few families whose offal
would not afford abundant material for enriching the gar-
den, and with substances peculiarly fitted for flowers, fruits,
and esculent roots.
FALL WORK IN THE GARDEN.
PLANTING seeds may be performed for very early spring
use. Lettuce, spinage, and radishes, may be sown in a shel-
tered spot, and they will come forward ten days or a fortnight
earlier than those which shall have been sown in spring.
Clearing wp the garden should be thoroughly performed.
Let pea-brush be removed, bean poles and flower stakes be
collected and put under shelter. Collect all refuse vines,
haulm, stems and stalks and wheel them to a corner to rot,
or to be ready for use in covering flower-beds. Let the
alleys be hoed out for the last time, and it will be as good
as one hoeing in the spring, when they will probably be too
wet to hoe, Gravel may now be laid in the walks ; if ashes
are to be spread, it may be done in autumn, and save time ir
the spring.
* See note, p. 98, Colman’s Tour, 2d part, where is given an estimate
by a distinguished agricultural chemist, Mr. Haywood.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 191
All tender plants are to be removed or secured by covering.
The best covering to secure the earth from frost, that we
know of, is a layer of leaves, say three inches thick when
well packed down, and upon them two or three inches of
chip dirt, with the coarsest part on top. We have had the
soil unfrozen in severe winters when so covered. In tis
manner, tuberoses, gladiolus, dahlias, tiger flowers, etc., may
be kept out through the winter. The gladiolus thus treated
makes splendid tufts of blossoms. It may be prudent to
try only a few at first, and adventure more as experience
gives confidence.
Crtery which is to be left in the trenches should first be
well covered with straw, and then boards should be placed
upon the top in such a manner as to shed the rain. Great
quantities of wet rot it when it is not growing; and freez-
ing and thawing in the light destroys it.
If portions of the garden have been infested with cut-
worms, etc., let it be spaded and thrown up loosely just be-
fore freezing weather. A clay soil will be ameliorated by
frosts, if treated in the same way. A light, loose soil, should
not be worked in the fall.
GUARDING CHERRY-TREES FROM COLD.
Tus tree is peculiarly liable while young, but more espe-
cially when coming into bearing, to be roughly handled by
our winters. The bark at the surface of the ground splits, and
often the trunk, enfeebling the tree and sometimes destroy-
ing it. The evil does not result from the cold, but from the
action of bright suns upon the frozen trunk. Let those hav-
ing valuable young trees, prepare them for winter by giv-
ing a cheap covering to the trunks, so that the sun shall not
strike them. This may be done by tying about them bass
matting, long straw, corn-stalks, or any similar protection.
192 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
SHADE-TREES.
WE believe that no man ever walked under the magnifi-
cent elms upon the Boston Common, or beneath the Lin-
dens in Philadelphia, or through Elm street in New Haven,
without conviction of the beauty and utility of shade-
trees. Trees not only are objects of beauty—the architecture
of Nature—but they promote both health and comfort. Our
ardent summers, from June to October, make open, un-
shaded streets, almost impassable, and reflect heat upon our
dwellings from the side-walks and beaten road.
In this country the growth of trees is so rapid, and the
supply from our own forests so abundant and convenient
that every village and city, and every well-conducted farm
should be lined with shade-trees. We will offer a few sug-
gestions upon the kinds to be selected and the manner of
setting.
Tue Locust (Robinia pseudacacia).—This tree is very
popular, and is almost the only one at the West set for
shade-trees. It has a beautiful form, grows very rapidly,
bears a profusion of beautiful and very fragrant blossoms
(pendulous racemes of pea-shaped flowers), its foliage is sin-
gularly pleasing—the young leaves being of a light pea-
green, and growing darker with age, so that in the same
tree three or four distinct shades of green may be seen; it
grows freely in all soils, and is not infested by any worms;
its timber is almost as durable as cedar, and in the West, is
not subject to the attacks of the dorer, as it is in the East.
On the other hand, the tree becomes unsymmetrical with
age, it is brittle, breaking easily at slight wounds, even
when they have healed over. It is not a long-lived tree,
and requires careful protection from cattle.
We would advise a more sparing use of it. Let every
other tree be a Locust, and the alternate maple or elm, oak,
tulip, ete. By this method the Locust will afford immediate
shade, and when they become unsightly the intervening
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 193
trees will have grown to a goodly size. The Locust should
be transplanted just as the buds are ready to burst ; they
should be protected by frames as soon as set. Good cases
may be made at a trifling expense, by taking strips of inch
and a half stuff, three inches wide, and nine or ten feet long,
sharpen the lower end, and drive it into the ground four or
five inches, and in a box formed about the tree let cross-
pieces be nailed at the top. Be careful that the tree does
not rub upon the case, although the wound will heal over, yet
in the first high wind, it will be apt to break off at that
point. This tree is rather peculiar in that respect.
The Locust was introduced to Europe by a Frenchman
named Robin. From him the genus (fobinia) took its
name. There are but four species belonging to it, and they
are all indigenous to North America, viz. :
Robinia pseudacacia (common Locust). R. viscosa,
confined to the southwestern parts of the Alleghany Moun-
tains, bearing rose-colored blossoms and being even more
ornamental than the former; it is equally hardy, and if it
could be introduced among us would form a valuable addi-
tion. Locusts nowhere appear to a better advantage than
when planted in clumps of six or eight on a lawn, and if the
KR. pseudacacia and Rf. viscosa were contiguous, blending
the pure white and the rose-colored blossoms, the world
might be challenged for a finer effect.
The &. hispida (rose-acacia of our gardens) is a highly
ornamental shrub, its branches are, like the moss-rose, cov-
ered with minute spines, which give it a fine appearance.
A fourth species is said to exist in the basin of Red River.
The favorable opinion here expressed of the Locust, will
remove any impression of prejudice when we say, that they
are altogether too much cultivated. Our forests are full of
magnificent shade-trees whose claims can never, all things
considered, be equalled by the Locust.
Exim (Ulmus Americana), commonly called White Elm,
Of the four species of elms indigenous to the United
194 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
States, but two are particularly worth notice, the White
Elm, and Slippery Elm (UV. pulva). But the former of these
is so incomparably the superior, that it should be selected
wherever it canbe had. It attains a height of one hundred
feet, is very long-lived, grows more and more beautiful with
age, its long branches droop over, forming graceful pendu-
lous extremities ; and no one who has seen the Boston Mall,
or the New Haven elms, or those scattered along the vil-
lages of Connecticut, will think that Michaux exaggerated
in pronouncing this tree to be the most magnificent vegeta-
ble production of the Temperate Zone. It is unquestionably
the monarch among shade-trees, as superior to the oak for
avenues and streets, as the oak is to it for parks and forests.
The great main-street of every village should be lined with
White Elms, set at distances of fifty feet, and Locusts
between to supply an immediate shade, and to be removed
so soon as the slower-growing elm has spread enough to
dispense with them.
Tue Marrte.—The following varieties are in our forests,
and are beautiful shade-trees for the borders of farms, door-
yards, public squares, avenues, streets, etc. The Sugar
Maple (Acer saccharinum), White Maple (A. eriocarpum,)
Red Maple (A. rubrum). This last variety shows beautiful
red flowers before its leaves put out in spring, and, like the
sugar-maple, brilliant scarlet leaves in autumn. "The maple
is a beautiful tree of fine form, the leaves of the different
varieties, are variously shaped and all beautiful, it is free
from disease and noxious insects.
Besides these, the ash, oak, tulip, beech and walnut, are
all worthy of being transferred to our streets. Shade-trees
for door-yards, and public squares, and pleasure-grounds,
require a separate notice, as in some material respects they
should be differently treated.
We warmly recommend in lining streets, that each alter.
nate tree only be locust.
It is better for effect that each street, or at least con-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 195
tinuous portions of each, have one kind of forest tree, so
that an avenue of similar trees be formed. In planting
grounds, it is well to group trees of different kinds, but in
streets an avenue should be of elms, or of oaks, or of syca-
mores, or of maples, and not all of them mingled together.
A PLEA FOR HEALTH AND FLORICULTURE.
Every one knows to what an extent women are afilicted
with nervous disorders, neuralgic affections as they are
more softly termed. Is it equally well known that formerly
when women partook from childhood, of out-of-door labors,
were confined less to heated rooms and exciting studies,
they had, comparatively, few disorders of this nature.
With the progress of society, fevers increase first, because
luxurious eating vitiates the blood; dyspepsia follows next,
because the stomach, instead of being a laboratory, is turned
into a mere warehouse, into which everything is packed,
from the foundation to the roof, by gustatory stevedores.
Last of all come newralgic complaints, springing from the
muscular enfeeblement and the nervous excitability of the
system.
_ Late hours at night, and later morning hours, early appli-
cation to books, a steady training for accomplishments, viz.
embroidery, lace-work, painting rice paper, casting wax-flow-
ers so ingeniously that no mortal can tell what is meant lilies
looking like huge goblets, dahlias resembling a battered cab-
bage; these, together with practisings on the piano, or if
something extra is meant, a little tum, tum, tuming, on the
harp, and a little ting-tong on the guitar; reading “ladies?
books,” erying over novels, writing in albums, and original
correspondence with my ever-adored Matilda Euphrosyne,
are the materials, too often, of a fashionable education.
While all this refinement is being put on, girls are tauglit
196 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
from eight years old, that the chief end of women is to get
a beau, and convert him into a husband. Therefore, every
action must be on purpose, must have a discreet object in
view. Girls must not walk fast, that is not lady-like; nor
run, that would be shockingly vulgar; nor scamper over
fields, merry and free as the bees or the birds, laughing till
the cheeks are rosy, and romping till the blood marches
merrily in every vein; for, says prudent mamma, “my dear,
do you think Mr. Lack-a-daisy would marry a girl whom he
saw acting so unfashionably ?” Thus, in every part of edu-
cation those things are pursued, whose tendency is to
excite the brain and nervous system, and for the most part
those things are not “refined, which would develop the
muscular system, give a natural fullness to the form, and
health and vigor to every organ of it.
The evil does not end upon the victim of fashionable
education. Her feebleness, and morbid tastes, and preter-
natural excitability are transmitted to her children, and to
their children. If it were not for the rural habits and
health of the vast proportion of our population, trained to
hearty labor on the soil, the degeneracy of the race in
cities would soon make civilization a curse to the health of
mankind,
Now we have not one word to say against “accomplish-
ments”? when they are vea/, and are not purchased at the
expense of a girl’s constitution. She may dance like
Miriam, paint like Raphael, make wax fruit till the birds
come and peck at the cunning imitation; she may play like
Orpheus harping after Eurydice (or what will be more to
the purpose, like a Eurydice after an Orpheus), she may
sing and write poetry to the moon, and to every star in the
the heavens, and every flower on earth, to zephyrs, to
memory, to friendship, and to whatever is imaginable in the
spheres, or on the world—if she will, in the midst of these
ineffable things, remember the most important facts, that
health is a blessing ; that God made health to depend upon
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 197
exercise, and temperate living in all respects; and that the
great objects of our existence, in respect to ourselves, is a
virtuous and pious character, and in respect to others, the
raising and traiming of a family after such a sort that
neither we, nor men, nor God, shall be ashamed of them.
Now we are not quite so enthusiastic as to suppose that
floriculture has in it a balm for all these mentioned ills.
We are very moderate in our expectations, believing, only,
that it may become a very important auxiliary in main-
taining health of body and purity of mind,
When once a mind has been touched with zeal in floricul-
ture it seldom forgets its love. If our children were early
made little enthusiasts for the garden, when they were old
they would not depart from it. A woman’s perception of
the beauty of form, of colors, of arrangement, is naturally
quicker and truer than man’s. Why should they admire
these only in painting, in dress, and in furniture? Can
human art equal what God has made, in variety, hue, grace,
symmetry, order and delicacy? <A beautiful engraving is
often admired by those who never look at a natural land-
scape; ladies become connoisseurs of “ artificials,” who live
in proximity to real flowers without a spark of enthusiasm
for them. We are persuaded that, if parents, instead of
regarding a disposition to train flowers as a useless trouble,
a waste of time, a pernicious romancing, would inspire the
love of it, nurture and direct it, it would save their daugh
ters from false taste, and all love of meretricious ornament.
The most enthusiastic lovers of nature catch something of
the simplicity and truthfulness of nature.
Now a constant temptation to female vanity—(if it may
be supposed for the sake of argument, to exist) is a display
of person, of dress, of equipage. In olden times, without
entirely hating their beauty, our mothers used to be proud
of their spinning, their weaving, their curiously-wrought
apparel for bed and board. A pride in what we have done
is not, if in due measure, wrong or unwise; and we really
198 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
think that rivalry among the young in rearing the choicest
plants, the most resplendent flowers, would be altogether a
wise exchange for a rivalry of lace, and ribbons, and silks.
And, even if poor human nature must be forced to allow
the privilege of criticising each other something severely,
it would be much more amiable to pull roses to pieces, than
to pull caps; all the shafts which are now cast at the luck-
less beauty, might more harmlessly be cast upon the glow-
ing shield of her dahlias or upon the cup of her tulips.
A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry,
habits of close observation, and of reading. It would
incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason
upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts,
and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm ; maintain sim-
plicity of taste; and in connection with personal instruction,
unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraitened, ardent piety.
SSL
KEEPING YOUNG PIGS IN WINTER.
THERE is both negligence, and mistake, in the way of win-
tering pigs. I am not talking to those whose manner of
keeping stock is, to let stock take care of themselves; but
to farmers who mean to be careful. Hogs should be sorted.
The little ones will, otherwise, be cheated at the trough,
and overlaid and smothered in the sleeping-heap. There
should not be too many in one inclosure; especially young
pigs should not sleep in crowds; for, although they sleep
warmer, they will suffer on that very account. Lying in
piles, they get sweaty; the skin is much more sensitive to
the cold, and coming out in the morning reaking and smok-
ing, the keen air pierces them. In this way, young pigs die
off through the winter by being too warm at night. Ifyou
have the land-shark and alligator breed, however, you should
crowd these together, for the more they die off the better
for the farmer.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 199
SWEET POTATOES.
ALTHOUGH our practice has been more extensive, and is
more skillful, in eating sweet potatoes than in raising them,
we yet adventure some remarks: No root can live and
grow without food from the leaf; if the tops be permitted
to root, so much nutriment is subtracted from the tubers as
is diverted to these new roots. Those who are best skilled
in their cultivation, raise their vines up so as to detach the
roots, but do not twist them round the hill; which, by crush-
ing or covering the leaves, would render the vines unhealthy.
As to vines of the Cucurbitace, their fruit not being under
ground, it is not necessary that such an amount of pre-
pared sap should go to the root as if tubers were formed.
There is, in such vines, a great lability to disease and
injury near the hill, The vines shrink and dry near the
base; and however flourishing the running end may other-
wise be, it is destroyed. If roots are secured at several
points along the vine, we remove the chances of its prema-
turely dying, without withdrawing any sap necessary for
the maturation of its fruit.
MANAGEMENT OF BOTTOM-LANDS.
Atmost every kind of soil requires a management of its
own. That proper for clays, and that proper for bottom-
lands, cannot be interchanged. Bottom lands are usually
composed largely of vegetable matter and sand; and are
therefore light, and easy to work; yet, as they are now
managed, they admit a less variety of crops than the
tougher and more unmanageable clay lands.
Borrom-Lanps FoR Corn.—Our corn-lands, strictly so
called, consist of rich intervales and river bottoms. On
these corn is raised year after year, without manuring, fal-
200 PLAIN AND PLEASaNT TALK
lowing, clover, or any change; but one constant, successive
corn, corn, corn. It is supposed that corn may be had for
an indefinite period, so far as mere exhaustion of the soil is
concerned, if the right course is pursued. Some of the best
farmers in this region hog their corn lands. Hogging, is
turning the hogs in upon the ripe corn, and letting them
harvest it in their own way. The saving of labor of gath-
ering the corn and feeding it out is very great. Some sin-
gle farmers fatten from one to five hundred head of hogs;
but if this number were fed by hand and the grain gath-
ered for them it would require a force which would eat up
the profits. When the fatting hogs have eaten off the field
(temporary fences divide large fields into inclosures of con-
venient size) they are turned into another, and the stock-
hogs for another year, are let in to glean and root for the
waste and trampled corn. In this way nothing is lost.
This method takes very little off from the land ; for the
droppings of the hogs returns a great amount of food for
the soil; and the corn stalks being burned or turned under,
the land continues in good heart. Land being hogged will
be free from cut-worms ; for the continual rooting of the
stock-hogs, which continues until the ground freezes
throws up the eggs or insect to be destroyed by the winter
This method of cultivation is peculiarly suited to large
farms, where extensive tracts of ground are kept under the
plow.
But in the course of eight or ten years, this process ren-
ders the soil extremely light. The action of frost upon it,
after the hogs have snout-plowed it, leaves it in the spring
as light and dry as an ash-heap. The corn will still grow
as well, but every high wind will throw it down; the soil
has not tenacity enough to hold up its crop. Clovering
has been resorted to by some good farmers as a remedy ;
out without pretending to know certainly, we suspect
that clover will not fully answer the object. Clover on
hard soils, separates the particles and renders the ground
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 201
lighter, and adds vegetable matter to its composition. This
is not what bottom land needs. It is ¢oo light, and rich
enough in vegetable matter.
We believe a better course will be found in putting bot-
iom-lands to small grain. 'To be sire, there are difticulties
in the way of this; but good farming is nothing but a com-
promise of difficulties. If the month of May be cold and
backward, wheat will do well and yield freely. But if the
spring is forward, May warm and wet, the grain will run
rank, break down when the head begins to fill, and, of
course, the berry, however plump and well it might have
looked in the milk, will, after it falls, for want of nourish-.
ment, light, and air, shrink and shrivel. But even in such
springs, might not an over rankness be prevented by pastur-
ing the grain; or even mowing it, when, as it sometimes
happens, it gets ahead of what cattle are put upon it. But,
at the worst, the grain is not lost; for if it lodges, and is
spoiled for the sickle, hogs may be turned upon it and they
will thrive well.
But now comes the advantage of small grain to the soil,
which will be the same whether the crop is reaped or
hogged. The straw or stubble, in either case, remains
upon the ground. This should not be plowed in, but
burned, and the ashes plowed under. To do this a strip of
eight feet should be plowed about the whole field; and fire
put to it, on every side at once, so that it may burn to-
wards the centre; for fire, driven across a field, would leap
many feet of open space at a fence. The more stubble the
better, and the more weeds the better. The ashes will give
to the soil just what it lacks, sohesion or firmness, and
moisture. For, to make a dry soil moist, requires some
substance to be added, which, having an affinity for mois-
ture, shall attract and retain it. This is the nature of wood
or straw ashes. A gentleman who will recognize in the
above much of his own practical experience, mentioned to
us a singular fact in corroboration of thir reasoning. Hay-
202 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
~
ing a very heavy wheat or oat stubble on a bottom-land
field, which made it very hard for the plow, he burned it
over; but a smart thunder-storm coming suddenly up, the
fire was extinguished, leaving about five acres in the middle
of the piece, unburned. The whole field was then plowed.
It was found that the soil in the part burned over was more
firm, and moist, all the ensuing summer; and the corn more
even, and darker colored, than that upon the five acres
which escaped the fire, and whose stubble had been plowed
in.
At all events, there can be no doubt that wood-ashes
would be very advantageous to bottom lands. And we are
persuaded that such soils may be kept in wheat and corn
for any length of time, if thus managed. In conclusion,
corn your bottom-lands till they are too light, hogging
instead of harvesting them; then put in wheat or oats;
leave the stubble long, burn it over, and put it into wheat
again, or to corn, as the case may be.
CULTIVATION OF WHEAT.
THERE are two opinions which will prevent any attempt
to improve the cultivation of wheat, or, indeed, of anything
else. The first is the opinion that, what are called wheat-
lands, yield enough at any rate: the second is the opinion
of those who own a soil not naturally good for wheat, that
there is no use in trying to raise much to the acre. We
suppose that wheat will not average more than twelve bush-
els to the acre, as it is now cultivated in some parts. At
that rate, and with too low prices, it is not worth cultiva-
tion for commercial purposes. The cost of seed, of labor
in preparing the soil, putting in the crop, harvesting, thresh-
ing, and carrying it to market, is greater than the value of
the crop. At fifty cents a bushel, and twelve bushels to the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 203
acre, the farmer gets six dollars, which certainly does not
cover the worth of his time and the interest on his land
Is it possible, then, at an expense within the means of
ordinary farmers, to bring a double or treble crop of wheat ?
If nature has sect limits to the produce of this grain to the
acre, andif our farmers have come up to that limit, there is
no use in their trying to do any better. But if their crop is
four fold bebind what it ought to be, they will feel courage
to reach out for a better mode of cultivation. Vegetables
collect food from the atmosphere, and from the soil; and
different plants select different articles of food from the
soil, just as different birds, beasts, insects, etc., require
different food. One class of plants draws potash largely
from the soil, as turnips, potatoes, the stalk of corn, ete.
Another class requires lime, in great measure, as tobacco,
pea straw, etc. Liebig partially classifies plants according
to the principal food which they require; as silica plants,
lime plants, potash plants, etc.
Every plant being composed of certain chemical elements,
requires for its perfection a soil containing those elements.
Thus chemistry has shown, by exact analysis, that good
meadow hay contains the following elements: Silica (sand),
lime (as a phosphate, a sulphate, and a carbonate, i. e. lime
combined with phosphoric, sulphuric, and carbonic acids),
potash (as a chloride, and a sulphate), magnesia, iron, and
soda. Whatever soil is rich in these will be productive of
grass.
The grain of wheat (in distinction from the straw) con-
tains, and of course requires from the soil, sulphates of pot-
ash, soda, lime, magnesia, iron, etc.
Any vegetable, in its proper latitude, will flourist. in a
soil which will yield it an abundance of food; and decline
in a soil which is barren of the proper nutritive ingredients,
A practical, scientific knowledge of these fundamental
facts, will give an intelligent farmer, in grain-growing lati-
tudes, almost unlimited power over his crops. A gvod
204 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
cook knows what things are required for bread; ie selects
these materials, compounds them to definite proportions— _
adding, if any one is deficient; subtracting, if any one is in
excess. MRuising a crop is a species of slow cooking. Here
is a compound of such materials (called wheat) to be made.
Nature agrees to knead them together, and produce the
grain, if the farmer will supply the materials. To do this
he must understand what these materials are. Suppose a
cook perceiving that the bread was wretched, did not know
exactly what was the matter; and should add, salt, or flour,
or yeast, or water at hap-hazard? Yet that is exactly what
multitudes of farmers do. They find that their fields yield
a small crop of wheat. They do not know what the matter
is. Is the soil deficient in lime, or sand, or clay? Is mag-
nesia or potash lacking? Perhaps they do not even know
that these things are requisite to this crop. ‘The land
must be manured.” Now, manure on an impracticable soil, |
is medicine. Of course if the farmer prescribes, he must
tell what medicine, i. e. what manure. Is it vegetable mat-
ter or phosphates? alumina or silica? Suppose a doctor
says: “ You are sick and must take medicine,” without
knowing what the disease is, or what the appropriate
remedy; and so should pull out a handful of whatever there
was in his saddle-bags and dose the wretch? That’s the
way farming goeson. ‘The ten acre lot wants manure.”
To the barn yard he goes, takes the dung heap, plows it
under, and gets an enormous crop of—straw. Nitrogenous
manure was not what the soil wanted. He has added
materials which existed in abundance already; but those
elements, from the want of which his crop suffered, have
not been given it. The land is sicker than it was before.
It languishes for want of one element, it, suffers from a sur-
feit of another. We are prepared to sustain these observe-
tions by a reference to authentic facts.
Massachusetts, a few years ago, was not a wheat-growing
State. Cautious farmers had given up the crop, because
ABOUT FRUITS. FLOWERS AND FARMING. 905
neither soil nor climate was supposed to favor it. How
then have both soil and climate been persuaded to relent,
and permit from twenty to forty bushels to grow to the
acre? It was no accident, and no series of blind but lucky
blunders, that effected the change. It was thinking that did
it. It was a change wrought by science. Elliot (in Con-
necticut), Deane (both clergymen), Dexter, Lowell, Fes-
senden, and many others, all men of science, were pioneers.
Agricultural surveys, geological surveys, and skillful chemi-
cal analyses of the soil and its products have been made for,
now, a series of years. A Hitchcock, a Dana, a Jackson
have applied science to agriculture. Pamphlets, books, and
widely circulated newspapers have diffused this knowledge.
Agricultural societies, state and county; farmers’ meetings
for discussion, such as are held every winter in Boston,
have awakened the mind of farmers, and by learning to
treat their soils skillfully, good wheat is raised in large
quantities on soils naturally very averse to wheat.
The average crop of wheat in great Britain is twenty-six
bushels to the acre, but forty and fifty are common to good
farmers; sixty, seventy, and even eighty have been raised
by great care.
In the whole United States it will not average much more
than fifteen. A comparison of the two countries will show
a corresponding inferiority on our part in the application of
science to agriculture. Scotland, formerly, hardly raised
wheat. Since the formation of the Highland Agricultural
Society in Scotland, wheat has averaged fifty-one bushels to
the acre!—Eilsworth’s Report for 1844, p. 16.
Lord Hardwicke stated, in a speech before the Royal
Agricultural Society of England, that fine Suffolk wheat
had produced seventy-six bushels per acre; and another
and improved variety had yielded eighty-two bushels
per acre! This was the result of “book farming” in a
country where anti-book farmers raise twenty-six bushels
to the acre.
206 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Those very operations which farmers call practecal, and
upon which they rely in decrying “ book farming’ were
first made known by science, and through the writings of
scientific men.
These views have an immediate and practical bearing on
the cultivation of wheat in the Western States.
Hitherto the want of enough cleared land has led farm-
ers to put in wheat among the corn, and half put it in at
that. Others have plowed their fallows, or their grass
lands, so early in the season, that rains and settling have
made it hard again by seed-time. Then, without stirring it,
the grain has been thrown (away) upon it, and half har-
rowed in and left to its fate. “Equally bad has been the
system of late single plowing. Others have given their
grain no soil to bed their roots in; a scratched surface
receives the grain; its roots, like the steward, cannot dig,
and so get no hold; and are either winter killed, or subsist
upon the scanty food of the three or four inches of top soil.
With some single exceptions, wheat cannot be said to have
been cultivated yet. The two great operations in render-
ing soil productive of wheat, are either the development of
the materials already in the soil; or, the addition to the
soil of properties which are wanting.
Much land yielding only twelve or fifteen bushels, by a
better preparation would, just as easily, yield thirty. Let
us suppose that a common plowing of four or five inches,
precedes sowing. Out of this superficial soil the wheat is
to draw its food. Constant cropping has, perhaps, already
diminished its abundance. Then wheat is rank in stem,
short in the head, and light in the kernel. But below there
is a bed of materials untouched. The subsoil, if brought
up, exposed to the ameliorating influence of the ele-
ments, will furnish in great abundance the elements
required. The simple operation of deep and thorough
plowing will, often, be enough to increase the crop one-half.
Deep plowing gives a place for the roots, which will not be
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 207
apt to heave out in winter; it saves the wheat from drought, it
gives the nourishment of twice the quantity of soil to the crop.
Five acres may become ten by enlarging the soil down-
ward. These remarks are desultory; and, while we intend
to continue writing on the subject, we say to such as may
be getting ready for the wheat-sowing, plow deeply and
thoroughly ; unlike corn, wheat can only be plowed once,
and that at the beginning. It should be thoroughly done,
then, once for all.
WHEAT LANDs ought to be so farmed as to grow better
from year to year; certainly, they ought to hold their own.
Lands may be kept in heart by the adoption of a rotation
suited to each particular soil; or, if frequent wheat crops are
raised, by fallows or manuring. It is a fact that in this
neighborhood farms in the hands of careful men are yielding
better crops of wheat every year; while multitudes of far-
mers think themselves fortunate in twelve or fifteen bushels
to the acre, there is another class who expect twenty-five or
thirty bushels, and in good seasons get it. This is encou-
raging. As our lands get older we may look for yet better
things. Some farmers put in from 100 to 800, and even
1,000 acres of wheat. The native qualities of the soil are
relied upon for the crop. To manure or clover such a body
of land is impossible with any capital at the command of its
owners. But with us, each owner of a quarter section puts
in from ten to twenty acres, and it lies within his means to
dress this quantity of land to a high degree.
Sorts Fir FoR Wuxrat.—A vegetable mold cannot yield
wheat, because it does not contain, and therefore cannot
afford to the crop, silicate of potash, or phosphate of mag
nesia; the first of which gives strength to the stem, and
the second of which is necessary to the grain. On such soil
wheat may grow as a grass, but not as a grain.
A mere sand will not yield wheat; because wheat re-
quires, and such soils do not contain, soda, magnesia, and
especially silicate of potash,
208 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Al: clays contain potash, which is indispensable to wheat,
but they may be deficient in soda, in magnesia, and in
other alkalies.
A calcareous clay-loam may be regarded as the best soil
for wheat. And when it does not exist in a natural state,
all the additions in the form of manure should be with
reference to the formation of such a soil. If the land be
light and sandy, clay, and marl, and wood ashes should be
added, together with barnyard manure; if the soil is a
tenacious clay, it should be warmed and mellowed by sand
and manure ; if it is deficient in lime, lime in substance, or
in marl must be given; vegetable molds, if heavily
dressed with wood-ashes and lime, may be brought to pro-
duce wheat.
To PREPARE THE GRouND.—This operation depends
upon the condition of the soil. But, in all cases, the
deepest plowing is the best. The roots of wheat, if un-
checked, will extend more than jive feet. Stiff, tough, soils,
unbroken for years, and especially if much trampled by
cattle, will require strong teams. Oxen are better than
horses to break up with. It has been said, that a yoke of
cattle draw a plow deeper, naturally, than a span of
horses. They are certainly better fitted for dull, dead,
heavy pulling. Andif oxen have been well trained they
will do as much plowing in a season as horses, and come
out of the work in better condition.
Fallow lands should be broken up early in summer, as
soon as‘ corn planting is over; about midsummer plow
again; and the last time early in September to prepare for
seed.
A grass or clover lay * may be plowed under deeply at.
* The word lay, or ley, is only a different way of spelling dea, the old
English word for field, not used except in poetry or by farmers; and it
is one, among many instances, of old Saxon English words being pre-
served among the agricultural population long after they have ceased to
be generally used.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 209
midsummer, and not disturbed till sowing-time, and ths
fall plowing should not disturb the inverted sod.
When wheat is to be sown on wheat again, as large a
part of the straw should be left in the harvest-field as pos-
sible. This is to be plowed under; but, if it can be done
without endangering the fences, it would be better to burn
it over ; the ashes will contain all the valuable salts. On
this point we extract the followimg note appended by the
editor of Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry.
‘In some parts of the grand-duchy of Hesse, where wood
is scarce and dear, it is customary for the common people
to club together and build baking-ovens, which are heated
with straw instead of wood. The ashes of this straw are
carefully collected and sold every year at very high prices.
The farmers there have found by experience that the ashes
of straw form the very best manure for wheat; although it
exerts no influence on the growth of fallow-crops (potatoes
or the leguminose, for example). The stem of wheat
grown in this way possesses an uncommon strength. The
cause of the favorable action of these ashes will be apparent,
when it is considered that all corn-plants require silicate of
potash ; and that the ashes of straw consist almost entirely
of this compound.
But this procedure does not depend upon theoretical
reasonings; it has been abundantly substantiated by the
practice of English cultivators. We find on page 333 of the
“ British Husbandry, ” an admirable work published under
the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, the following statement:
“The ashes of burnt straw have also been found benefi-
cial by many intelligent practical farmers, from some of
whose experiments we select the following instances.
Advantage was taken of a fine day to fire the stubble of an
oat-field soom after harvest, the precaution having been pre-
viously taken of sweeping round the boundary to prevent
injury to the hedges. The operation was easily performed,
210 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
by simply applying a light to windward, and it completely
destroyed every weed that grew, leaving the surface com-
pletely covered with ashes; and the following crop, which
was wheat, produced full five quarters per acre. This
excited further experiment, the result of which was, that in
the following season, the stubble having been partly plowed
in according to the common practice, and partly burned,
and the land sown with wheat, the crop produced eight
bushels per acre more on that portion which had been
burned, than on. that which had been plowed in. The
same experiment was repeated, on different occasions, with
similar results; and a following crop of oats having been
laid down with seeds, the clover was found perfectly
healthy, while that portion on which the burning of the
stubble had been omitted, was choked with weeds. It
must, however, be recollected, that if intended to have a
decided effect, the stubble must be left of a considerable
length, which will occasion a material deficiency of farm-
yard manure; though the advantages will be gained of
saving the cost of moving the stubs, the seeds of weeds and
insects will be considerably destroyed, and the land will
be left unimpeded for the operation of the plow.
“On the wolds of Lincolnshire, the practice of noi only
burning the stubble, but even the straw of threshed grain,
has been carried, in many cases, to the extent of four to
six loads per acre ; and, asit is described in the report of the
county, has been attended, in all those instances, with
very decidedly good effect. It is even said to have been
found superior, in some comparative trials, to yard-dung,
in the respective rate of five tons of straw to ten of manure!”
We frequently ride past immense piles of wheat straw,
encumbering the yard or field where it was threshed ; and
never without thinking upon the unthriftiness of a farmer
who ignorantly takes everything off his wheat land, re.
turns nothing to it, and is content with annually diminish.
ing crops.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 2tt
SELECTION oF SrEps.—The varieties of wheat, already
very numerous, are constantly increasing. No farmer
should be satisfied with anything short of the dest kind of
wheat. Suppose an expense of many dollars to have been
incurred in procuring a new kind, if it yield only two
bushels more to the acre than an old sort, it will more than
pay for itself in the first harvest field. It should be observed
that different soils require different varieties; and every
farmer should select, after trial, the kind which agrees best
with his land.
A standard wheat should be hardy, strong in the straw;
not easy to shell and waste, prolific, thin in the bran, white
in flour, and the flour rich in starch and gluten. The
earliness or lateness of a variety affects its liability to dis-
ease.
Much may be done by every farmer to secure a variety
suited to his soil from his own fields. Let a watchful eye
observe every remarkable head of wheat—a very early one,
a very long head, any which have an unusual sized grain,
or is distinguished for any excellent property. By gather-
ing, planting separately, and then culling again, each
farmer may improve his own wheat ten fold. Indeed it has
been in this way that several improved varieties have been
procured.
Of spring wheat, the most valuable kinds are, Ztalian
Spring Wheat ; bearded, red berry, white chaff, head long,
bran thick, flour of fair quality. Zea or Siberian Bald ;
bright straw, not long; berry white, bald; flour good ;
extensively cultivated in New England and northern part of
New York. Valuable variety.
Brack Sra Wueat.—White chaff, bearded, berry red,
long and heavy, bran thick, flour inferior. Ripens very
early, and seldom rusts or mildews.
The following are also the spring varieties. Kgyptian
Wild Goose or California—tLarge and branching head,
bearded, berry small, bran thick, flour coarse and yellow,
D2 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ripens jate, and subject to rust. Although branching, it is
not productive. There is a winter variety also. Rock
Wheat, from Spain.—Chaff white, bearded, berry red and
long, bran thick, flour of fair quality, hardy, shows small,
well adapted for new lands and late sowing. Black
Bearded —tLong cultivated in New York—stem large,
heavy head, berry large and red, beard very long and stiff,
produces flour well. ed Bearded, English_—Chaff red,
pearded, beards standing out, berry white, weighs from
sixty to sixty-two pounds, Scotch Wheat.—A large white
wheat, berry and straw large.
Spring wheat does well on soils which heave and throw
out winter wheat. It is deemed a good policy to sow some
spring wheat every year, that, if the winter wheat fails, a
crop may still be on hand.
An account of the best varieties of winter wheat, we
extract from the Western Harmer and Gardener :
“ Wurre Fuuxnt.—A winter wheat, very white chaff, with-
stood Hessian fly well, has yielded fifty-four bushels to the
acre, weighing from sixty-three to sixty-seven pounds per
bushel. Lmproved White Flint—This from early selection
from the first. White Provence, from Hrance-—A white
wheat—shows small heads, well filled and large. Old Red
Chaff—White wheat, old—subject to fly. Mentucky,
White Bearded—White wheat, sometimes called Cana-
dian Flint—early, good for clay soils. Indiana Wheat.—
White wheat—berry white and large, ripens early, not so
flinty as the White Flint, good flour, valuable for clayey
soils. Velvet Beard, or Crate Wheat.—White wheat—
English variety, chaff reddish, berry large and red, straw
large and long, heads long and well filled, beard very stiff,
flour yellowish. Sovle’s Wheat.—A mixed variety, heads
large, berry white, not very hardy. Beaver Dam.—Old
variety, berry red, flour yellowish, ripens late. Hclipse—
English, not hardy. Virginia White May, from Virginia.—
Winter, good flour, chaff white Wheatland Wheat, from
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 913
Virginia.—Chaff red, heads well filled, berry red, hardy.
Tuscan Bald, from Italy in 1837.—Berry large and white,
not hardy, flour good. TZwuscan Bearded—Head large,
still less hardy. Yorkshire, from England, ten years ago.
—Mixed variety of white and red chaff, bald, berry white,
good flour, liable to injury from insects, subject to ergot.
Bellevere Tallavera.—White variety from Eng’and, head
large, tillers well, not hardy, insects like it much. Peggle-
sham, English—Head large, berry white, and medium
sized, tender for our winters—(all this is calculated for New
York State.) Golden Drop, English.—Berry red, flour not
first rate. S&4inno~ Wheat.—Produced from crosses, berry
red, chaff white, ha: dy, yield good, sixty-four pounds to the
bushel. Mediterranean.—Chaff light, red bearded, berry
red and long, very flinty, flour inferior. Hume's White
Wheat from crosses.—A beautiful white wheat, berry
large, bran thin, hardy and a valuable variety. Blue Stem.
—Cultivated for thirty-three years, berry white, sixty-four
pounds to the bushel, flour superior, bran thin, and very
productive. Valparaiso Wheat, from South America.—
Chaff white, bald, berry white, bran thin, a good vari-
ety.
PREPARING SEED FOR SOWING.—Seed wheat should be
subjected to a process which shall separate all chess, cockle,
etc., from it, together with the shrunken kernels of the
wheat itself. This may be, in part, done by screening ; but
the light grain will float and may thus be detected in the
process of brining. Two tubs, or half barrels, may be con-
veniently used. A strong brine of salt and water is pre-
ferred, and the wheat, in convenient parcels, is poured in,
the light wheat skimmed from the top, the brine poured off
into the second tub, and the heavy wheat at the bottom
put into some suitable receptacle to drain for an hour.
When in successive parcels the whole quantity to be used
has been brined, let it be emptied upon a smooth floor, and
limed at the rate of about a bushel of lime to ten of wheat.
214 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
By this process the chaffy grain is rejected, the smut, to
which wheat is so liable, is entirely prevented; and the
grain caused to germinate more rapidly and strongly. The
lime should be what is termed qwicklime, or that just
slaked. The reason may be explained. No seed can ger-
minate until it has rid itself of a large part of that carbon,
which, being essential to its preservation, must be with-
drawn in order that it may grow. The addition of oxygen
from air and water converts the carbon to carbonic acid,
which is emitted from the pores, and escapes. Newly
slaked lime has a powerful affinity for carbonic acid; and
by withdrawing it from the seed, puts it in a condition
favorable to immediate germination. Lime that has been
air-slaked or lain exposed to the air after being slaked by
water, combines with the carbonic acid in the, atmosphere,
and when applied to wheat, being already a carbonate, it
does not liberate the carbonic acid contained in the seed.
PLEASURES OF HorticuLtuRE.—There is no writing so
detestable as so-called jine writing. It is painted empti-
ness. We especially detest fine writing about rural affairs
—all the senseless gabble about dew, and zephyrs, and stars,
and sunrises—about flowers, and green trees, golden grain
and lowing herds, etc. We always suspect a design upon
our admiration, and take care not to admire. In short,
geoponical cant, and pastoral cant, and rural cant in their
length and breadth, are like the whole long catalogue of
cants (not excepting the German Kant), intolerable. Now
and then, however, somebody writes as though he knew
something ; and then a free and bold strain of commenda-
tion upon rural affairs is relishful.
~~.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 215
PRACTICAL USE OF LEAVES.
THERE are two facts in the functions of the leaf, which
are worth consideration on account of their practical bear-
ings. The food of plants is, for the most part, taken in
solution, through its roots. Various minerals—silex, lime,
alumen, magnesia, potassa—are passed into the tree in a
dissolved state. The sap passes to the leaf, the superfluous,
water is given off, but not the substances which it held in
solution. These, in part, are distributed through the plant,
and, in part, remain as a deposit in the cells of the leaf.
Gradually the leaf chokes up, its functions are impeded,
and finally entirely stopped. When the leaf drops, it con-
tains a large per cent. of mineral matter. An autumnal or
old leaf yields, upon analysis, a very much larger propor-
tion of earthy matter than a vernal leaf, which, being yet
young, has not received within its cells any considerable
deposit. It will be found also, that the leaves contain a
very much higher per cent. of mineral matter, than the wood
of the trunk. The dried leaves of the elm contain more
than eleven per cent. of ashes (earthy matter), while the
wood contains less than two per cent. ; those of the willow,
more than eight per cent., while the wood has only 0.45;
those of beech 6.69, the wood only 0.36 ; those of the (Ku-
ropean) oak 4,05, the wood only 0.21; those of the pitch-
pine 3.15, the wood only 0.25 per cent.*
It is very plain, from these facts, that, in forests, the min-
eral ingredients of the soil perform a sort of circulation;
entering the root, they are deposited in the leaf; then, with
it, fall to the earth, and by its decay, they are restored to
the soil, again to travel their circuit. Forest soils, there-
fore, instead of being impoverished by the growth of trees,
receive back annually the greatest proportion of those
* See Dr. Grey’s Botanic Text Book, an admirable work, which every
horticulturist should own and study.
£16 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
mineral elements necessary to the tree, and besides, much
organized matter received into the plant from the aumnos-
phere; soils therefore are gaining instead of losing. If
owners of parks or groves, for neatness’ sake, or to obtain
leaves for other purposes, gather the annual harvest of
leaves, they will, in time, take away great quantities of mine-
ral matter, by which the soil, ultimately, will be impover-
ished, unless it is restored by manures.
Leai-manure has always been held in high esteem by gar-
deners. But many regard it as a purely vegetable sub-
stance ; whereas, it is the best mineral manure that can be
applied to the soil. What are called vegetable loams (not
peat soils, made up principally of decomposed rooés), con-
tain large quantities of earthy matter, being mineral-vege-
table, rather than vegetable soils.
Every gardener should know, that the best manure for
any plant is the decomposed leaves and substance of its own
species. This fact will suggest the proper course with refer-
ence to the leaves, tops, vines, haulm, and other vegetable
refuse of the garden.
The other fact connected with the leaf, is its function of
Exhalation. The greatest proportion of crude sap which
ascends the trunk, upou reaching the leaf, is given forth
again to the atmosphere, by means of a particularly beauti-
ful economy. The quantity of moisture produced by a
plant is hardly dreamed of by those who have not specially
informed themseives. The experiments of Hales have been
often quoted. A sun-flower, three and a half feet high,
presenting a surface of 5.616 square inches exposed to the
sun, was found to perspire at the rate of twenty to thirty
ounces avoirdupois every twelve hours, or seventeen times
more thanaman. A vine with twelve square feet exhaled at
the rate of five or six ounces a day. A seedling apple-tree,
with twelve square feet of foliage, lost nine ounces a day.*
* Lindley’s Horticulture, p. 42-44. Grey’s Botany, p. 131.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 217
These are experiments upon very small plants. The vast
amount of surface presented by a large tree must give off
immense quantities of moisture. The practical bearings of
this fact of vegetable exhalation are not afew. Wet for.
est-lands, by being cleared of timber, become dry; and
streams, fed from such sources, become ulmost extinct as
civilization encroaches on wild woods. The excessive damp-
ness of crowded gardens is not singular, and still less is it
strange that dwellings covered with vines, whose windows
are choked with shrubs, and whose roof is overhung with
branches of trees, should be intolerably damp; and when
the good housewife is scrubbing, scouring and brushing,
and nevertheless, marvelling that her house is so infested
with mold, she hardly suspects that her troubles would be
more easily removed by the axe or saw, than by all her
cloths and brushes. A house should never be closely sur-
rounded with shrubs. A free circulation of air should be
maintained all about it, and shade-trees so disposed as to
leave large openings for the light and sun to enter. Un-
usual rains in any season produce so great a dampness in our
residences that no one can fail to notice its effect, both on
the health of the occupants, and upon the beauty and good
condition of their household substance.
Tue following method to destroy weeds is pursued at the
mint in Paris, with good effect: 10 gallons water, 20 !bs.
quicklime and 2 lbs. flowers of sulphur are to be boiled in an
iron vessel ; after settling, the clear part is thrown off and
used when needed. Care must be taken, for if it will
destroy weeds it will just as certainly destroy edgings and
border flowers if sprinkled on them. Weeds, thus treated,
will disappear for several years.
218 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
SPRING WORK FOR PUBLIC-SPIRITED MEN.
SHADE-TREES.—One of the first things that will require
your action is, the planting of shade-trees.. Get your neigh-
bors to join with you. Agree to do four times as much as
your share, and you will, perhaps, then obtain some help.
Try to get some more to do the same in each street of your
village or town.
Locusts, of course you will set for immediate shade.
They will in three years afford you a delightful verdant
umbrella as long as the street. But maples form a charm-
ing row, and the autumnal tints of their leaves and the
spring flowers add to their beauty. They grow quite
rapidly, and in six years, if the soil is good and the trees
properly set, they will begin to cast a decided shadow.
Elms are, by far, the noblest tree that can be set, but they
will have their own time to grow. It is best then to set
them in a row of other trees, at about fifty or a hundred
feet apart, the intervening space to be occupied with
quicker-growing varieties.
The beech, buckeye, horse-chesnut, sycamore, chestnut,
and many others may be employed with advantage. Now,
do not let your court-house square look any longer so bar-
ren.
Avenues may be lined with rows of trees, but squares
and open spaces should have them grouped or scattered in
small knots and parcels in a more natural manner.
May-wrEep.—There was never a better time to extermin-
ate this villainous, stinking weed than summer-time will be.
Just as soon as the first blossoms show, “ up and at it.” Club
together in your streets and agree to spend one day a-mow.:
ing. Keep it down thoroughly for one season and it will
no longer bedrabble your wife’s and daughter’s dresses,
nor fill the air with its pungent stench, or weary the eye
with its everlasting white and yellow.
SIDE-WALK8.— What if your neighbors are lazy; what if
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 219
they do not care? Some one ought to see that there are
good gravel walks in each village. You can have them in
this way: Take your horse and cart and make them before
your own grounds, and then go on no matter who owns,
and when your neighbors see that you have public spirit,
they will, by and by, be ready to help you. But the grand
way to do nothing, is, not to lift a finger yourself, and then
to rail at your fellow-citizens as selfish and devoid of all
public spirit.
Protect Pustic Proprrty—What if it does concern
everybody else as much as it does you? Some one ought
to see that the fences about every square are kept in repair,
Some one ought to save the trees from cattle; some one
ought to have things in such trim as that the inhabitants
can be proud of their own town. Pride is not decent when
there is nothing to be proud of; but when things are worthy
of it, no man can be decent who is devoid of a proper
pride. The church, the schoolhouse, fences, trees, bridges,
roads, public squares, sidewalks, these are things which tell
tales about people. A stranger, seeking a location, can
hardly think well of a place, in which the distinction
between the house and stye are not obvious; in which every
one is lazy when greediness does not excite him, and where
general indolence leaves no time to think of the public
good.
When politicians are on the point of dissolving in the
very fervent heat of their love for the public, it would
recall the fainting soul quicker than hartshorn or vinegar to
ask them—Did you ever set out a shade-tree in the street?
Did you ever take an hour’s pains about your own village ?
Have you secured it a lyceum? Have you watched over its
schools? Have you aided in any arrangements for the
relief of the poor? Have you shown any practical zeal for
good roads, good bridges, good sidewalks, good school-
houses, good churches? Have the young men in your place
a public library ?
220 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
If the question were put to many distinguished village
patriots, What have you done for the public good?—the
answer would be: “ Why, I’ve talked «ill ’m hoarse, and
an ungrateful public refuse me any office by which I
may show my love of public affairs i a more practical
manner,”
FARMERS AND FARMING SCENES IN THE WEST.
Ir any one goes to Holland they are all Dutch farmers
there; if he goes to England he finds British husbandry ;
in New England it’s all Yankee farming. A man must
go to the West to see a little of every sort of farming
that ever existed, and some sorts we will affirm, never had
an existence before anywhere else—the purely indigenous
farming of the great valley. Within an hour’s ride of each
other is the Swiss with his vineyard, the Dutchman with
his spade, the ‘“‘ Pennsylvany Dutch” and his barn, the Yan-
kee and his notions, the Kentuckian and his stock, the Irish-
man and his shillelah, the Welchman and his cheese, besides
the supple French and smooth Italian, with here and there
a Swede and a very good sprinkling of Indians.
Away yonder to the right is a little patch of thirty acres
owned by a Yankee. He keeps good cows, one horse only
(fat enough for half a dozen) ; every hour of the year, save
only nights and Sabbath-days he is at work, and neat fences,
clean door-yard, a nice barn, good crops, and a profitable
dairy, and money at interest, show the results. What if he
has but thirty acres, they are worth any two hundred around
him, if what a man makes is a criterion of the value of his
farm. But a little farther out is a jolly old Kentucky -
farmer, the owner of about five hundrec! acres of the best
land in the county, which he tills when he has nothing else
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 221
to do. He is a great hunter and must go out for three or
four days every season after deer. He loves office quite
well, and is always willing to “serve the public” for a con-
sid-er-a-tion, as Trapbois would say. As to farming, he
hires more than he works; but, now and then, as at plant-
ing or harvesting, he will lay hold for a week or a month
with perfect farming fury, and that’s the last of it. As to
working every day and every hour, it would be intolerable!
He is a great horse-raiser, is fond of stock, and if a free and
easy fellow ready to laugh, not careful of his purse, nor
particular about his time, will ride over his grounds, admire
his cattle, his bluegrass pasture, his Pattons and his Dur-
hams; and above all, that blooded filly, or that colt of Sir
Archie’s—our Kentucky farmer will declare him the finest
fellow alive, and his house will be open to him from year’s
end to year’s end again.
Right along side of him is a “‘ Pennsylvany Dutch,” good-
natured, laborious, frugal and prosperous. He minds his
own business. Seldom wrangles for office. Is not very
public spirited, although he likes very well to see things
prosper. He farms carefully on the old approved plan of
his father, plants by the signs in the moon, seldom changes
his habits, and on the whole constitutes a very substantial,
clean, industrious, but unenterprising farmer.
Then there is a Vew York Yankee; he has got a grand
piece of land, has paid for it, and got money to boot; he
knows a little about everything ; he “ lays off” the timber
for a fine large house—bossed the job himself. When it
was up he stuck on a kitchen, then a pantry on to that, then
a pump-room on that, then a wood-house on that, and then
a smoke-house for the fag end; a fine garden, a snug littie
nursery well tended, good orchards; by and by a second
farm, pretty soon a boy on it, all married and fixed off; by
and by again another snug little farm, and then another
boy on it, with a little wife to help him; and then a spruce
young fellow is seen about the premises, and after a while
-
229) PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
a daughter disappears and may be found some miles off on
a good farm, making butter and raising children, and has
good luck at both. The old man is getting fat, has money
lent out, loves to see his friends, house neat as a pin, glori-
ous place to visit, etc., etc. But who can tell how many
sorts more there are in the great heterogeneous West,
and how amusing the mixture often is, and what strange
customs grow out of the mingling of so many diverse
materials. It is like a kaleidoscope, every turn gives a new
sight. We will take our leisure, and give some sketches of
men, and manners and scenery, as we have seen them in the
West.
About eight years ago a raw Dutchman, whose only
English was a good-natured yes to every possible question,
got employment here as a stable-man. His wages were six
dollars and board; that was $36 in six months, for not one
cent did he spend. He washed his own shirt and stock-
ings, mended and patched his own breeches, paid for his to-
bacco by some odd jobs, and laid by his wages. The next six
months, being now able to talk “‘ goot Inglish,” he obtained
eight dollars a month, and at the end of six months more
had $48, making in all for the year $84. The second year,
by varying his employment—sawing wood in winter, work-
ing for the corporation in summer, making garden in
spring, he laid by $100, and the third year $125, making
in three years $309.
With this he bought 80 acres of land. It was as wild as
when the deer fled over it, and the Indian pursued him.
How should he get a living while clearing it? Thus he did
it. He hires a man to clear and fence ten acres. He him-
self remains in town to earn the money to pay for the
clearing. Behold him! already risen a degree, he is an
employer! In two years’ time he has twenty acres well
cleared, a log-house and stable, and money enough to buy
stock and tools. He now rises another step in the world,
for he gets married, and with his amply-built, broad-faced,
=
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 223
good-natured wife, he gives up the town and is a regular
farmer.
In Germany he owned nothing and never could; his
wages were nominal, his diet chiefly vegetable, and his
prespect was, that he would be obliged to labor as a menial
for life, barely earning a subsistence and not leaving
enough to bury him. In five years, he has become the
owner in fee simple of a good farm, with comfortable fix-
tures, a prospect of rural wealth, an independent life, and,
by the blessing of heaven and his wife, of an endless pos-
terity. Two words tell the whole story—Industry and
Economy. These two words will make any man rich at
the West.
We know of another case. While Gesenius, the world-
wide famous Hebrew scholar, was as school, he had a
bench-fellow named Eitlegeorge. I know nothing of his
former life. But ten years ago I knew him in Cincinnati as
a baker, and a first-rate one too; and while Gesenius issued
books and got fame, Eitlegeorge issued bread and got
money. At length he disappeared from the city. Travel-
ling from Cincinnati to Indianapolis, a year or two since, I
came upon a farm of such fine land that it attracted my
attention, and induced me to ask for the owner. It belonged
to our friend of the oven! There was a whole township
belonging to him, and a good use he appeared to make of
it. Courage then, ye bakers! In a short time you may
raise wheat instead of molding dough.
A HOLE IN THE Pocxer.—If it were not for these holes
in the pocket, we should all be rich. A pocket is like a cis-
tern, a small leak at the bottom is worse than a large pump
at the top. God sends rain enough every year, but it is
not every man that will take pains to catch it; and it is not
every man that catches it who knows how to keep it.
~
224 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ORNAMENTAL SHRUBS.
A DESCRIPTION of a few of the desirable flowering and
ornamental shrubs for yards and lawns may enable our
readers to select with judgment.
Priver.—This is quite beautiful as a single plant ; but
is universally employed for hedges, verdant screens, ete.
There is an evergreen variety, originally from Italy, by far
the best. The roots of this plant are fibrous, don’t spread
much ; the limbs endure the shears very patiently ; it grows
very rapidly, two full seasons being sufficient to form a
hedge ; and it will flourish under the shade and drip of
trees.
Rose Acacta (Robinia hispida).—This is a species of
the locust, of a dwarf habit, seldom growing six feet in
height, and covered with fine spines which give its branches
a mossy appearance. Its blossoms resemble the locust, but
are of a pink color. It is often grafted upon the locust to
give it a higher head and better growth. It should be in
every shrubbery.
VENETIAN SuMAcH, or smoke tree (Jthus cotinus).—The
peculiarity of this shrub is in the large bunches of russet-
colored seed-vessels, looking, at a little distance, like a puff
of smoke. The French and Germans call it pertwig-tree,
from the resemblance of these russet masses to a powdered
wig. It grows freely, and is highly ornamental.
There are two other species of sumach worthy of cultiva-
tion; the Rhus typhina, or Stag’s Horn sumach, of a fine
flower, and whose leaves turn in autumn to a beautiful pur-
plish red; and the &. glabra, or Scarlet sumach, having
red flowers and fruit of a velvety scarlet appearance, chang-
ing as it ripens to crimson.
Syrinea, or Mock Orange (Philadelphus coronarius), is
a beautiful shrub, having, in the spring, flowers of a pure
white, and of an odor only less exquisite than that of the
orange; whence one of its popular names. The leaves have
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 995
the smell of the cucumber, and are sometimes used in spring
to flavor salads. It grows freely, even under the shade of
trees, which, in all low shrubs, is a valuable quality. There
is also a large flowered inodotous variety. The popular
name, Syringa, is the botanical name of the lilac; but
these plants are not in the remotest degree related to each
other.
Litac.—This well-known and favorite little tree requires
only to be mentioned. There is a white variety, and deli-
cately-leaved variety called the Persian.
SNOWBALL (Viburnum opulus), everywhere known, and
everywhere a favorite ; and scarcely less so is the
WAXBERRY, or Snowberry, (Symphora racemosa), intro-
duced by Lewis and Clark to the public attention, and first
raised from seed by McMahan, a gardener of some note.
When its fruit is grown, it has a beautiful appearance.
Tamarisx (Zamarix gallica), a sub-evergreen of very
beautiful feathery foliage, of rapid growth, and highly orna-
mental in a shrubbery. It will grow in very poor soil,
Suerparpra, or Buffalo Berry, from the Rocky Mountains,
a low tree, with small silvery leaves, a currant-like fruit,
which is edible. This is worthy of cultivation. It is diw-
cious, and the male and female trees must therefore be
planted in proximity.
Dwarr Atmonp (Amygdalus nana), but now called by
botanists Cerasus or Prunus japonica. This favorite shrub
is found in all gardens and yards. The profusion of its
blossoms and the delicacy of their color make it, durigg the
short time of its inflorescence, deservedly a favorite. As it
flowers before its leaves put forth, it requires a green back-
ground to produce its full effect. It should therefore be
planted against evergreens.
W oop Honeysucktez (Azalea).—This is a native of North
America, and is perfectly hardy. It flourishes best in a half
shade, and flowers freely. There have been a vast number
of varieties originated from crossing the species; and the
226 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
nurseries will supply almost every shade of color from white
to brilliant flame color.
The A. pontica, is also hardy; but the Chinese species
require a greenhouse, This is one of the most magnificent
shrubs that can be cultivated, and deserves the special atten-
tion of those who wish to form even a moderately good
shrubbery.
The Brerserry (Berberis vulgaris) is quite beautiful when
in fruit. It is easily propagated, grows in any soil, requires
little pruning, and is very good fur hedges,
Giope Frower (Corchorus japonica).—A very pretty
shrub with double yellow flowers, which are in abundance
early in the summer, and also, but sparingly, shown through-
out the season.
““By some mistake Kerria japonica was at first supposed
to belong to Corchorus, a genus of Tiliaceze, and of course
nearly allied to the lime-tree; to which it bears no resem-
blance, though it is still called Corchorus-japonica im the
nurseries. It is also singular, that though the double-flow-
ered varicty was introduced into England in 1700, the spe-
cies was not introduced till 1835. It is a delicate little
shrub, too slender to support itself in the open air; but
when trained against a wall, flowering in great profusion.
It should be grown in a light, rich soil, and it is propagated
by cuttings.”— Companion to the Flower Garden.
Lasurnum (Cytisus laburnum).—This beautiful plant
forms a small tree, which, in May, is covered with pendant
yelloweblossoms. Blooming at the same time with the lilac,
the two planted together have an extremely beautiful effect.
It is hardy, grows in any soil, and is propagated easily by
seed.
The Scotch Laburnum (C. alpinus), is much more beau-
tiful than the common kind, “ the flowers and leaves being
larger and the flower more frequently fragrant. They are
also produced much later in the season, not coming into
flower till the others are quite over.”
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 227
AurueEa, or Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus Syriacus).—One
of the most desirable shrubs for yards and gardens. The
form of the shrub is compact and sightly; flowers double,
and may be had of every color; it is hardy, growing well
in all soils, and blooms continually from the last of July till
frost. It is beautiful in avenues, and, being patient of the
shears, it will form a fine floral hedge, a good specimen of
which may be seen on Mr. Hoffner’s beautiful grounds near
Cincinnati. The single altheas are not so desirable. We
regard this shrub as worthy of much more extensive culti-
vation than it has received. Its flowers are coarse on a
close inspection, but at a little distance, and among other
plants its effect is excellent. It is very easily propagated
by cuttings, or from the seed.
SweEeEr-scenreD Saurus (Calycanthus Floridus).—Chief-
ly desirable from the pine-apple fragrance of its brownish-
purple flowers. They are used to scent drawers, to carry
n the pocket, etc. It grows freely in any dry, ric: soil,
and is propagated by layers and suckers.
Rep-sup (Cercis Canadensis.)—This small tree is fami-
liar to every one, being the first spring flowering tree of our
woods. It flourishes in gardens and makes a finer appear-
ance there than in its native localities.
ee
GoosEBERRIES.—Let those who are accustomed to lose
their fruit by mildew, drench their bushes with an alka-
line wash. Lime-water, or diluted lye are the most conve-
nient. With a watering-pot, copiously water the whole bush,
on the upper and under side of the branches; which can be
easily done, if one wiil lift the branches while another be-
stows the shower-bath. After they have done bearing, prune
out the head, and the lower branches, so as to give a free
circulation of air under and through the bush. Spade in
about them a liberal dressing of leached ashes, and fine
cha:eoal if procurable.
228 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
GARDEN WORK FOR AUGUST.
Dahlias will require special attention to secure them from
splitting down, and breaking; let every part be well sup-
ported by ties. The cool nights and warm days of
approaching fall will give them their most vigorous
growth.
Saving Srrp.—Beet, spinage, peas, celery, salsify, let-
tuce seeds will now be ripe and should be gathered. Even
if not quite ripe, they may be plucked, as experiments seem
to show that seeds are more injured by over-ripeness than
under-ripening. Seal up your peas in bottles and put wax
about the cork, according to Dr. Plummer’s directions, and
the larvee of the pea-bug will die for want of air. Seeds
are ripened best in their own pods or receptacles; and
where they ripen nearly at the same time, and do not easily
shake out, we hang the whole plant in an airy shed, barn,
etc., until winter ; and then, for convenience, thresh out and
pack up.
As fast as your perennial plants have shed their
flowers, let the seed plants be destroyed, unless you
wish to save seed, as the ripening of seed exhausts the
root.
Young peach-trees should have the side shoots cleared
away and one strong centre stem secured for budding in
the fall.
Onions may now be gathered. Let them lie a day or two
on the bed or in the alley, and then be transferred to a cool
and airy place. The sets for top onions may be tied in bun-
dles and hung up till spring.
Where peas and bush beans have been cleared away, tur-
nips may be sowed for a fall and winter crop.
Spinage seed should be got ready to be sown in Septem-
ber, if you wish a good supply of this choicest of all spring
greens.
Celery plants will begin to grow strongly in the trenches ;
e, ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 229
water with liquid manure; if troubled with insects, dust
with quick lime and water with salt water. Above all
things be careful in drawing in the earth to keep it
out from the heart of the plant, and let it be done in dry
weather.
PULLING OFF POTATO BLOSSOMS.
Tue Boston Cultivator, speaking of this process, says:
“As the qualities of the potato-ball or apple differ con-
siderably from the root or tuber, it may be that the juices
destined to nourish the balls will not, on removing the
blossoms, go to increase the roots. This view is not un-
reasonable.”
We do not suppose the theory to be, that the sap tend-
ing to the bloom and ball returns to the root. But,
simply, that there will be so much less food to be prepared,
and therefore so much less exhaustion to the vegetable
economy. It is well known that the filling out and ripen-
ing of seeds is eminently exhausting to the plant. It has
long been the custom of florists who wish show-flowers, to
refuse their bulbous plants leave to bloom for one season,
plucking off the bud, that they might be so much the
stronger for the next year’s blooming.
But we suppose the truth to be this. The sap is pre-
pared in the leaf and enters the distributing vessels of the
plant. It is conveyed to every organ; each part, receiving
its portion, modifies it by a farther chemical action pecu-
liar to itself. Thus in the case of an apple-tree. The
elaborated sap which goes to the leaf, the alburnum, the
liber, the blossom, the fruit is the same in all; but the fruit
gives it a still further elaboration, by which it imparts the
peculiar properties belonging to it, in distinction from the
230 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
tissues ; so of the bark, the blossom, ete. If, then, the seed-
vessels are removed, so much less elaborated sap is con-
' sumed as they would have required; and this, or at least,
portions of it, are given to the other parts of the vegetable
economy.
BLADING AND TOPPING CORN.
No one performs these operations for the benefit of the
ear, but to obtain fodder, and it is then justified on the
ground that the corn is not harmed by it. The sap drawn
from the root does not flow straight up into the ear and
kernel, but into the Jeaves or blades. The carbonic acid of
the crude sap is decomposed, oxygen is given off and carbon
remains in the form of starch, sugar, gum, ete., etc., accord-
ing to the nature of the plant. When sap has by exposure
to light undergone this change it is said to be elaborated.
It is only now that the sap, passing from the upper side
of the leaf to a set of vessels in the under side, is reconveyed
to the stem, begins to descend, and is distributed to various
parts of the plant, affording nourishment to all. But when
the fruit of every plant is maturing, it draws to itself a large
part of the prepared sap, which, when it has entered the
kernel, is still farther elaborated, and made to produce the
peculiar qualities of the fruit, whether corn or wheat, apple
or pear. It is plain from this explanation that a plant
stripped of its leaves is like a chemist robbed of his labora-
tory, or like a man without lungs.
If corn is needed for fodder, let it be cut close to the
ground when the corn has glazed. The grain will go on
ripening and be as heavy and as good as if left to stand, and
the stalk will afford excellent food for cattle. Sheep are
fond of corn thus cured, and will winter very well upon it.
In husking out the corn, the husk should he left on the stalk
for fodder.
ABOU FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 931
MAPLE-SUGAR.
As most persons who have not informed themselves on
the subject, imagine that we are indebted to cane-sugar for
our main supply, and that maple-sugar is a petty neighbor-
hood matter, not worth the figures employed to represent
it, we propose to spend some space in stating the truth on
this matter. We will exhibit, 1, the amount produced; 2,
the proper way of manufacturing it; 3, the proper treat-
ment of sugar-tree groves.
We shall confine our statistics to the most important
Northern and Western States.
1. New York produces annually.... ......... 10,048,109 Ibs.
DRO esses in stance tama atisete ord tise a 6,363,886 “
SR OVICLINGIG) 2.) cicraioiess sisrersielejele: sierseavevevecace eves 4,647,984 *
Aroma aT Ay a eter ch stave siete cisiavole cieke saje i siancretaetis: 3 8,727,795 ‘
SMMREDNSYIVANIA jaye cits w.cicin sro sisteis sioe.sieisieteres « 2,265,755 *
GreNGwa ll am pShires .c..2crsjersicie sieslsi sisiele stereieveince 1,162,368 ‘*
TAM VAG ATILAS oe) 5,0) dc) Siaie w creleretss chele die aici ord. opekenans 1,541,833 <<
RRPRCO THCY, ej ore bici wks nysyatsis eis = joes atelats ajatsaterls 1,377,835
GUM CHI OAM sc, + c)a,siclarcleielcie «/ 61ce's )ee'e a sie vererveste 1,329,784
Totaltof nine States: .. 3.2 s.1csse ese cmelne 22,464,799 ‘*
Residue thus—add for Maine, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Maryland, Tennessee, Illinois,
Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin............. 2,030,853 §¢
24,495,652
Something should be subtracted for beet-root and corn-
stalk-sugar. But on the other hand, the statistics are so
much below the truth on maple-sugar, that the deficiency
may be set off against beet-root and cornstalk-sugar. That
the figures do not more than represent the amount of
maple-sugar produced in these States may be presumed
from one case. Indiana is set down at 8,727,795; but in
the four counties of Washington, Warrick, Posey and Har-
rison, no account seems to have been taken of this article.
PB PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
In Marion county, four of the first sugar-making townships,
Warren, Lawrence, Centre and Franklin, are not reckoned.
If we suppose these four townships to average as much as
the others in Marion county, they produced 77,648 Ibs.,
and instead of putting Marion county down at 97,064 it
should be 174,712 Ibs. It is apparent from this case, that
in Indiana the estimate is far below the truth; and if it is
half as much so in the other eight States enumerated,*
then 22,464,799 is not more than a fair expression of the
maple-sugar alone.
Lousiana is the first sugar-growing State in the Union.
Her produce, by the statistics of 1840, was 119,947,720, or
nearly one hundred and twenty million pounds. The States
of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and Flo-
rida, together, add only 645,281 pounds more.
Cane-sugar in the United States 120,593,001 lbs.
Maple “ z «“ 24,495,652
Thus about one-sixth of the sugar made annually in the
United States is made from the maple-tree.t+ It is to be
* Dr. J. C. Jackson puts Vermont at 6,000,000 lbs. per annum, while
the census only gives about 4,000,000.
+ The data of these calculations, it must be confessed, are very uncer-
tain, and conclusions drawn from them as to the relative amounts of
sugar produced in different States, are to be regarded, at the very best,
as problematical. We extract the following remarks from an article in
the Western Literary Journal, from the pen of Charles Cist, an able sta-
tistical writer :
“Ttis not my purpose to Zo into an extended notice of the errors in the
statistics connected with the census of 1840. A few examples will serve to
show their character and extent. In the article of hemp, Ohio is stated to
produce 9,080 tons, and Indiana 8,605—either equal nearly to the pro-
duct of Kentucky, which is reported at 9,992 tons, and almost equal, when
united, to Missouri, to which 18,010 tons are given as the aggregate.
Virginia is stated to raise 25,594 tons, almost equal to both Kentucky
and Missouri, which are given as above at 28,002 tons. Now the indis«
putable fact is, that Kentucky and Missouri produce more than hemp all
the rest of the United States, and ten times as much as either Ohio, Indiana
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 233
remembered too that in Louisiana it is the staple, while at
the North maple-sugar has never been manufactured with
any considerable skill, or regarded as a regular crop, but
only a temporary device of economy. Nowit only needs to
be understood that maple-sugar may be made so as to have
the flavor of the best cane-sugar, and that it may, at a tri-
flng expense, be refined to white sugar, and the manufac-
ture of it wil become more general, more skillful, and
may, in a little time, entirely supersede the necessity of im-
porting cane-sugar. Indiana stands fourth in the rank of
maple-sugar making States. Her annual product is at least
Jour million pounds, which, at six cents the pound amounts
to $160,000 per annum. A little exertion would quickly
run up the annual value of her home-made sugar to half a
million dollars.
Maple-sugar now only brings about two-thirds the price
or Virginia, which three States are made to raise 50 per centum more
than those two great hemp-producing States.
“The sugar of Louisiana is given at 119,947,720 Ibs., equal to 120,000
hhds., 160 per cent. more than has been published in New Orleans, as the
highest product of the five consecutive years, including and preceding
1840.
“But what is this to the wholesale figure-dealing which returns
3,160,949 tons of hay, as the product of New York for that article! a
quantity sufficient to winter all the horses and mules in the United States.
““Other errors of great magnitude might be pointed out; such as
making the tobacco product of Virginia 11,000 hhds., when her inspec-
tion records show 55,000 hhds., thrown into market as the crop of that
year. Who believes that 12,233 lbs. pitch, rosin and turpentine, or the
tenth part of that quantity, were manufactured in Louisiana in 1840, or
that New York produced 10,093,991 Ibs. maple-sugar in a single year, or
twenty such statements equally absurd, which I might take from the
returns ?””
Mr. Cist will find in the appendix to Dr. Jackson’s Final Report on the
Geology of New Hampshire, a statement, that Vermont makes 6,000,000
pounds of sugar annually. If this be so, we may, without extravagance,
suppose that New York reaches 10,000,000 Ibs. So far as we have colla-
teral means of judging, the amount of maple-sugar is wnder-stated in the
census of 18-40.
934 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
of New Orleans. The fault is in the manufacturing of it.
The saccharine principle of the cane and tree are exactly
the same. If the same care were employed in their man-
facture they would be indistinguishable; and maple-sugar
would be as salable as New Orleans, and if afforded at a
less price, might supplant it in the market. The average
quantity of sugar consumed in England by each individual
is about thirty pounds per annum.
Marire-Suear Maxine.—Greater care must be taken
in collecting the sap. Old, and halfdecayed wooden-
troughs, with a liberal infusion of leaves, dirt, ete., impart
great impurity to the water. Rain-water, decayed vegeta-
ble matter, etc., add chemical ingredients to the sap, trou-
blesome to extract, and injuring the quality if not removed.
The expense of clean vessels may be a little more, but with
care, it could be more than made up in the quality of the
sugar. Many are now using earthen-crocks. These are
cheap, easily cleaned, and every way desirable, with the
single exception of breakage. But if wood-troughs are
used, let them be kept scrupulously clean.
The kettles should be scoured thoroughly before use,
and kept constantly clean. If rusty, or foul, or coated with
burnt sugar, neither the color nor flavor can be perfect.
Vinegar and sand have been used by experienced sugar-
makers to scour the kettles with. It is best to have, at
least, three to a range.
All vegetable juices contain acids, and acids resist the
process of crystallization.
Dr. J. C. Jackson* directs the one-measured ounce (one-
fourth of a gill) of pure lime-water to be added to every
gallon of sap. This neutralizes the acid, and not only faci-
litates the granulation, but gives sugar in a free state, now
too generally acid and deliquescent, besides being charged
* Appendix to final Report en the Geology and Mineralogy of New
Hampshire, page 361. This admirable Report is an able exposition of
the benefit of public State surveys.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWEXKS AND FARMING. 235
with salts of the oxide of iron, insomuch that it ordinarily
strikes a black color with tea.
The process of making a pure white sugar is simple and
unexpensive. The lime added to the sap, combining with
the peculiar acid of the maple, forms a neutral salt; this
salt is found to be easily soluble in alcohol. Dr. Jackson
recommends the following process. Procure sheet-iron
cones, with an aperture at the small end or apex—let
them be coated with white-lead and boiled linseed-oil, and
thoroughly dried, so that no part can come off. [We do
not know why earthen cones, unglazed and painted, would
not answer equally well, besides being much cheaper.|
Let the sugar be put into these cones, stopping the hole in
the lower end until it is entirely cool. Then remove the
stopper, and pour upon the base a quantity of strong
whisky or fourth-proof rum *—allow this to filtrate through
until the sugar is white. When the loaf is dried it will be
pure white sugar, with the exception of the alcohol. To
get rid of this, dissolve the sugar in pure boiling hot-water,
and let it evaporate until it is dense enough to crystallize.
Then put it again into the cone-moulds and let it harden.
The dribblets which come away from the cone while the
whisky is draining, may be used for making vinegar. It
is sometimes the case that whisky would, if freely used in
a sugar camp, go off in a wrong direction, benefiting neither
the sugar nor the sugar-maker. If, on this account, any
prefer another mode, let them make a saturated solution
of loaf-sugar, and pour it in place of the whisky upon the
base of the cones. Although the sugar will not be quite
as white, the drainings will form an excellent molasses,
whereas the drainings by the former method are good only
for vinegar.
* Tf those who drink whisky would pour it on to the sugar in the refin-
ing cones, instead of upon sugar in tumblers, it would refine them as
much as it does the sugar; performing two valuable processes at once.
236 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Care or Suaar Orcuarps.—It is grievous to witness
the waste committed upon valuable groves of sugar-trees.
If the special object was to destroy them, it could hardly
be better reached than by the methods now employed.
The holes are carelessly made, and often the abominable
practice is seen of cutting channels in the tree with an axe.
The man who will murder his trees in this tomahawk and
scalping-knife manner, is just the man that A‘sop meant
when he made the fable of a fellow who killed his goose to
get av once all the golden eggs. With good care, and
allowing them occasionally a year of rest, a sugar-grove
may last for centuries.
As soon as possible get your sugar-tree grove laid
down to grass, clear out underbrush, thin out timber and
useless trees. Trees in open land make about six pounds
of sugar, and forest trees only about four pounds to the
season. As the maple is peculiarly rich in potash (four-
fifths of potash exported is made from sugar-maple), it is
evident that it requires that substance in the soil. Upon
this account we should advise a liberal use of wood-ashes
upon the soil of sugar-groves.
Tappine TreEs.—Two taps are usually enough—never
more than three. For though as many as twenty-four have
been inserted at once without killing the tree, regard ought
to be had to the use of the tree through a long series of
years. At first bore about two inches; after ten or twelve
days remove the tap and go one or two inches deeper.
By this method more sap will be obtained than by going
down to the colored wood at first. We state upon the
authority of William Tripure, a Shaker of Canterbury, N.H.,
that about seven pounds of sugar may be made from a
barrel of twenty gallons, or four pounds the tree for forest
trees; and two men and one boy will tend a thousand trees,
making 4,000 pounds of sugar.
We would recommend the setting of pasture-lands,
and road-sides of the farm with sugar-maple trees. Their
{BOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 237
growth is rapid, and no tree combines more valuable pro-
perties. It is a beautiful shade-tree, it is excellent for fuel,
it is much used for manufacturing purposes, its ashes are
valaable for potash, and its sap is rich in sugar. There are
twenty-seven species of the maple known, twelve of them
are indigenous to this continent. All of these have a sacha-
rine sap, but only two, to a degree sufficient for practical
purposes, viz., Acer saccharinum or the common sugar-
maple, and Acer nigrum or the black sugar-maple. The sap
of these contains about half as much sugar as the juice of
the sugar-cane. One gallon of pasture maple sap contains,
on an average, 3,451 grains of sugar; and one gallon of
cane-juice (in Jamaica), averages 7,000 grains of sugar.
But the cane is subject to the necessity of annual and
careful cultivation, and its manufacture is comparatively
expensive and difficult. Whereas the maple is a permanent
tree, requires no cultivation, may be raised on the borders
of farms without taking up ground, and its sap is easily con-
vertible into sugar, and, if carefully made, into sugar as
good as cane-sugar can be. Add to the above considera-
tions that the sugar-making period is a time of comparative
leisure with the farmer, and the motives for attention to this
subject of domestic sugar-making seem to be complete.
Lerruce.—Those who wish fine head lettuce should pre-
pare a rich, mellow bed of light soil; tough and compact
soil will not give them any growth. In transplanting, let
there be at least one foot between each plant. Stir the
ground often. If it is very dry weather, water at evening
copiously, if you water at all; but the hoe is the only
watering-pot for a garden, if thereby the soil is kept loose
and fine. We have raised heads nearly as large as a drum-
head cabbage by this method, very brittle, sweet and tender
withal.
238 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
GEOLOGICAL DEFINITIONS.
_ Many terms, in general use among scientific men, and
asually employed in agricultural works, are obscure to
young readers. For their sakes we will explain some of
them; and shall not be angry if o/d men profit by the
explanation.
Som.—The surface-earth, of whatever ingredients it may
be composed. It may bea clay-soil, a sand-soil, a calcareous
soil, as the surface is composed of clay, or sand, or clay
strongly mixed with lime, etc.
Sussoit.—The earth lying below the ordinary depth to
which the plow or spade penetrate. Sometimes it has
hardened by the running of the plow over it for a series
of years; then it is called pan, as hard-pan, clay-pan, etc.
It is sometimes of the same nature as the top-soil, as in clay-
lands; in others it is a different earth; as when a coarse
gravel underlies vegetable mold, or when clay lies
beneath sandy soil.
Supsor. Prowine.—In ordinary plowing, the share runs
from five to seven inches deep. A plow has been con-
structed (called subsoil plow), to follow in the furrow, and
break up from six to eight inches deeper—so that the
whole plowing penetrates from ten to sixteen inches,
Sussom. Prow.—A plow having a narrow “ double share,
or a small share on each side of the coulter, and no mold-
board.” It is designed to break up and soften the subsoil,
but not to bring it up to the top.
Moxrp.—A soil in which decayed vegetable matter
largely predominates over earths. Thus, leaf-mold is soil
principally composed of rotten leaves; dung-mold, of
dung reduced to a fine powdery matter; heath-mold, a
black vegetable soil found in heath-lands; peat-mold,
forest-mold, garden-mold, ete.
Loam.—Clay, or any of the primitive earths, reduced to
a mellow, friable state by intermixture of sand, or vegeta
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 239
ble matter, is called loain. Clay lands well manured with
sand, dung, or muck, are turned, gradually, to a loam.
ARGILLACEOUS.—F rom the Latin (argillaceus,) soil prin-
cipally composed of clay.
Atumina ok ALUMINE.—Generally employed to signify
pure clay. It is, chemically speaking, a metallic oxide ;
aluminium is the metallic dase, and is an elementary sub-
stance.
It is generally known that the diamond is pure carbon
(charcoal is carbon in an impure state), but it is not as
generally known that the ruby and the sapphire, “two of
the most beautiful gems with which we are acquainted, are
composed almost solely of alumina,” or pure clay in a crys-
tallized state.
Sitrcrous.—An earth composed largely of silex. Silex or
silica is considered to bea primitive earth constituting flint,
and containing most kinds of sands, and sandstones, ete.
China or porcelain, ware is formed from silica and alumina
united, 7. e. from silicious sand and clay.
CatcarEous.—A soil into the composition of which lime
enters largely. Limestone lands are calcareous. Pure
clay manured freely with marl becomes calcareous, for marl
is, mostly, clay and carbonate of lime.
ALLUVIAL.—Strictly speaking, alluvium or our alluvial
soil, is a soil formed by causes yet in existence. Thus a
bottom-land is formed by the wash of a river. It is usually
a mixture of decayed vegetable matter and sand.
Dinuviat.—A diluvial soil or deposit is one formed by
causes no longer in existence. Thus a deposit by a deluge
is termed dilwvial. The word is derived from the Latin
(diluvium), signifying a deluge.
The terms argillaceous, calcareous, silicious, alluvial and
diluvial are constantly employed in all works which treat of
husbandry.
Friaste.—A friable soil is one which crumbles easily.
Clay is adhesive, or in common language clammy: leaf:
240 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
mold 1s friable, or crumbling. Clay becomes friable when,
by exposure to air or frost, or by addition of sand, vegeta-
ble matter, ete., it is thoroughly mellowed.
DRAINING WET LANDS.
BrEFoRE many years there will be thousands of acres
pierced with drains. But the inducements to it which
make it wise in England and New England do not yet,
generally, exist in the West. The expense of draining one
acre would buy two. Many farmers have already more
arable land than they can till to advantage. Land
redeemed from slough would not pay for itself in many
years.
But although a general introduction of draining would
not be wise, there are many cases in which, to a limited
extent, it should be practised. Lands lying near to cities
are sufficiently valuable, and the market for farming pro-
ducts sure enough, to justify the reclaiming of wet pieces
of land. On small farms of forty and eighty acres, sur-
rounded by high-priced lands, not easily procured for enlarg-
ing his farm if the owner should wish it, draining might be
employed with advantage. A man with a smail farm can
afford expenses for high cultivation which would break a
large farmer.
Some times a large meadow or arable field is marred by
a wet slash through the middle of it; a farmer would not
begrudge the labor of draining for the sake of having his
favorite field without a blemish. Sometimes farms are
intersected by wet lands, which make the passage from one
part of the farm to another difficult at all times, and almost
impassable at some seasons of the year. Draining might be
resorted to in such a case, not so much for the sake of
the land reclaimed, as for the convenience of the whole farm.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 241
We know pieces of wet, peaty meadow land lying close
by the farm-house, the only drawback to the beauty of the
place. A good farmer would wish to recover such a spot
for the same reason that he would prefer a handsome house
to a homely one—a fine horse over a coarse-looking animal
—a sightly fence, rather than a clumsy one. There is much
strong land—but high, flat, and cold—which is wet through
all the spring, resisting seed till long after other portions of
the farm are at work, and which would, but for this back-
wardness, be regarded as the best land. If without great
expense, such land could be cured, few farmers would mind
the trouble or labor.
There are three kinds of draining which may be employed
according to circumstances—subsoil-plowing, furrow-drain-
ing and ditch-draining. When a soil is underbound by a
compact, impervious subsoil, all the rain or melting snow is
retained in the soil until it can exhale and evaporate. For
the subsoil acts like a water-tight floor, or the bottom of a
tub. Subsoil-plowing, by thoroughly working through this
under crust, gives a downward passage to the moisture ;
water sinks as it does in sandy loams. Nor will such treat-
ment be less useful to prevent the injury of summer drought ;
for the depth of soil affords a harbor for roots from whence
they can draw moisture when the top-soil is dry as ashes.
But there is a limit put to this treatment by the amount
of clay contained in the subsoil. It has been experiment-
ally ascertained in England, that when the soil contains
as high as forty-three per cent. of alumina (clay) sub-
soil-plowing is useless, because the clay soon coalesces and
is as impervious as ever. In such cases, if the land has a
slight inclination in any direction, furrow-draining may, in
some measure, relieve it. The ground is marked out in
lands as for sowing grain and plowed with back-furrows,
throwing the earth toward the centre. The rain and snow
will run to either side, and flow off by the channels left
_between each strip. This treatment does not relieve the
242 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
land, to any great extent, of water contained in it, but acts
as a preventive, by carrying off the rain and snow before
they are absorbed.
O DEAR! SHALL WE EVER BE DONE LYING?
Aw honest old gentleman, in telling us his troubles, gave
great prominence to the necessity he was frequently under
of disappointing his customers, whose work could not be
finished as soon as he had promised. After explaining the
difficulty, he looked up with great earnestness, and ex-
claimed, “* O dear! shall we ever be done with this lying ?”
We have often wondered ourselves whether such a con-
summation would ever take place. ‘Your boots shall be
done on Saturday night without fail.’ Nevertheless, you
have to go to church with gaping shoes for want of them.
“Your coat shall be sent home by nine o’clock on Satur-
day night ;” and you get it, in fact, the Wednesday after.
“Will you lend me your wheel-barrow ? I will return it to-
night.” You wait for it till next week, and then send for
it. My carpenter solemnly agreed to finish my house by
November; but it was July before I could get the key.
My wood was to be split on Saturday afternoon—enough
for the Sabbath; so it was—but I had to do it. My
money was to be paid me the next week; and then, neat
week; and then, Next week—and then, as soon as he
could get it; he did get it and spent it; and then it should
be paid when he got it again—he got it again, and paid
another debt because the man treated him more savagely
than I would. The strength laid out in running for this
money, if it had been economically applied to labor, would,
nearly, have earned the whole debt. The fellow never paid
me at last; but Death came along, and he paid him
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 243
promptly. “O dear! shall we ever get done with this
lying ?” It is one of the few domestic manufactures which
need no protection, and flourishes without benefit either to
the producer or consumer.
CARE OF STOCK IN WINTER.
Peruaprs no better sign of careful husbandry can be found
than in the attention paid to brute animals. We always
expect a thriftless fellow to neglect and abuse his stock.
When we see them well cared for, we always judge the
owner to be a good farmer. Cattle ranging out often
have had good picking, and if partly fed at the rack, will
come out in the spring well-conditioned. Where hay and
grain are a drug, we suppose that all cautions about wasting
them will be laughed at. Care and economy are not the
peculiar features of western farming; profusion and easi-
ness are the more characteristic. But there are some
points of attention to which every farmer should give
heed.
CLEANING THE STABLE.— When cattle lie out, this trouble
is saved in their case. But it is almost universally the prac-
tice to let the manure accumulate in stables for horses from
autumn to spring, and sometimes from year to year, until
its quantity compels its removal. This is all well enough
for the sake of the manure—it is sheltered, and its strength
preserved. But it is at the expense of the horse. The con-
centrated effluvia is bad; and lying down upon manure,
night after night, causes the skin to break out in blotches ;
and sometimes the whole ham is affected so much that the
hair comes off, and the skin is inflamed and covered with
running sores. The ammonia of urine (which abounds in
244 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
horse manure), is caustic, and acts upon the skin like a blis.
ter upon the human flesh. If Providence had ordained that
a sore should break out on the owner, for every one on his
stock occasioned by his negligence, animals would have
a much better time than they now do.
Cows wity Catr.—Especial attention should be paid to
these. As they grow heavy, toward spring, they should
not be chased by horses or dogs, or beaten by unmannerly
boys and men. Their food should be abundant and nutri-
cious. A cow brought to calving in spring in a very thin
and lean condition will not recover through the whole sum-
mer, no matter how carefully tended. 'The cow, the calf,
and your own profit in both, require that you should bring
your cows to the spring in first-rate condition. If you have
roots, feed them; but if not, give a slop of shorts, meal, and
flax-seed cake. This last ingredient is eminently service-
able in laying on flesh.
Mirx1ne Cows.—Let them be milked regularly without
regard to weather. <A careless girl will, if not watched,
milk irregularly, and what is worse, leave the cow wnstript.
The morning work presses, or the cold pinches, or she is in
haste, at night, to go a visiting, or some one of a hundred
other reasons tempt her to milk out the full flow, and leave
the strippings. A cow so abused will be injured, in a short
time, so much, that all the care in the world will not bring
her back again.
See that stock are treated with gentleness and pstience.
lt is a shame to abuse a kind and docile animal, and it is
useless to thrash those that are not so. In either case, kind-
ness is the best policy. A man who is brutal to cattle is
more of a beast than they are. We have seen many a man
who, if he had two more legs, would not fetch the price of
a stock-hog.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 245
DEEP PLANTING.
WE saw recently a potato which grew at the depth of
twenty-five feet below the surface of the earth. This is an
extraordinary depth. Few things planted at that depth
would vegetate. The fact in this case is unquestionable.
The top was terminated by a cluster of blossoms, and the
potatoes were of the size of small hickory-nuts.
P. 8. Another fact, which like to have been omitted in this
account, is, that it grew at the bottom of an open well.
CORN AND MILLET FOR FODDER.
THE practice of sowing grains for fodder has been prac-
tised with great success. Mutter is sown in May, June, or
July, at the rate of three pecks of seed to the acre. It is,
usually, ready for the scythe in about ninety days. Thick
sowing is best. Cut when the grain is fairly out of the
milk, and cure it like hay. Four tons is a fair sp?
tons is a small crop.
Inpian Corn should be sown broadcast at the rate of
four to five bushels to the acre. Corn belongs to the tribe
of grasses. Cultivating it for the grain, in rows, with every
stimulant of air, light, and manure, develops the stalk
almost to a tree form. When sown for fodder, the object
should be to produce it, as nearly as possible, like a grass.
Thick sowing will tend to do it, and each stalk being small
and tender, the crop will be easily masticated by cattle. By
good management six or eight tons may be cut to the acre
—cutting twice in the season. The first mowing should be
about the period of silking. The next, whenever the
shoots have grown again to a proper size. If but one
mowing is intended; it should be permitted to stand a week
246 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
or two later than when two crops are to be taken. For, all
plants prepare the most of nutritious juices at the period of
their fruiting. Indian corn is the richest in saccharine
matter at about the time its grain is turning from a milky
to a mealy state. Cattle will eat either of the above grains,
treated like a grass crop, with great avidity ; and every one
knows that it is desirable to give them a change of food
through the winter.
SEED SAVING.
Tue seeds of cucumber, melon, etc., are better, at any
rate, when four of five years old than when fresh ; and we
have well authenticated instances of seeds retaining their
vitality much longer than this. There is no fixed period
during which seeds will keep. There is no reason to sup-
pose that they would lose their vitality in any assignable -
number of years if the proper conditions were observed.
De Candolle says that M. Gerardin raised kidney beans,
obtained from Tournefort’s herbarium, which were at least
a Kundred years old; but beans left to the chances of the
atmosphere are not good the second year, and hardly worth
planting in the third. Professor Lindley raised raspberry
plants from seed not less than sixteen or seventeen hundred
years old. Multitudes of other instances might be given.
In reply to the first question, it may, then, be said, that the
length of time through which seeds will keep depends upon
the method of preserving them.
We do not suppose it to be essential to inclose apple,
pear, and quince seeds in earth for the purpose of presery-
ing their vitality during a single winter. But if exposed
to the air, the rind becomes so hard and rigid as to make
germination very difficult from mere mechanical reasons,
The moisture of the soil keeps the covering in a tender
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. IAT
state, and it 1s easily ruptured by the expansion of the
seed.
The shell of peach, plum, and other stone-fruit seeds
would form, if left to dry and harden, a yet more hopeless
prison. If kept for two years, the most stone-fruit pips,
it is to be presumed, would not germinate. Some, how-
ever, would have vigor enough to grow even then. We
have forgotten who it was, but believe it to have been
a reliable person, recently mentioned the fact, that a peach
or apricot stone was for several years kept as a child’s piay
thing; but upon being planted, grew, and is now a healthy
tree. Such cases are, however, rare.
The intercourse between Great Britain and her distant
colonies, and the various expeditions fitted out from her
shores for purposes of botanical research and for the acquisi-
tion of new plants from distant regions, have made the sub-
ject of seed-saving at sea a matter of much experiment.
In general, the conditions of preservation are three; a
low temperature, dryness, and exclusion of air. But it
often happens, that all these cannot be had, and then a
choice must be made between them. Heat and moisture
will either germinate the seeds or corrupt them. In long
voyages, and in warm regions, moisture contained in the
seed, if in a close bottle, is sufficient to destroy the seed.
Glass bottles have therefore been rejected. Seeds for long
voyages, or for long preservation, are thoroughly ripened
and thoroughly dried; but dried without raising the tempe-
rature of the air, as this would impair their vitality. They
are then wrapped in coarse paper, and put, loosely, in a
coarse canvas bag, and hung up in a cool and airy place.
In this way seeds will be as nearly secure from heat and
moisture—their two worst enemies—as may be. It is pro-
bable that some seeds have but a short period of vitality
under any circumstances of preservation. Seeds contain-
ing much oil, are peculiarly liable to spoil. Lindley sug-
gests that the oil becomes rancid.
248 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
The preservation of seeds from one season to another, for
home use, is not difficult, and may be described in three
sentences: ripen them well, dry them thoroughly, and
keep them aired and cool.
RHUBARB.
RuvBARB or pie-plant is becoming as indispensable to the
garden as corn, or potatoes, or tomatoes. No family
should be without it. It comes in after winter apples are
gone and before green apples come in again for tarts. By
a little attention it may be had from the last of March
through the whole summer. Indeed, it may be had
through the whole year. The root contains within itself
all the nourishment required to develop the leaves and
stalks at first, without any other aid than warmth and mois-
ture. If then it be lifted late in the fall or during open
weather in winter, and put in large pots, nail kegs, boxes,
etc., put In a warm room, or cellar, it will soon send up a
supply of leaves. It is not even necessary that there should
be much light, for the want of it only makes the stem
whiter and of a milder acid. The roots thus used may
either be thrown away, or set out again and not used until
they have recovered, which will be in about one summer,
For early spring use, select a warm spot in the garden,
and late in the fall dig in around your roots a good supply
of rotten manure. Cover them with coarse manure, straw,
or litter. As soon as the frost comes out of the ground,
knock out the ends of a barrel and put one over each plant
from which you propose to gain an early supply. Put a
quantity of coarse manure around the outside of the bar-
rel to maintain the warmth, and, in cold nights and during
cold rains, lay a board over the open top. Thus treated,
you may have tarts in March, But the main supply of this
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 249
wholesome plant is to arise from open cultivation. The
roots may be gained from seed or from division of old
roots. Eastern writers recommend sowing the seed in
autumn; but in the West spring sowings have vegetated
much better than an autumnal planting. In April sow the
seed in deep mellow andrich beds. Keep the plants free from
weeds and in a growing state during the summer. They
may require a little shading during the hottest days of sum-
mer. The next spring we transplant them to a trial-bed ;
for, it is to be remembered, that the seed does not neces-
sarily give a plant like its parent. Let them be set two
feet apart every way, and during the season it can be seen
which are the largest and best; these are to be raised in the
fall, divided and transplanted, and the rest thrown away-
Out of a hundred plants, not more than two or three may
be worth keeping. In the spring of 1842 we planted seed
obtained in New York, for the Victoria Rhubarb (a new
kind), which had been imported but a few months. Of
fifty plants only three proved worth keeping—one of these
for its earliness and the others for size.
When you have secured roots from which you wish to
form a bed for your main supply, divide them either in the
fall or spring into as many pieces as there are buds on the
crown, each piece having, of course, a bud. The smallest
slice of root will live, although a large portion is preferable.
Do not be too timid in dividing; the plant is exceedingly
tenacious of life—it can hardly be killed. We have had
roots lying in the open air for weeks, and when replanted
growing with undiminished vigor. Every one who has, for
a single season, tended a garden, knows what dock is, and
how tenacious of life, so much so, as to make it quite a
trouble. The rhubarb isa full-blooded vegetable brother,
belonging to the same family of plants.
This plant thrives most luxuriantly in a rich, sandy loam;
the earth should be spaded and mellowed to at least twenty
inches depth. We prepare ground for it as follows: Mark
250 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
out the row with a line, throw out the top earth on one
side; throw out a full spade depth of subsoil upon the
other side. Throw back the top dirt, mixing it freely
with well rotted manure. Now put in the soil which was
taken from the bottom of the trench; as this is compara-
tively poor—mix it largely with manure. We make rows
four feet apart, and set the plants three feet apart in the
row. Very little care is needed in after cultivation. The
large leaves will shade the ground and check weeds. A
good supply of fresh manure, well dug in once a year, will
keep the plants in heart and health for a long time.
PEAS.
Peas should be planted among the earliest of seeds.
They are a hardy vegetable, and will bear severe frosts in
the spring without injury. A light, sandy soil is the best.
If manured, let only the most thoroughly rotted be used,
Two sorts of peas are sufficient for all ordinary purposes—
one early kind, and one for the later and main supply. The
number of kinds advertised by seedsmen is very great, and
every year adds to the new varieties. Many of them are
of little value, and many, hitherto esteemed, are supplanted
by better ones. The Early Warwick and Cedo Nulli are
fine early peas, unsurpassed till the Prince Albert appeared.
This is now esteemed the earliest of peas, ripening at Boston
in fifty-three days from the time of sowing, and in England
in forty-two days. We hope to be able, soon, to have this
variety for distribution. Early peas are seldom of high
flavor; none that we ever raised are comparable to the
larger and later peas, and it is, therefore, except for market
purposes, not desirable to plant very largely of early sorts.
Of late peas we have, after trying many sorts, fallen back
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING 251
upon the old-fashioned Marrowfat, and now raise 1t exclu-
sively. It will be fit for the table in from seventy to eighty
days after planting. Anight’s tall marrowfat is recom-
mended in Hovey’s Magazine (a standard authority), as of
“delicious quality and producing throughout the whole sea-
son.” We have never had an opportunity of proving it.
We prefer buying our seed to raising it. In this region
the pea-bug pierces every seed-pea, and, although the germ
is not usually destroyed by this depredator, the seed is
weakened, and the certainty of growth very much dimin-
ished. If one must plant buggy peas, let them have scald-
ing water poured upon them and turned off again imme-
diately. The bug will be destroyed and the pea not injured.
When peas are up they require but one or two hoeings,
as they soon shade the ground so as to prevent weeds from
growing. They should be well supplied with brush, strong-
ly set in the ground. When peas are allowed to fall over,
they become mildewed and rot. This also happens when
the rows are planted so near together as to prevent free
circulation of air.
When large quantities of peas are desired they should
be sown broad-east, at the rate of about three bushels to
the acre—more rather than less. It leaves the land in fine
tilth, smothering all weeds. Thirty bushels to the acre is
a fair crop; but eighty-four, and eighty-eight, have been
taken.
AUTUMN-PLANTED Ontons.—Onions for seed should be
planted in October; and, like their more brilliant, but less
perfumed, friends of the tulip and hyacinth connections,
they will thoroughly root themselves during the autumn
and mild winter weather, and be ready for early work, the
moment the frost rises from the ground.
252 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
PLANT SHADE-TREES.
WE would suggest to the editors of newspapers the pro-
priety of establishing in their columns a permanent agricul-
tural department. We are much pleased to see that many
excellent papers are doing it, and that others insert occa-
sional articles. Great advantage cannot fail to accrue to
our town and rural population by putting into their hands
every week, able articles from practical farmers and gar-
deners upon the various topics of agriculture and horticul-
ture. Let every paper urge the setting out of shade-trees
in our villages. It is greatly to be desired, that all our
towns should be filled with elms, maples, ashes, locusts, ete.
The cultivation of fruit may be much encouraged and pro-
moted by a frequent republication of articles on that sub-
ject. The gardens and conservatories of a few very wealthy
gentlemen do not constitute a horticultural community.
They are of great use in the procuration and cultivation of
new varieties of plants, and in testing important matters by
expensive experiments. But affluent men and their pleas-
ure grounds are to horticulture, what universities are to
common schools; that State is best educated whose whole
population are the most thoroughly trained ; and that is the
horticultural State, a// of whose villages, towns, farms, and
gardens, are in the highest state of cultivation.
Our desire is to diffuse a love for rural affairs, husbandry,
and horticulture among the whole mass of the community.
Weerns 1n AtLErys.—lt is said that weeds may be entirely
destroyed for years by copious watering with a solution of
lime and sulphur in boiling-hot water. This, if effectual,
will be highly important to such as have garden gravel
walks, pavements, ‘etc., through which grass and weeds
grow up.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 253
HOT-BEDS.
Arter a little practice any one can make and manage a
simple hot-bed. For a common family one twelve by
four feet will be large enough, and nine by four will answer
for a small family. rame.—The frame should be made of
two-inch stuff (pine or poplar). The back must be as high
again as the front, in order to give the right inclination to
the sash. The ends should be nailed fast to corner posts,
say four inches square. The back and front are to be
attached to those parts by iron bolts, which may be screwed
or unscrewed at pleasure. The frame may be taken to
pieces, if so made, and put away during the season it is not
in use. A frame twelve by four, will take four sash of
three feet wide, the other sized frame will take three sash.
Where the sash meet, a piece of wood three inches broad
and two thick, should be let in from back to front, for the
sash to run upon, and it may be allowed to extend back for
two feet beyond the body of the frame. Three coats of
paint should be put on the outside and inside of the
frame, and then, with good care, it will last twenty
years. Mark out the ground six inches larger every
way than your frame. Dig it out a foot deep. Take fresh,
strong horse-dung. Shake it up and mix it thoroughly.
Lay it into the bed evenly, beating it down with the back
of the fork, but never treading it. Raise the bed three feet
above the surface, making the thickness in all four feet. In
a week’s time this will have settled six or eight inches,
We have for the sake of a gentler and longer continued
heat, laid alternate layers of manure and tan-bark, and thus
far it has done well with us. Put on the frame and sash
and let it stand tillthe heat begins to raise, which will be
two or three days. Then raise the sash to let the steam
pass off. In about four days take off the frame, put on
about six inches of light, good soil, evenly, all over the
954 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
bed; replace the frame, and in a day thereafter it will be
ready for seed.
Cabbage, cauliflower, tomatoes, egg plants, peppers,
celery, cucumbers, lettuce, together with savory herbs, as
sweet marjoram, sweet basil, thyme, sage, lavender, etc., etc.
may be sown in drills in the soil prepared as above.
_ It is difficult to give, on paper, the directions for the care
ofthe bed. The greatest dangers of all, are that of burning
the plants by excessive heat, or of damping them off, by too
little air. These evils must be guarded against by the
admission of as much air as possible. In mild days let the
sash be partly open all day, and in very cold days, endeavor
to procure a half hour even, at mid-day, for raising the sash
and airing the plants. As they grow up, if crowded, they
should be thinned out, so as not to run up spindling.
ORIGINAL RECIPES.
WHEN we say original, we don’t mean that no one ever
employed the same recipes, but only this, that we have
obtained them, not from books, but from good and skillful
housewives.
Epicurr®’s Corn BREAD.—Upon two quarts of sifted corn-
meal, pour just enough boiling water to scald it thoroughly ;
if too much water is used it will be heavy. Stir it thoroughly,
let it get cold; then rub ina piece of butter as large as a
hen’s egg, together with two teaspoonfuls of fine salt ; beat
four eggs thoroughly, and they will be all the better if the
whites and yolks are beaten separately, add them to the
meal and mix thoroughly. Next, add a pint of sour cream,
or butter-milk, or sour milk (which stand in the order of
their value). Dissolve two teapoonfuls of saleratus in hot
water, and stir it in. Put it in buttered pans and bake it
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 955
In winter, it may be mixed over night and in that case,
the eggs and saleratus should not be put in until morning.
When ready for the oven, the mixture ought to be about as
thin as ‘good mush, and if not, more cream should be
added.
If you are not an epicure already, you will be in danger
of becoming one, if you eat much of this corn cake—
provided tt is well made.
Sucar GINGER-BREAD.—To three-quarters of a pound of
butter and not quite a pint of finely rolled brown sugar, adda
great spoonful of ginger, and alittle cinnamon and nutmeg ;
beat these up to a foam; beat four eggs thoroughly and
add and mix well, with the butter and sugar. Add a tea-
cup of rich cream, a great spoonful of saleratus dissolved in
hot water. Stir in sifted flour as long as it can be worked.
Pound and knead the dough very thoroughly. Roll out
quite thin, cut into small cakes, bake in a quick oven. They
will be hard, but tender and crisp.
Hoosier Biscurr.—Add a teaspoonful of salt to a pint of
new milk, warm from the cow. Stir in flour until it
becomes a stiff batter; add two great spoonfuls of lively
brewer’s yeast ; put it in a warm place and let it rise just as
much as it will. When well raised, stir in a teaspoonful of
saleratus dissolved in hot water. Beat up three eggs (two
will answer), stir with the batter, and add flour until it
becomes tolerable stiff dough ; knead it thoroughly, set it
by the fire until it begins to rise, then roll out, cut to
biscuit form, put in pans, cover it over with a thick cloth,
set by the fire until it rises again, then bake in a quick
oven. If well made, no directions will be needed for
eating. ;
As all families are not provided with scales and weights,
referring to the ingredients generally used in cakes and
pastry, we subjoin a list of weights and measures.
256 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
WEIGHT AND MEASURE.
Wheat flour one pound is one quart,
Indian meal one pound two ounces, is one quart.
Butter, when soft one pound one ounce, is one quart.
Loaf-sugar, broken, one pound is one quart.
White sugar, powdered, one pound one ounce, is one quart.
Best brown sugar one pound two ounces, is one quart.
Eggs ten eggs are one pound.
LIQUID MEASURE.
Sixteen large tablespoonfuls are half a pint
Eight large tablespoonfuls are one gill.
Four large tablespoonfuls are half a gill.
A common sized tumber holds half a pint.
A common sized wine glass holds half a gill.
Allowing for accidental differences in the quality, fresh-
ness, dryness, and moisture of the articles, we believe this
comparison between weight and measure to be as nearly
correct as possible.
COOKING VEGETABLES.
Wuite we believe meat to be necessary to laboring men,
we are equally sure that it is used to excess; for persons of
a sedentary habit, vegetable diet is supposed to be much
more wholesome, because much less stimulating than meat.
Whatever shall make vegetables more relishful will
extend their popular use, and therefore any simple recipe
for cooking them is a public good. The following are
taken fresh from the kitchen, and we will vouch for their
being good, although there may be other ways still better.
1. GreEens.—The articles employed for greens are numer-
ous; we merely mention the following :—sprouts of turnip
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 257
and cabbage, dandelions, lamb’s quarters, red-rooted
plantain, cowslip, wild pepper-grass, purslain, young beet-
tops, lettuce, and spinage—the best of all greens.
In gathering plantain, care must be taken to select only
the red-rooted, the white being thought poisonous. With
the exception of spinage, all these should be boiled in salted
water, or in water witha piece of salt pork, for half an hour,
then taken out, drained, and served up with butter gravy.
Spinage is boiled, as above, for half an hour, then taken
out, thoroughly drained, put into a skillet with cream, butter
and pepper, and if need be, a little more salt. Place it over
the fire and stir it up with a knife all the time it simmers,
until it becomes a paste. About five minutes are enough
for this last process—then dish and serve it.
2. Asparagus.—Asparagus should never be cut below the
surface of the ground, although books and papers, almost
universally, direct to the contrary. The white part of the
stem is always tough and inedible. Let it spring up about
six or eight inches and then cut it at the surface of the
ground. Lay it in the pan or kettle in which it is to be
cooked, and sprinkle salt over it. Pour boiling water over
it, until it is just covered; boil from fifteen to twenty-five
minutes, according to the age of the asparagus. Have two
or three nicely toasted slices of bread in the dish which is
to go to the table; lay the asparagus upon the toast, putting
first sweet butter and pepper upon it according to your
taste; lastly pour over it the liquor in which it was boiled.
Many throw away the water in which it was cooked and
substitute cream and butter, but thereby the finest flavor
of the vegetable is thrown away and lost.
8. Brnrs.—While young, beets may be boiled tops and
all; as the tops get tough the root alone is boiled in salted
water until tender, viz. from three-quarters of an hour to
an hour and a half, according to the size of the beet.
Quarter or slice them if large, and add fresh sweet butter
and pepper.
958 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
4, Peas.—No vegetable depends more for its excellence .
upon good cooking than peas. Have them freshly gathered
and shelled, dut never wash them. If they are not per-
fectly clean, roll them in a dry cloth; but even this is sel-
dom required, and then only through carelessness. Pour
them dry into the cooking dish, and put as much salt over
them as is required, then pour on boiling water enough to
cover them; boil them fifteen minutes if they are young;
no pea is fit to cook which requires more than half an hour’s
boiling. When done, put to a quart of peas three great table-
spoonfuls of butter, and pepper to your taste. Put all the
water to them in which they were boiled. The great mis-
takes in cooking peas are in cooking too long, and in de-
luging them with water.
STRING or sNaP beans are cooked like peas, only they
require longer boiling.
5. Corn should be boiled in salted water from twenty
to thirty minutes, according to its age; if boiled longer it
becomes hard and loses its flavor. We have given in the
Western Farmer and Gardener, p. 231, a recipe for corn
and beans, but as all may not see that periodical, we extract
the substance of it.
We give directions for a mess sufficient for a family of
Six or seven.
To about half a pound of salt pork put three quarts of
cold water; let it boil. Now cut off three quarts of green
corn from the cobs, set the corn aside and put the cobs to
boil with the pork, as they will add much to the richness of
the mixture. When the pork has boiled, say half an hour,
remove the cobs and put in one quart of freshly-gathered,
green, shelled beans; boil again for fifteen minutes; then
add the three quarts of corn and let it boil another fifteen
minutes. Now turn the whole out into a dish, add five or
six large spoonfuls of butter, season it with pepper to your
taste, and with salt also, if the salt of the pork has not
proved sufficient. If the liquor has boiled away, it will be
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 259
necessary to add a little more to it before taking it away
from the fire, as this is an essential part of the affair.
6. Satsiry oR OysTER-PLANT.—This vegetable is raised
exactly as are carrots and parsnips. Like the latter—they
require a little frosting before their flavor is fully devel-
oped.
They should be scraped and washed (but noé soaked in
vinegar, as English cooks direct, to extract a bitter taste,
which they do not contain), and sliced; sprinkle enough
salt upon them to season them, pour on just enough boiling
water to cover them; boil till perfectly tender, which will
be, say fifteen minutes. Put butter and pepper to them;
stir up a little flour in cream to make a thin paste and pour
in enough to thicken a little the water in which they were
boiled. Dish with or without toasted bread, as may suit
the taste.
7. Tomators.—The recipe which we gave in the Furmer
and Gardener has been universally copied, and, we believe,
has beguiled thousands to the love of tomatoes. It has
been introduced to cook-books under the name of “ Indiana
Recipe for Cooking Tomatoes.”
8. Ontons should be boiled for half an hour in salted
water, then drained, put into sweet milk, boiled again for
five or ten minutes, seasoned with butter, pepper and salt,
and served up.
9. Pin-pLant—This important vegetable—among the
earliest, the most wholesome, and of the easiest culture—
should be found in every garden, and served up on every
table during the spring and early summer. To prepare it
for use, strip off the skin, slice it thin, put into a dish with
a few spoonfuls of boiling water, just enough to keep from
sticking, for its own juice will afford liquid enough after it
is cooked. Boil until it is perfectly tender, stirring it con-
stantly. If the plant is good and the fire quick, it ought
to be boiled in five minutes. Stir in all the sugar needed
while it is in a scalding state. A little nutmeg or lemon
260 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
peel, put in while it is hot, improves the flavor. When cool,
it may be used for tarts, or pies, with or without upper
crust ; it also makes a better apple-sauce than apples do
themselves.
10. Eae-prant.—Boil in salted water a few minutes; cut
slices, put a little salt between each slice, and let them lie
for half an hour. Then fry them in butter or lard until
they are brown.
11. CavuLIFLOWER AND Broccor1.—The only difference
between these, so far as the cook is concerned, is in color.
Take off the outside leaves and soak them for an hour in
salted water. Pour boiling water to them and boil for about
twenty minutes. Serve them up with butter and pepper.
The Savoy cabbages are next in delicacy of flavor to the
cauliflower, and may be cooked in the same way.
FARMERS, TAKE A HINT.
Ir is very surprising to see how slow men are to take a
hint. The frost destroys about half the bloom on the fruit-
trees; everybody prognosticates the loss of fruit; instead
of that, the half that remains is larger, fairer, and higher
flavored than usual; and the trees instead of being ex-
hausted, are ready for another crop the next year. Why
don’t the owner take the hint and thin out his fruit every
bearing year? But no; the next season sees his orchard
overloaded, fruit small, and not well formed; yet he
always boasts of that first-mentioned crop without profiting
by the lesson it teaches.
We heard a man saying, “ the best crop of celery I ever
saw, was raised by old John , on a spot of ground
where the wash from the barn-yard ran into it after every
hard shower.” Did he take the hint, and convey such
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. °61
liquid manure in trenches to his garden? Not at all;
he bragged about that wonderful crop of celery, but would
not take the hint.
We knew a case where a farmer subsoiled a field and
raised crops in consequence which were the admiration of
the neighborhood; and for years the field showed the
advantage of deep handling. But we could not learn that a
single farmer in the neighborhood took the hint. The man
who acted thus wisely, sold his farm and his successor pur-
sued the old way of surface-scratching.
A stanch farmer complained to us of his soil as too loose
and light; we mentioned ashes as worth trying; “ well,
now you mention it, I believe it will do good. I bought a
part of my farm from a man who was a wonderful fellow to
save up ashes, and around his cabin it lay in heaps. I took
away the house and ordered the ashes to be scattered, and
to this day I notice that when the plow runs along through
that spot, the ground turns up moist and close-grained.”
It is strange that he never took the hint! There are thou-
sands of bushels of ashes lying not far from his farm about
an oid soap and candle factory with which he might have
dressed his whole farm.
A farmer gets a splendid crop of corn or grain from off a
grass or clover lay. Does he take the hint? Does he
adopt the system which shall allow him every year just
such a sward to put his grain on? No, he hates book-
farming, and scientific farming, and “this notion of rota-
tion ;” and jogs on the old way.
A few years ago our farmers got roundly into debt; and
they have worried and sweat under it, till some of them
have grown greyer, and added not a few wrinkles to their
face. Do they take the hint? Are they not pitching into
debt again ?
A few years ago mules commanded a high price ; every-
body raised mules forthwith; the market of course was
glutted; the price fell; everybody quit the business; mar-
962, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
kets became empty and the price rose; a few men who
had stuck to the business pushed in their droves and made
money ; and now everybody is raising mules again. The
same game is played every four or five years with pork;
men make when pork is scarce, but few farmers have stock
on hand. They instantly rush into the business, flood the
country with hogs and get almost nothing for them. Why
don’t men take the hint? A moderate stock all the time,
makes more money than that system which has none when
the price is high and too many when the price is low.
Because one year, the wheat crop has been very large
and fine, and the price low, not half so much will be put in
another year. Those who are wise, foreseeing this fact and
sowing largely, will, if the season favors wheat, reap a hand-
some profit.
Auctioneers tell us that a “ wink is as good as a word.”
We give both, and hope our readers will take the hint.
MIXING PAINT, AND LAYING IT ON.
Ir 1s convenient, and oftentimes, on the score of economy,
necessary for persons (who have not been apprenticed to
the trade), to do their own painting. To enable such to
practise with success, we propose giving a few hints.
RESPECTING THE ARTICLES USED.
Wauirt Lreav.—This is extensively manufactured in all of
our principal cities. Low priced leads are always adulterated
by chalk, or, as it is called in its prepared state, whiting. It
is sometimes so largely mixed with this, as to be worthless,
and every one has observed houses, painted for a year
or so, from which the paint rubs off like whitewash, in
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 263
consequence of the use of adulterated lead. The poorest
lead is sold without any brand. The common article is
branded as No. 1, with the maker’s name. The best article
is branded with the maker’s name, as PurE, or SUPERIOR.
It is the best economy always to use the pure lead.
Or.—Linseed oil is that usually employed in painting.
It contains a large amount of fatty substance and of other
impurity, which should be separated from it before it is
used. This is to be done by boiling. For outside work,
the oil should always be boiled, no matter what the painter
says about it. Great care should be taken in doing this.
Let the kettle be set out of doors, the heat be increased
gradually, but never enough to produce violent boiling, as
the oil will expand, run over, and take fire, when nothing
can save it, or the house either, oftentimes, if you have
been foolish enough to do it within doors. As fast as
impurities rise to the surface, skim them off—when the oil
has a clear look, slack off the fire and let the oil cool; care-
fully turn off the clear portion, leaving the sediment undis-
turbed.
Dryerrs.—Substances used to make paint dry quickly
are called Dryers. For light work,sugar of lead is the
best ; for colored paint, litharge and red lead are employed.
Spirits of turpentine is used for the same purpose. Litharge
and red lead are usually boiled in with the oil at the
rate of about a quarter of a pound of litharge to a gallon
of oil.
Mixine anp Layine On.—Paint is purchased in kegs,
containing twenty-five pounds of lead ground in oil, and
ready for mixing. The kegs themselves make excellent
paint-pots. The lead is to be mixed according to the work
to be done. If paint is laid on in heavy coats it will crack
and peel off. If several thin coats are successively laid on,
it forms a solid body. The first coat is called priming.
The lead is made quite thin with oil for priming. Before
laying it on, let the work be cleaned, all dust and dirt be
264 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
removed. The surface is then covered evenly with paint,
and allowed to dry thoroughly.
Sreconp Coat.—Let nail-holes, cracks, etc., be filled with
putty; for colored painting, red-lead putty is the best.
The paint should be mixed to the thickness of thin cream,
and laid on evenly, but not in too great quantities. In nice
work, after this coat has thoroughly dried, it should be
rubbed down with pumice-stone or fine sand-paper. The
third coat is to be laid on as was the second. Three coats,
at least, are required for good painting. Four or five will
be still better.
Paint mixed with boiled oil usually has a glossy appear-
ance. If it is desired to increase this, small portions of
varnish are added. This is usually confined to outside
work,
In cities the glossy surface of paint, is dis-esteemed for
inside work; and instead, a flatted white is laid on. This
is produced by mixing the lead for the last coat with tur-
pentine instead of oil, by which a dull white is made,
Flatted colors are not susceptible of being cleaned by wash-
jng more that once or twice, whereas common paint will
endure washing, if carefully performed, for years. If paint-
ing is well done, and the paint is of the best materials, it
ought to last twenty years. But the trash too often
daubed upon buildings, does not last five years.
White will keep its color best for outside work. Some
tint is thought to be more agreeable for inside work. Much
judgment is required in preparing colored or tinted paints;
and verbal directions cannot well be given for it in any
moderate space. The usual pigments employed in making
up the tints most in fashion, are for grey—white lead,
Prussian blue, ivory black, and lake, or Venetian red; for
pea and sea greens—white, Prussian blue, and yellow ; for
olive green—white, Prussian blue, umber, and yellow
ochre; for fawn color—burned terra sienna, umber, and
white.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 265
We add two recipes taken from an English work, for a
cheap paint for inside walls.
“Mirx Paryt.—A paint has been used on the Continent
with success, made from milk and lime, that dries quicker
than oil paint, and has no smell. It is made in the follow-
ing manner: Take fresh curds and bruise the lumps on a
grinding-stone, or in an earthen pan, or mortar, with a spa-
tula or strong spoon. Then put them into a pot with an
equal quantity of lime, well slacked with water, to make it
just thick enough to be kneaded. Stir this mixture without
adding more water, and a white-colored fluid will soon be
obtained, which will serve as a paint. It may be laid on
with a brush with as much ease us varnish, and it dries
very speedily. It must, however, be used the same day it
is made, for if kept till next day it will be too thick: conse-
quently no more must be mixed up at one time than can be
laid on in a day. If any color be required, any of the
ochres, as yellow ochre, or red ochre, or umber, may be
mixed with it in any proportion. Prussian blue would be
changed by the lime. Two coats of this paint will be suffi-
cient, and when quite dry it may be polished with a piece
of woollen cloth, or similar substance, and it will become as
bright as varnish. It will only do for inside work; but it
will last longer if varnished over with white of egg after it
has been polished.”
“The following recipe for milk paint is given in
‘Smith’s Art of House Painting: Take of skimmed
milk nearly two quarts; of fresh-slaked lime about six
ounces and a half; of linseed oil four ounces, and of whiting
three pounds; put the lime into a stone vessel, and pour
upon it a sufficient quantity of milk to form a mixture
resembling thin cream; then add the oil, a little at a time,
stirring it with a small spatula; the remaining milk is then
to be added, and lastly the whiting. The milk must on
no account be sour. Slake the lime by dipping the pieces
266 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
in water, out of which it is to be immediately taken, and
left to slake in the air. For fine white paint the oil of
varaway is best, because colorless; but with ochres the com-
monest oils may be used. The oil when mixed with the
milk and lime entirely disappears, and is totally dissolved
by the lime, forming a calcareous soap. The whiting or
ochre is to be gently crumbled on the surface of the fluid,
which it gradually imbibes, and at last sinks: at this
period it must be well stirred in. This paint may be
colored like distemper or size-color, with levigated charcoal,
yellow ochre, etc., and used in the same manner. The
quantity here prescribed is sufficient to cover twenty-seven
square yards with the first coat, and it will cost about three
halfpence a yard. The same paint will do for outdoor
work by the addition of two ounces of slaked lime, two
ounces of linseed oil, and two ounces of white Burgundy
pitch: the pitch to be melted in a gentle heat with the oil,
and then added to the smooth mixture of the milk and
lime. In cold weather it must be mixed warm, to facilitate
its incorporation with the milk.”
We add several recipes of various convenient kinds of
paint to be employed in particular situations, and for special
purposes.
“A coating to preserve wood in damp situations may
be made by beating twelve pounds of resin in a mortar,
and adding to it three pounds of sulphur and twelve pints
of whale oil. This mixture must then be melted over a fire,
and stirred well while it is melting. Ochre of any required
color, ground in oil, may be put to it. This composition
must be laid on hot, and when the first coat is dry, which
will be in two or three days, a second coat may be given;
and a third, if necessary.”
“ Gas tar, with yellow ochre, makes a very cheap and
durable green paint for iron rails and coarse woodwork.”
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 267
“ Composition to lay on a boarded building, to resist the
weather and likewise fire-—Take one measure of fine sand,
two measures of wood-ashes well sifted, three of slaked
lime ground up with oil, and mix them together; lay this
on with a brush, the first coat thin, the second thick. This
adheres so strongly to the boards covered with it, that it
resists an iron tool, and the action of fire, and is impene-
trable by water.”
“ A flexible paint for canvas is made by stirring into
fifty-six pounds of common oil paint a solution of sozp lye,
made of half a pound of soap and three pounds of water: it
must be used while warm.”
“A black coloring for garden walls may be made by
mixing quicklime, lampblack, a little copperas, and hot
water.”
GARDEN WEEDS.
Arter hot weather sets in many are naturally inclined to
relax their garden labors; they have eaten their salads,
their radishes and peas; their beans and corn require but
little attention, and as for the rest, it is left to the company
of weeds.
Weeps.—lIf the garden be thoroughly hoed twice or
three times, the labor of keeping down weeds the rest of the
summer will be small. It is best to go over a compartment
first with the hoe, to cut off weeds and loosen the soil, then
with a rake go over it again, levelling and smoothing the
surface, and collecting the weeds into heaps, which should
be wheeled to the manure-corner and left to decay. In
raking, tread backward so that your tracks will be covered
by the rake, and the bed left even.
Among the most vexatious weeds may be mentioned the
purslam (Portulacca oleracea), commonly called pussly.
It comes in May and lasts through the summer. One plant
268 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
bears seed enough for a whole acre. It is very tenacious
of life. The least bit of root sprouts again, and when
rooted up, if a single fibre touches the soil, it starts off in
full vigor. When boiled it furnishes a very palatable article
of “greens.” We go over the ground with a hoe, then
rake it into heaps and wheel it to the barn-yard. Hogs
are fond of it, and it is said to fatten them well. It is
somewhat amusing to those who are vexed at its insuper-
able intrusiveness and its inevitable vigor, to hear English
garden-books speaking of it as “somewhat tender,” of rais-
ing it on hot-beds, of drilling it in the open garden, of
watering it in dry weather thrice a week, and cutting it
carefully so that it may sprout again! Cut it as you please,
gentlemen! rake it into alleys, let an August sun scorch it,
and if there is so much as a handful of dirt thrown at it, no
fear but that it will sprout again. It is a vegetable type of
immortality. The Jamestown weed (called jimpsum), the
Spanish needle, lamb’s-quarters, etc., are easily eradicated
for the season by one or two hoeings. The grasses which
infest gardens, spreading into a cultivated ground from the
grass-plat, or brought in with manure, are easily weeded
out if plucked while small; but if left, the long spreading-
roots tear up tender plants along with them.
It is said that if no seeds were brought into the land by
wind or manure, or growth, the stock of weeds might be
eradicated in eight years. But so long as corners and
fence edges are reserved as weed-nurseries, to furnish an
annual supply of seed, no one need fear that gardening will
become too easy from want of work.
We know of but two reasons for letting weeds grow to
any size. In a large garden, when all the ground is not to
be planted at once, the reserved portions may he suffered
to sprout all the weeds, and when six or eight inches high,
if turned under, they will furnish good manure. Again,
when cut-worms are very numerous, when tomatoes and
cabbages have been set out on a clean compartment, we
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 269
fiave lost from a half to two-thirds of the plants. If the
weeds are kept down just about the hill, and permitted to
grow for a few weeks, between the rows, although it has a
very slovenly look, it will save the cabbages, etc.,. by giving
ample foot to the cut-worm. When the plants grow tough
in the stem the weeds may be lightly spaded in, and the
surface levelled with a rake.
LUCERNE.
Tuts admirable plant is not so well known as it should be.
It resembles a clover, and is used for green food for cattle,
for which it is peculiarly adapted both by its nutriciousness
and its endurance of repeated cuttings. Care must be
taken to put it upon the right soil and it will bear mowing
four or five times a year, and will last for ten years—with
care five years more! The soil for it is a deep, a very deep
vegetable loam, which drains itself perfectly and yet with-
out becoming dry. It has a fusiform root, which, as the
plant grows older, extends downward from four to six feet.
The subsoil is regarded by Flemish farmers as of more
importance than the surface soil. A stiff, cold, clay, a wet
and springy soil; a hard, cold, wet subsoil of any sort, is
unfavorable to it. It should therefore be tried on warm,
dry, and rich soils, than which none are better than our
sandy alluvions or bottom lands. During its first year it
requires some care, to keep down weeds, as it is easily
smothered ; but when once established it rules the soil in
defiance of anything. Ifthe ground is very clean, it may be
sown broadcast; but it is always safer and often necessary
to drill it. Authors vary as to the quantity of seed
required per acre, Von Thaér says six to eight pounds,
while his French editor says from sixteen to eighteen. We
270 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
suppose that from ten to twelve pounds will be a fair
amount.
When the plants are well established they will be
improved by severe harrowing every spring, a sharp har-
row being used until the field looks as if it were plowed.
Lucerne has been tried by a few cultivators in the West,
but by more in the East, with great success, and it has this
peculiar excellence, that, thanks to its very long roots, it
withstands our severest droughts; indeed our hottest and
dryest summers are those which it seems to delight in.
FAMILY GOVERNMENT.
“ Wit1i1am! stop that noise, I say—zon’t you stop! Stop,
I tell you, or Pll slap your mouth.”
William bawls a little louder.
“William, I tell you! ain’t you going to stop? Stop I
say! If you don’t stop I'll whip you, sure.”
William goes up a fifth, and beats time with his heels.
““T never saw such a child !—he’s got temper enough for
a whole town; I’m sure he didn’t get it from me. Why
don’t you be still! Whist. Wh-i-st. Come, come, be still,
won’t you? Stop, stop, stop, say! Don’t you see this—
don’t you see this stick? See here now,” (cuts the air with
the stick).
William, more furious, kicks very manfully at his mother
—grows redder in the face, lets out the last note, and
begins to reel, and shake, and twist, in a most spiteful
manner.
“Come, William! come dear—that’s a darling—naughty
William! come, that’s a good boy; donty ery, p-o-o-r, little
fellow; sant ab-o-o-s-e you, sall eh! Ma’s ittle man, want
a piece of sooger? Ma’s little boy got cramp, p-o-o-r little
sick boy,” etc., ete.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 271
William wipes up, and minds, and eats his sugar, and
stops.
Arter ScenE.—The minister is present, and very nice
talk is going on upon the necessity of governing children.
“Too true,” says mamma, “some people will give up to
their children, and it ruins them—every child should be
governed. But then it won’t do to carry it too far; if one
whips all the time it will break a child’s spirit. One
ought to mix kindness and firmness together in managing
children.”
“JT think so,” said the preacher ; “ firmness first and then
kindness.”
“ Yes, sir, that’s my practice exactly.”
CATALOGUE OF FLOWERS, SEEDS, AND FRUITS.
We have received from different directions catalogues of
seeds, flowers, and fruits. Instead of a mere mention of
them, we shall employ them as texts for some remarks on
the departments to which they belong.
The kinds, and varieties of the same kind of vegetables
advertised are satisfactory. Then there is evidence that the
easily besetting sin of seed establishments has been resisted
and very much overcome, viz.: a prodigal multiplication
of varieties. Now we do not wish to tie down a seedsman
to only one variety of cucumber—one pea—one bean; for
there is great advantage in having many varieties of the
same vegetable. Some love mild radishes, and some love
the full peppery taste; as both qualities cannot exist in the
same variety it is desirable to have two. But some radishes
which do admirably in the spring and early summer, lose
their good qualities if planted in summer. We therefore
seek and find a summer variety. This again fails for late
eff PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
autumnal use, and we procure a (so called) winter sort.
We need one pea for its earliness: but early fruit seldom
has size or a high flavor ; we desire other varieties, there-
fore, for flavor, even though, in giving them a longer
period to perfect their juices, we havea late pea. But some
men raise peas for market, and cannot afford to raise a pea
merely because fine-flavored, unless also it is prolific. 'Then,
once more, market peas must be raised, usually as a field-
pea, and sown broadcast. Some peas stand up stronger
than others, and these are of course preferred. Now, as we
cannot find any vegetable that combines all the qualities of
earliness, size, flavor, and adaptation to variety of soil and
diversity of cultivation, we come as near to it as possible,
by gaining varieties, in which some one or more of these
qualities are better developed than in any others. The rea-
sons for multiplying varieties afford a rule by which they
may be limited.
The fact that a seed is a variety different from all others
is no good reason for retaining or cultivating it; it must, in
SOME respects, surpass others now in use, or it only encum-
bers the garden. What is the use of ten varieties of peas
ripening at the same time of one size, and differmg from
each other in not one assignable particular? When a cata-
logue enumerates fifty varieties of cabbage, or pea, or bean,
are we to believe that each of the fifty has a virtue peculiar
to itself? If not, if two-thirds of them have no merit
which is not found, and found in a higher degree, in the
one-third they have no business to be retained. Let the
one-third, stand and the rest be erased. We regarda very
fat catalogue as we do a very fat man—all the worse for its
obesity. In comparing catalogues, we are not left as much
without an authoritative standard of judgment, in respect
to a proper extension of the number of varieties, as might
at first appear. English gardening has been carried tosuch
a degree of excellence, both as an art and as a science, that
we may regard the deliberate judgment of the best gar
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 273
deners as law on this subject. When Loudon published his
invaluable “ Encyclopedia of Gardening,” he was permitted
by the London Horticultural Society to avail himself of the
services of the distinguished Monro in the department of
culinary vegetables.
Let us compare the catalogues of three first rate seedsmen
as it respects a multiplication of varieties, with Mr. Monro’s
selections :
f 8 3 :
F : - | & ©
aig P| os “/S1e/]//8
i) it} — o u 2 ao 3 >
s ao o 3 a o o Oo
Set yee tn Ue Rest |e sd
Mendrathn cd. Sikes cc. Sos: 2115/2] 5\ 9]10| 7/15] 8
Brockett) t..dbi 95.2! 9|/10| 6| 8 | 22] 18 | 20 | 24 | 19
LTC ae a 17/25! 8! 9130149 | 47 | 61 | 56
Mr. Monro names nineteen kinds of peas only, instead
of forty-seven: twenty-two kinds of beans instead of siaty-
one ; seven varieties of turnip instead of twenty-two, or,
worse yet, thirty; fourteen sorts of lettuce, instead of fifty-
two.
To the uninitiated a catalogue may look meagre with only
eight kinds of lettuce instead of fifty ; fifteen beans instead
of sixty-one, etc., but these corpulent catalogues make
meagre pockets, except in the case of the seedsman. A
much greater latitude of varieties is allowable in a nursery
catalogue than in a seedsman’s list. But in even these
there is a disposition to extravagance which needs to be cor-
rected. Where the disproportion of knowledge between
the buyers and seller is so great as it is, and for some time,
must be, in horticultural matters, it becomes nurserymen
and seedsmen who are honest (and we have many such, and
they are increasing)—those who regard their business as an
honorable branch of science, as well asa proper means of
livelihood, and who hope to gain a high reputation, even
274 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
more than they do wealth, it becomes such to render the
lists sELEcT; and while the monstrously bloated catalogues
of boasting and avaricious men continue to perplex and de-
ceive the unwary, let all intelligent cultivators sustain
those who rely on the quality rather than quantity of their
articles.
GARDEN SEEDS.
Goop seeds are the very first requisite for a good garden;
soil and culture cannot make good crops out of bad seed.
1. Asa general rule, buy your seeds. The reasons for it
are so many and so good, that you will certainly do it,
unless economy prevent; but it is better to economize else-
where.
In the first place, seed-raising is a delicate business; and,
for many reasons, will be better done by those who make it
their business, than by those who do not. A reputable
seedsman never dreams of raising, himself, all the seeds
which he sells. For example, one sort of seed is let out to
a farmer who contracts to raise it in a given soil and man-
ner, and at a distance from all other seeds. One man raises
the beet seed—another man, very often hundreds of miles
distant, another sort. Peas are sent to Vermont and to
Canada, where the pea-bug does not infest them. Some
seeds, for which this climate is not favorable, are imported
from Italy, from Guernsey—just as flowering bulbs are from
Holland. We suppose this to be true of Landreth, Thorn-
burn, Prince, Bliss, Risley, ete. In cases where seeds are
raised upon the premises of the seedsman, they are put on
different parts of the farm, as far apart as possible.
These precautions are indispensable to the procuration of
the dest seeds of esculent vegetables. Species of the same
genus, with open flowers, are so easily crossed, that, if
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 975
grown contiguously, they cannot be kept pure. All exeurbdi-
taceous plants, such as squashes, pumpkins, melons,
cucumbers, gourds, etc., will mix and degenerate if planted
even in the same garden. Let any one who wishes to see
how it is done, watch the bee covering itself with golden
pollen as it searches for honey in the cells of the flower, and
darting off to another, mingling the fertilizing powder of
the two. In a single morning, cucumbers, will be mixed
with each other, and with canteloupes; squashes will be
crossed, and in the next generation will show it. Where
- the organs of flowers are protected, as in the pea, bean, etc.,
by a floral envelope, insects do not mix their pollen. I
I have never known pure beet seed raised in a private gar-
den which had more than the single kind in it—or when
another garden was near which had other sorts.
We prefer, generally, northern seeds to those raised
elsewhere. A mere change of soil and climate is often
advantageous to seeds. But besides this, greater care and
skill are usually employed at the north in producing sound
and safe seeds.
We can recommend, from repeated trials, the seeds of
Risley, Chatauque county, N. Y., and of Mr. Breck of
Boston. Landreth of Philadelphia has a high reputation ;
so have the veteran Thorburn of John Street, and the enter-
prising house of B. K. Bliss & Sons of Park Place, New
York.
2. Some seeds retain their power of germination to an
astonishing length of time, as will appear from facts stated
by Prof. Lindley :
“ Not to speak of the doubtful instances of seeds taken
from the Pyramids having germinated, melons have been
known to grow at the age of 40 years, kidney beans at 100,
sensitive-plant at 60, rye at 40; and there are now grow-
ing, in the garden of the Horticultural Society, raspberry
276
plants raised from seeds 1600 or 1700 years old.”
PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
(See
“Introduction to Botany,” ed. 3, p. 358.)
But in selecting seeds, fresh ones should be had if pos-
sible.
Where, however, the vegetable is cultivated for the
sake of its flower, or its fruit, it is sometimes better tc select
old seed.
Thus balsamines (the touch-me-not) and the
cucumber, squash and melon tribe do better on seeds three
or four years old; for fresh seeds produce plants whose
growth will be too luxuriant for producing fruit; whereas
from old seed, the plants have less vigor of growth but a
greater tendency to fruit well
We insert a table, exhibiting the years which different
seeds will retain their vitality.
TIME THAT SEEDS WILL KEEP.
YEARS.
Asparagus........-...... 40r 18
Balm..
subooddsegounocde 2
NS ASTI W ys cesicieve Baltes Sales lor3
BG ANS Scteverc ie 6 cists sistcvencrste lor 2
SE CtS a) ane Gis eer o Sastre CHOL LO
ISOUNES . sq gnapodoDOGI0uS 2
Wabbaxe ar «i-/cmis« fers se 6 or 8
(CANTO Ur rete ers ie scinielewin els ale lor7
Celery ARORE 6 or 8
COLI reread ove leis cote te teyionsvtnes ts 2or3
Cress.) Wiwiercje Weters eisielehee
Cucumber. <0. cs Seicles OT OLELD
(CEU EMG goonooooD JG0000 ©
Mennelec sonic, sss,0 cteue avatene
Garlic’... 'sre <i G cinta avalos ereelene
Wie Kees iis ere id Stovcttertene ~o oor
Lettuce...
YEAR.
Marjorama. . <<< «scenes ene
Micl orig cieistelete siiclneieeets ie OLORMLO
Mustard). 5, 5 siciete «ses cttsiee een
Nasturtium. .........e00es 2 or 3
Cmitonwegadcamoccosacoce 2
Parsley: -aeyersiseleiaete AO 6 hc 5 or 6
IRAN SND Er oiyetre AE ncdoo 6 5 il
eaerercyecione PAs oe eS
Pumpkine seer widvete tater oon SvOr LG
Rep Peli siecretoteneteie ois(o' ps ORORNG:
IMAGER qgds duccso ac . 6or 8
RUGS micjoicl=ceiafslsnale}oleseteataemes
Ruta Baga... ccs sie eon
Salsify:s< osc <0 see eee 2
NAVOLY:. ole ole ele)sciels fesse ieei ORC
SPIDALS. .\clcesisiel stoke BO oon. Bs 4
DQUASD:; . sie'sc cecetieloerteeme ROMEO
TULMIP. «cs0i00sevsjeesiatenie eee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING.
bo
=I
=I
FARMERS’ GARDENS.
FarMeErs are apt to have very inferior gardens. The
idea is, that in the spring they have no time; the farm crops
are of more importance. In consequence of such a decision,
no garden will be had unless the housewife is willing to be
gardenwife too. At her importunity at length one horse is
put to the plow and the garden is broken up—say four
inches deep. Possibly the boy is allowed to throw up the
beds, but very often even this is left to woman’s hand. She
has to hunt up seed ; peppers are pulled off from the ceiling
and eviscerated; drawers are ransacked for the bag of ra-
dish seed or the paper of lettuce seed; the old broken
pitcher is taken from its long seclusion on the top of the
cupboard and emptied of its beans and peas; withal a few
flower seeds are added to grace the stock—four o’clocks,
poppies, marigolds, and touch-me-nots. Our gardenwife is
not so admirable for lily hands or fair face, or fairy form.
She cannot walk over dewy flowers without crushing them,
as can a true heroine; for her specific gravity gives evidence
of a good constitution, health and habits.
Her praise is, that in a new country where woman unques-
tionably suffers the most of hardships, she is cheerful, con-
tented, industrious, enterprising, and, like women the world
over, seeks to draw around herself objects of taste and
beauty to decorate and cheer her husband’s and her child
ren’s home; and, if necessary, to do it by the field-labor of
her own hands. We could not forbear saying so much of
the meritorious gardener of more than half the rural gar
dens in the West.
The seeds all mustered, she may be seen, after the break-
fast things are all done up, busy with spade and hoe, hiding
her treasures. And thus she does it. First a liberal suit
of onion beds—savory vegetables to the tongue and most
unsavory to the nose—making it almost impossible for these
respectable neighbors to live together in peace, one or
278 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
other of them being in bad odor with the other. Next, a
seed-bed full of cabbages—significant to the imagination of
cold-slaw, sourcrout, etc. A good row of peas, and a few
hills of running beans are added. The alleys are ruffled
with bush beans; a few early potatoes, some corn for roast-
ing-ears, with a slender bed for beets, complete the stock
of esculents. But sage, and summer savory, and thyme, and
rue, and sweet marjoram, tansy, boneset and wormwood
are attended to; a part for stuffing ducks and chickens—
and the others for curing those who have been too much
stuffed with them. The garden yields in due time its first
fruits; the potatoes come and go, the corn is early plucked,
lettuce shoots up its seed-stalk, peas render their tribute
and grow sere, beans rattle in the pod, and before August
her work is done and her garden forsaken except a small
retinue of flowers, which are nursed to the last. Weeds
now make up for lost time, and in a few weeks a weedy
forest hides every trace of cultivation. This is not a fancy
sketch; we have been far from drawing a picture from the
worst specimens ; it is a fair average case.
Our business is, not to quarrel with the farmer, but to
suggest a better plan for his garden. We saw the plan
stated some years ago; where, we have forgotten, but think
well of it. It is simply this: let the garden be an oblong—
say three times as long as it is broad—and cultivate it with
the plow. Instead of having beds, let all seeds be planted
in rows running the whole length of the garden. For
example, begin with one row of beets—or more if wanted ;
next a row or rows of carrots, parsnips, cabbages, potatoes,
corn, and all about three feet apart. The same system
should be followed for small fruits—currants, gooseberries,
strawberries, raspberries, etc.—and it will have this advan-
tage over common gardens, that the bushes will have sun
and air on all sides, and be more fruitful and more healthy
for it. The whole garden, thus arranged, can be kept in
order with very little labor. A single-horse plow will dress
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 279
between the rows of the whole garden in a very little time
and save all hand-hoeing. The hand-weeding in the row
may be performed by women or children.
In large towns ground is scarce and labor abundant.
Gardens, therefore, are properly laid out for economy of
space. In the country the reverse is true; land is abundant
but labor scarce and dear; of course gardens should be laid
out not to save room, but to economize labor. The plan
suggested will save labor, improve the garden, and take
from the wife the drudgery of the spade and hoe.
EARLY DAYS OF SPRING.
Ir the soil be thrown up during the open weather into
ridges, an immense number of insects will be unburrowed
and destroyed; stiff clayey soils will be rendered more
crumbling and mellow by exposure to frost. If advantage
is taken of the weather to haul manure, let it be stacked up,
and a little earth thrown over it, else the volatile and most
valuable portions will escape. Ashes may be spread over
the garden; a small portion of refuse salt will benefit the
ground, and may be sown now. Clear the ground of all
vines, stalks, haulm. If you have flowering bulbs, cover
slightly with coarse manure—they will not be so much tried
by the changes of temperature and moisture, and will
flower stronger for it. Bright, dry days afford a fine time
for going to the woods and cutting poles for your beans,
stakes for your trees and dahlias, brush for peas, ete.
While you are about it, collect moss from old logs, and put
away in the barn or shed to cover the ground in summer
where roses and shrubs have been newly set out, and
require to be kept moist. If not done before, put two or
three forks full of coarse green manure about tender shrubs
280 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
—Noisette and China roses. Freezing and thawing at the
crown of the roots, destroys them oftener than anything
else.
On mild days when the earth is open, sow lettuce seed in
a warm corner, beat it gently with the back of the shovel,
and cover it slightly with fine earth or old crumbling
manure. You will have lettuce ten days earlier for your
trouble. Pepper-grass and radishes may be sowed in like
manner.
(3S~ Let alone the knife and saw. Your vines and trees
will not be benefited by any pruning at this season.
PARLOR FLOWERS.
Water freely such as are in pots, while in blossom.
The flower stalks will be apt to shoot up taller and weaker
than in the garden, and will require rods to support them,
Let the rod be thrust down about two inches from the cen-
tre of the flower, and attach the flower stem to it by one
or two ligaments. Flowers in small stove rooms can
be kept in health with extreme difficulty. The heat forces
their growth, or injures the leaves. They should be
washed off once a week (either on a mild day out of doors,
or in a warm room within, if the weather be severe), as the
dust settles upon the leaf, and stops up the stomata
(mouths) by which the leaf perspires and breathes. If
green aphides infest them, put a pan of coals beneath the
stand, and throw on a half-handful of coarse tobacco. In
half an hour every insect will tumble off. Let such as lie
on the surface of the earth be removed or crushed, as they
will else revive. Pants should have fresh air every day.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 281
A SALT RECIPE.
THERE is a great fashion, now-a-days, in all papers, to
set forth useful recipes for every imaginable purpose.
Every newspaper has its weekly budget of recipes. Our
magazines have a page of original recipes; and, before
long, why should not the North American Review, or the
Edinburgh Review come out with their quarterly bill of
fare reciped in full? So practical is our nineteenth cen-
tury, that our literary men and women feel it to be a solemn
duty to indite novel recipes for cooking, seasoning, removy-
ing stains, curing diseases, etc.; and why not? If one can
invent a sonnet, an elegy, or worse yet, a poem, and thus
draw people’s brains a wool-gathering in the regions of
imagination, ought they not to atone for their license by an
invention equally substantial for the body? Miss Leslie
writes a beautiful story, and a recipe for manipulating
lobsters. Miss Martineau writes travels, political econo-
mies and suggestions on plum pudding. Mrs. Sigourney
tunes her lyre with a hand most redolent of pies, cakes and
gingerbread. Such is the aspect of culinary affairs, and
the rights of women, that the day seems at hand when no
learning will sustain a man, and no accomplishments a
woman, who does not understand the art and mystery of
cooking. It will be the duty of some future Heyne to give
accurate recipes for all the feasts of Homer’s heroes, the
ingredients of all the Horacian drinking-bouts—the dishes
of Virgil’s fine fellows, as well as the minor matters of
armor, language, manners, and customs; and a good lexi-
con, Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, must contain clearly written
recipes for all the dishes used by the people whose lan-
guage it sets forth. We have been led into this grand
prairie of reflections by a recipe found in a country paper
which unquestionably is salty.
“InptAn Baxep Puppine.—Indian pudding is good and
wholesome, baked. Scald a quart of milk, and stir in seven
282 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
table spoonfuls of salt, a tea-cupful of molasses, and a great
spoonful of ginger, or sifted cinnamon. Bake three or four
hours. If you want whey you must be sure and pour in a
little cold milk, after it is all mixed. Try it.”
If Misses Leslie, Childs, ete., refuse to mother such a
recipe, with xo Indian meal in it, but seven mortal spoon-
fuls of salt, then we will consider it as emanating from Lot’s
wife. We are sure if one should eat many such puddings,
he would speedily come to her estate.
CULTURE OF CELERY.
We know of no vegetable which requires more care and
skill in its cultivation, from beginning to end, than celery-
An inexperiened hand will be apt to fail in planting his seed,
fail in preparing the trenches, and fail in earthing up the
plants and bleaching them. And yet, celery is so generally
a favorite that every family desires it, and every gardener
is willing to cultivate it.
SrED Sowrne.—The seed is exceedingly slow in germi-
nation, and, if not assisted artificially, will lie three and
sometimes four weeks without sprouting. We soak the
seed in water, (a solution of oxalic acid would be much
better), for twenty-four hours: turn off the water, and then
add and stir up a few handfuls of sand, well moistened, and
let the seed stand in a stove room or other warm place, for
two or three days. The sand will now be nearly dry; if it
be not, add dry sand to it until it is perfectly powdery,
and can be sown without falling in lumps. Besides hasten-
ing its germination, mixing the seed with sand ena-
bles the operator to sow it with greater facility and
evenness. Select a shaded spot, let the earth be rich,
rather inclined to moisture, and perfectly mellow. Sow
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 283
the seed broadcast, and cover very thinly by sifting over it
finely pulverized mold. Beat the bed gently with the back
of the spade to settle the earth firmly about the seed.
Don’t fear that the seed will be troubled by beating; every
seed should have the earth pressed to it by a smart stroke of
the hoe, hand, spade, or by the pressure of aroller. If the
weather is exceedingly warm and dry, cover your seed-bed
with matting or old carpet, to retain the moisture. When
up let them be well weeded, until they are six inches high,
when they are to be removed to the trench for blanching.
Hirst TRANSPLANTING.—The process here detailed may be
wholly omitted by those who are obliged to economize time
and labor. But those who wish to do the very best that
can be done—who wish to avoid spindling, weak plants,
and secure strong and vigorous ones—transplant their
celery to a level bed of very rich soil, placing the plants
four inches apart every way. They are cultivated here for
about five weeks, when they will have attained a robust
habit, or, technically, they will have became stocky—for
which purpose they were thus transplanted.
CrLery TrencuHEs.—Dig your trenches about eighteen
inches wide, and one foot deep, laying a shovelful of dirt
alternately on each side of the trench, that it may be con-
veniently drawn in on both sides when you earth up. If
you are favored with a very deep and rich loamy soil, such
as often abounds in Western gardens, you will need little
orno manure. But usually about four inches of vegetable
mold and very thoroughly rotted manure, should be placed
in the bottom of the trench and gently spaded in. No
part of the culture is more critical than manuring. If the
soil is slow, poor, and stingy, the celery will be dwarfish,
tough and strong. On the other hand, if you employ new,
rank, fiery manure, although you will have a vigorous
growth, the stalks will be hollow, watery, coarse and flavor-
less. Let the manure be very thoroughly decayed and
mixed half and half with leaf or vegetable mold,
284 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Set the plants five inches apart, water them freely with a
fine rosed. watering pot, and, if the sun is fierce, cover
the trenches daily from ten a.m. till evening with boards.
In about a week they will begin to grow and will need
no more shading.
Let them alone, except to weed, until the plants are from
twelve to fifteen inches high—at which time they are to be
earthed up.
Eartuine Ur.—tIn dry weather, with a short, hand-hoe,
draw in the earth gently from each side and bring it up
carefully to the stalk. The soil must be kept out of the
plant, and it is best for the first and perhaps the second
time of earthing, to gather up the leaves in the left hand,
and holding them together, to draw the earth about them.
Fill in about once in two weeks, and always when the plants
are dry. When the trench is full, the process is still to go
on, and at the close of the season your plants will be
exactly reversed—instead of standing in a trench they will
top out from a high ridge.
Savinc CELERY 1N WintTER.—Three ways may be men-
tioned. Letting it stand in the trench—in which case it
should be covered with long straw and boards so laid over
it that it will be protected from the wet, which is supposed
to be more prejudicial to it than mere cold.
The Boston market gardeners dig it late in autumn, trim
off the fibrous roots, cut off the top, lay it for two days
in an airy shed, turning it, say twice a day, and then pack
it in layers of perfectly dry sand, in a barrel. After laying
two days to air it goes into the barrel much wilted, but
regains its plumpness, and comes out as fresh as from the
trench.
Lastly, it may be put in rows on the cellar bottom, with-
out trimming, and earth heaped up about it. Set a plank
at an angle of forty-five degrees and bank up the earth
against it, set a row of roots and cover them with dirt,
then another row and so on.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 985
Solid celery is not a particular variety—any celery is solid
when properly grown—and if grown too rankly the most
solid celery in the world will be hollow.
We have seen it recommended to water the trenches once
or twice during the season with a weak brine of salt and
water. Besides the fertilizing effect of salt, it will have
the effect of retaining moisture in the soil, and what is of
yet more moment, it destroys the parasitical fungus
(Puccinca Heraclet) which attacks and rusts the plant, and
probably would, also, guard it against a maggot which is
apt to infest and very much injure it. There is an insect,
which, in very dry weather, is apt to sting the leaf and cause
it to wilt. While the dew is on in the morning, sift lime
over the plants once or twice, and it will check the fly.
If any think these directions too minute and the process
vexatious, they are at liberty to try a cheaper method—and
may, once in a while, succeed. But a certain crop, year by
year, cannot be expected without exact and very careful
cultivation. We have learned this by sorrowful expe-
rience,
The main crop of celery need not be placed in the
trenches until the middle of July or the first of August.
It’s greatest growth will be in the fall months.
1-0-4
SEEDLING TREES.—Many trees which are entirely hardy
when grown, are very tender during the first and second
winters. Cover them with straw, refuse garden gatherings,
leaves, etc. Sometimes it is best to raise them and lay
them in by the heels, by which those gardeners designate
the operation of laying trees in trenches or excavations,
and covering the roots and a considerable portion of the
stems. This will not be extra labor in all cases when the
young trees are to be reset, at any rate, the second year
in nursery rows.
286 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
CULTURE OF PIE-PLANT.
Buarnners should in all cases, if possible, obtain a supply
of plants, from a proved sort, by dividing the root. Raising
from seed is an after, and an amateur practice. The first
object with every man is to supply his family with this
esculent, and not to experiment with new sorts. Let him
buy or beg from garden or nursery, enough buds to estab-
lish a bed, of some kind already known to be good.
The best season of the year for dividing the root is in the
spring; the next best is in late autumn; and the worst in
midsummer—as we have abundantly ascertained by experi-
ment. ‘The reason is plain. Like bulbs, and tubers, the
root of the pie-plant stores up in itself during one season, a
supply of organizable matter enough to enable it to start
off the next season, without any dependence upon the soil.
Dahlias, potatoes, onions, turnips, cabbages, etc., it is well
known, are able to grow for a considerable time, in the
spring, without any connection with the soil; being
sustained by that supply which they had treasured up
within themselves the previous autumn. When this is
exhausted, they will die, if they have not been put in con-
nection with food from without. When pie-plant is divided
in the spring, it is full of the material of life, and a bud cut
off from the main root with a portion of the root attached,
has a supply of food until new roots are emitted, which in
good soil and weather will be in about a week. There is
the same vitality in autumn, and the only reason why it is
not so good for transplanting as spring, is the risk that the
buds and roots will rot off during the winter. A uniform
winter will scarcely injure one in a hundred, but constant
changes, freezing and thawing, will weaken, if not destroy
many of them. When, however, it is necessary to divide
and transplant in the fall, cover the bed full four inches
deep with coarse, strong manure. Although great care
will enable one to transplant asection of the root in mid-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 287
summer, yet we have found that when no more attention is
paid than in spring, nine plants are lost out of ten. The
reason is obvious. There is no reserved treasure of sap in
the root in summer, such as gives it vitality in spring or
autumn. If for any reason we must take up a root in
summer, let every possible fibre be saved, the plant well
watered and sheltered until it begins to grow again.
Raising FRoM Seep.—The origination of new varieties
of fruits, flowers and esculent vegetables is one of the
greatest rewards of gardening. Almost every seed of the
pie-plant will produce a variety. We have thought our-
selves repaid for trouble if one in fifty seedling plants were
worth saving. It requires a full two years’ trial to improve
a sort. Of fifty plants, say twenty-five may be rejected
peremptorily the first season, the petioles being mere wires.
Of the other twenty-five, one or two will give great promise,
and the others will be doubtful. Let them be transplanted
in the spring of the second season, into very mellow, rich,
deep loam, full three feet apart every. way, and here they
may stand until the owner is fully satisfied, by the trial of
one or more seasons, which are good and which inferior.
In marking seedling plants, the cultivator should bear in
mind that there are éwo kinds required, viz. a very early
sort, and one for the later and main supply. If a plant has
small stalks, and is date too, reject it of course. If it be
very early, it may be valuable even if quite small. Some
sorts are fit for plucking five or six weeks before others;
we have a variety which comes forward almost the moment
the frost leaves the ground in the spring, or in warm spells
in winter.
In selecting a late sort from your seedlings, several
qualities must be consulted. The plant should manifest an
indisposition to go to seed; should be apt to throw out an
abundance of leaves, to supply those taken off; the petioles
should be large; the meat rich and substantial. There is
great difference between one sort and another in the
288 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
amount of sugar required, in the delicacy of flavor, and in
the property of stewing to a pulp, without wasting away.
A good variety of pie-plant, then, should be a vigorous
grower, prolific, large in the stalk, not apt to flower, of a
sprightly acid without any earthy or woody taste, not stew-
ing away more than one-third when cooked, and not requir-
ing too much sugar.
We have observed in our trials that seedlings having
smooth leaves, with the upper surface varnished and glossy,
are seldom good; while every plant which we have thought
worth keeping, had the upper surface of its leaves of a
deep, dull, lack-lustre green.
ForMATION OF A Brep.—Select a strong and rich loam
Let it be spaded full two feet deep. If the subsoil has
never been worked, and is clay, or gravel, a large supply of
old manure should be mixed with it. Our working-method
is this: Mark off the square, begin on one side, lay out a
full spadeful of the top-soil clear across the bed; lay four or
five inches of manure in the trench, and then spade it down
a full twelve inches deep; beginning again by the side of the
first trench, put the top-soil of the second into the first ; add
manure and spade as before; and so across the bed. The
surface-soil thrown out of the first trench may be wheeled
down and put into the dast one. This process will leave
the bed much higher than it was; let it stand one or two
weeks to settle. If the bed is prepared in autumn it will
be better, and in the spring it may be halfspaded again
before planting.
Mark out, by line, rows three feet apart, and set your
plants in the rows three feet from plant to plant, if of
the large kind, and two feet, if of the small. Very large
varieties require four feet every way. The buds should be
left just below the surface of the soil.
Arrer Cutture.—Through the summer keep the surface
mellow and free from weeds. In the fall of the year, when
the leaves show signs of falling, form a compost heap of
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 289
fine charcoal, if you can get it from blacksmith’s or else-
where, vegetable mold, ashes, and very old manure. Spread
and spade in a good coat of this, spading lightly near to the
plants and deeply between them. When frost destroys the
tops wholly, cover the bed with coarse, strong manure
about four inches deep, smooth it down, and let it remain
thus. The next spring stir the surface smartly with a rake,
and no further care will be required except to pluck out any
weeds that grow through the summer,
GATHERING.—Leaves are constantly springing from the
centre. Of course the full-grown ones will be on the out-
side. These should be harvested, leaving the inside ones
to mature. By going regularly over your bed, and taking
in turn the outside leaves, a bed may be used till July with-
out the slightest injury. Other fruit, after that time,
usually displaces pie-plant and leaves it to rest the
remainder of the year. The leaf-stalks should not be cut
off. Slide the hand down as near as possible to the root,
and give the stalk a backward and sidewise wrench and it
will be detached at a joint or articulation, and no stump
will be left to rot and injure the root—we usually cut off
the leaves on the spot, leaving them about the root, both
for shade to the ground and for manure.
PRESERVE yOoUR Pot-Piants.—We warn ladies having
pot-plants designed for winter-wear, to be prudent before
hand, or some frosty night will cut every tender plant left
out, and then prudence will be good for nothing. Every
one who pretends to keep parlor plants should own a
thermometer. If at sundown or at nine o’clock it stands
anywhere near forty degrees, your plants are in danger,
Sometimes it will fall, in one night, from fifty degrees to
below thirty-two degrees, which last is the freezing point.
290 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
SUN-FLOWER SEED.
To some extent this is likely to become a profitable crop.
Medium lands will yield, on an average, fifty bushels;
while first-rate lands will yield from seventy to a hundred
bushels.
Mops or Cuttivation.—The ground is prepared in all
respects as for a corn crop, and the seed sown in drills four
feet apart—one plant to every eighteen inches in the drill.
It is to be plowed and tended in all respects like a crop of
corn.
Harvestine.—As the heads ripen, they are gathered,
laid on a barn floor and threshed with a flail. The seed
shells very easily.
Usr.—The seed may be employed in fattening hogs, feed-
ing poultry, etc., and for this last purpose it is better than
grain. But the seed is more valuable at the od/-mill than
elsewhere. It will yield a gallon to the bushel without
trouble; and by careful working, more than this. Hemp
yields one and a fourth gallons to the bushel, and flax-seed
one and a half by ordinary pressure; but two gallons under
the hydraulic press.
The oil has, as yet, no established market price. It will
range from seventy cents to a dollar, according as its value
shall be established as an article for lamps and for painters?
use. But at seventy cents a gallon for oil, the seed would
command fifty-five cents a bushel, which is a much higher
price than can be had for corn.
It is stated, but upon how sufficient proof we know not,
that sun-flower oil is excellent for burning in lamps. It has
also been tried by our painters to some extent; and for
inside work, it is said to be as good as linseed oil, Mr.
Hannaman, who has kindly put us in possession of these
facts, says, that the oil resembles an animal, rather than
a vegetable oil; that it has not the varnish properties
of the linseed oil. We suppose by varnish is meant,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 291
the albumen and mucilage which are found in vegetable
oils. The following analysis of hemp-seed, and jflax-seed, or
as it is called in England lint or linseed, will show the
proportions of various ingredients in one hundred parts.
Hemp-seed. Linseed,
(Bucholz.) (Leo Meier.)
Oi sgeaepode statotoyh) oretster nfotevakevelclelevetelaievalsiciomimtoell 11.3
UBS C6CY secs siestneces ndbscopscadandoce | BSS 44,4
Wieodvetiore andistancHyeteersictelelsieiesrsieicicie an mn DEO 1.5
SCRE CiGsG coodoobsoguDOb OK soc ode06 66 wae 2G 10.8
GUE ey tesssiere sid oar hals axils enlerelare Sarelejer siete Oe Hol!
Soluble albumen (Casein ?)..........00..02 24.7 15.1
Imsolubleidor crcl ness Seo erseeourth Sosoud: = 3.7
Wax and resin,..... aiatieKatelsrateys nodosncoeacar wWsE 8.1
GSS fats arasiarsfictaisieinsieie"s Severe celts sEouoN “Ose 3.0
100 100
The existence of impurities in oil, such as mucilage, albu-
men, gum, etc., which increase its value to the painter, dimin-
ishes its value for the Jamp, since these substances crust or
cloy the wick, and prevent a clear flame. All oils may,
therefore, the less excellent they are for painting, be regarded
as the more valuable for burning. Rape-seed is extensively
raised in Europe, chiefly in Flanders, for its oil, and is
much used for burning. Ten quarts may be extracted
from a bushel of seed. We append a table represent-
ing the richness of various seeds, etc., in oil.
Oil per cent.
Linseed (flax)........ acoso sesoce Soudosnososcor 11 to 22
EME THTI-SCCCniesteretetett ere lelelelsiaiele lets elev) ejelsietereeets ponog! deh iio), Pas
IRAE-SCe Cites ei chsysreres ae Bferiots SdoodoL ppcacccccsca” 240) ie) (00)
BOPPYESCGC \-teiercraiz-eicisl eictoic.e 6 Si eisvelalovelete steberierers -.- 36 to 33
ienerretardiaced sooddoeeoan =e! sis(elaleleiecistelelsiat ame DNLOE4e
Black MUStAnG-SeCUh cists: cic aiesie.ciaierevsre ohare eereteree 5 als
Swedish turnip-seed,........... wicleiejelsieiceveleretarstere . 34
DUN-AGWerSCCG,. ..cccecccessescsns Godoscoobacd 15
\W@lintt IRGIREGIIES 6. aR old CS eee RRR ERIE oan 40 to 70
292, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Hazel-nut kernels,, .. 000, ccaccsoecsarctesvecress 60
BG CCH-MUPKCENEIS (sla) 1111- 101.0) ele vaisielsielsfeunaiemirersien inal 15 to 17
UN -SLOUGUCLO: ye clavelateis lois is's<role/</elo) «\eislolslelelelaielelataire 33
Sweet almond kernels,..........-eeeccseeese eee 40 to 54
Bitter do. Oo Maicisisiels eistolsicte oie leinisioleistetetsstereye 28 to 46
—_e- 0-0 ——_
APRIL GARDEN-WORK.
Every one will now be at work in the garden. A few
suggestions may make your garden better.
Piowine Garprens.—We do not like the practice except
when the garden is large, and the owner unable to meet
the expense of spading. But if you must plow, let that be
well done. Those contemptible little one-horse plows, with
which most gardens are plowed, should be discarded. The
best plowing will be too shallow, but these spindling little
plows, drawn by a little meagre horse, will skim over your
ground, averaging from three to four inches deep, and pre-
paring your soil to receive the utmost possible detriment
from summer droughts. What chance have young roots,
or the finer fibres of plants, to penetrate more than a few
inches of surface-soil? Persons come to our garden and
wonder why some vegetables flourish so well, while they
never have luck with them, “It must be a difference of
soil.’ No, it is the difference of working it. Give your
vegetables a chance to descend eighteen or twenty inches
if they incline to it, and you will have no more trouble. A
large plow should be used, and you should stand by and
see that it is put in to the beam. A garden soil is usually
mellow, and a plow can go to its full depth without hurting
the horses.
Spapine.—This mode of working the ground will always
be employed by those ambitious of having a first-rate gar-
den. Indeed, where there is much shrubbery and perma-
nent beds. as of asparagus, pie-plant, strawberry, and plant-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 293
ations of currants, raspberries, etc., spading is the only
method which can be employed.
Spapinc SHRUBBERY.—Let very fine manure be spread
about roses, honeysuckles, and ornamental shrubs (where
they are not standing in a grasslawn). Beginning at the
plant, with great care turn over the soil one or two inches
deep, yet so as not to injure the fibres; gradually deepen
the stroke of your spade as you go out from the plant; at
two feet from the shrub you may put in the spade half its
depth, and at three feet to its full depth. You will of
course cut many roots, but they will very soon re-form and
send out fibres, and by the manure spaded in, be supplied
with abundant nourishment for the season.
Spapine Firower Beps.—This requires a practised hand.
There is danger of wounding and displacing clumps of
flower-roots, or of filling the crowns with dirt, or of leaving
the surface uneven, and the edges ragged. If there is a
skillful gardener to be had, hire it done, and watch while
he performs, for any man who has seen a thing done in a
garden once, ought to be ashamed if he cannot himself do
it afterwards.
Spapine VEGETABLE Beps.—Asparagus, pie-plant, straw-
berries, etc., require enriching every year, and to have the
manure forked or spaded in. It is easy to perform this
upon strawberries, and a spade is preferable. A three or
four-pronged fork is better for asparagus and pie-plant. Be
careful not to tear or cut the crowns of the plants. No
material injury ensues from clipping the side fibres, im the
spring; in summer, when a plant requires all its mouths to
supply sap for its extended surface of leaf, it is not wise to
cut the roots or fibres at all, but only to keep the surface
mellow and friable.
Deep Spapine.—Ames’ garden-spades measure twelve
inches in length of blade. In a good soil the foot may gain
one or two additional inches by a good thrust. Thus the
soil is mellowed to the depth of fourteen inches. This will
294 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
do very well; but if you aspire to do the very best, another
course must be first pursued. The first spadeful must be
thrown out, and a second depth gained, and then the top
soil returned. This is comparatively slow and laborious,
but it need not be done more than once in five years, and
by dividing the garden into sections, and performing this
thorough-spading on one of the sections each year, the pro-
cess will be found, practically, less burdensome than it seems
to be.
GETTING POOR ON RICH LAND AND RICH ON POOR
LAND.
A cuLoss observer of men and things told us the follow-
ing little history, which we hope will plow very deeply into
the attention of all who plow very shallow in their soils.
Two brothers settled together in county. One of
them on a cold, ugly, clay soil, covered with black-jack
oak, not one of which was large enough to make a half
dozen rails. This man would never drive any but large,
powerful, Conastoga horses, some seventeen hands high. He
always put three horses to a large plow, and plunged it in
some ten inches deep. This deep plowing he invariably
practised and cultivated thoroughly afterward. He raised
his seventy bushels of corn to the acre.
This man had a brother ahout six miles off, settled on
a rich White River bottom-land farm—and while a black-
jack clay soil yielded seventy bushels to the acre, this fine
bottom-land would not average fifty. One brother was
steadily growing rich on poor land, and the other steadily
growing poor on rich land.
One day the bottom-land brother came down to see the
black-jack oak farmer, and they began to talk about their
crops and farms, as farmers are very apt to do. °
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 295
“How is it,” said the first, “that you manage on this
poor soil to beat me in crops ?”
They reply was “ J work my land.”
That was it, exactly. Some men have such rich land
that they won’t work it; and they never get a step beyond
where they began. They rely on the soz/, not on labor, or
skill, or care. Some men expect their Lanvs to work, and
some men expect to WORK THEIR LAND ;—and that is just
the difference between a good and a bad farm er.
When we had written thus far, and read it to our infor-
mant, he said, “three years ago I travelled again through
that section, and the only good farm I saw was this very
one of which you have just written. All the others were
desolate—fences down—cabins abandoned, the settlers dis-
couraged and moved off. I thought I saw the same old
stable door, hanging by one hinge, that used to disgust me
ten years before; and I saw no change except for the worse
in the whole county, with the single exception of this one
farm.”
GETTING READY FOR WINTE
Haut tanbark and bank up around the house to insure
awarm cellar. Cellar windows should be kept open through
the day, and closed after the nights begin to freeze, as late
in the season as possible. See that dry walks are prepared
from the house to all the out-houses. Do not be stingy of
your materials; make the paths high and rounding, so as to
insure dryness, especially about the barn. See that stones,
gravel, or timber are laid so as to be out of the way of cat-
tle’s feet, and just in the way of your own. We have seen
swamp-barn-yards, before going into which a prudent man
would choose to make his will, Mud on the shoes from
roads and fields is all well enough; but mud from one’s own
296 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
yards, shows that the owner has not fixed up as he ought
to have done.
If your stables are old, examine the floor; or some night
may let a horse through, to come out lame for life. If you
have a dirt floor, see that it is carefully laid, and remember
that if it be inclined either way, it should be from the rack
and not toward it. Let your wagons, carts, plows, etc., be
repaired during the fall and winter, and not be left till spring
See that your shingles are all sound on the house, barn,
and shed. The leak which you have allowed to drop, drop,
drop all summer has at last taken off a yard or two of
plaster, and it is time now to put on a shingle or two.
There is another leak or two that must be stopped. That
pocket of yours which has let out dime after dime for liquor,
the hole getting bigger and bigger every year, now is the
time to sow Zé up, or it will rip you up. A pocket is a small
place, to be sure, but we have seen barns, cattle, and acre
after acre slip through a hole in it which, at first, was
only large enough to let sixpence through.
See that all your tools have a safe and dry standing-
place; hoes rakes, scythes, sickles, yokes, spades, shovels,
chains, pins, harrows, plows, carts, and sleds, axes, mattocks,
hammers, and everything, but your geese and ducks, should
be kept from wet and snow.
If you have no stables for your cattle, you should have
good sheds provided, opening to the south. Even when
cattle are allowed to run through the stock-fields, there
ought to be in some warm place an ample shed to which
they can resort during wet and cold weather ; and one sufii-
ciently snug can be made without calling in the carpenter
or buying lumber.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING 92907
ESCULENT VEGETABLES.
WE mention some of the more common kinds of garden
esculent vegetables, to point out the best kinds, and give
some hints for their cultivation. If more vegetables were
raised and eaten in the place of meat, there would be fewer
diseases, and less expense for medicine than is now the case
among those who eat so heartily and liberally of the fut of
the land,
Brerr.—The turnip-rooted blood beet should be sown for
the earliest crop; the long blood beet for the late crop, and
for winter use. The blood beet is the proper garden beet.
The scarcity, the sugar beets (so called), white, yellow, and
red, are inferior for table use. Every year we see accounts
of new varieties, which are seldom mentioned a second
time, while these old standard sorts hold their own from
year to year. We see people running around among
their neighbors for deet-seed, careless whether it is early or
late, coarse fleshed or fine grained, sweet or insipid. It is
just as easy and cheap to have the best seed of the best
kinds, as to have refuse seed of worthless kinds. Lately, a
variety introduced from France, called Bassano, has at-
tracted attention and commendation.* It is early, tender,
and sweet. If you attempt to raise your own seed, let only
one sort stand in the garden; otherwise bees and other
insects will mix them. and the purity of the variety will be
* A new variety called the Bassano has been recently introduced into
France, and extensively cultivated; and it is said to be found in all the
markets from Venice to Genoa, in the month of June. It is remarkable
for the form of the root, which is flattened like a turnip. The skin is
red, the flesh white, veined with rose. It is very tender, very delicate,
preserving its rose colored rings after cooking, and from two to two
and a half inches in diameter. This description is from the Bon Jardi-
nier for 1841. The edition for 1842 states that this variety is highly
esteemed in the north of Italy, and that itis, in fact, one of the best kinds
for the table.—Hovey’s Magazine.
298 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
lost. We very seldom see an unmixed variety in common
gardens, unless seed have been bought from good seeds-
men.
The best seed is a small black seed about the size of a
pin head, enveloped in a ragged, rough, two or three lobed
husk. Every seeming seed planted, then, isa mere envel-
ope of two or more seeds, and two or three plants come up,
very much to the surprise of the inexperienced, for each
husk. When a little advanced, they are to be thinned out
to one in a place.
We prefer planting very early, and in rows eight inches
apart and at about one inch distant intherow. As the plants
begin to gain size they make very delicate greens; and for
this purpose are to be boiled, leaf, root, and all. Continue
to thin out until one is left for every six inches for full
growth.
Every year a great ado is made about monstrous beets—
twenty and thirty pounders. There is no objection to
these giants, unless they beget an idea that size is the test
of merit. For table-use, mediwm sized fruits and vegetables
are every way preferable; a beet should never be larger
than a goose-egs.
It is equally foolish to suppose that large, coarse-grained
vegetables, whether potatoes, beets, parsnips, ruta bagas, or
anything else, are as good for stock, though not so palat-
able to men. To be sure they fill up. But that which is
nutriment to man is nutriment to beast ; a vegetable which
is rank and watery is no better for my cow than for us.
It is not the bulk but the quality that measures the fitness
of articles for food.
Parsnip.—This vegetable is, to those who are fond of it,
very desirable, as coming in at a time when other things are
failmg. For, although the parsnip attaims its size by
autumn, yet its flavor seems to depend upon its receiving a
pretty good frosting. It may be dug at open spells through
the winter and early in the spring. It gives one of the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 999
first indications of returning warmth, and its green leaves
are among the first which cheer the garden. On this ac-
count it must be dug early in the spring and housed, or it
will spoil by growth.
We know of no difference in varieties. The Guernsey,
is not a different sort from the common, but only the com-
mon sort, very highly cultivated in that island, where it
sometimes grows to a length of four feet. The hollow-
crowned and Stam are mentioned in English catalogues, as
fine fleshed and flavored, but we have never been able to
obtain seed of them.
The parsnip (Pastinacea sativa) is a native of Great
Britain and is found wild by the road-sides, delighting par-
ticularly in calcareous soils. It has hitherto been supposed
that the seed would not retain its germinating power more
than one year, but Mr. Mendenhall states that he has raised
freely from four year old seed. The parsnip is much sown
as a field crop at the east, yielding 1,000 bushels, on good
land, to the acre. They are invaluable both to cows
and horses. The quantity and quality of milk in cows
is improved; and no farmer with whom butter-making is a
considerable object of interest, should be without a root
crop—beet, carrot, or ruta baga.
Carrot. (Daucus carota).—This is a native of Great
Britain. The early horn and Altringham are the best
varieties sold by our seedsmen. Beside their use upon the
table, they are largely and deservedly cultivated in the field
for stock. A horse becomes more fond of them than of oats,
and they do not, like the potato, require boiling before feed
ing out. A thousand bushels may be raised to the acre.
The premium of the New York Agricultural Society for the
year 1844, was to a crop of 1,059 bushels the acre.
The seed should be new each year, as it will not
come well even the second year, and not at all if kept yet
longer.
Rapisu.—Every garden has its bed of rad’shes, and they
300 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
are among the first spring gifts. They will grow in any
soil, but not in all equally well. A mellow sandy loam is
best ; or rather that soil is best which will grow them the
quickest. If they are a long time in growing, they are
tough and stringy. Itis said that a compost of the follow-
ing materials will produce them very early and finely.
Take equal parts of buckwheat bran and fresh horse-dung,
dig them in plentifully into the soil where you intend to
sow. Within two days a plentiful crop of toadstools will
start up. Spade them under, and sow your seed, and the
radishes will come forward rapidly, and be tender and free
from worms.
The short-top scarlet, isthe best for spring planting. It
is so named, because, from its rapid growth the top is yet
small when the root is fit for the table. There is a white
and red turnip-rooted variety, also good for spring use.
The turnip-rooted kinds have not only the shape, but some-
thing of the sweetness and flavor of the turnip, and are by
some preferred to all others. For summer planting, there
is a yellow turnip-rooted sort and the summer white. For
fall and early winter, the white and black Spanish are
planted. When radishes are sown broadcast, it must be
very thinly, for if at all crowded they run to top, and
refuse to form edible roots. For our own use, we sow on
the edges of beds, devoted to onions, beets, etc., and thrust
each seed down with the finger.
The radish (Raphanus sativus) is a native of China, and
was introduced to England before 1584.
SALSIFY, OR VEGETABLE OysTEeR.—We esteem this to be
a much better root for table use than either the parsnip or
carrot. It is cultivated in all respects as these crops are.
Some have been skeptical as to their possessing an oyster
flavor. They seldom attain the true taste until, like the
parsnip, they have been well frosted. But if dug up dur-
ing spells in winter and early in the spring, and cooked by
an orthodox formula, they are strikingly like the oyster.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 501
We have just consulted the oracle of our kitchen, and give
forth the following method of cooking it: First, oblige
your husband to raise a good supply of them. When you
have obtained them, scrape off the outside skin—cut the
root lengthwise into thin slices—put them into a spider and
just cover with hot water. Let them boil until a fork will
pass through them easily. Without turning off the water,
season them with butter, pepper, and salt, and sprinkle
in a little flour—enough to thicken the liquor slightly. Then
eat them.
The success of this gustatory deception depends, more
than anything else, upon the skillin seasoning. If well done
they are not merely an apology, but they are a very excel-
lent substitute for the shell-fish himself; a thousand times
better than pickled can-oysters—those arrant libels upon all
that is dear in the remembrance of a live oyster.
Every one may save seed for himself, as it will not, if well
cultivated, degenerate. It is a biennial, and roots may
either be set out, or left standing where they were planted.
When the seed begins to feather out it must be immediately
gathered, or like the dandelion or thistle, it will be blown
away by the wind. This vegetable should be much more
extensively cultivated than it is.
Brans.—There are three kinds—English dwarf, kidney
dwarf or string, and the pole beans. The first kind, so far
as our experience has gone, are coarser than the others,
and, in our hot and dry summers, are very difficult to raise.
Of kidney or bush beans, there is a long catalogue of
sorts. The Mohawk is good for its hardiness, enduring
spring frosts with comparative impunity. The red-speckled
valentine is highly commended. But after a trial of some
twenty kinds, we are entirely contented with one—the
China red-eye. It is early, hardy, very prolific, and well
flavored,
Of the pole beans, one sort, the Zima, might supersede
all others were it a little earlier. It is immensely prolific -
302 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
its flavur unrivalled, and nearly the same in the dry bean
as when cooked in its green state, a quality which has
never, we believe, been found in any other variety. To
supply the deficiency of this variety in earliness, we know
of none equal to the Horticultural. With these two kinds
one has no need of any other. Pole beans will not bear
frost, and are among the last seeds to be planted, seldom
before the last of April. The bush-bean may precede
them a fortnight.
The English dwarf ( Vicia faba) is anative of Egypt; but
has been cultivated in England from time immemorial, and,
it is supposed, was introduced by the Romans.
The kidney dwarf (Phaseolus vulgaris) is a native of
India, and was introduced into England about the
year 1597.
The pole bean (Phaseolus multifioris) is a native of
South America, and was introduced to England in 1633.
Pole beans are not strictly annuals. In a climate where:
the winter does net destroy them they bear again the
second year, and we believe yet longer. Gov. Pinney,
of Liberia, on the African coast, stated in a lecture, speak-
ing of the vegetable productions of that region, that the
bean was a permanent vine like the grape, bearing its crops
from year to year without replanting. The bush bean is
strictly anannual. If the pole bean were protected in the
ground, or raised and put away like sweet potatoes,
dahlias, etc., in the cellar and replanted in the spring it
would bear again the second season. Perhaps an earlier
crop of beans might thus be secured.
The bean crop, by field culture, is not to be overlooked.
Great quantities of dried beans are consumed by families,
by the army and in the navy, and they always bear a good
price, when they are well grown and well cured. They are
excellent for sheep, not from their fattening properties, but
for improving their fleece. Analysis has shown them to be
rich in those properties which are “ wool-gathering.”
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 303
FIELD ROOT CROPS.
From mid-winter, and especially just before spring opens,
beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, ruta baga, and mangel
wurtzel are of the highest utility. After months of dry
fodder, and of slops thickened with corn-meal, cattle need—
their stomach, their blood need—a change of diet ; and none
can be better than roots. At the East it is no longer a de-
batable question—root crops are as regularly laid in as
grain or grass crops. The chief difficulty at the East, in
introducing “new-fangled notions,” arises from the regular
routine habits of farmers and their settled aversion to change
from old ways. Very little of this spirit exists at the West.
There the very essence of life is change. The population
have broken up from old homesteads, moved off from old
States, abandoned the comforts and settled life of long
tilled agricultural districts—to come into a new country,
where they have to practise new ways, live differently, and
labor by new methods; and, by consequence, the farming
community of the West are remarkably free to meet and
adopt agricultural improvements. But the difficulty lies in
a different direction. The farmers have large farms—are
ambitious of large crops, large herds of cattle, large droves
of hogs, and of a style of husbandry which brings in a
large pile, and all at once; so that the idea of good farming
is large farming. Many a sturdy Kentuckian will very
patiently plow, two or three times, his fifty or hundred acres
of corn, and think nothing of it; but to put in half an acre
of carrots, or beets, to weed and work, to harvest and store
the vexatious little crop, this seems a piddling business.
Our big prairie farmers, our heavy bottom-land farmers, our
stock farmers who “ hog” one or two hundred acres of corn,
of their own planting or of their neighbor’s, they do not
love little work. We know a man who lives on thirty acres
of land of about a middling quality. He winters seven
cows, two horses, aud two pigs. He raises corn and grass
804 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
enough for his own use, and sells none. Every year he puts
in about a quarter of an acre of parsnips, or ruta baga, for
winter and spring fodder. His garden in summer, and his
dairy all the year round, are represented in market. He
probably does not receive five dollars at once, on any one
sale, through the year. We never looked into that old
chest under his bed; but we will venture much, that if the
shrewd housewife would keep her eagle eyes off long enough
to give us a chance, it would be found that this man has
made, and laid up, more money in the last five years from
his thirty acres, than any farmer about here from six times
the amount. Our farmers ave not grown rich on large
and careless farming; but many are growing rich on small
farms and careful husbandry.
When the dairy shall be more thought of—when winter-
ing stock, and fattening it, shall be more carefully studied—
we predict that our farmers will annually raise thousands
of bushels of roots, and have capacious cellars under their
barns to store them in,
CULTIVATION OF FRUIT-TREES.
WE must give up thinking of remedies for blights and
diseases of fruit-trees and seek after preventives. Amputa-
tion may limit its ravages; but surgery is not a remedy,
but a resource after remedies fail. We must, it seems to
us, look for a preventive in a wiser system of fruit cultiva-
tion. To this subject we shall now speak.
The effect of cultivation in ghanging the habits of plants
is familiar to all. Incident to this artificial condition of the
plant, there will be new diseases, vegetable vices, which, as
they result from cultivation, must be regarded in every
perfect system of cultivation.
Where trees are grown for timber, or shade, or orna-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 305
ment, everything can be sacrificed to the production of
wood und foliage. But in fruit-trees wood is nothing and
fruit is everything. We push for quantity and quality of
fruit; and would not regard the wood or foliage at all, if it
were not indispensable as a means of procuring fruit. That
is the most skillful treatment of fruit-trees which involves a
just compromise between the wants of the tree, and the
abundance and excellence of fruit. There is a way of gain-
ing fruit by a rapid consumption of the tree; and there is a
method of gaining fruit by invigorating and prolonging the
tree. Two systems of cultivation grow out of these dif
ferent methods—a natural system and an artificial system.
All cultivation is artificial, even the rudest. By natural
system, then, is only meant a treatment which interferes
but Zittle with nature; and by artificial, a system in which
skill is applied to every part of the vegetable economy.
For conservatories, gardens, and experimental grounds,
there is no reason why an artificial system should not exist.
Moral considerations restrain us from stimulating aman ora
beast to procure a quick or a large return at the expense of
life and limb; but in vegetable matters our preference or
interest is the only restraint. If any reason exists for fore-
ing a tree to bear young, and enormously, and after ten
years’ service for throwing it away, it is proper to do it.
For larger show-fruit we ring a limb expecting to sacrifice
the branch; we diminish the life of the pear by putting it
to a dwarf habit by violent means. If we have any suffi-
ciently desirable object to accomplish, there is no reason
why we should not do it. There may be as good reasons
for limiting a tree to ten years as a strawberry bed to
three.
There is another form of the artificial system in which
there 7s much to censure. When fruit-trees are set in gar-
dens, yards, etc., to be permanent, and long-lived, it is folly
to apply to them that high-toned treatment which belongs
to an artificial system as I have spoken of it above.
306 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Impatient of delay, the cultivator presses his trees forward
by stimulating applications, or retards them by violent
interference—by prunings at the root or branch, by bend-
ing or binding; everything is sacrificed for early and abun-
dant bearing. Fine fruit yards, designed to last a hundred
years, are served with a treatment proper only to a con-
servatory or experimental garden. This high-toned system
is still more vicious when applied to orchards and especially
to pear orchards; and it seems to us that much is to be
learned and much unlearned before we shall have attained
a true science of pear culture. Let us consider some facts.
It is well known that seedling apple-trees are generally
longer lived than grafted varieties, and obnoxious to fewer
diseases. The same is true of the pear-tree. It has fre-
quently been said that seedling and wilding pears were not
subject to the blight. This is not true if such trees are under-
going the same cultivation as grafted sorts; it is not always
true when they exist in an untutored state; but when they
are left to themselves, they certainly are dess obnoxious to
the blight and to disease of any kind, than are grafted and
cultivated varieties. A comparison between wild and
tame, between cultivated and natural, between seedling and
and grafted fruit, is certainly to the advantage of seedling
uncultivated fruit, in respect to the HEALTH Of the tree—of
course it is not in respect to quality of fruit. In connection
with these facts, consider another, that seedling and wilding
fruit is nearly twice as long in coming into bearing as are
cultivated varieties. The seedling apple bears at from ten
to fourteen years. The pear bears at from fifteen to eighteen
years. But upon cultivation the grafted pear and apple
bear in from five to eight years. It is noticeable that,
although the pear as a wilding is four or five years longer
in coming to a bearing state than the apple, yet, upon
cultivation, they both bear at about the same age from the
bud or graft. In a private letter from Robert Manning (we
prize it as among the last he ever wrote; another, received
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 307
not long after, was dictated ; but signed by his tremulous
hand in letters which speak of death), he says, “‘ Pears bear
as soon as apples of the same age; on the quince much
sooner,” etc.
It appears, then, that while cultivation accelerates the
period of fruit-bearing and perfects the fruit, it is also
accompanied with premature age and liability to diseases.
we do not wish to be understood as opposing the habit of
cultivating fruit, or as prejudiced against grafted varieties
—we are neither opposed to the one nor to the other. But
we would deduce from facts, some conclusions which will
enable us to perfect our fruits by a more discriminating
treatment.
The question will arise, Is it only by accident that liability
to disease increases, with increase of cultivation? Is there
an inherent objection in ald artificial treatment? or is there
objection only to particular methods of artificial cultiva-
tion?
Although there may be too many exceptions, to allow of
our saying, that quickly-growing timber is not durable, it
may be said in respect to trees of the same species, that the
durability of the timber depends (among other things) on
the slowness of its growth. Mountain timber is usually
tougher and more lasting than champaign wood; timber
growing in the great alluvial valleys of the West, is noto-
riously more perishable than that grown in the parsimonious
soils of the North and East.
The reason does not seem obscure. In a rich soil, and
under an ardent sun, not only is the growth of trees greater
in any given season, than in a poor soil, but the growth is
coarser and the grain coarser. But what is a coarse growth,
and what is fine-grained, or coarse-grained timber ?—timber
in which the vascular system has been greatly distended, in
which sap-vessels and air-cells are large and coarse. Where
wood is formed with great rapidity and with a super
abundance of sap, not only will there be large ducts and
308 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
vessels, but the sap itself will be but imperfectly elaborated
by the leaves. We may suppose that overfeeding in vege-
tables is, in its effects, analogous to overfeeding in animals.
The sap is but imperfectly decomposed in the leaf—it passes
into the channels for elaborated sap in a partially undigested
state—it deposits imperfect secretions, and the whole tissue
resulting from it will partake of the defects of the proper
juice.*
Thus a too rapid growth not only enlarges the sap pas-
sages, but forms their sides and the whole vegetable tissue
of imperfect matter. This accounts, not only for the perish-
ableness of quickly-grown timber, but, doubtless, for the
short-lived tendency of cultivated fruit in comparison with
wildings. For where the tissue is imperfectly formed,
general weakness must ensue.
These reasonings do not include plants which, in their
original nature, have a system of large sap-vessels, etc., and
which naturally are rapid growers, but respects only plants
which have been forced to this condition by circumstances,
Has this condition of the vegetable substance nothing to
do with the health of a tree? Does it not very much
determine its liability to disease ?—its excitability ? Where
are trees liable to diseases of the circulation? In England,
in New England, where, by climate and soil, growth is
slow ?—or in the Western and Middle States, where, by
climate, by soil, and by vicious treatment, the growth is
excessive? This leads me to review the methods employed
in rearing fruit-trees.
The nursery business is a commercial business, and aims
at profit. It is the interest of nurserymen to sell largely,
and to bring their trees into market in the shortest possible
time from the planting of the seed and the setting of the
* For the young reader it may be necessary to say, that when sap is
first taken up by the roots it is called true sap ; but after it has under-
gone a change in the leaves it is called proper juice.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 309
bud, to the sale of the tree. But independently of this,
few nurserymen know, accurately, the nature of the plants
which they cultivate, and still less the habits of each
variety. Why should they, when learned pomologists are
content to know as little as they? The trees are highly
cultivated and closely side-pruned. The vigor of a tree,
é. e. the rapidity with which it will grow, determines its
favor. Sorts which take time, and require a longer treat-
ment, are regarded with disfavor. Everything is sacrificed
to rapid growth and early maturity.
Next, and proceeding in the same evil direction, comes
the orchard cultivation. From what quarter have we,
mostly, derived our opinions and practices in fruit cultiva-
tion? From French, English, and New England writers.
But is the system which they pursue fit for us? There is
an opposite extreme to high cultivation; there are evils
besetting low-cultivation. In cold, wet, stiff, barren soils,
and in a cool, or humid, or cloudy atmosphere, trees
require stimulants. The soil needs drying, warming,
manuring; and the tree requires pruning. But such a
system is ruinous, where the soil is full of fiery activity,
bursting out with an irrepressible fertility and a superabun-
dant vegetation; where the long summer days are intensely
brilliant, and the air warm enough to ripen fruit even in
the densest shade of an unpruned tree.
A traveller in Lapland would require the most bracing
and stimulating food ; but in New Orleans it would produce
fever and death. A region, subject to all the diseases and
evils of vegetable plethora, has adopted the practice of
regions subject to the opposite evils. While receiving with
gratitude, at the hands of eminent foreign physiologists
and cultivators, the principles, we must establish the arr
of horticulture, by a practice conformable to our own cir-
cumstances. A treatment which in England would only pro-
duce healthful growth, in this country would pamper a tree
to a luxurious fullness. Let us not be deluded by the falla-
310 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
cious appearance of our orchards. The evils which we
have to fear are not shown forth in the early history of a
tree or an orchard. On the contrary, the appearance will
be flattering. The apple is a more hardy tree than the
pear, and will endure greater mismanagement; but in the
long run we shall have to pay for our greedy cultivation,
even in the apple family. Our pear-trees are already
evincing the evils of a too luxuriant habit ; and if the West
is ever to become the pear-region of America, the culture
of this tree must be adapted to the peculiarities of western
soil and climate.
It will be borne in mind that our remarks upon the culti-
vation of fruit-trees are not applicable to the processes of
art employed in experimental gardens, or in climates
requiring a highly artificial culture, but to gardens and
open orchards of the pear and apple in the middle and
Western States.
Our climate and soil predispose fruit-trees to excessive
growth. There is, in the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
and in the thickly settled portions of Missouri and Ken-
tucky, very little poor soil. Limestone lands, clay lands,
sandy loams and alluvions, afford not only variety of soil,
but the strongest and most fertile. The forest trees of the
West compared with the same species east of the Alleghany
ridge, exhibit the difference of soils. Artificial processes
may prodice better soils, it may be, but there is not pro-
bably on earth so large a body of land which is, as
uniformly, deep, strong, quick, and rich in all mineral and
vegetable substances. It is cultivated under a climate most
congenial to vegetation, both in respect to length and tem-
perature. Our spring is early. In 1835 we gathered
flowers from the woods, near Cincinnati, on the 22d of
February. In 1839 we gathered them at Lawrenceburgh,
in the last week of February. We find in our garden
journal at Indianapolis, latitude 39°55’ north, March 11,
1840, “‘ rose-bushes, honey-suckles, and willow trees had
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 311
been in leaf for some days,” and seed-sowing had begun.
In 1841, seed was sown in open ground, April 8th. In
1842, pie-plant broke ground March 8th, and all early seed
were in the ground by the 21st. In 1843, seeds were in by
April 20. In 1844 ground was in a working state Feb.
23d, and seeds put in by March1. Trees, varying according
to the nature of the season, complete the first growth, on an
average, about the Ist of September. Their second growth
continues, usually, into November. In 1844 we had noisette
roses pushing out terminal leaves after Christmas ; but this
is not a frequent occurrence. Upon an average, the middle
of March and the 1st of November, may be taken as the
limits of the vegetable year—a period of more than seven
months. During this season rains are copious, and fre-
quent. Our midsummer droughts are seldom so severe
upon vegetation as they seem to be in New England.
During the months of June, July and August, the tempe-
rature of mid-day seldom falls below 70° Fahren. and
ranges between 70° and 100°.
One other cause of rapid growth is to be mentioned
—the nature of our winters. Except when the roots are
frozen, they are supposed never to be inactive. During the
winter they slowly absorb materials from the soil, and fill
the whole system with sap. When the winters are severe
they are usually very long; and the slowness of its winter
action is compensated by the length of time afforded to the
plant. In the western States, though the winters are short,
yet there is scarcely a week in which trees may not accumu-
late their stores. The spring growth will be vigorous in
proportion to the amount of true sap collected in the vege-
table system. As the whole winter is mild enough for
this process to go on, the growth of trees is rampant in
spring. Thus, the quality of the soils, and the nature of
the seasons—the mildness of winter—the earliness of spring
and length of summer—its heat and great atmospheric bril-
liancy, all conspire to produce very rapid and strong
[
312 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
growth in herb, shrub, and tree; and I repeat, as a funda
mental consideration, that our soll AND SEASON PREDIS-
POSE FRUIT-IREES TO EXCESSIVE GROWTH. From this fact
we should take our start in every process of orchard, nur-
sery, and garden cultivation of fruit-trees; and if philoso-
phically employed it will, we will not say revolutionize, but
materially modify the processes of cultivation peculiar to
colder climates and poorer soils. In respect to esculent
vegetables—cabbages, radishes, celery, rhubarb, lettuce,
ete., this rank and rapid growth is beneficial, since it is not
the fruit but the plant which we eat. The reverse is true
in fruit-trees. Observant cultivators have conformed to
this indication of nature, in some things; for instance, -in
the treatment of the grape. The German emigrants who
settled in these parts, having been conversant with vine-
dressing in Europe, were usually employed to cut and lay
in the vines of such as were desirous of the best gardens.
But, gradually, their practice has been rejected, and now,
instead of reducing our vines to niggardly stumps, the
wood is spared and laid in long. If pruning be close, the
vine may be said to overflow with excess of new wood,
which does not ripen well. Our remarks more especially
apply to regions below 40° of north latitude.
Below this line, our efforts need not be directed to the
forcing of growth, for that, naturally, will be all-sufficient.
Our object must be compact and thoroughly ripened wood.
These reasonings may be applied to many practices now
generally in vogue.
1. It is the practice of nurserymen to force their trees by
cultivation, and by pruning. It is very well known, to
those conversant with the nursery business, that great grow-
ers and early growers are the favorites (and, so far as an
expeditious preparation of stock for sale is concerned, just-
ly), that slow and tedious growers are put upon rampant
growing stocks to quicken them. In some cases manures are
freely applied to the soil, as directed by all writers who teach
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 313
how to prepare ground for a nursery. But such writers
had their eye upon the soil of England or New England.
The still more vicious practice of side trimming and free
pruning is followed, which forces the tree to produce a great
deal of wood, rather than to ripen well a little. A well-
informed nurseryman ought not to look so much at the
length of his trees, as to the quality of their wood. The
very beau ideal of a fruit-tree for our climate is one that,
while it is hardy enough to grow steadily in cool seasons, is
not excitable enough to grow rampantly in warm ones, and
which completes its work early in the season, ripens its
wood thoroughly, and goes to rest before there is danger
of severe frost. Such trees may be had, by skillful breed-
ing, as easily, as, by breeding, any desirable quality may be
developed in cattle or horses. But of this hereafter.
The subject of pruning will be separately treated; but
it is appropriate here to say, that every consideration should
incline the nurseryman to grow his trees with side brush
from top to bottom, and by shortening these, to multiply
leaves to the greatest possible extent all over the tree. In
every climate we should idolize the deaf—in which are the
sources of health and abiding vigor.
2. The mistakes of the nursery are carried out and de-
veloped by the purchaser, in the following respects—by bad
selection, pernicious cultivation, and by improper pruning.
First, trees are selected upon a bad principle. Men are
very naturally in a hurry to see their orchards in bearing ;
precocious trees, therefore, and all means of prematurity
are sought. In respect to the pear, it is the popular, but
incorrect, opinion that it takes a man’s lifetime to bring
them into fruit. Hope deferred, very naturally in such
cases, makes the heart sick. But certain talismanic words
found in catalogues and fruit manuals restore the courage,
and you shall find the pencil mark made upon all pears,
described as “ of a vigorous growth,” “a rampant grower,”
“comes early into bearing,” “ bears young,” “a great and
314 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
early bearer.” But such as these—“not of a very vigorous
growth,” “does not bear young,” “the growth is slow but
healthy,” “‘ grows to a large size before producing fruit,”—
are passed by. Many farmers judge of a tree as they
would timothy grass. <A short-jointed, compact branch, is
“ stunted ;” but a long, plump limb, like a water shoot, or
a Lombardy poplar branch, is admired as a first-rate growth.
Some pears have but this single virtue : they make wood in
capital quantities, but very poor pears. Now our selection
must proceed on different principles if our orchards are to
be durable and healthy. We should mark for selection pears
described as— of a compact habit,” “‘ growth slow and
healthy,” “ripens its wood early and thoroughly.” <A tree
which runs far into the fall, and makes quantities of wood
more than it can thoroughly ripen, must be regarded as
unsafe and undesirable.
There is another marked fault in selecting trees—a dispo-
sition to get long and handsome trees with smooth stems.
This principle of selection would be excellent when one
goes after a bean-pole, oracane. A fruit-tree is not usually
cultivated for such uses. In the first place, it is not wise to
expose the trunk of a fruit-tree to the full sun of our sum-
mers. We have seen peach trees killed by opening the ~
head so much as to expose the main branches to the sun.
A low head, a short trunk should be sought. When land
is scarce, and orchards cultivated, high trimming is em-
ployed for the sake of convenience, not of the tree, but of
its owner. And in cool and humid climates, such evils do
not attend the practice, as with us. Beside picking long
shanked trees, one would suppose that a leaf below the
crotch would poison the tree from the assiduity with which
they are trimmed off. It ought to be laid down as a funda-
mental rule with us, that a tree is benefited not by the
amount of its wood, but by the extent of its leaf surface.
Every effort should be used to make the length of the wood
moderate, and the amount of its leaves abundant. The
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 315
\
leaf does not depend for its quality on the wood, but the
wood takes its nature from the leaf. Young trees ought
to be grown with side brush from the roots to the fork.
Water shoots from the root are to be removed, but leaves
upon the trunk are to be nursed. By cutting in the brush
when it tends to a long growth, it will emit side shoots, and
still increase the number of leaves.
Secondly. There is great evil in pruning too much.
France and England have given us our notions upon prun-
ing. There, their own system is wise, because it conforms
to the climate and soil. But their system of pruning is to-
tally uncongenial with our seasons and the habits of our
trees. In England, for instance, the peach will not ripen in
open grounds, except, perhaps, in the extreme southern
counties. In consequence, it is tramed upon walls, and its
wood thinned, to let light and heat upon every part of it.
It is very right to husband light and heat when it is scarce,
and by opening the head of a tree to carry them to all parts
of the sluggish wood. But we often have more than we want.
A peach will ripen, on the lowest limb and inside of the
tree, by the mere heat of the atmosphere. Even in New
England, the English system of pruning proves too free.
Manning says, “From the strong growth of fruit-trees in
our country and the dryness of its atmosphere, severe prun-
ing is less necessary here than in England.” We are not
giving rules for pruning ; but cautions against pruning too
freely. There is not a single point in fruit cultivation where
more mistakes are committed than in pruning.
Thirdly. Great mistakes are committed in stimulating the
growth of trees by enriching the soil. Books direct (and
men naturally and innocently obey), the putting of manure
to young trees. We have no doubt that the time will
come, when manures will be so thoroughly analyzed and
classified, that we can employ them just as a carpenter does
his tools, or the farmer his implements; if we wish wood,
we shall apply certain ‘ingredients to the soil and have it;
316 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
if we wish fruit, we shall have at hand manures which pro-
mote the fruiting properties of the tree; if we want seed,
we shall have manures for it. But manures as now em-
ployed, are, usually, not beneficial to orchards of young
trees. A clay soil, very stiff and adhesive, may require
sand and vegetable mold to render it permeable to the root ;
some very barren soils may require some manure; but the
average of our farms are rich enough already, and too rich
for the good of the young tree. It would be better for the
orchard if it made less wood and made it better.
If these directions make the prospect of fruit so distant
as to discourage the planting of orchards, we will add, plant
your orchard; and if you cannot wait for its healthful
growth, plant also trees for immediate use, and serve them
just as you please; manure them, cut them, get fruit at all
hazards; only make up your minds that they will be short-
lived and liable to blight and disease.
A LIST OF CHOICE FRUITS.
Our readers may desire a list of fruits, which are univer-
sally admitted to be of first-rate excellence. We cannot
include, of course, ail that are first rate; but we put nene
in that are not so.
[ie GASP Pies.
I. SUMMER.
Red er Carolina June. Prince’s Harvest.
Summer Queen. Kirkbridge White.
Yellow Hoss. Sweet June.
Sweet Bough. Daniel.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Ba
Il, AUTUMN.
Maiden’s Blush. Fall Harvey.
Wine. Gravenstein.
Holland Pippin. Ashmore.
Rambo. Porter.
III. WINTER.
Black. White Belle Fleur.
Golden Russet. Michael Henry Pippin.
Newtown Spitzenberg. Pryor’s Red.
Rhode Island Greening. Green Newtown Pippin.
Hubbardston Nonsuch, Jenetan or Rawle’s Janet.
Vandeveer Pippin. Putnam Russet.
Yellow Belle Fleur.
fie PrAars.
I. Summer Pears, or such as ripen from the first of July to the last of
August.
1. Madeleine, or Citron des Carmes. 4. Dearborn’s Seedling.
2. Bloodgood. 5. Julienne.
3. Summer Francreai. 6. Williams’ Bon Chretien.
II, Aurumn Pears, or such as ripen from September to the last of No
vember.
4. Stevens’ Genesse. 14. Beurre Bose.
8. Belle Lucrative. 15. Andrews.
9: Henry the Fourth. 16. Marie Louise.
10. Washington. 17. Doyenne or fall butter,
11. Dunmore. 18. Dix.
12. St. Ghislain. 19. Petre.
13. Seckel. 20. Duchesse D’Angouleme,
III. Winter Pears, or those which ripen during the winter and spring
months.
21. Beurre Diel. 2'T. Van Mons Leon le Clere.
22. Hacon’s Incomparable. 28. Beurre Easter.
23. Passe Colmar. 29. Chaumontelle.
24, Beurre Ranz. 30. Glout Morceau.
25. Columbia. 31. Prince’s St. Germain.
26. Beurre D’Aremberg, 82. Winter Nelis.
318 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Those who wish only four trees, may select Nos. 2, 6, 20,
26. Those who have room for eight, to the above may add
13, 238, 25, 82. Those who wish sixteen trees, to the above
may add, 1, 3, 11, 14, 18, 21, 24, 28.
Lik... Pe xou me:
I. EARLY.
1. Red Magdalen. 4. Morris’ Red Rareripe.
2. Early Royal George. 5. Crawford’s Early Melocoton.
3. Early York.
II, MEDIUM.
6. Apricot Peach. 11. Malta.
7. Baltimore Rose. 12. Brevoort.
8. Swalsh. 13. Douglass.
9. Noblesse. 14. Grosse Mignonne.
10. Coolidge’s Favorite.
Ill. LATE. .
15. Heath. 17. Lemon Cling.
16. Crawford’s late Melocoton. 18. La Grange.
IV. APRICOTS.
1. Large Early. 8. Peach Apricot.
2. Breda. 4, Moorpark.
V. CHERRIES.
1. Bauman’s May or Bigarreau de 6. Bigarreau, or Spanish Yellow.
Mai. 7. Belle de Choisy.
2. Black Eagle. 8. Black Tartarian.
8. Knight’s Early Black. 9. Downer’s Late.
4. May Duke. 10. Napoleon.
5. Elton.
For a collection of two trees, 4, 9; for four trees, add
6 and 10.
Vi, Proms.
1. Green Gage. 6. Cruger’s Scarlet,
2. Jefferson, 7. Washington.
8. Huling’s Superb. 8. Red Gage.
4. Coe’s Golden Drop. 9. Smith’s Orleans.
5
. Purple Gage. 10. Royal de Tours. yo
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 319
For two trees, 1 and 4; for four add 2 and 7. The fol-
lowing are said to be suitabie for light sandy soils, on which
plums usually drop their fruit: Cruger’s Scarlet, Imperial
Gage, Red Gage, Coe’s Golden Drop, Bleeker’s Gage, Blue
Gage.
VII. STRAWBERRIES.
Harly Virginia. Hudson.
Hovey’s Seedling. Ross Phoenix.
No one man can make out a list that will suit all; and
those who are acquainted with fruits will reject some from
the above list and insert others. But it may be safely said,
that he who has in his collection the above varieties, wiil
have a collection comprising the best that are known, and
without one inferior sort, although there may be many
others as good; which may be added by such as have room
for them.
THE NURSERY BUSINESS.
Tue great interest in the cultivation of fruit which has
been excited within a few years, has given rise to many
nurseries to supply the demand, and every year we see the
number increasing. Or rather, we see new adventurers mm
this line, for the failure of many and the abandonment of
the business, prevents the number from becoming so great
as one would suppose.
We are very glad to see the art of fruit culture increas-
ing, and we are very glad to see competent men embarking
in the nursery business. But we are sorry to see the
impression gaining ground that it is a business which any-
body can conduct, and that every man can make money by
it who knows how to graft or to bud. Let no man embark
in it under such misapprehension.
320 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
In the first place, the time, and Jabor, and natience rea-
quired for a successful nursery business is much greater
tnan any one suspects beforehand. Jf a man has a Ja’ge
capital he may begin sales at once upon a purchased stock.
But if one is to prepare his own stock for market, and this
must be the case with by far the greater number of western
nurserymen, it will require several years of expensive labor
before he can realize anything. Nor even then will he be
apt to receive profits which will at all meet his expectations.
During these years of preparation on what is he to live?
If he has means, very well; but let no man suppose that he
can get along, especially with a family on his hands, during
the early years of his nursery, if he has nothing else to de-
pend upon. The mere physical labor of keeping a nursery
in proper order is such as to make it no sinecure.
But all this is a less consideration than the special skill
and vigilant care required to conduct a nursery in an hon-
orable manner. Nowhere do mistakes occur more easily,
and nowhere are they more provoking, both to the buyer
and seller. It is rare that assistants can be had upon
whom reliance can be placed. There are men enough to
plow, and grub, and clean; but to select buds and grafts,
to work the various kinds, and plant them safely by them-
selves, this, usually, must be done by the proprietor. Where
a nursery is carried on by assistants, it makes almost no dif-
ference how much care is used, mistakes will abound.
The extent to which an error goes is not unworthy of a
moment’s attention. We purchased of a very highly re-
spectable nurseryman, the Royal George peach. The first
season many buds were distributed from it. An expert
nurseryman in the vicinity, among others, got of it. The
credit of the original proprietor of the tree was such that
it was thought safe to propagate at once, and thousands of
trezs were worked with these buds; from him, nurserymen
from aeighboring counties procured scions, and now the
Koyal George, which has proved to be no Royal George at
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 521
all, is scattered all over the country. When a nursery con-
tains from fifty to a hundred kinds of apples, thirty or forty
kinds of pears, ten to twenty sorts of cherries, thirty or
forty kinds of peaches, besides plums, nectarines, apricots,
etc., there will be some two or three hundred separate
varieties of fruit to be propagated each year, and of each
sort from a hundred to a thousand or more trees, according
to the business of the nursery. Two things are apparent
from this view; first, that such unremitting and sagacious
vigilance is required that not every one is fit to be a nurse-
ryman; and, secondly, that not every nurseryman is a
scamp who puts upon you trees untrue to their names.
No doubt there are roguish nurserymen; no doubt, too,
there are culpably careless men in this, as in all other forms
of business. But no one will be so charitable to nursery-
men as those who understand the difficulties of their busi-
ness; and a mistake, and many of them, may occur in well-
appointed grounds, which no care could well have pre-
vented.
We think this to be a business to which no man should
turn, except under two conditions; first, that he will, if he
has not already, serve a faithful apprenticeship to it—we
do not mean by regular indenture, but by practising for
several years in a good nursery until the prominent essen-
tial parts of the business have become practically familiar.
The other condition is, that he make up his mind to see
to it himself.
Remepy ror YELtLow Buas.—A gentleman informs us
that he has always saved his vines by planting poppies
among them. Those on one side of an alley, without pop-
pies, would be entirely eaten, while those on the other side,
with poppies, would not be touched.
322 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
THE BREEDING OF FRUITS.
BEcavsE, as yet, no certain rules can be laid down for the
production of a given result by crossing flower on flower,
it does not follow that there are not certain invariable prin-
ciples which govern the process. It is but a little while since
breeding animals had any pretension to scientific rules. But,
by careful practice and observation, the most important
improvement has been attained in all the animals belonging
to the farm. And if careful research and experiment do
not result in absolute certainty, they will yet render the
production of fine varieties of fruit, by the crossing of
the old ones, a matter of much less chance than it now
is.
The art of cross-fertilization is being much more practised
by florists than by pomologists, and for obvious reasons.
What the breeder of annuals can do in a few months
requires more than as many years from him that essays to
raise new fruits. Many florists’ flowers, however, require
as long and even a longer time than apples or pears; and it
is a marvel that the phlegmatic patience of the tulip-loving
Dutch Jobs should not have found imitators in the orchard.
If a man can wait ten years to ascertain that all his seedling
bulbs are good for nothing, or at the best, that out of ten
thousand, but one or two are worth keeping, surely the
patience of an enthusiast in fruit ought not to snap by being
drawn through such a space.
Two methods for originating new varieties of fruit have
been practised; the natural method of Van Mons, and the
artificial method of Knight. Van Mons, born at Brussels
in 1765, was a man of fine genius and thorough education.
Although he is chiefly known as a pomologist, his labors
in the nursery were only incidental to the regular occupa-
tion of a public scientific life. M. Poiteau quaintly says of
him that he writes “on the gravest subjects, in the midst
of noise, in 4 company of persons who talk loudly on frivo-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 323
lous subjects, and takes part in the conversation without
stopping his pen.”
Van Mons’ theory is founded upon two physical facts:
1. That all seeds in a state of nature can be made by cul-
tivation to vary from their condition, which variations
may be fixed, and become permanent.
2. That all cultivated seeds have a tendency to return to-
ward that natural state from which they originally varied.
Wesay toward, for he supposed that an improved fruit would
never return absolutely to the original and natural type.
It was upon this last principle that Van Mons accounted
for the fact, that as a general thing, the seeds of fine old
varieties of fruit produced only inferior kinds. Recourse
could not be had therefore to seeds of improved fruit.
On the other hand, the seed of fruits absolutely wild
would produce fruits exactly like their original. If the
seed of the wild pear be gotten from the wood and planted
in a garden, every seed will yield only the wild pear again.
But if a wild pear be transplanted, and put under new influ-
ences of soil, climate and cultivation, its fruit will begin to
augment and improve. The change is not merely upon the
size and appearance of the fruit, it affects also the qualities
of the seed. For if the seed be now planted, the difference
between a wild pear, iz a state of nature and the same wild
pear-tree in a state of cultivation will at once appear in
this, that whereas the seed of the first is constant, the seed
of the second shows an inclination to vary. Here then is a
starting. When once the habit of variation is gained, the
foundation of improvement is laid. In a short time the
enthusiasm of Van Mons had collected into his garden
80,000 trees upon which he was experimenting, nor can the
result of his labors be better stated than in the words of
M. Poiteau:
“That so long as plants remain in their natural situation,
they do not sensibly vary, and their seeds always produce
the same; but on changing their climate and territory
324 : PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
several among them vary, some more and others less, and
when they have once departed from their natural state,
they never again return to it, but are removed more and
more therefrom, by successive generations. and produce,
sufficiently often, distinct races, more or less durable, and
that finally if these variations are even carried back to the
territory of their ancestors, they will neither represent the
character of their parents, or ever return to the species
from whence they sprung.”
’ Accordingly, Van Mons began to sow the seeds of natural
and wild fruit which were in a variable state. By all means
within his power he hastened his seedlings to show fruit.
The first generation showed only poor fruit but decidedly
better than the wild. Selecting the seed of the best of
these, he sowed again. From the fruit of these he sowed
the third generation. From the third, a fourth; and from
the fourth, a fifth; as far as the eighth generation.
His experience showed that there was great difference
among different species of fruit in the number of gene-
rations through which they must pass before they were per-
fect. The apple yielded good fruit in the fourth genera-
tion. Stone fruits produced perfect kinds in the third
generation. Some varieties afforded perfect fruit im the
fifth generation, while others go on improving to the
eighth.
The time required for this renovation diminished at each
remove from the normal or wild state. Thus, the trees
from the second sowing of the pear-seed fruited in from ten
to twelve years ; those from their seed, or of the third gene-
tion in from eight to ten years; those of the fourth genera-
tion in from six to eight years; those of the fifth genera-
tion, in six years, and those in the eight, in four years.
These are the mean terms of all his experiments.
To obtain perfect stone fruits, through four successive
generations, from parent to son, required from twelve to
fifteen years ; the apple required twenty years, and the pear,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 325
when carried only to the fifth generation, required from
thirty to thirty-six years.
HysripizaTION, oR Knicut’s Mernop.—Andrew Knight,
one of the most original and philosophic horticulturists that
ever lived, pursued an entirely different method—that of
cross-fertilization. He carefully removed the anthers from
the blossoms upon which he wished to operate, so that the
stigma should not receive a particle of the pollen belonging
to its own flower. He then procured from the variety
which he wished to cross, a portion of the pollen, and arti-
ficially impregnated the prepared blossom with it. When
the fruit thus produced had ripened its seeds, they were
sown, and by regular precess brought into bearing. The
progeny were found to combine, in various degrees of
excellence, the qualities of both parents.
REMARKS ON THE TWO METHODS.
1. Both Van Mons and Knight believed in a degeneracy
of plants; but the degeneracy of the one system is not to
be confounded with that of the other.
Knight believed that varieties had a regular period of
existence; although, as in animal life, care and skill might
make essential difference in the longevity, yet they could in
nowise avert the final catastrophe; a time would come,
sooner or later, at which the vegetable vitality would be
expended, and the variety must perish by exhaustion—by
running out.
Van Mons believed that an improved variety tended to
return to its normal state—to its wild type; and although
he did not believe that it could ever be entirely restored te
its wild state, it might go so far as to make it worthless for
useful purposes.
Knight believed in absolute decay; Van Mons, in retro-
cession. According to Knight’s theory, varieties of fruit
326 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
cease by the natural statute of limitation; according to
Van Mons, they only fall from grace.
There can be no reasonable doubt that Van Mons held
the truth, and as little, that Knight’s speculations were fal-
lacious. Bad cultivation will cause anything to run out; no
plant will perfect its tissues or fruit without the soil affords
it elementary materials. The so-called exhausted varieties
renew their youth when transplanted into soils suitable for
them.
2. Against Van Mons’ method it is urged, that it enfee-
bles the constitution of plants; that, enfeedbling is the very
key of the process. This Mr. Downing urges with emphasis,
saying that, “the Belgian method (Van Mons’) gives us
varieties often impaired in their Aealth in their very origin.”
It is one thing to restrain the energy of a plant, and an-
other to enfeeble it. It may be enfeebled until it becomes
unhealthy, but rampant vigor is as really an unhealthy state
as the other extreme. A tree refuses fruit and is liable to
death from a coarse, open, rank growth, as much as from a
languor which suppresses all growth.
No; that which we imagine Van Mons to have effected
was a smaller, but more compact and jine growth. Nor
are we aware that, as a@ matter of experience, the Belgian
pears prove to be any more tender than the English,
Doubtless, there are trees of a delicate and tender habit in
the number, but as few, in proportion to the great number
originated, as by any other method.
The two main objections to the plan are the time required,
and the utter uncertainty of the results. To imitate the
process would require a Van Mons’ patience, in which, pro-
bably, he was never surpassed, and his enthusiasm, which
was extraordinary even for a horticulturist, a race of beings
supposed to be anything but phlegmatic.
The uncertainty is such as to prevent any determinate
improvement. We get, not what we may wish, but what-
ever may happen to come. Nothing that art can do would
A4Z20JT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 327
affect the size, color, hardness, or in any respect, the gene-
ral character of the fruit.
_ It is in these aspects that Knight’s method must always
be preferred as a practical system. We can obtain a return
for our labor in one-fifth the time ; and, what is even more
important, we can regulate, before-hand, the results within
certain limits. The new fruit is to be made up of the quali-
ties of its parents in various proportions. We cannot deter-
mine what the proportions shall be, but we can determine
What parents shall he seleeted. Nor is it at all improbable
that, when knowledge has become more exact by a longer
und larger experience, the breeder of fruit may cross the
varieties with nearly the same certainty of result as does
the breeder of stock. It is upon this feature, the power
which science has over the results to be obtained, that we
look with the greatest interest ; and we urge upon scientific
cultivators the duty of perfecting our fruits by judicious
breeding.
PRUNING ORCHARDS.
Tue habit of early spring pruning has been handed down
to us from English customs, and farmers do it because it
always has been done. Besides, about this time, men have
leisure, and would like to begin the season’s work; and
pruning seems quite a natural employment with which to
introduce the labors of the year.
It is not possible for America, but more emphatically for
western cultivators to do worse than to pattern upon the
example of British and Continental authorities in the matter
of orchards and vineyards. The summers of England are
moist, cool, and deficient in light. Our summers are exactly
the reverse—dry, fervid, and brilliant. The stimuli of the
328 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
elements with them are much below, and with us much
above par. In consequence, their trees have but a moderate
growth ; ours are inclined to excessive growth. .
Their whole system of open-culture, and wall-training is
founded upon the necessity of husbanding all their re-
sources. To avail themselves of every particle of light,
they keep open the heads of their trees, so that the parsi-
monious sunshine shall penetrate every part of the tree.
Let this be done with us, and there are many of our trees
that would be killed by the force of the sun’s rays upon the
naked branches in a single season, or very much enfeebled.
For the same general reasons, the English reduce the quan-
tity of bearing-wood, shortening a part or wholly cutting it
out, that the residue, having the whole energy of the tree
concentrated upon it, may perfect its fruit. Our difficulty
being an excess of vitality, this system of shortening and
cutting out, would cause the tree to send out suckers from
the root and trunk, and would fill the head of the tree with
rank water-shoots or gourmands. What would be thought
of the people of the torrid zone should they borrow their
customs of clothing from the practice of Greenland? It
would be as rational as it is for orchardists, in a land whose
summers are long and of high temperature, to copy the
customs of a land whose summers are prodigal of fog and
rain, but penurious of heat and light.
Except to remove dead, diseased or interfering branches,
do not cut at all.
But if pruning is to be done, wait till after corn-planting.
The best time to prune is the time when healing will the
quickest follow cutting. This is not in early spring, but m
early summer. The elements from which new wood is pro-
duced are not drawn from the rising sap, but from that
which descends between the bark and wood. This sap,
called trwe sap, is the upward sap after it has gone through
that chemical laboratory, the leaf. Each leaf is a chemical
contractor, doing up its part of the work of preparing sap
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 329
for use, as fast as it is sent up to it from the root through
the interior sap-passages. Jn the leaf, the sap gives off and
receives, certain properties; and when thus elaborated, it
is charged with all those elements required for the forma-
tion and sustentation of every part of vegetable fabric.
Descending, it gives out its various qualities, till it reaches
the root; and whatever is left then passes out into the soil.
Every man will perceive that if a tree is pruned in spring
before it has a leaf out, there is no sap provided to repair
the wound. A slight granulation may take place, in certain
circumstances, and in some kinds of plants, from the ele-
ments with which the tree was stored during the former
season; but, in point of fact, a cut usually remains without
change until the progress of spring puts the whole vege-
table economy into action.
In young and vigorous trees, this process may not seem to
occasion any injury. But trees growing feeble by age will
soon manifest the result of this injudicious practice, by
blackened stumps, by cankered sores, and by decay.
If one must begin to do something that looks like spring-
work, let him go at a more efficient train of operations.
With a good spade invert the sod for several feet from the
body of the tree. With a good scraper remove all dead
bark. Dilute (old) soft soap with urine; take a stiff shoe-
brush, and go te scouring the trunk and main branches.
This will be Jabor to some purpose; and before you have
gone through a large orchard faithfully, your zeal for spring-
work will have become so far tempered with knowledge,
that you will be willing to let pruning alone till after corn-
planting. ‘
Two exceptions or precautions should be mentioned.
1. In the use of the wash; new soap is more caustic than
old ; and the sediments of a soap barrel much more so tian
the mass of soap. Sometimes trees have been injured by
applying a caustic alkali in too great strength. There is
little danger of this when a tree is rough and covered with
830 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
dead bark or dirt; but when it is smooth and has no scurf
it is more liable to suffer. Trees should not be washed in
dry and warm weather. The best time is just before spring
rains, or before any rain.
2. Where fruit-trees are found to have suffered from the
winter, pruning cannot be too early, and hardly too severe.
If left to grow, the heat of spring days ferments the sap
and spreads blight throughout the tree; whereas, by severe
cutting, there is a chance, at least, of removing much of the
injured wood. We have gone over the pear-trees in our
own garden, and wherever the least affection has been dis-
covered, we have cut out every particle of the last sum-
mer’s wood; and cut back until we reached sound and
healthy wood, pith and bark.
sa
SLITTING THE BARK OF TREES.
Tuis is a practice very much followed by fruit-raisers.
Downing gives his sanction to it. Mr. Pell (N. Y.), famous
for his orchards, includes it as a part of his system of
orchard cultivation. Men talk of trees being bark-bound,
etc., and let out the bark on the same principle, we sup-
pose, as mothers do the pantaloons of growing boys. We
confess a prejudice against this letting out of the tucks in
a tree’s clothes. We do not say that there may not be
cases of diseased trees in which, as a remedial process, this
may be wise; but we should as soon think of slitting the
skin on a boy’s legs, or on a calfs or colt’s, as a regular
part of a plan of rearing them, as to slash the bark of sound
and healthy trees. Bark-bound! what is that? Does the
inside of a tree grow faster than the outside? When bark
is slit, is it looser around the whole trunk than before?
When granulations have filled up this artificial channel, is
not the bark just as tight as it was before? Mark, we do
ABOU1 FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. dol
not say that it is mot a good practice; but only that we do
not yet understand what the benefit is.
“* Why, the bark bursts sometimes.”
Yes, disease may thus affect it ; and when it does, ewt if
NECESSATY.
“Does it do any harm?” Perhaps not; neither would it
to put a weathercock on the top of every tree; or to bury
a black cat under the roots, or to mark each tree with talis-
manic signs. Is it worth while to do a thing just because
it does no harm ?
“But when a tree is growing too fast, does it not need
it?” Yes, if it can be shown that the bark, alburnum, etc.,
do not increase alike. That excitement which increases the
growth of one part of a tree will, as a general fact, increase
the growth of every other. In respect to the fruit and
seed, doubtless, particular manures will develop special
properties. But is there evidence that such a thing takes
place in respect to the various tissues of the wood,
bark, ete?
“But if atree be sluggish, and bound, will it not help
it??? Whatever excites a more vigorous circulation will be
of advantage. Whether any supposed advantage from the
knife arises in this way, we do not know. But a good
scraping, or a scouring off of the whole body with sand,
and then a pungent alkaline wash—(soft soap diluted with
urine) would, we think, be better for bark-bound trees than
the whole tribe of slits, vertical, horizontal, zig-zag, or
waved.
Hovey’s Macazinr or Horticutturr.—We recommend
all who can afford three dollars a year for a sterling monthly,
beautifully got up, in the best style of Boston typography,
to send to Boston for Hovey’s Magazine. We give it an
unqualified recommendation, and those who take it one
year will be loth to part with it.
San PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
DOWNING’S FRUIT AND FRUIT-TREES OF AMERICA.
WHEN a book is hopelessly weak or incorrect, it should
be the object of criticism to exterminate it. But when a
work is admitted to be, upon the whole, well done, criti-
cism ought to be an assistance to it, and not a hindrance,
Praise by the wholesale is better for the publisher than for
the reputation of the author; since, in a work like Down-
ing’s, every pomologist knows that perfectiow is not attain-
able, and indiscriminate eulogy inclines the better-read
critic to rebut the praise by a full development of the faults.
Thus on one side there is general praise and faint blame ;
and on the other, faint praise and general blame.
We shall, at present, confine our attention to the cata-
logue of apples and pears, for all other fruits of our zone
together are not of importance equal to these; and if an
uuthor excels in respect to these, his success will cover a
multitude of sins in the treatment of small fruits, and fruits
of short duration. Mr. Downing has shown good judg-
ment in making out his list of varieties; his descriptions,
for the most part, seem to be from his own senses; he has
added many interesting particulars in respect to fruits not
recorded before, or else scattered in isolated sentences in
magazines and journals.
But are his descriptions thorough and uniform? While
he has added materials to pomology, has he advanced the
science by reducing such materials to a consistent form? If
we compare Mr. Downing’s descriptions with those of Ken-
rick, or even of Manning, he excels them in fullness. If he
be compared with classic European pomologists, he is de-
cidedly inferior, both in the conception of what was to be
done, and in a neat, systematic method of execution. In-
deed, Mr. Downing does not seem to have settled, before
hand, in his mind, a formula of a description ; sometimes
only three or four characteristics are given. Downing sins
in excellent company. There is not an American pomo-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 333
logical writer who appears to have conceived, even, of a sys-
tematic, scientific description of fruits. European authors,
decidedly more explicit and minute than we are, have never
reduced the descriptive part of the science to anything like
regularity. We do not suppose that there can be such exact
and constant dissimilarities detected between variety and
variety of a species, as exists between species and species of
a genus. We do not think a description of fruits to be im-
perfect, therefore, merely because it is less distinctive than
a description of plants. But the more variable and obscure
the points of difference between two varieties, the more
scrupulously careful must we be to seize them. Where
differences are broad and uniform, science can afford to be
careless, but not where they are vague and illusory. We
can approximate a systematic accuracy. But it must be by
making up in the nwmber of determining circumstances,
that which is wanting in the invariable distinctiveness of a
few that are specific.
1. Downing’s descriptions are quite irregular and unequal.
Both his pears and apples are imperfect, but not alike im-
perfect. The descriptions of pears are decidedly in advance
of those of the apple. It would seem as if the improve-
ment which he gained by practice was very easily traced in
its course on his pages.
Hardly two apples are described in reference to the same
particulars. With respect to color of skin, size and form,
eye and stem, he approaches the nearest to uniformity.
But with respect to every other feature there is an utter
want of regularity, which indicates not so much carelessness
as the want of any settled plan or conception of a perfect
scientific description.
We will, out of a multitude of similar cases, select a few
as specimens of what we mean. Of the Pumpkin Russet,
he says, “flesh exceedingly rich and sweet;” but he does
not speak of its tewtwre, whether coarse or fine; whether
brittle or leathery. Pomme de Neige—“ flesh remarkably
334 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
white, very tender, juicy and good, with a slight perfume ;”
but is it sweet or sour, or subacid, or astringent? No one
can tell by reading the joint descriptions of the Red and
the Yellow Ingestries what their flavor is, since it is only
said that they are “juicy and high flavored »—but whether
the high flavored juice is sweet or sour, does not appear.
These are not picked instances. They occur on almost
every page of his list of apples. The Swmmer Sweet Para-
dise is, of course, sweet, since we are three times told of it,
once in the title and twice in the text. The Swrxr Pear-
main also, is a “sweet apple” ‘ of a very saccharine flavor.”
Of course it is sweet. Nos. 67, 68, 69, 74, 75, and very many
more, are described without information as to their flavor
except that, whatever it is, it is “ brisk,” or “ high,” or “ rich”
—forlorn adjectives unaffianced to any substantive which they
may qualify. Sometimes the health of the tree and its hardi-
ness are given, and as often omitted. Some times its habit
of bearing is mentioned, but oftener neglected. The color
of the flesh is given in No. 82, but not in 83; in 84, but not
in 85; from 86-92 inclusive, but not to the second 92, for
the Bedfordshire Foundling and the Dutch Mignonne are
both numbered 92. The color of the flesh is not given in 93,
97, 100, 101, 103, 110, although the intermediate numbers
have it given. Why should one be minutely described, and
another not all? Weshould regard it an ungrateful requital
for all the pleasure and profit which this volume has afforded
us to hunt up and display what, to some, may seem to be
mere “jots and tittles,” were it not that these, in them-
selves, unimportant things mark decisively the absence in
the author’s plan, of a style of description which pomology
always needed, but now begins imperiously to demand.
And we are confident that a pomological manual on the
right design, is yet to be written. Our hearty wish is, that
Mr. Downing’s revised edition may be that manual.
2. We are led, from these remarks, to consider, by it-
self, the imnerfect scale of descriptions adopted by all our
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 335
American pomological writers, upon wh.ch Mr. D. has not
materially improved.
The description of the tree is very meagre or totally neg-
lected. Nothing at all is said of it in cases out of the 174
apples numbered and described. The general shape of
the tree is given in but thirty-eight instances in the same
number.
The color of the wood is, usually, noticed in the account
of pears; but in the account of apples in not one case, we
should think, in ten.
The peculiar growth of the young wood, in a great
majority of cases, is not noticed; but more frequently in
the pear than in the apple list. The least practised
observer knows how striking is this feature of the face of a
tree. We do not remember an instance where the buds
have been employed as a characteristic. Are distinctive
marks so numerous that such a one as this can be spared?
The shape, color, size, prominence, and shoulder of buds,
together with their interstitial spaces, form too remarkable
a portion of trees to be absolutely overlooked in a book
describing the “ fruits and fruit-trees of America.”
Equally noticeable is the almost entire neglect of the
core and seed, as identifymg marks. Once in a while, as in
the case of the Belle Fleur, the Roman Stem, the Spitzen-
berg, and the Pomme Royale, we are told, that the cores
are hollow. But neither among pears nor apples, is the core
or seed made to be of any importance. This is the more
remarkable as being a decided retrocession in the art of
description. Prince, wisely following continental authors,
is careful in his description of pears, to give, and with some
minuteness, the peculiarities of the seed. But Downing,
injudiciously misled by, in this respect, the decidedly bad
example of British authors, has, almost without exception,
neglected this noble criterion. There is not another single
feature, either of fruit or fruit-trees, which we could not
spare better than the core and seed. Not only may varie-
3356 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ties be marked by their seeds, but they form, in connection
with the core, important elements of diagnosis of qualities.
A long-keeper, usually has a very small, compact core, with
few seeds. A highly improved and luscious pear, not unfre-
quently is wholly seedless; while fruits not far removed
from the wild state abound in seeds. Whenever a system
of description shall have been formed, we venture to predict
that the core and seed will be ranked at a higher value in it
than any one other element of discrimination and description,
The same neglect or casual notice is bestowed upon the
leaf. If anything about it is remarkable it is mentioned,
not otherwise: but is there a page of any book that was
ever printed, that has more reading on it than is on a leaf,
if one is only taught to read it? Jt, too, is not only a sign
of difference but very often of quality. Mr. D. has availed
himself of this criterion in describing peaches. Is it a legible
sign only in the peach orchard? He that is ignorant of
these marks, and only can tell one frwit from another, is yet
in the abc of pomology. Who but a tyro, on importing
Coe’s Golden Drop, would not at once perceive the imposi-
tion, if there was one, the moment his eye saw a bud, or its
shoulder? Van Mons learned to select stocks for his experi-
ments, as well by the wood and bud in winter, as by the
leaf and growth of summer. In a large bed of seedlings
every experimenter ought to know by wood and leaf what
to select as prognosticating good fruit, and what to reject,
without waiting to see the fruit. Nurserymen of our
acquaintance, without book, label, or stake, can tell every
well-known variety on their grounds. One of our acquain.
tance never had a mark, label, stake, or register, of any
kind upon his ground; a culpable reliance on his ability to
read tree-faces ; for, on his throwing up the business sud-
denly, bis successor fell into innumerable mistakes. It is
just as easy for a pomologist to know the face of every
variety, as for a shepherd to know the face of every sheep
in his flock, or a grazier every animal of his herd,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 337
g. Although the “Fruit and Fruit-trees of America”
professes to give the process of management only for the
garden and the orchard, it ought to include, and we pre-
sume was designed to embrace the essential features of
nursery culture. Every cultivator of fruit must be a private
nurseryman ; he needs the same information, the same direc-
tions as if he were a commercial gardener. He that designs
planting an orchard ought to know the disposition of each
variety of fruit-tree, that he may suit the circumstances of
his soil, or provide for the peculiarities of a tree, as a
farmer needs to know the peculiarities of the different
breeds of hogs and cattle. With a large number of persons
it would be enough to say of fruits, “superb,” “ extra-
superb,” “superlatively grand,” “extra magnificent ;” for
such, a princely catalogue would answer every purpose.
But such as have some knowledge, and every year, we are
happy to believe, the number of such increases, ask, not the
author’s bare eulogy, but a definite statement of all those
special qualities on which such eulogy is founded. The
exact taste of each variety of fruit should be studied in res-
pect to soil; some, and but few, love strong clays; yet
fewer thrive upon wet soils; but some will, as the Sweet or
Carolina June, which does well on quite wet soils; some
refuse their gifts except upon a warm and rich sand; some,
and by far the greatest number, love a deep loam, with a
subsoil moist without being wet. The buds of some varie-
ties escape the vernal frosts by their hardmess; some by
putting forth later than their orchard brethren. Some
varieties thrive admirably by ground or root grafting, while
very many, so worked, are killed off during the first winter;
some varieties, if budded, grow off with alacrity, others are
dull and unwilling; some form their tops with facility and
beauty; others, like many men, are rambling, awkward,
and averse to any head at all. Some sorts, put upon what
stock you will, have singularly massive roots; others have
fine and slender ones. Every variety of tree has traits of
338 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
disposition peculiar to itself; and in respect to traits pos-
sessed in common, even these may be classified. In every
description there should be, at least, an attempt at giving
these various nursery peculiarities. It cannot be done, as
yet, with any considerable accuracy. Firuit-trees have not
yet been minutely studied. <A florist can give you a thou-
sand times more minute and special information in respect
to the peculiar habits and wants of his flowers, than an
orchardist can of his trees. Doubtless, it is easier to do it
in plants which have a short period ; whose whole life passes
along before the eye every season, than in plants whose very
youth outlasts ten generations of Dahlias, Pansies, Balsams,
etc. But that only makes it the more important that we
should be up and doing. Let no work be regarded as clas-
sic which does not take into its design the most thorough
enunciation of all the peculiarities of fruits, and pomology
will receive more advantage in ten years, than it could by a
hundred years of rambling, unregulated, discursive descrip-
tions.
The ability which Mr. D. has shown as a horticultural
writer, his industry in collecting materials for this, his last
work; the skill which he has shown himself to possess in
describing fruits, give the public a right to expect that he
will “go on unto perfection ;” and if Mr. D. will adopt a
higher standard and set out with a design of a more sys-
tematic description of fruits, every liberal cultivator in the
land will be glad to put at his disposal whatever of minute
observation he may possess.
BuckwHEAtT is a corruption rather than a translation of
the Saxon word Buckwaizen, the first syllable signifying
beech, the tree of that name, whose nut the kernel of the
grain so much resembles in shape. The grain, therefore,
might be properly called beech-wheat.
ABOUS FEUTIS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 339
LETTER FROM A. J. DOWNING.
Ws give below 2 letter from Mr. Downing, long known
as an eminent pomologist and more recently yet more
distinguished fer his writings upon Horticultural matters,
Although a private letter, it is of general interest, and he
will, we hope, indulge the liberty taken.*
‘“ HIGHLAND GaRDENS, NewnureH, New York,
Feb. 29th, 1845.
“My peak Sir: I thank you for the interesting article
on horticulture in the West, which appears in the last No.
of Hovey’s Magazine.
“ My particular object in writing you at this moment is
to call your attention to the remarks you make on the
‘Golden Russet,’ which you call ‘the prince of small
apples” From your description of this fruit it is the
‘Sheep-nose,’ or ‘ Bullock’s Pippin’ of Coxe, well known
here, and one of the most meltimg and delicious of apples.
I understand from Professor Kirtland of Cleveland, that
this is the apple known by the name of Golden Russet in
his region.
“Will you do me the favor, for the sake of settling the
synonyms, to send me two or three cuttings of the young
wood, by mail? I can then determine in a moment. The
Sheep-nose has long shoots of a peculiar drab color. If
your apple proves the same, I think I shall cancel the title
‘Sheep-nose ’—(a vile name), known only in New Jersey,
and substitute ‘American Golden Russet’ t—this being its
common title in New England and the West. I speak now
in relation to my work on fruits, now in press.
“What do you mean by the ‘ White Bell-flower of Coxe ??
The Detroit I have carefully examined. and it is quite
* Mr. Downing’s untimely end by drowning is well known.
+ There is an English Golden Russet, distinct and quite acid.
340 PLAIN AND PLEASANT fz UK
different from the Yellow Bellflower. The Morstrous Bell-
flower—the only other one Coxe describes—-is a large
autumn fruit, while the Detroit keeps till April?
“ My work on Fruits has cost me a great deal of labor,
but will still contain many imperfections. When it is out
of press—in about six weeks—I promise myself the plea-
sure of sending it with the copy of each of my previous
works for the acceptance of your Horticultural Society.
And I then hope to be favored with your criticism.
Hoping an early answer to my queries herein,
“T am sincerely yours,
“ A, J. DowNING.
“ H. W. BeEecHeEr.”
We should have said “ Monstrous Bellflower” instead of
White.
The Bellflower here mentioned is the White or Green
Bellflower of Indiana, the Ohio Favorite of western Ohio
about Dayton, etc., the Hollow-cored Pippin of some ; and
it has been inquired for, at Mr. Alldredge’s nursery, as the
Cumberland Spice. Mr. A considered, from the
description given, that the white Bellflower only could
have been meant. But from the following description of
Cumberland Spice in Kenrick, from Coxe, I am inclined to
think that the true Cumberland Spice may have been
inquired for.
“The tree is very productive ; a fine dessert fruit, large,
rather oblong, contracted toward the summit; the stalk
thick and short; of a pale yellow color, clouded near the
base; the flesh white, tender, and fine. It ripens in
autumn, and keeps till winter, and shrivels in its last
stages.”
The fruit was brought to Wayne County, Indiana, by Mr.
Brunson. He came from New York to Huron county,
Ohio, and thence to Wayne County, Indiana. It is univer-
teed ee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 341
sally diffused through the eastern and central parts of
Indiana, and is esteemed a first-rate apple. The éree strik-
ingly resembles the Green Newtown Pippin, but its brush is
not so small, and there is less of it, the top being rather
more open. The wood is brittle, and, as the tree is a free
and constant bearer, it tends to break, and is troublesome
to keep in good order. Mr. Ernst and other gentlemen of
Cincinnati suppose the variety to be the Detroit. We
cannot say one thing or another, except that it is of the
Bellflower family. The Detroit of New York is a widely
different fruit, of a bright scarlet color, and we never heard
of any other Detroit, until the name was applied to this
apple.
There is not the least doubt that the Golden Russet of the
West is the Bullock Pippin and Sheep-nose of New Jersey,
and we hope that the proposed name “ American Golden
Russet” will deliver us, for ever after, from eating any
more sh¢ep-noses. Names are of importance in classifying
fruits, and there is a pleasure also in having a decorous name
to a good fruit. It is amusing to look through a catalogue
of singular names.
The Hoss apple is popularly the Herse apple, and when,
on a certain contingency a gentleman promised to eat a hoss
it was not so hazardous a threat as some have imagined,
The French, in naming their fruits, exercise a freedom with
things human and divine, to which we occidentals are not
accustomed (as, Ah Mon Dieu! Grosse Cuisse Madame,
etc.), and an innocent person, recapitulating his pears, might,
if overheard by neighbors understanding French, be
thought very profane, or worse. There are other names
which have a tendency to make the mouth water, as Onion
Pear. One must have pleasing associations while eating
the Toad Pear. (See Prince’s Pom. Man. p. 24 and 34.)
The French Bon Chrétien (or Good Christian) is called in
these parts the Bon Cheat-em. Then, there is the Demoi-
selle, the Lady’s Flesh, and Love’s Pear (Prince, 58, 34,
342 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
and 117)—very proper for young lovers. Then, there is
the Burnt Cat (Chat Bruslé of the French, Prince 89),
which undoubtedly has a musk flavor. We have less
objection to the Priest’s Pear (Poire de Prétre, Prince,
108). Piscatory gentlemen would always angle in our nur-
series for the Z’rout pear (Prince 130), and if they did not
get a bite, the pear would, as it is a fine variety. How did
those who named pears, Louise Bonne de Jersey, or Van
Mons leon le clerc, expect common folks to hold fast to the
true name? But he must have a short memory indeed,
who forgets the emphatic name of Yat or Yut.
But to return from our digression. We give the descrip-
tion of the Golden Russet from three sources, and indorse
their general accuracy:
GOLDEN RUSSET.—(DR. PLUMMER.)
“¢ S1zE.—2 2-10 inches long; 2 7-10 inches wide.
“‘Form.—Rather smaller at the summit ; moderately flat-
tened at the ends,
““Putp.—Very tender, juicy, yellowish white.
“Coror.—Deep yellow, with brown and russet clouds ;
or wholly brown and russet.
“‘SurFACE.—Nearly dull; ruffled by the confluent Jine-
oles; dots hardly discoverable.
“ FLavor.—Sweet and delicious,
“‘Srem.—Slender ; half to one inch long, reaching to a
considerable distance beyond the verge.
““Kyx.—In rather contracted cavity; closed.
‘¢ Ripens in the tenth month,
“It is one of our best apples, and keeps well through the
winter.”
“‘' Whether the Leathercoat and the Glass apple are the
same as are now known under those names, it is impossible
to determine. Near Poughkeepsie, in the State of New
York, the Leathercoat used to be a favorite fruit; and
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 343
wkethe: it is the same as the Golden Russet, described
aheve, I am not now able to say; but my recollection of
that apple after a lapse of twenty-three years induces me
to think it is no other than the Golden Kusset ; and, indeed,
Trevelyan calls it also the ‘russet¢ appell... The Glass apple
was described in a former number of ‘The Orchard, If
the ‘lethercott’ has descended to us under the name of
Golden Russet, the fine flavor of this apple would lead us
to believe that it had not deteriorated, after a period of
more than two centuries and a half.’— West. Farm. and
Gard., 1848.
BULLOCK’S PIPPIN, OR SHEEP-NOSE.—(COXE.)
Golden Russet of Cincinnati. Golden Russet of the Hastern
nurseries.—(Dr. Kirtland.)
“Neither the size nor appearance of this fruit would
attract attention; yet it sells more readily in markets where
it is known than any other apple. Its flavor is rich and
pleasant, and many people consider it the best fruit of the
season. In northern Ohio it matures at New-Year’s, while
in Cincinnati it is in perfection in November.”— West.
Farm. and Gard., 1841.
GOLDEN RUSSET—BULLOCK PIPPIN, OR SHEEP-NOSE.—
(A. HAMPTON.)
“This apple is below medium size; the skin is yellow,
inclined to a russet; the flesh yellow, rich, juicy, tender
and sprightly. I know of no apple more generally admired
for its richness and excellent flavor than this; commanding
a high price, and ready sale, in market; it makes very rich
cider; a great and constant bearer; and keeps well till
spring.”— West. Furm. and Gard., 1841.
We do not know another apple whose flavor and flesh
9
344 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
are so admirable. A gentleman in Ohio, on being assed for
a list of a hundred trees for an orchard, replied, ‘‘ set out
ninety-nine Golden Russets, the other one you can euoose
for yourself.”
ATTENTION TO ORCHARDS.
CLEAN ovuT your orchards. Let no branches lie scattered
around. If in crops, let the tillage be thorough and clean.
In plowing near the tree be careful not to strike deep
enough to lacerate the small roots and fibres. An orchar1]
should be tended with a cultivator rather than a plow, and
the space immediately about the tree should be worked
with a hoe. Look to the fence corners, and grub out all
bushes, briers and weeds. A fine orchard with such a ruffle
around it, is like a handsome woman with dirty ears and neck.
Pruning may still be performed. Those who are raising
young orchards ought not to prune at any particular time
between May and August, but all along the season, as the
tree needs it. Ifa bad branch is forming, take it out while
it is small; if too many are starting, rub them out while so
tender as to be managed without a knife and by the fingers.
If an orchard is rightly educated from the first, there will
seldom be a limb to be cut off larger than a little finger,
and a pen-knife will be large enough for pruning. In the
West there is more danger of pruning too much, than too
little. 'The sun should never be allowed to strike the inside
branches of a fruit-tree. Many trees are thus very much
weakened and even killed if the sun is violently warm.
Over-pruning induces the growth of shoots at the root,
along the trunk, and all along the branches.
Grub up suckers, and clear off from large and well
established trees all side-shoots. After a tree is three inches
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 845
in diameter through the stem, it may be kept entirely free
of sile shoots. But young trees are much assisted in every
. respect, except appearance, by letting brush grow the whole
length of their stem, only pinching off the ends of the whips,
if they grow too rampantly. In this way the leaves afford
great strength to the trunk, and prevent its being spindling
or weak-fibred.
Scour off the dead bark, which, besides being unsight-
ly, is a harbor for a great variety of insects, and affords
numerous crevices for water to stand in. We have pre-
viously recommended soft soap, thinned with urine to the
consistence. of paint, as a wash for trees; we have seen
nothing better.
Fixramine grafts if any have been put in. See if the
wax excludes the air entirely; rub out all shoots which
threaten to overgrow and exhaust the graft; if it is grow-
ing too strongly, it must be supported, or it will blow out
in some high wind.
Loox our For Buiiaut.—All trees that have shown no
indications of blight, will be safe for the season. But those
which have shown the affection may be expected to con-
tinue to break out through the season. It is all important
to use the knife freely; for although there is no contagion
from tree to tree, yet the diseased sap will, in the same tree,
be conveyed from part to part over the whole fabric. But
prompt pruning will remove the seat and source of the evil.
Where a branch is affected, cut chips out of the bark along
down for yards; indeed, examine the limb entirely home
to the trunk, and you may easily detect any spots which are
depositories of this diseased sap, which, by its color, and
whole appearance, will be identified by the most unprac-
tised eye. Cut everything, below and aloft, that has this
feculent sap in it, even if you take off the whole head by
the trunk, and leave only a stump; for, the stump may send
new shoots; but if the tree is spared from false tenderness
you will lose it, bough, trunk, and root.
346 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
WINE AND HORTICULTURE.
“ Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color
an the cup, when it moveth itself aright.”
Now, the Cincinnati Hortietii7al Society appointed a
committee to do just what So!»mon says must not ve done.
Their report is a very artful document, so drawn up that
the unwary would suppose that this was a mere business
affair—passing off quite respectably. But we were not to
be deceived; we instantly saw through it; and pencil in
hand, we noted all places in the report proper to shock a
true Washingtonian heart.
Although the array of forty kinds of wine save one, did
not intimidate these hitherto respectable gentlemen, it
inspired them with prudence; and a German Committee
called in, to ferret out any foreign wines which might have
been smuggled in to the confusion of the judges.
The committee only darkly intimate their modus ope-
randi ; if they had given us a journal of their doings,
made out on the spot, by some trusty clerk, what a bac-
chanal mystery would have been disclosed! but they had
discretion enough left to defer this until they were sober
again.
~ But Washingtonianism is abroad, and can detect all the
mysteries of ebriety, however graced with authority from a
Horticultural Society. We can imagine the impatience
with which the bottles were preliminarily eyed—the entire
moderation with which each sipped a few first specimens ;
we can see them gradually warming with their subject—
tasting with alacrity—nodding at each other, squinting
through the ruddy glass, smacking their too often dewy
lips, or wagging their heads with more than ordinary satis-
faction as a beaker of great merit made the facilis descen-
sus averni. Laughter interrupts sober attention to busi-
ness; in vain the chairman thumps the table for order;
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 347
he gets more jokes than attention. Many a sly story is
told; some of them have visited wine countries and now
begin long yarns thereof; the clamor of laughing, and
anecdote, and criticism—the necessity, in consequence, of
re-tasting, and tasting again to arrive at a conclusion,
brought them, we doubt not, to a most lamentable conclu-
sion, although the report only obscurely hints of it, as we
shall see. Had any of them married into the Caudle con-
nection we might have had a graphic account of their
several arrivals at their homes—at what time, by whose
help, in what condition, ete.
The tabular report given in has evidently been studiously
framed. We suspect that if the opinions had been set
down just in the order of their occurrence, they would
have afforded an index of the condition of the committee as
well as of the wine. But though they have mixed them
up, they cannot elude our vigilance—we can pick out the
chronological order. At first such opinions as these were
given: “ Tolerably good,” “Inferior,” ‘Poor, fermented
on skins.” They were critical yet; but warming a little
they express more generous sentiments ; “Good,” “‘ Very
good Cape,” “ Very good, resembling old Madeira.” The
next step shows the genial advance—some were getting
disputatious. ‘Good, considered by some better than
No. 8, by others not so good,”—they evidently had a row
about it. They next advanced into the patriotic mood as
is seen in the judgment of our foreign wines, “Good dry
Wine, but supposed to be foreign,” ‘“ Inferior, a foreign
wine,” ‘Not American wine.” Here the gradations of
contempt are very plain. We have next, melancholy evi-
dence of their progress in the necessity of a stronger body
to their wines,—‘“t Not liked, supposed to have been injured
in the bottle.” Why not say it right out, that it was a
weak, thin wine? Here we have it, “Good strong wine.”
The last record made is “Good new, not in a state for judg-
ment.” Does this refer to the wine or to the committee ?
348 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
To the latter we suppose; and at this point, probably per-
ceiving their condition, they laid aside their official charac-
ter and made it a private, personal, and somewhat miscel-
laneous affair. We see now the meaning of a sentence
which follows the tabular exhibit: ‘“The judgments pro-
uounced and recorded in the foregoing table, were as
nearly unanimous as can ever be expected among so many
judges.”
The committee state in respect to western wines : “That
the pure juice of the grape when judiciously managed will
furnish the finest kind of wine, without any addition or
mixture whatever; that no saccharine addition is necessary
to give it sufficient body to keep for any length of time in
this climate.”
We submit that the keeping properties of wine are not
altogether intrinsic; but depend much upon the persons
having access to them, or, as we were taught in school,
“on time, place, and person.” In owr cellar American
wines would doubtless have great longevity. We wish to
eall the attention of Mr. Gough to the closing sentence of
the report: “ A taste for the wines of this region appears
to be well established, since all that can be produced finds
a ready market at good prices; and the committee are of
opinion, that the period is not distant when the wines of
the Ohio will enjoy a celebrity des to those of the
Rhine.”
Here’s work on hand for him. In conclusion, we
respectfully suggest that the same committee be continued
from year to year, as there is no use in spoiling a fresh set
every year. If the specimens multiply, perhaps more help
will be required—at any rate a by-law should be passed,
so that there shall be one committee-man to at least every
ten bottles.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 349
DO VARIETIES OF FRUIT RUN OUT?
Is there such similarity between animals and vegetables,
in their organic structure, development and functions, as
to make it safe to reason upon the properties of the one
from the known properties of the other?
It is admitted that the lowest forms of vegetable exist-
ence are extremely difficult to be distinguished from a cor-
responding form of animal existence. As we approach the
lower confines of the vegetable kingdom, flowers, and of
course, seeds, disappear. The distinction between leaves
and stem ceases; and, at last, the stem and root are no lon-
ger to be separated, and we find a mere vegetable sheet or
lamina whose upper surface is leaf and whose lower surface
is root. In a corresponding sphere, animal existence is re-
duced to its simplest elements. Whatever resemblances
there are in the lowest and rudimentary forms of vegetable
and animal life, it cannot be doubted that when we rise
to a more perfect organization, the two kingdom be-
come distinct and the structure and functions of each are
in such a sense peculiar to itself, that he will grossly mis-
conceive the truth who supposes a structure or a function to
exist in a vegetable, because such structure or function
exists in an animal, and vice versd. Tobe sure, they resem-
ble in generals but they differ in specials. Both begin in a
seminal point but the seed is not analogous; both develop
—but not by an analogous growth; both require food, but
the selection, the digestion and the assimilation are differ-
ent. The mineral kingdom is the lowest. Out of it, by
help of the sun and air, the vegetable procures its materials
of growth; in turn the vegetable kingdom is the magazine
from which the animal kingdom is sustained ; to each, thus
the soil contains the original elements ; the vegetable is the
chemical manipulator, and the animal, the final recipient of
its products. The habit of reasoning from one to the other,
of giving an idea of the one by illustrations drawn from the
350 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
other, especially in popular writings, will always be fruitful
of misconceptions and mistakes.
The next idea set forth in the paragraph which we review, is,
the essential dissimilarity of buds and seeds. The writer
thinks that a plant from a seed is a new organization, but a
plant from a bud or graft (which is but a developed bud) is
but a continuation of a previous plant. With the exception
of their integuments, a bud and a seed are the same thing
A seed is a bud prepared for one set of circumstances, and
a bud is a seed prepared for another set of cireumstances—
it is the same embryo in different garments. The seed has
been called, therefore, a “primary bud,” the difference
beng one of condition and not of nature.
It is manifest, then, that the plant which springs from a
bud is as really a new plant as that which springs from a
seed; and it is equally true, that a seed may convey the
weakness and diseases of its parent with as much facility as
a bud or a graft does. If the feebleness of a tree is general,
its functions languid, its secretions thin, then a bud or graft
will be feeble,—and so would be its seed; or if a tree be
thoroughly tainted with disease, the buds would not escape,
nor the tree springing from them—neither would its seed,
or a tree springing from it. <A tree from a bud of the
Doyenne pear is just as much a new tree as one from its
seed.
The idea which we controvert has received encourage-
ment from the fact, that a bud produces a fruit like the
parent tree, while, oftentimes, a seed yields only a variety
of such fruit. But, it is probable that this is never the case
with seeds except when they have been brought into a
state of what Van Mons ealls variation. In their natural
and uncultivated state, seeds will reproduce their parent
with as much fidelity as a bud or a graft.
The liability of a variety to run out, when propagated by
bud or graft, isnot a whit greater than when propagated by
seed, in so far as the nature of the vegetable is concerned.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 851
But it is true that the conditions in which a bud grows
render it liable to extrinsic ills not incidental to a plant
springing from seed. A seed, emitting its roots directly
into the earth, is liable only to its own ills; a bud or graft
emitting roots, through the alburnum of the stock on which
it is established, into the earth, is subject to the infirmities
of the stock as well as to its own. Thus a healthy seed
produces a healthy plant. A healthy bud may produce
a feeble plant, because inoculated upon a diseased branch
or stem.
Instead of a limitation in their nature, there is reason to
suppose that trees might flourish to an indefinite age were
it not for extrinsic difficulties. A tree, unlike an animal, is
not a single, simple organization, it is rather a community
of plants. Every bud separately is an elementary plant,
capable, if disjoined from the branch, of becoming a tree
by itself. In fact, each bud emits roots, which, uniting to-
gether, go down upon a common support (the trunk) and
enter the earth, and are there put in connection with ap-
propriate food. Every fibre of root may be traced upward
to its bud from which it issued.
In process of time, the elongation of the trunk exposes it
to accidents; the branches are subject to the force of
storms; in proportion as the distance from the roots
increases, and the longer the passages through which the
upper sap, or downward elaborated sap travels, the more
liabilities are there to stoppage and injury. The reason of
decline in a tree is not to be looked for in any exhaustion
of vital force in the organization itself, but it is to be found
in the immense surface and substance exposed to the wear
and tear of the elements.
It would seem, if this view be true, that no bounds can
be placed to the duration of perennial plants, if, by any
means, we could diminish their exposure, by reducing their
expansion, by keeping them within a certain sphere of
growth. Now this is exactly what is accomplished by bud
352 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ding. A bud, far removed on the parent stock from the
root and connected with it through a long trunk, is inocu-
lated upon a new stock. It now grows with a comparatively
limited exposure to interruption or accident. 'The connec-
tion with the soil is short and direct.
In this manner a variety of fruit may be perpetuated to
all generations, if the laws of vegetable health be regarded
in the process. Healthy buds, worked upon healthy stocks
and planted in, wholesome soil, will make healthy trees; and
from these another generation may proceed, and from these
another. By a due regard to vegetable physiology, the
Newtown Pippin, and the Seckle Pear, may be eaten two
thousand years hence, provided, always, that expounders of
prophesy will allow us the use of the earth so long for
orchard purposes. A disregard of the laws of vegetable
physiology in the propagation of varieties, will, on the
other hand, rapidly deteriorate the most healthy sort.
There is no clock-work in the branches of the tree, which
finally runs down past all winding up; there is no fixed
quantity of vitality, which a variety at length uses up, as a
garrison does its bread. Plants renew themselves and
every year have a fresh life, and, in this respect, they dif
fer essentially from all forms of animal existence. Any one
tree may wear out; but a variety, never.
We need not say, therefore, that we dissent from
Knight’s theory of natural exhaustion and from every sup-
plement to it put forth since his day. Van Mons’ theory of
variation and the tendency of plants to return toward their
original type, is to be regarded as nearer the truth.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 353
THE STRAWBERRY CONTROVERSY.
No man will deny that in their cultivated state, strawber-
ries are found, in respect to their blossoms, in three condi-
tions: first, blossoms with stamens alone, the pistillate organs
being mere rudiments; second, blossoms with pistillate or-
gans developed fully, but the stamens very imperfect, and
inefficient ; third, blossoms in which staminate and pistillate
organs are both about equally developed.
There are two questions arising on this state of facts;
one, a question of mere vegetable physiology, viz., Is such
a state of organization peculiar to this plant originally, or
is it induced by cultivation? The other question is one of
eminent practical importance, viz., What effect has this state
of organization upon the success of cultivation ?
Passing by the first question, for the present, we would
say of the second that, a substantial agreement has at
length, been obtained. It is on all hands conceded that
staminate plants, or those possessing only stamens, and not
pistillate organs, are unfruitful. Any other opinion would
now be regarded as an absurdity. It is equally well under-
stood that pistillate plants, or those in which the female
organs are fully, and the male organs scarcely at all devel-
oped, are unfruitful. No one would attempt to breed a
herd of cattle from males exclusively, or from females, and,
for precisely the same reason, strawberries cannot be had
from plants substantially male, or substantially female, where
each are kept to themselves.
But a difference yet exists among cultivators as to the
facts respecting those blossoms which contain both male and
female organs, or, as they are called, perfect flowering
plants.
Mr. Longworth states, if we understand him, substan-
tially, that perfect-flowering varieties will bear but moder.
ate crops, and, usually, of small fruit.
On the other hand, Dr. Brinkle, whose seedling straw-
354 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
berries we noticed in a former article, Mr. Downing, and
several other eminent cultivators adopt the contrary opin-
ion, that, with care, large crops of large fruit may be obtained
from perfect-flowering plants. This question is yet, then,
to be settled.
It is ardently to be hoped that, hereafter, we shall have
less premature and positive assertion, upon unripe observa-
tions, than has characterized the early stages of this con-
troversy. We will take the liberty of following Mr. Hovey
in his magazine, between the years 1842 and 1846, not for
any pleasure that we have in the singular vicissitudes of opin-
ion chronicled there, but because an eminent cultivator,
writer, and editor of, hitherto, the only horticultural maga-
zine in our country, has such influence and authority in
forming the morals and customs of the kingdom of Horti-
culture, that every free subject of this beautiful realm is
interested to have its chiefs men of such accuracy that it
will not be dangerous to take their statements.
In 1842, Mr. Longworth communicated an article on the
fertile and sterile characters of several varieties of straw-
berries for Mr. Hovey’s magazine, which Mr. H. for sub-
ject-matter, indorsed. In the November number, Mr. Coit
substantially advocated the sentiments of Mr. L.; and the
editor, remarking upon Mr. Coit’s article, recognized dis-
tinctly the existence of male and female plants.
He (Mr. H.) says that, of four kinds mentioned by Mr.
C. as unfruitful, two were so “from the want of staminate
or male plants,” and “the cause of the barrenness és thus
easily explained.” And he goes on to explain divers cases
upon this hypothesis; and still more resolutely he says, that
all wild strawberries have not perfect flowers; ‘in a dozen
or two plants which we examined last spring some were per-
fect (the italics are ours) having both stamens and pistils;
others, only pistils, and others, only stamens; thus showing
that the defect, mentioned by Mr. Longworth, exists in the
original species.’ He closes by urging cultivators to set
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 3590
rows of early Virginia among the beds for the sake of im-
pregnating the rest.
Mr. Hovey’s next formal notice was exactly one year from
the foregoing, November, 1843, and it appears thus: “ We
believe it is now the generally received opinion of all intel-
ligent cultivators (italics are ours again) that there is no
necessity of making any distinction in regard to the sexual
character of the plants when forming new beds. The idea
of male and female flowers, first originated, we believe, by
Mr. Longworth, of Ohio, is now considered as exploded.’
Such a sudden change as this was brought about, he says,
by additional information received during that year by
means of his correspondents, and by more experience on
his own part. He says nothing of male blossoms and female
blossoms, which he had himself seen in wild strawberries.
Mr. Hovey then assumed the theory that ewltivation, good
or bad, is the cause of fertile or unfertile beds of strawber-
ries, and he says: “in conclusion, we think we may safely
aver, that there is not the least necessity of cultivating any
one strawberry near another (our italics) to insure the fer-
tility of the plants, provided they are under a proper state
of cultivation.”
Mr. Hovey now instituted experiments, which he prom-
ised to publish, by which to bring the matter to the only
true test; and he, from time to time, re-promised to give
the result to the public, which, thus far, we believe, he has
forgotten to do.
His magazine for 1844 opens, as tl.at of 1843 closed ; and
in the first number he says, “the »>ftener our attention is
called to this subject, the more we feel confirmed in the
opinon that the theory of Mr. Longworth is entirely un-
founded ; that there is no such thing as male and female
plants, though certain causes may produce, as we know
they have, ade and sterile ones.”
Nevertheless, in the next issue but one this poccung eae
language is again softened down, and a doubt even appears,
356 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
when he says, “Ir Mr. Longworth’s theory should prove
true,” etc. We, among others, waited anxiously for the
promised experiments ; but if published we never saw them.
The subject rather died out of his magazine until August,
1845, when, in speaking of the Boston Pine, a second fine
seedling of his own raising, he is seen bearing away on the
other tack, if not with ad/ sails set, yet with enough to give
the ship headway in the right direction: “ Let the causes
be what they may, it is sufficient for all practical purposes,
to know, that the most abundant crops (italics ours) can be
produced by planting some sort abounding in staminate
flowers, in the near vicinity of those which do not possess
them.” P.293. And on p. 444 he reiterates the advice to
plant near the staminate varieties. In the August number
for 1846, p. 309, Mr. Hovey shows himself a thorough con-
vert to Mr. Longworth’s views, by indorsing, in the main,
the report of the committee of the Cincinnati Horticultural
Society. We hope after so various a voyage, touching at so
many points, that he will now abide steadfast in the truth.
We look upon this as a very grave matter, not because
the strawberry question is of such paramount, although it is
of no inconsiderable importance; but it is of importance
whether accredited scientific magazines should be trust-
worthy; whether writers or popular editors should be
responsible for mistakes entirely unnecessary. We blame
no man for vacillation, while yet in the process of investi-
gation, nor for coming at the truth gradually, since this is
the necessity of our condition to learn only by degrees, and
by painful siftings. The very first requisite for a writer is,
that he be worthy of trust in his statements. No man can
be trusted who ventures opinions upon uninvestigated mat-
ters; who states facts with assurance which he has not
really ascertained; who evinces rashness, haste, careless-
ness, credulity, or fickleness in his judgments. The ques-
tion of perfect or imperfect blossoms depends upon the sim-
plest exercise of eyesight. It requires no measurements,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 357
no process of the laboratory, no minute dissections or nice
calculations ; it requires only that a man should see what
he looks at.
When a boy, playing “how many fingers do I hold up,”
by dint of peeping from under the bandage, we managed to
make very clever guesses of how many lily-fingers some
roguish lassie was helding in tempting show before our ban-
daged eyes; but some folks are not half so lucky with both
eyes wide open, and the stamens and pistils standing before
them.
If such a latitude is permitted to those who conduct the
investigations peculiar to herticulture, who can confide in
the publication of facts, observations or experiments? Of
what use will be journals and magazines? They become
like chronometers that will not keep time; like a compass
that has lost its magnetic sensibility ; like a guide who has
lost his own way, and leads his followers through brake,
and morass, and thicket, into interminable wanderings,
Sometimes, the consciousness of faults in ourselves, which
should make us lenient toward others, only serves to pro-
duce irritable fault-finding. After a comparison of opinions
and facts, through a space of five years, with the most dis-
tinguished cultivators, East and West, Mr. Longworth is
now universally admitted to have sustained himself in all
the essential points which he first promulgated—not discov-
ered, for he made no claims of that sort. The gardeners
and the magazines of the East have, at length, adopted his
practical views, after having stoutly, many of them, con-
tested them.
It was, therefore, with unfeigned surprise, that we read
Mr. Hovey’s latest remarks in the September number of his
magazine, in which, with some asperity, he roundly charges
Mr. Longworth with manifold errors, and treats him with
a contempt which would lead one, ignorant of the con-
troversy, to suppose that Mr. Hovey had never made a
mistake, and that Mr. Longworth had been particularly
358 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
fertile of them. Thus: “ Mr. Longworth’s renarks abound
in so many errors and inconsistencies, that we shall expect
scarcely to notice all.” ‘“ Another gross assertion,” etc. Re-
ferring to another topic, he says, ‘“‘ This question we, there-
fore, consider as satisfactorily settled, without discussing
Mr. Longworth’s conflicting views about male and female,
Keen’s,” etc.
This somewhat tragical comedy is now nearly played out,
and we have spoken a word just before the fall of the cur-
tain, because, as chroniclers of events, and critics of horti-
cultural literature and learning, it seemed no less than our
duty. We have highly appreciated Mr. Hovey’s various
exertions for the promotion of the art and science of horti-
culture, nor will his manifest errors and short-comings in
this particular instance, disincline us to receive from his pen
whatsoever is good.
We hope that our remarks will not be construed as a
defence of western men or western theories, but as the
defence of the truth, and of one who has truly expounded
it, though, in this case, theory and its defender happen to
be of western origin. Whatever errors have crept into
Mr. Longworth’s remarks should be faithfully expurgated;
and perhaps it may be Mr. Hovey’s duty to perform the
lustration. If so, courtesy would seem to require that it
should be done with some consciousness, that through this
whole controversy Mr. Longworth is new admitted to have
been right in all essential matters; and if, in error at all,
only in minor particulars, while Mr. Hovey, in all the con-
troversy, in respect to the plainest facts, has been changing
from wrong to right, from right to wrong, and from wrong
back to right ‘again. We do not think that the admirable
benefits which Mr. Longworth has conferred upon the
whole community by urging the improved method of culti-
vating the strawberry, has been adequately appreciated.
We still less like to see gratitude expressed in the shape of
snarling gibes and petty cavils.
Eee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 399
We will close these remarks by the correction of a matter
which Mr. Downing states. While he assents to all the
practical aspects of Mr. Longworth’s views, he dissents as
to some matters of fact and philosophy, and among others,
to the fact that Hovey’s seedling is always and only a pis-
tillate plant. He thinks that originally it had perfect flow-
ers, but that after bearing twice or thrice on the same roots
the plants degenerate and become either pistillate or stami-
nate. He says, “ Hovey’s seedling strawberry, at first,
was a perfect sort in its flower, but at this moment more
than half the plants in this country have become pistillate.”
Mr. Hovey himself states the contrary on p. 112 of his
magazine for 1844. He denies that there are two kinds
of blossoms to his seedling, and says, ‘“‘the flowers are all
of one kind, with both pistils and stamens, but the latter
quite short and hidden under the receptacle.” This is the
common form of all pistillate blossoms, and shows, in so far
as Mr: Hovey’s observations are to be trusted, that, at its
starting-point and home, Hovey’s seedling was, as with us it
now invariably is, so far as we have ever seen it, a pistillate
plant.
STRAWBERRIES.
Directions for the culture of the strawberry will vary
with circumstances; as, whether it is raised for private use,
or for market. But, for whatever purpose cultivated,
respect must be invariably had to the fact of staminate and
pistillate flowers, or male and female. Each flower contains
the rudiments of both the male and female organs. But the
male organs are more or less defective in one set of plants
and the female in another “and, in the Hudson and some
others, it amounts to a complete separation of the sexes.
In some of the male (staminate) varieties mare or less ot
360 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
the blossoms are also partially perfect in the female organs
and will produce some fruit.
“‘ Every flower contains both the male and female organs ;
and, in the white and monthly, both organs are always
perfect in the same blossom, as far as my experience goes.
In other kinds, the male organs are more or less defective
in one set of plants, and the female in the other; and, in
the Hudson and some other varieties, it amounts to a com-
plete separation of the sexes. The male organs are so
" defective in one set of plants, and the female in the other,
that an acre of either would not produce a single fruit. In
some of the male (staminate) varieties, more or less of the
blossoms are also more or less perfect in the female organs,
and will produce more or less fruit ; but I have never seen a
female plant with the male organs sufficiently developed to
produce a single perfect fruit. Tovey’s seedling, and some
others, may produce deformed berries.” —- Longworth.
Mr. Longworth, in consequence of this fact, always has
a compartment allotted to male and one to female plants,
and out of these he forms his beds, being able thus to
insure a proper proportion of males to females. Mr. 8. S.
Jackson, a very skillful nurseryman of Cincinnati, usually,
in selling plants, puts up ninety females to ten males in the
hundred.
We shall now give the time and manner of planting of
some of the best cultivators in the West, at the East, and in
England.
Mr. Jackson says: ‘I plant any time from the first of
April, till they are in bloom. I, one year, planted twenty-
five square roods of ground ; the plants were all in bloom
when set out; and the next year I picked thirty-eight
bushels, and there were fully ten bushels left on the
vines.
“T plant them in this way: first plow or spade the
ground ; harrow it smooth; then strain a line on one side
nine inches from the edge, and a row from twelve to fifteen
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 361
inches apart ; then move the line eighteen inches, and plant
another row; then move it three feet, and again eighteen
inches—and so on till the ground is planted. I then go
over and put one male plant every six feet, between the
two rows. Keep them clear of weeds through the summer,
and let them spread as much as they will.
“In the fall dress the out-walks eighteen inches wide,
which will leave the beds three feet wide; and when it sets
in cold, give them a light covering of straw; rake it off in
the spring. You may then expect a fullcrop. It is best to
make a new bed once in two or three years.”
But plantations may be made through the summer, and
as late as September; of course, the earlier in the season
the better established the plants will become before winter,
and the larger the next summer’s crop. Thus, a bed
formed in September would bear very scantily ; while Mr.
Jackson’s beds, formed in the spring, produced a large
crop the next season.
Mr. Kenrick gives the following methods as practised by
market gardeners near Boston; the first one strikes us as
being the most economical way of working strawberries,
on a large scale, that we have seen:
“Tn the vicinity of Boston, the following mode is often
adopted. The vines are usually transplanted in August.
The rows are formed from eighteen inches to two feet
asunder. The runners, during the first year, are destroyed.
In the second year, they are suffered to grow and fill the
interval, and in the autumn of that year, the whole old rows
are turned under with the spade, and the rows are thus
shifted to the middle of the space. The same process is
repeated every second year.
“« Another mode, which may be recommended generally, is
to plant the strawberries in rows thirty inches asunder, and
nine inches distant in the row, and suffer the vines to
extend to the width of eighteen inches, leaving twelve
inches’ space for an alley; or allow eighteen inches’ width
362 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
to the alleys, and three feet asunder to the rows; and to
form new beds every three years, or never to suffer the bed
to exist over four years; and to plant out in August in
preference to spring.”
Dr. Bayne of Alexandria, D. C., gives his method
of producing very large fruit. The peculiarity of his
treatment is the use of undecomposed or green manure.
Almost every other cultivator recommends well rotted
manure; and, we are inclined to think, with the better
reason. We have found some English cultivators who
agree with him; but the most dissuade from the practice,
as making plants productive of leaves rather than fruit.
“To produce strawberries of extraordinary size for exhi-
bition, I would recommend the following preparation:
select the best soil and trench it at least two feet deep;
incorporate well with the first twelve inches an abundance
of strong undecomposed manure; pulverize and rake the
ground well, then mark off the rows twelve or fifteen inches
asunder, and set the plants in the rows from twelve to
fifteen inches, according to the luxuriance and vigor of the
variety. During the first year, the runners must be care-
fully and frequently destroyed before they become rooted.
By this means the stools become very vigorous and bear the
most abundant crops. In the spring after the fruit is set,
place around each plant a small quantity of straw, or what
is much better, cover the whole surface of the ground one
inch thick with wheat chaff. This prevents evaporation,
protects the fruit from the earth, improves the flavor, and
will greatly increase the size.”
Loudon gives Garnier’s method of treating the straw-
berry as an annual. It is peculiarly applicable to small
gardens. The observations on the depth of soil required,
are worthy of especial attention :
“Early in August, or as soon as the gathering is over, I
destroy all my beds, and proceed immediately to trench,
form, and manure them in the manner before directed, to
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 363
receive the plants for the crop of the ensuing year, taking
care to select for that purpose the strongest and best-rooted
tunners from the old rejected plants. If at this season the
weather should be particularly hot, and the surface of the
ground much parched, I defer the operation of preparing
my beds and planting them till the ground is moistened by
rain. Such is the simple mcde of treatment which I have
adopted for three successive years, and I have invariably
obtained upon the same spot, a great produce of beautiful
fruit, superior to that of every other garden in the neighbor-
hood. Depth of soil I have found absolutely necessary for
the growth and production of fine strawberries, and when
this is not to be obtained, it is useless, in my opinion, to
plant many of the best varieties. It is not generally known,
but I have ascertained the fact, that most strawberries
generate roots, and strike them into the ground, nearly two
feet deep in the course of one season. The practice of
renewing strawberry plantations every year, and even of
using runners of the current year for forcing, is now become
very general among gardeners. Mr. Knight generally
adopts this mode, and, notwithstanding the increased labor
attending it, it is even adopted by some market-gardeners
about London for their earliest crops. . It is invariably
found that by this mode the fruit not only comes larger,
but somewhat earlier. It must always be recollected, how-
ever, by those who intend practising it, that almost the
whole of the success depends on bringing forward the
earliest runners, by encouraging them to root. This is
done by stirring the soil beneath them, hooking them
down, or retaining them in their proper places by smali
stones ; or, when the object is to procure plants for forcing
rooting them into small pots.”
364 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
RASPBERRIES, STRAWBERRIES, GOOSEBERRIES AND
CURRANTS.
Currants, Gooseberries, Raspberries, Strawberries, etc..
are termed “Small Fruit.’ We will give some directions
for spring-work which these ra juire.
RaspBeRRiESs.—The sorts usually found in our gardens are
rejected from all good collections as worthless. The Ant-
werp, red and white, have, until lately, been regarded as
the best. Two new kinds are very highly thought of—
the Franconia and the Fustolf. This last is an Eng-
lish variety; was found growing ona gentleman’s ground
among some lime and brick rubbish—evidently a seedling
—and removed to his garden. It was a number of years
before it attracted attention; but, lately, it has been much
in demand and bids fair to claim a rank among the first, if
it is not the first.
A deep, rich, loamy soil which is moist, proves best for
this fruit. It prefers a half shady position.
When first planted, put them four feet apart in the row,
and the rows three feet from each other.
In old beds cut out the last year’s bearing wood, now
worthless, and also all the new shoots but four or five to a
root; grub up all that have come up between the rows.
Cut those which are reserved for bearing to about five feet
in length, and tie them gently to a stake. Thus treated
from year to year, and well manured, raspberries will return
a rich reward.
STRAWBERRIES.—Thenumber of kindsisimmense. Knight,
late president of the London Horticultural Society, had four
hundred kinds in his garden, and most of them seedlings of
his own raising. The early Virginia is regarded as the
best early kind. Hovey’s, Warren’s and Keen’s seedlings
are admirable sorts. Wiley’s and Motter’s seedlings ori-
ginated in Cincinnati and are esteemed. There are many
other fine sorts which an amateur cultivator would wish,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 365
not necessary to common gardens, where two or three
choice sorts will suffice.
Almost every cultivator has a way of his own in raising
strawberries.
In private gardens, in a soil well enriched and deeply
spaded, let beds be formed avout four feet wide; upon
these set three rows of hills and the plants about fifteen
inches apart in the row. Pinch off all runners through the
season, unless they are wanted for new plants.
Old beds, grown over and matted, had better ke des-
troyed; but if, for any reason, it is desirable to save them,
mark out lines every eighteen inches and dig alleys through
the bed, by turning the plants under. In this way the patch
will be thrown into beds of eighteen inches width. Before
this is done take an iron-toothed rake and rake the bed
severely. Do not be afraid of tearing the plants; go over
the whole bed thoroughly. It will seem as if scarcely a
dozen plants were left, but in a few weeks your bed will be
entirely covered with a strong growth.
GoosEBERRIES.—This fruit is very much neglected because
its merits are only little known. There are two sorts found
in our gardens, the common gooseberry and Hnglish, by
which name is meant a large, coarse, thick-skinned green
variety. It is not generally known that there are any other
cultivated sorts; and as these are inferior they are little
cared for. The Lancashire (England) Nurserymen publish
300 varieties! The select list of Mr. Thompson of the Lon-
don Horticultural Society’s garden comprises fifty-six
varieties; the still more condensed select list of Robert
Manning (Mass.) includes twenty-eight sorts. Some of
these bear fruit as large asa medium-sized plum. There
are four colors, red, yellow, green and white; to each color
are two sizes, large and small fruits. Those who have not
seen and tasted the Scotch and Lancashire varieties of the
gooseberry do not know what the fruit is. In sending for
them, select a trustworthy nurseryman, and request him to
366 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
send, of each color, such kinds as have proved, with him,
the best; and in such numbers as you may wish. The
yooseberry delights in three things, a very rich soil, a shady
positien, and a free circulation of air. If accommodated in
these respects, it will be free from mildew and give a sure
and ample crop of delicious fruit.
Tiili-tops are the best sites. In gardens the open and airy
parts shouid be selected; in low and confined situations
they mildew. Hog manure is esteemed the best for this
fruit. When the fruit begins to set, if threatened with
blight, take a moderately strong lime-water (sulphur added
will be all the better) or, if lime is not convenient, lye from
wood ashes, and drench the bushes freely with it. A large
watering-pot should be employed. Gooseberries may be in-
creased from cuttings like the currant, and with the same ease.
Currants.—There are very few varieties of this fruit,
Our common red and white, if well cultivated, are very
good. The Large Dutch Red, and White, are much larger
varieties and generally preferred in the best Eastern gar-
dens. Every farmer, if he has nothing else, has a long row
of currant bushes, and gets, usually, five times as many cur-
rants as he can consume. Very few fruits have so few
diseases incident to them as the currant. It is not infested
with worms, its fruit is subject to no blight, it bears every
year, is rarely affected either by severe winters or late
frosts, and we do not remember a season in our lives when
there was not, at least, a partial currant crop.
We advise those who are careful in such matters to train
their currants to a éree form ; let a cutting be set, rub out
all the buds but two or three at the top; at about twelve
or fifteen inches from the earth let the branches put out,
and never permit suckers to grow, or branches to stand
lower tnan this. The difficulty which some have found in
tree currants, that they are top-heavy and require staking
to prevent their being bent by winds and their own weight,
arises from having the stem too long. We have seen two
—————
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 367
feet and even more allowed. If twelve or fifteen inches be
allowed, the stem, in a few years, will become strong
enough to withstand winds and sustain its own top. Thus
formed they are beautiful to the eye, convenient for borders,
allow a free circulation of air under and through them, are
easy to work in spring or for manuring, and easy to prune,
when, as should be done every year, you take out the old
wood,
Gooseberries will do better to be trained in this way,
than in the bush form. The top once formed, there is no
difficulty in keeping it so. If you are faithful to grub up
every sucker for one season you will have few to plague
you after that.
Gooseberries, Raspberries, Strawberries and Currants
ought to be found in every farmer’s garden. The trouble
of cultivation is slight and the return of wholesome fruit
very great. One woman can, for the most part, bestow all
the attention which they need.
SPRING WORK IN THE ORCHARD.
1, Tuere is a great deal more pruning done than is need-
ful or healthful. Our hot summers and strong growth of
wood make every leaf on the tree precious. Dead limbs
should be taken out. Where the tree is really tangled with
wood, thin out. Where branches are rubbing across each
other severely, take off one of them. Grub up every water-
sprout from the roots. If you can avoid it, do not use them
for trees, for the tree thus obtained will inherit the same
propensity of sending up water-shoots. Sometimes, in
scarcity of stock, they are used rather than to have none,
but it is then only a lesser of two evils.
2. .Tore or Prustne.—There is a bad practice abroad of
pruning before the leaves are out. English books direct to
368 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
prune in February, and we suspect that the custom sprang
up at the East from the old country enent le. It is not safe
for us to follow the specific processes of Great Britain or
the Continent. Our own well settled experience is to be our
rule of practice.
There is no better month in the year to prune, than that
month in which the tree is making the most wood. It is
plain that the sooner a wound heals the better; and equally
plain, that a tree which is growing will heal a wound
quicker than an inactive tree. All the matter which goes
to form wood, or to form the granulations by which a cut
heals, comes from the downward current of sap, or sap
which has been elaborated in the leaf. Of course when the
tree has the most leaves, and the leaves are preparing the
greatest quantity of proper juice or elaborated sap, that is
ae time for pruning, because the time for healing. In this
climate we have preferred the last of May for spring prun-
ing, and the last of August for summer pruning—the exact
week varying as the season is forward or backward.
3. INSTEAD OF PRUNING AT THIS EARLY PERIOD, LET TREES
BE THOROUGHLY SCRAPED AND ScourED.—A three-sided
scraper, such as butchers use to clean their blocks with, or
any convenient implement, may be applied to the trunk and
large branches with force sufficient to take off the dry’, dead
bark. Only this is to be removed. Take soft soap and
reduce it by wrine to the consistence of paint. With a stiff
shoe-brush rub the whole trunk and the limbs as far up as
is practicable. The bark will grow smooth and glossy ;
insect eggs will be entirely destroyed ; all moss and fungoug
vegetation removed, and the bark stimulated and made
healthier. Tis 18 BETTER THAN ANY WHITEWASH, and just
as convenient.
4. Lime is better used as follows: remove the earth from
the trunk, and put about half a peck to each tree. suvery
spring, spread and dig in the old lime, and put new mm its
place. Unleached ashes are good to be dug in around a
~
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 569
tree. If your soil is calcareous, full of lime, these applica-
tions are not needful. Thoroughly rotted manure, or better
yet, black vegetable mold may be dug in liberally, and
will supply the soil with nutriment, and the roots will find
their way in with great facility.
5. When a tree is manured, remember that the ends only
of the roots take up nourishment, and that the ends of the
roots are not found close by the trunk. We often see
heaps of manure piled about the trunk, and the ends of the
roots are three yards or more distant from it. You might
as well put your fodder down at your cattle’s hind legs,
and wonder that they did not get fat on it. Treat your
trees as you do your stock—put their food where their
mouths are. Youne orcHaRDS are better without stimu-
lating manure. Let the soil be mellowed, and then give
the trees their own time, and if they do not bear quite as
soon, they will live longer and be less subject to disease.
MIRACLES IN FRUITS.
Wuen a traveller was relating, in Cowper’s presence,
some prodigious marvels, the poet smiled somewhat incredu-
lously. ‘ Well, sir, don’t you believe me? I saw it with
my own eyes.” ‘Qh, certainly, I believe it if you saw it,
but I would not if I had seen it myself? Even so we feel
about the thousand and one physiological fooleries which
run the monthly rounds of the papers.
How on earth do men suppose a fruit to receive its char-
acteristic quality? Is it from the root, trunk, pith, bark,
branch, or leaf? One would think that it made no differ-
ence which. We have long supposed that the leaf digested
the sap, returned it to the passages of distribution to be
employed in the formation of fruit, wood, tissue, ete. Is
this the function of the leaf? or have recent investigations
370 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
exploded this doctrine? If not, it will be apparent that all
grafting of scions together, cannot change the quality of
fruit, unless the leaves are also amalgamated. Is a red,
green, yellow, and white fruit, sweet, sour, or bitter, be put
upon the same tree, each will maintain its characteristics ;
because, each bud or scion has its own peculiar leaves, from
whose laboratory the fruit is sweetened or acidulated and
colored with all its hues. To be sure, fruits are affected by
the stock on which they are put; but their characteristic
elements are not altered, but only pushed along in the same
line and made more perfect.
There is no doubt that trees indulge, occasionally, in rare
antics. A sober apple-tree will sometimes let down its dig-
nity, in what gardeners call a “sport,” e. g. a sweet apple
may grow ona sour tree, and vice versd. An apple may
vu one side be sweet and on the other sour. But, in such
cases, the same general law is seen governing yet. We all
know that great changes of temperament occur in men. A
nervous temperament often becomes abdominal, and a little,
wiry, fussy, peevish, minikin, becomes a round, plump, rosy,
corpulent spot of good nature. Similar changes may occur,
through disease, or the peculiarity of the season, or from
unknown causes, in the structure of the leaves of a branch,
and then the fruit will follow the change of the leaf.
But the fruit itself digests still further the elaborated sap
sent to it from the leaf. If, then, from any hidden causes,
the fruit should in part change its structure, the juices
elaborated would be altered. If stamens and pistils may
change to petals, if petals may change to leaves, if leaves may
extend to branches, we know of no reason why the whole
or the half of a fruit may not, also, alter its structure; and
with its peculiarity of function, also, of course, the charac-
ter of the fruit. While then we are not skeptical of “ mon-
sters,” “marvels,” ‘“ sports,” “singularities,” we think we
cin trace the origimal law through all the transmuta-
tions,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 871
PROTECTING THE ROOTS OF FRUIT-TREES.
CuttivaTors are frequently urged in Horticultural papers
to cover the roots of the peach-trees with heaps of snow,
etc., that they may be retarded in the spring, and escape
injury from late frosts upon their blossoms. This direction
takes it for granted that the warmth of the ground starts
the root, and the root starts the sap, and the sap wakes up
the dormant branch. By covering the soil and keeping it
back, the whole tree is supposed to be secured. But,
unfortunately for this process, the motion of the sap is first
in the BRANCHES, and last in the roots. Light and heat,
exerted upon the branches for any considerable length of
time, produce a high state of excitability ; the sap begins to
move toward the bud, its place is supplied by a portion
lower down, and so on until the whole column of sap
through the trunk is in motion, and last of all in the root.
But suppose warm, spring days, with a temperature of from
sixty degrees to sixty-five degrees, have produced a vigor-
ous motion of the sap in the branches and trunk, while the
root, (thanks to snow and ice piled over it to keep it
frozen), is dormant, what will result? The sap already
within the tree will be exhausted, the root will supply
none, the light and heat still push on the development
of bud and leaf and the tree will exhaust itself and die.
We not long since observed a remarkable confirmation ot
these reasonings. A gentleman of our acquaintance, in
reading these unskilfull directions to cover the peach-tree
root, opened trenches about his trees, and filled them with
snow, heaping bountifully also all about the trees. The
next spring, long after his trees should have been at work,
the snow held the root fast; the buds swelled and burst,
lingered, shrivelled and died—and the trees too. This
might lave been prognosticated. There are partial
methods of protecting the peach from too early develop.
ment, but they all have respect to the protection of the
372 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
limbs. If the branches can be covered during the random
and prematurely hot days of spring, the tree will not suffer,
High, and cool-aired aspects, north hill-sides, northern sides
of houses, barns, ete., will answer this purpose. When it
can be afforded, long boards may be set up upon the east
and south sides of choice trees, upon a frame slightly made
and easily removed.
The reason why more damage has not been done by
covering peach-tree roots, than has occurred, is, that the
ground has been superficially frozen, and many of the roots
extending deeper and laterally beyond the congealed por-
tions, have afforded a supply of sap after a motion had been
imparted to it in the branches.
PRUNING GRAPE VINES.
Au know that after the sap begins to flow in the spring,
a vine, if cut, will bleed. It seems that at this early period
of its development the sap vessels have no power of con-
traction. Many suppose that the same state of things con-
tinues throughout the growing season, and are afraid to
cut their vines. But after the vine has begun to grow
freely (when the leaves, for example, are as large as the
palm of one’s hand), a wound very soon contracts, bleeds
little or none, and heals over as in a tree. Any pruning
which is necessary upon the old wound may, therefore, be
fearlessly performed.
Some inexpert cultivators, in order to let the sun fall
upon the grapes, pluck off the leaves; hoping thus to pro-
cure sweeter grapes. This is the very way to have acid
fruit. Where is the sugar prepared for the cluster but in
these very leaves which are taken off? Without leaves,
the sap which flows into the cluster has undergone but
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 375
imperfectly those chemical changes on which the fruit
depends. Every leaf in the neighborhood of the fruit is
precious.
MILDEW ON GRAPES.
Many permit the fruit of the vines to perish before their
eyes from the ravages of mildew, ignorant that an effectual
remedy is within their reach. It is simply to dust the
branches with flowers of sulphur. It is best done while the
dew is on. .
When vines are trained upon the sides of a house or
fence, it is well to whitewash the surfaces on which they
are fastened with a wash in which flowers of sulphur has
been largely mixed.
It is recommended by some cultivators to employ such a
whitewash for the wood of the vine, covering all the main
stems with it; but all these methods result in the one thing
—the application of sulphur as a remedy for mildew.
HOW TO OBTAIN GRAPE VINES.
GRAFTING is only practised on the vine for special rea-
sons, and we have never had occasion to try it. We shall
speak of a better mode of obtaining vines.
The best method of “ getting a start’ of grape vines is,
by the employment of cuttings. These may be planted
immediately after the spring pruning of established vines.
But cuttings of native grapes are as well planted in the
fall. The granulation, from which the roots spring, will
form during the winter, and the cuttings, starting early in
the spring, will make good growth the first year. Cuttings
374 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
are the best, because they can be procured easily, abun-
dantly, and cheaply ; they will bear carriage to any dis-
tance, are exceedingly tenacious of life, and they make |
thriftier plants. Cuttings may be set, either where they
are to remain, in which case several should be set, to
allow for failures, and only the strongest finally retained ;
or, they may be set in nursery rows, eight inches apart.
Cuttings should be inserted about eight inches deep,
and have two eyes or buds above the surface. The two
buds are merely precautionary ; that if one fails the other
may sprout; one only, and that the strongest, should finally
be permitted to grow.
An old and skillful cultivator of the vine says that cwt-
tings are the best of all modes of securing a supply of
vines. “For my part I am for scions without roots,
after many experiments. All the advantage the one with
roots has over the other, is that they are more sure to
live; but they will not in general, make as thrifty plants.”
—J. J. Dufour.
This only objection to cuttings—that a part of them fail
to root—is of little practical importance, as they are easily
obtained in any quantity.
AUTUMNAL MANAGEMENT OF FRUIT-TREES.
Orcuarpists and cultivators of garden-fruit will have
need of all their skill to prepare tender fruit-trees for win-
ter. It is the misfortune, alike of the English summers, and
of ours in the West, that trees do not properly ripen their
wood. But inGreat Britain it is from the want of enough,
and in America, from too much summer. Our long and hot
summers give two or three separate growths to fruit-trees,
and the last one is usually in progress at a period so late
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 370
that severe frosts and freezings overtake the tree while yet
in an excitable state, pushing new wood, and with a top
quite unripened for severe frosty handling.
The year 1845 furnished a fine type of western summers.
The spring came in very properly, and at so late a period
that the usual frosts, after the expansion of leaves, were
avoided. The summer opened warmly and continued with
almost unvarying heat throughout. At the same time there
were frequent and copious rains.
By this statement theaverage temperature of June was
71°, and the rain 6! inches; of July, average noon heat
80°, rain 34 inches; of August, average noon heat 80°, rain
54 inches. Nights were exceedingly warm. The day
repeatedly opened and closed at 80°. Our thermometer on
the north of our house, in a shady yard, stood for eight and
ten days together between 94° and 100°, twice attaining
the latter height.
Under such stimulus our pear, apple and plum-trees, made
their first growth by the first of July. They soon started
into a second growth, which wound up during the last of
August and the first of September, plum-trees entirely
shedding their leaves and standing as bare as in Jan-
uary.
Let orchards be examined when frosts begin to occur,
and every side-shoot, sucker or water-sprout, cut cleanly
out. These succulent, raw sprouts are the breeding-spots
of disease. Cold-blight invariably manifests itself in them
in the most positive form.
Garden trees, choice pears, and stone-fruits, should, in
addition to this operation, if still in growth at the last of
September, receive a fall pruning. From the first to the mid-
dle of October, according to the season, cut off two-thirds
of the new growth, or back to strong, ripe wood. It is well
known that the newest buds, near the extremity of young
wood, are the most sensitive and apt to break and grow,
whereas the buds near the base of a branch are dormant.
376 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It is the repose of the older buds which makes fall pruning,
if performed with judgment, so valuable. Because it forces
the tree to expend its energies in ripening its wood instead
of making more, and it also tends to induce fruitfulness by
changing leaf-buds to fruit-buds. The great art of fall
pruning is to relieve the tree of its crude wood without
causing its dormant buds to break. If performed too early,
or if but the tips of the fine wood are removed, the new
buds may break and side-shoots issue, leaving the tree
worse off than before.
Young trees just coming into bearing should have their
trunks protected. That there is a change in the economy
of a tree when it begins to bear is plain; and experience
seems to teach that trees are peculiarly tender at the time
of this change, since they are far more apt to die when
coming to fruit, than either before or afterward. Cherry-
trees and pear-trees should have brush, or corn-stalks,
or straw, or matting, as is most convenient, so placed from
the ground to the branches, as to exclude the sun with-
out excluding air. An hour’s attention may save much
regret.
PEARS GRAFTED UPON THE APPLE STOCK.
WE do not think the pear does so well in any other way
as on its own root. But it has been found extremely difii-
cult to obtain the requisite stock. Pear-seeds are scarce.
When obtained, the seedlings have proved intractable, and
left the nurseryman oftentimes in the lurch. The first and
best substitute for pear-stock, is the root of the pear—great
quantities may be obtained when removing pear-trees in
the autumn from the nursery, and also without any injury
to the trees, roots may be taken from old bearing-trees.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 377
These are to be grafted in the manner already described in
our pages. Next to this, the quince stock is to be chosen.
The pear is dwarfed upon it. In other words, the two are
‘but imperfectly suited to each other, and the scion does not
develop according to its original nature. But this very
dwarfing adds something to the good qualities of the fruit,
affords trees so small that, at eight feet apart, they make
beautiful linings to a walk or border, and, morever, brings
the pear to its fruit several years earlier than if it were on
its own bottom. But on the other hand, the pear on quince
is comparatively short-lived. The white-thorn has been
tried as a stock and not without success, but it is hardly to
be used except in extremities.
Last, and worst of all, comes the apple. The scion grows as
vigorously upon the apple as upon a stock of its own species,
and we do not know that the fruit deteriorates. But the
trees seem to have no constitution. After a few bearings
they seem struck with irremediable weakness, and soon run
down and die. Nurserymen ought not, therefore, to graft
the pear upon the apple. To do so, if advised of the fore-
going facts, cannot be honest. Our attention has been
called to the subject by some painful experience of our
own.
Neswanoc Potato.—This potato (pronounced MMesha-
noc), was raised from the seed about the year 1800, by
John Gilkey, Mercer county, Pennsylvania. He called it
Neshanoc, from a creek near to which he lived. It was
called by some, Mercer, from the county in which it was
raised, It is extensively cultivated, and deserves to be.
Mr. Gilkey was an Irishman—of course a judge of good
potatoes.
578 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
SEEDLINGS FROM BUDDED PEACHES.
Mr. Nicnotas Loneworrs inquires: “ Will the pit of
the budded peach produce the same fruit as the bud, or as °
the stock, or a mixture of the two?” And he also says, ‘I
have never fairly tested the question, but my experience
led me to believe that the budded pit produced the same
fruit as the original stock.”
So far as ie question can be determined (macpencenae
of experiment) upon the known laws of the vegetable king-
dom, we say that it will noé produce fruit like that of the
original stock; nor will it, on the other hand, with any cer-
tainty, reproduce the budded kind.
If the pit of a budded variety takes after the stock, we
must very much change our theory of the office of leaves,
and perhaps of the bark. At present, the received and
orthodox teaching is, that the sap from the root is crude
and undigested until it has received in the leaf a chemical
change. Until then, the sap does not materially influence
the vegetable tissue, nor form new substance, or affect the
fruit. But after its elaboration in the leaf, a returning cur-
rent of prepared sap (similar in its functions to arterial
blood), sets downward, distributing to every part of the
vegetable economy the properties required by each. The
sap arising from the root, does not touch the channel of
fruit until it has been chemically changed; and the differ-
ence exhibited in the fruit of one tree compared with
another, arises, primarily from the nature of the sap which
it receives; the sap receives its qualities by a digestion in
the leaf.* In all cases, then, we suppose the deaf to deter-
mine the nature of the fruit (and the root in no case, and
the trunk in no case), since the stem is, so far as sap is con-
cerned, but a bundle of canals for its passage—a mere high-
* The fruit itself still further elaborates the sap, else a peach would be
as acrid as the juice of the peach leaf.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 379
way for transmission—and not like the leaf, a laboratory for
its preparation ! *
We may be reminded that a stock, in point of fact, does
‘influence the fruit. It is indisputable that pears are changed
on quince roots. The Wilkinson, grafted upon the quince,
is smaller, more prolific, higher flavored, and of a brighter
red cheek than if grafted on the pear. The Duchesse d’An-
gouléme is larger and better on the quince than on its own
roots. But what isthe influence in this case? When a free-
grower is put upon a slow-grower, the point of junction
becomes a point of comparative obstruction to the return-
sap. It is only a wholesome process of ringing, or decor-
tication. Lindley says:
“When pears are worked upon the wild species, apples
upon crabs, and peaches upon peaches, the scion is, in regard
to fertility, exactly in the same state as if it had not been
grafted at all: while, on the other hand, a great increase
of fertility, is the result of grafting pears upon quinces,
peaches upon plums, apples upon the thorn, and the
like. In these cases, the food absorbed from the earth
by the root of the stock is communicated slowly.” And
* Loudon (Encyclopedia of Gardening, p. 448), has the following
remarks :
‘““The bark is the medium in which the proper juices of the plant, in
their descent from the leaves, are finally elaborated and brought to the
state which is peculiar to the species. From the bark these juices are
communicated to the medullary rays, to be by them deposited in the
tissue of the wood. The character of timber, therefore, depends chiefly
upon the influence of the bark: and hence it is that the wood formed
above a graft never partakes, in the slightest degree, of the nature of
the wood below it. The bark, when young and green, like the leaves, is
supposed, like them, to elaborate the sap, and hence may be considered
as the universal leaf of a plant.
These views corroborate the reasoning above, although Loudon
extends the functions of the leaf to the bark. We have not been able,
in our limited range of books, to find any other authority for this state~
ment, respecting the ‘‘ young and green bark.”
380 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Manning adds: “ No other influence have we ever noticed
exercised by the scion upon the stock.”
But if, after all, it can be shown by actual trial, that the
pits of budded peaches po go back to the fruit of the
stock, why we must receive it, in spite of all theory; for,
(and some would do well to heed the maxim), facts must
rule our theories, and not theories our fact. But we may
properly put any facts seeming to contravene the received
theory of the functions of plants in producing fruit, upon
their oath, and refuse them, unless they are unquestionable
and relevant.
Suppose a budded peach not to yield a fruit at all like
the bud, suppose it to resemble the fruit of the stock, it
does not follow that the stock influenced the fruit to such a
change. Mr. Longworth knows how freely some peaches
“‘ sport,” and that all peaches may be made to doit. Ifa
Melacatune be budded upon a Red Rareripe, and the Mela-
eatune pit shows a fruit resembling the Red Rareripe, it
must be shown that the blossom had not been crossed by
the busy offices of flies, bees, ete., with the pollen of con-
tiguous Red Rareripe-trees.
When a tree is even solitary, it does not follow that a
change in fruit which shall make it resemble the stock more
than the graft, results from the force of the stock on the
grafted fruit, for seedlings of grafted fruit are, notoriously
often, base and degenerate; and the resemblance might be
accidental, for seedlings of different origin are often strik-
ingly alike.
While we are aware of no facts which justify Mr. Long-
worth’s suspicion, that the pits of budded varieties produce
kinds like the stock on which the bud was put, we have
facts enough showing that “budded pits” produce their -
own kind.
It may be added that thoroughly ripe peaches are less
inclined to “sport” than those which are partially green.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 381
CARE OF PEACH-TREES.
Take a light hoe and remove the earth from the trunk
of your trees. If there are worms there you may detect
them from the gum which has exuded, or by the channels
which they have made in the bark, or if by neither of these,
py the discoloration of the bark in spots. Scrape the bark
gently with the back of a knife, and you can easily detect
the traces of worms if any are there. Cut freely and boldly
both ways along their track so as to lay bare the channel
in its whole length—remove the worm, and the bark will
very soon heal. Sometimes four, six, and even more will
be found in one tree. The ashes of stone coal, blacksmiths’
cinders, wood ashes, lime, the refuse stems of tobacco, plant-
ing tansy around the trunk, these, and dozens of other
remedies are proposed. For our own part we rely solely
on our jack-knife. In March or April, and then again in
August or September, according to the season, we search
the trunk thoroughly. We can attend to twenty trees in
an hour or two ; and when eating freely of delicious peaches
we never had a qualm of regret for having so spent the
time.
We have practised sowing salt under fruit-trees with
decided advantage. If one pound of saltpetre be added to
every six pounds of salt, it will be yet better. We sow
enough to make the ground look moderately white, and
prefer to do it in wet weather.
Tue most salable butter, quality being equal, is that
which is neatest done up. There isa great deal in the looks
of athing. You'll always find it so.
382 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
RENOVATING PEACH-TREES.
THE peach-tree inclines to thicken at the top, the small
inside branches die, and are removed by every neat cultiva-
tor. As the branches shoot up, this tree is disposed to
abandon its lower branches, and, like the vine, to bear on
the wood the farthest from the root, z. e. the young and
new wood. Ina few years the tree has a long-necked trunk,
sometimes several of them; while the weight of foliage and
fruit is situated so as to act like a power applied to a lever;
and as the fruit grows heavy, or a storm occurs, the tree is
broken down. We have practised the following method
with success. In the month of July we saw off the top of
one half of the tree, leaving about ten or twelve feet of
stem, measuring from the ground. New shoots will now
put out along the whole trunk; a part of these should be
rubbed off, according to the judgment of the cultivator,
leaving such as will give symmetry to the tree, and form a.
head low down. The second year, these branches will bear
fruit, and the other side may then be treated in the same
way.
This new head will require little meddling with for about
four years. At this time, or whenever the tree is outrun-
ning itself, the same process is to be renewed. But this
time the tree will be composed of a multitude of smaller
branches, instead of two or three main ones as at first.
Some of these should be wholly cut out, and the wound
smeared with a residuum of paint, or a thick white paint,
or grafting wax, or anything that will exclude the air while
the cut is granulating. The others are to be cut within,
say, five inches of the old, original wood—leaving, thus, a
stem of mere stumps. If the branches are taken entirely
off, leaving only the oldest wood, the buds which would
break from it would not be as healthy or vigorous as those
which will spring from the stumps of the later branches.
Probably twenty or thirty whips will come to each stump;
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 383
these should from day to day be reduced in number, until,
at last, all are removed but one, and that one should, if pos-
sible, spring from the nearest point where the stump joins
the old stem. When this new branch is obtained and fairly
established, remove the stump with a fine saw, so as to
leave the new branch, as nearly as possible, in the place of
the old one. We remove the whips from a stump gradu-
ally in order to give the tree the advantage of their leaves
as long as it can be done without interfering with the
branch or branches which we are training out.
This method is to the peach what pruning is to the grape.
The tree is kept in hand instead of sprawling abroad, a
prey to its own weight and to storms; there is always a
plenty of young wood for the fruit, which can be easily
reached when one thins out, or gathers for use.
One of our trees taught us this method of its own accord
in the summer of 1843. The weight of fruit was so great
that we applied a prop to the middle of the branch; in a few
days the branch broke short off at the point of the prop.
It so happened that the three main limbs on one side of the
tree acted in this manner. That same fall a strong growth
of new wood shot out, and the next season I had on that
side as fine a top as ever I had on any peach-tree.
Every farmer who expects his wife to make good butter,
after furnishing her with some good, well-fed milk cows,
should provide her with good milk-pans—large and shallow,
so as to present a large surface for the cream to rise on, and
enough of them to hold all her milk, and allow it to remain
undisturbed long enough for all the cream to rise. These
pans should be nicely washed every time the milk is emp-
tied out of them, and always be clear and bright when
filled.
384 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
AN APOLOGUE OR APPLE-LOGUE.
Two men planted out each one hundred apple-trees. In
six or seven years they began to bear. One had spared no
pains to bring his orchard into the highest condition. He
had constantly cultivated the soil about them, scraped off
the rough bark, washed them with urinated soap, picked
off every worm and nursed them as if they had been child-
ren. The other, pursuing a cheaper plan, simply let his
trees alone; but the moss, and canker-worms took his place
and attended to them every year. When the orchards
began to bear, the careful man had the best fruit, and the
careless man covered his folly by cursing the nursery-man
for selling him poor trees. Ina year or two the careful
man had two bushels to the other’s one from each tree,
Not to be outdone, the latter determined to have as many
apples as the former, and set out another hundred trees.
By and by, when they bore, the other orchard had so im-
proved that it produced twice as many yet; another hun-
dred trees were therefore planted. In process of time the
first orchard of one hundred trees still sent more fruit to
market than the three hundred trees of the careless man,
who now gave up and declared that he never did have luck,
and it was of no use to try on his soil to raise good fruit.
1. When a man is too shiftless to take good care of two
horses, he buys two more, and gets from the four what he
might get from two.
2. A farmer who picks up a cow simply because it is not
an ox, and ¢s, nominally, lactiferous, and then lets the crea-
ture work for a living, very soon buys a second, and a third,
and a fourth, and gets from them all, what he should have
had from one good one.
3. A farmer had one hundred acres. Instead of getting
seventy-five bushels of corn to the acre, he gets forty and
makes it up by cultivating twice as many acres; instead of
thirty bushes of wheat he gets twelve, and puts in acres
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 885
enough to make up; instead of making one hundred acres
do the work of three hundred, he buys more land, and
allows three hundred to do only the work of one hundred.
4, A young woman, with a little pains, can have three
times as many clothes as she needs, and then not look so
well as a humble neighbor who has not half her wardrobe ;
wherefore, we close with some proverbs made for the occa-
sion : °
Active little is better than lazy much.
Carefulness is richer than abundance.
Large farming is not always good farming, and small
farming is often the largest.
SELECT LIST OF APPLES.
Ir is impossible to frame a list of apples which will suit
every cultivator. Men’s taste in fruits is widely different.
The delicacy and mildness of flavor which some admire, is
to others mere insipidity. The sharp acid, and coarse grain
and strong flavor which disgust many palates, are with
others the very marks of a first-rate apple. The object of
the cultivator in planting an orchard, whether for his own
use, for a home market, for exportation, for cider-making,
or for stock-feeding, will very materially vary his selection.
The soil on which an orchard is to be planted should also
determine the use of many varieties, which are admirable
only when well suited in their locality.
Regard is to be had to climate, since some of the finest
fruits in one latitude entirely betray our expectations in
another. The hardiness and health of different varieties
ought to be more an object of attention than hitherto. As
in building, so in planting an orchard, a mistake lasts for a
century, and a bad tree in a good orchard is like bad tim-
ber in a good mansion.
386 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
However select, then, a list may be, every cultivator
must exercise his own judgment in adapting it to his own
circumstances.
SUMMER APPLES.
1. Carotina June.—This is identical with the Red June
of the principal nurseries; but many inferior varieties scat-
tered through the country, called Red June, are to be dis-
criminated from it.
The tree is upright with slender wood, which, when
loaded with fruit, droops like a willow. It is a healthy
tree, ripens its wood early in the fall, and is not subject to
frost-blight. It comes early into bearing, is productive and
bears every year. The fruit is of medium size though
specimens grow large; the flavor is sprightly, subacid, the
flesh tender. It has flourished well on sand-loams, common
clays, and on strong limestone clay. Ripens from the first
tothe twentieth of July. A valuable market fruit. Four
trees, in one county, sent eighty dollars’ worth to mar-
ket in one season. Not mentioned by eastern writers, nor
found in eastern catalogues, but described at the West by
Hampton and Plummer, and found in Ohio and Indiana
nurseries.
2. Sweer Junze.—Tree upright, wood moderately strong ;
ripens its wood early in fall; not subject to frost-blight ;
flourishes on all soils, even if quite wet; bears very young,
often while in nursery rows; bears every year and abun-
dantly. The fruit is of medium size; color a pale yellow;
form globular ; flavor sweet and pleasant. Ripens at same
time as the Carolina June.
3. Kirkprince Warre.—Not found in any catalogues
but those of Western nurseries. Tree upright, wood
strong and stubbed; grows slow while young, but vigor-
ously when fully established; ripens its wood early in
autumn; not subject to frost-blight; bears moderately
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 387
young, and is very productive. Jts fruit ripens in succes-
sion for six weeks from first of July to middle of
August, and is peculiarly valuable on that account; color
nearly white; it is largest at base and tapers regularly to
the eye, and is ribbed; flavor, mild, pleasant acid; flesh
melting, and, if fully ripe breaks to pieces in falling to the
ground. ;
4, Prince’s Harvest.—Manning pronounces this “ the
earliest apple worthy of cultivation.” It may be in Massa-
chusetts, but it is preceded by many at the West. Man-
ning’s description 1 is good.
“The form is flat, of medium size; the skin, when per-
fectly ripe, is of a beavis bright ee eee the flesh
tender and sprightly; if gathered before ey are fully
ripe, it has too much acidity. The finest fruits are those
which drop ripe from the tree; the branches make very
acute angles, by which it is readily distinguished from most
other trees in the orchard; it bears young. Ripe early in
July.”
Our nurserymen regard it as a shy bearer.
5. SuMMER QuEEN.—Extensively cultivated in the West
under the name of Orange Apple. The tree is spreading ;
a rapid grower ; not subject to frost-blight ; wood moder-
ately strong; comes late into bearing; productive when the
tree is fully grown, according to the books, but in this
region with some exceptions has proved to be a poor bearer.
Fruit large, yellow, striped with red; flesh, breaking;
flavor strong, and not delicate.
6. Sweet Boucu.—Two varieties of this name are cul-
tivated in the West—Coxe’s and Mount’s. Coxe’s sweet
bough, is that of the books and catalogues. Ripens at the
same time ; not quite so high in flavor. Coxe’s trees are
large limbed and spreading ; bearing on the point of the
limbs, and are shy bearers; Mount’s variety is of upright
growth; bears on spurs along the branches; is a good
bearer and ripens from middle of July to August.
888 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
“A variety under the name of Philadelphia Jennetting is
known in Trumbull County, Ohio. It ripens two weeks
later than the common kind, otherwise it is not essentially
different.,—Dr. J. P. Kirtland.
7. SumMeR Prarmarin.—There seem to be two varieties
of this name cultivated in Ohio and Indiana.
(1.) That of Coxe, which is the one cacy cultivated,
and deservedly popular.
“The fruit-buds seem to be unusually hardy, and often
resist the impression of late spring frosts, while others are
killed. In 1834, when our fruits were universally cut off
by that destructive agent, a tree of the summer pearmain
and another of the Vandeveer, matured a dozen or two
apples, while not another tree in an orchard containing over
five hundred, bore a solitary fruit. It is worthy of more
extensive cultivation.”—Dr. Kirtland.
(2.) A variety evidently allied to Coxe’s, but all things con-
sidered a more desirable variety. The fruit resembles Coxe’s,
but is larger; the flavor is the same, but not quite as high ;
Coxe’s is oblong ; this variety is Vandeveer pippin shape;
color the same, and the period of ripening, viz., July and
August. The trees are very distinct; Coxe’s is upright,
this is spreading ; Coxe’s of a slender growth, and stinted
habit, and is hard to bring forward in the nursery; this has
a vigorous growth, and strong wood, and strikingly resem-
bles the Vandeveer pippin-tree. It bears early and abun-
dantly in all soils.
This second variety was brought, by a man named Har-
lan, Fayette County, Indiana, from South Carolina, where
it is extensively cultivated.
8. DanteL.—The tree is upright, nearly pear-tree shape ;
wood strong and healthy; leaves, above all varieties, dark
green and glossy; bears young and abundantly. Fruit
medium size; it has a yellow ground covered with blotches
of dull red; flavor rich, sweetish, and high. Ripens in
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 389
succession from first to middle of August. A desirable
variety.
9. Hoss, improperly pronounced Horse, and so written
in Prince’s catalogue. Originated in North Carolina;
largely cultivated in both Carolinas and southern Virginia ;
named from the originator. It has been propagated by
suckers, grafts, and even by seeds ; in this latter case, the
product very nearly resembles the parent. Three varieties,
however, may be discriminated. Tree upright, wood strong
and healthy; bears yearly and abundantly; flesh melting:
flavor rather too acid until thoroughly ripe, and then fine.
Ripens in August and September. Desirable in the most
select orchards.
The time of ripening I have set down for the latitude of
Indianapolis. Upon the Ohio River, near Cincinnati, it will
be ten days earlier.
AUTUMN APPLES.
10. Maipen’s Biusu.—Tree moderately spreading, open
top, limbs slender ; grows late in fall, and somewhat liable
to winter-killng; grows well on all good soils; bears
young and very abundantly every year. The fruit large
when the tree is not allowed to ripen too large a crop;
white, and blush toward the sun; tender, melting, very
juicy, decidedly acid. The fruit is, even in unfavorable
seasons, very free from cracks, knots, and is always fair ;
one of the best for drying and excellent for marketing ;
should be plucked before it is dead ripe; ripens from |
August to October. It is the same as the English Hor-
thornden. It does not do well grafted on the root ; being
apt to burst the first or second winter; buds well, and
should be thus propagated in the nursery. It is a native of
New Jersey.
11. Wine AppLte.—Tree spreading but not sprawling ;
medium grower, healthy ; limbs rather slender ; does well
390 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
on all soils; bears very young, largely, and every year.
Fruit large on young, and medium-sized on old trees; deep
yellow ground covered with red, and russet about the
stem; tender, melting, very juicy, high-flavored, sweet,
with a spicy dash of subacid. One of the richest cooking
apples; one of the most desirable for drying, resembling
dried pears. Where known, it is worth, dried, a dollar and
a half a bushel, when other apples command but seventy-
five cents. Ripens first of September and has passed its
prime by November. Eastern writers call it a winter
apple, and Kenrick gives October to March as its season ;
but, in the West, it seldom sees the first winter month.
Takes by graft and bud pretty well; does well grafted upon
the root; favorable for nursery purposes.
12. Hortanp Pippin.—Tree large and _ spreading;
strong growth; wood short and stubbed, healthy; bears
moderately young; they are averse to heavy clay and wet
soils; on light, dry, rich, sandy soils bears largely, and of
high color and flavor; bears every other year. Fruit
large, very bright yellow, tender, juicy, subacid. The pulp
in the mouth becomes rather viscid, as if the fruit were
mucilaginous, which is agreeable or otherwise according to
the taste of the eater. It is sometimes, but rarely, water-
cored. Ripens in October and November ; will keep later,
but apt to lose in flavor. Good for drying, but usually
sold green, being a very marketable fruit. Not a good
tree for nurserymen; not willing to come if grafted on
the root; does well by crown-grafting ; moderately well
by budding, the eye being apt to put out simply a spur,
which can seldom be forced into a branch if permitted to
harden.
13. Ramso.—This apple is known in New Jersey by the
names of Romanite, Seek-no-further, and Bread and
Cheese. The first two names belong to entirely different
apples. The rambo is not to be confounded with the Ram-
Jours, of which there are several varieties. Tree upright,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 391
and the most vigorous growth of all trees cultivated in the
West; the easiest of al] to bud with, a bud seldom misses,
and makes extraordinary growth the first season; it may
well be called the nurseryman’s favorite; bears very young,
abundantly every year, good on all soils. Fruit medium
size, yellow ground with red stripes and the whole over-
laid with a bloom, like a plum; tender, juicy, melting, sub-
acid, rich; it has a peculiarity of ripening ; it begins at the
skin and ripens toward the core; often soft and seemingly
ripe on the outside while the inside is yet hard. Ripens
from October to December. One of the best of all
fruits.
14. Gotpen Russer.—This admirable apple is put in the
list of fall fruits, because, though it will keep through the
winter, it ripens in November, and sometimes even in
October. Tree, strong grower, upright, compact top-
healthy, grows late in fall and therefore subject to winter-
killing; will grow on all soils, but delights in rich sandy
loams, on which it bears larger and finer fruit. Fruit small,
rather oblong; -color yellow, slight red next to the sun;
although called russet, there is but a trace of it on the fruit
of healthy trees; tender, melting, spicy, very juicy; in
flavor it resembles the St. Michael’s pear (Doyenné) more
nearly than any other apple.
This fruit is the most popular of all late, fall, or early
winter apples, and deservedly, and should be put at the
head of the list. A gentleman near Belfre, Ohio, being
applied to for a list of apples to furnish an orchard of a
thousand trees for marketing purposes, replied, “Take nine
hundred and ninety-nine golden russets, and the res¢ you
can choose to suit yourself.” For nursery purposes it is
rather a backward apple; the buds apt to fail, which
occasions much resetting. It will not do well grafted on
the root, being tender and always largely winter-killed
when so wrought. They graft kindly on well established
stocks,
392 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Tf a larger list of fall apples is desired, we recommend the
Fall Harvey, Gravenstein, Lyscom, Porter, Red Ingestrie,
Yellow do. The Ashmore is a desirable fruit—difficult to
raise in the nursery, and therefore avoided, but the fruit is
fine. The Ross Nonpareil is a very admirable fall fruit of
Trish origin.
The list of autumn apples is very large and continually
augmenting. But fall apples are, ordinarily, less desirable
than any others; not from inferior quality, but because they
ripen at the season of the year when peaches and pears are
in their glory.
WINTER APPLES.
15. Gror1a Munvi or Monstrous Pippin. Tree, one of
the most upright, top close, and resembling the pear.
Wood medium sized, healthy, vigorous growth, wood
ripens early, not subject to frost-blight ; bears on moderately
young trees. It works well from the bud, and also
extremely well grafted on roots, and grows straight and
finely for nursery purposes. Fruit very large, green,
changes when dead-ripe to a yellowish white. Flavor mild,
subacid ; flesh melting and spicy. Ripens in November, at
the same time with the Golden Russet, but will not keep as
long. A native.
16. Brack Appite.—Tree low, spreading, and round
topped ; wood of medium vigor, healthy, ripens early, and
not subject to frost-blight. Grafts on the root kindly; not
so favorable for budding as the No. 15; bears remarkably
young, and abundantly to a fault. Fruit medium sized;
color very dark red, almost black, with grey rusty spots
about the stem; flesh tender, breaking; moderately juicy,
flavor rather sweet, though not a real sweet apple. No
apple would stand fairer as an early winter fruit, were it not
for a peculiar, dry, raw taste, somewhat resembling the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 393
taste of uncooked corn meal. Ripens from November to
January. It is a native.
17. Newron Srirzensure.—Tree, not large, upright but
not compact, top open; wood of medium size and vigor of
growth; healthy, ripens early, and yet, now and then, it
takes the frost-blight ; bears moderately young, every other
year, very abundantly ; grafts well on the root, buds only
moderately well, good for nursery handling. Fruit, vary-
ing much in size, but often large, flesh melting, juicy ; flavor
rich, spicy, subacid; ripens from November to January.
18. Ruope Istanp GreEentne.—Tree large, very spread-
ing and drooping, grows vigorously, healthy, ripens early,
not subject to frost-blight; bud takes well; but, whether
grafted on the root, or budded, it will plague the nursery-
man by its disposition to spread and twist about like a
quince bush. It should be budded on strong stocks
at the height at which the top is to be formed; but it
always overgrows the stock. Fruit very large, color green‘
with cloudy spots dotted with pin-point black specks; flesh
breaking, tender and juicy: flavor mild, rich, subacid; a
very popular fruit. Ripens from November to January.
19. Hussparpston Nonesucu.—Admirable in nursery;
works well on root or by bud. We give Downing’s des-
cription, as it has not fruited in this region.
“A fine, large, early winter fruit, which originated in the
town of Hubbardston, Mass., and is of first rate quality.
The tree is a vigorous grower, forming a handsome branch-
ing head, and bears very large crops. It is worthy of
extensive orchard culture.
“Fruit large, roundish-oblong, much narrower near the
eye. Skin smooth, striped with splashes, and irregular
broken stripes of pale and bright red, which nearly cover a
yellowish ground. The calyx open, and the stalk short, in
a russeted hollow. Flesh yellow, juicy, and tender, with
an agreeable mingling of sweetness and acidity in its flavor.
October to January.”
394 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
20. Mrntster.—We give Manning’s description:
“This fine apple originated in Rowley, Mass. The size
is large, the form oblong like the Bellflower, tapering to the
eye, with broad ridges the whole length of the fruit; the
skin a light greenish yellow, striped with bright red, but
the red seldom extends to the eye; flesh yellow, light, high
flavored and excellent. This is one of the very finest apples
which New England has produced. It ripens from Novem-
ber to February, and deserves a place in every collection
of fruits, however small. This apple received its present
name from the circumstance of the late Rev. Dr. Spring, of
Newburyport, having purchased the first fruit brought to
market.”
21. VANDERVEER Pirpin.—Tree large, one of the most
vigorous, spreading, but not drooping; ripens its wood
late, occasionally touched with frost-blight and liable to
burst at the surface of the ground during the winter.
Bears young, every year, and very abundantly. Buds well,
grafts well on the root, grows off strongly, forms a top
readily, and will please nurserymen. Fruit large, more uni-
formly of one size all over the tree than any in the orchard ;
shape of fruit flat; color, red stripes on a yellow, russety
ground. Flesh coarse, gritty; flavor strong, penetrating,
without aroma; December to March. This fruit is remark-
able for having almost every good quality of tree and fruit
and being pooh ania a third-rate apple. The tree is
hardy, its bloom, from peculiar hardiness, escapes injury
from frost, and even a second set of blossoms put out,
though feeble ones, if the first are destroyed. The fruit is
comely, cooks admirably, keeps well; but a certain sharp-
ness and coarseness will always make it but a second or
third-rate fruit. No tree is sought by farmers in this
region, with more avidity. Its origin is doubtful. Brun-
son, of Wayne County, brought it to Indiana, and all our
nurseries trace their stock to his. It was carried for the
first time to New Jersey, by Quakers visiting that region,
ee
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 395
from his orchard. It should have been mentioned, that it
holds its age remarkably well, very old trees producing as
largely, and as fair, sound fruit as when young.
22. Yettow Bette FLevur, or BELLFLOWER.—Tree
spreads and droops more than any tree of the orchard, the
Newark pippin, perhaps, excepted; wood very slender
and whip-like, healthy, ripens early, not subject to frost-
blight, grafts well on the root, but is rather tender during
the first winter when so worked; buds well, but from its
drooping, sprawling habits, is hard to form intoatop. Bears
moderately young (not so young as the white); abun-
dantly. Flesh melting and tender and juicy; flavor fine
and delicate rather than high; color deep yellow when
ripe; ripens from December to March. One of the most
deservedly popular of winter apples and always salable in
all markets.
23. Wuirrt Bette Freur.—This apple is cultivated in
Ohio under the names of Hollow-cored Pippin, Ohio
favorite, and, by the Cincinnati pomologists, of Detroit.
It is also the Cumberland Spice and Monstrous Bellflower
of Coxe. It was taken to the West by Brunson of Wayne
County, Indiana, and thence disseminated in every direc-
tion; and it may be called the Bellflower of Indiana,
since it and not the yellow, predominates in all orchards,
The yellow, however, within five years, has been largely
distributed. Tree, medium sized, spreading ; wood stronger
than the yellow belle fleur, healthy, ripens its wood early,
but liable to after-growth in warm falls, and therefore sub-
ject to frost-blight. The tree, from its habit of growth,
more liable to split and break under a full crop than any
tree of the orchard. One of the youngest bearers in the
nursery ; fruitful to a fault. Grafted on the root it kills off
in winter; buds well and forms a top without difficulty.
Fruit above medium and sometimes very large; color,
greenish white, and, in some seasons with a blush on the
sunny side; flesh breaking at first, but when fully ripe,
396 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
melting and juicy; flavor mild and delicate. It is not apt
to cloy, and more can be eaten than of almost any variety.
Ripe from December to March.
24. Batpwin.—Works well in nursery by root or bud,
and is fine for nurserymen. Top forms easily. Not up-
right, as Downing says, but a round, spreading top. We
give Downing’s description :
“The Baldwin stands at the head of New England
apples, and is unquestionably a first-rate fruit im all respects.
It isa native of Massachusetts, and is more largely culti-
vated for the Boston market than any other sort. It
bears most abundantly, and we have had the satisfaction
of raising larger, more beautiful, and highly favored speci-
mens here, than we ever saw in its native region. The
Baldwin, in fiavor and general characteristics, evidently
belongs to the same family as Esopus Spitzenburg, and
deserves its extensive popularity.
“Fruit large, roundish, and narrowing a little to the eye.
Skin yellow in the shade, but nearly covered and striped
with crimson, red, and orange, in the sun; dotted with a
few large russet dots, and with radiating streaks of russet
about the stalk. Calyx closed, set in a rather narrow
plaited basin. Stalk half to three fourths of an inch long,
rather slender for so large a fruit, planted in an even,
moderately deep cavity. Flesh yellowish white, crisp, with
that agreeable mingling of the saccharine and acid which
constitutes a rich, high flavor. The tree is a vigorous,
upright grower, and bears most abundantly. Ripe from
November to March, but attains its greatest perfection in
January.”
25. MicnarL Henry Pippry.—Tree upright, with a
round-shaped top; wood strong, rather slow grower, ripens
its main growth of wood early, but liable to fresh growth
in warm, wet falls; bears very young, every other year
abundantly and not a single apple in the next year. Should
not be grafted on the root; and it is rather troublesome
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 397
when budded, from a disposition to make dwarf spur-
like branches, rather than upright limbs. Fruit medium-
sized, long, large about the base, sharpening toward the eye ;
color green, clouded and black speckled; flesh tender,
melting; flavor rich, inclined to sweet, and very fine.
Ripens from December to March.
26. Rep Sweer Pieprn.—Tree handsome, round-topped,
but rather spreading; wood strong, and vigorous growth,
ripens early; tree very healthy, apt to grow with very
smooth bark affording little shelter for insects; bears
young, every year and abundantly. Works well in the
nursery either by grafting on the root, or by budding.
Fruit medium size inclining to large; color red with grey
stripes on the shaded side; flesh breaking and firm; flavor
sweet and rich. It bakes well, is good for pies, eats well,
and its kitchen and table qualities combined make it a
desirable fruit. Ripe from December to April.
27. Pryor’s Rep.—Tree upright; wood slow growing,
slender, and the branches full of small wood, healthy, not
subject to frost-blight; comes very late into bearing,
requiring ten or twelve years for full bearing; bears only
moderate crops; every year. Difficult to work in the
nursery, but does better by grafting on the root than by
budding. Fruit above medium size; color, red dotted
with white specks; the whole surface covered with slight
bloom; flesh melting; flavor very rich and high, and by
some thought to be even richer than the golden russet. If
this apple only grew on the Vanderveer pippin tree, it would
require nothing more to render it perfect. Ripens from
December to March. Its keeping properties are more
in danger from the ¢eeth than from ordinary decay. A very
salable and popular apple, which, when once had, none
would consent to lose. It is unknown in New England and
New York except by description ; and is not even described
by Downing, and but little more than mentioned by Ken-
rick.
398 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
28. GreEN Nrwrown Piprrn.—Tree spreading, wood
slender and slow growing; ripens early, making it often
troublesome for nurserymen to procure buds fit for late
work; not subject to frost-blight. The tree requires vigor-
ous cultivation to redeem it from a feeble growth; the bark
is inclined to crack on the branches and scale up, and when
once roughened it is difficult ever again to make them
smooth. Late coming into bearing, bears abundantly every
other year. They should never be grafted on the root;
they should be budded on strong healthy stocks and high
up in order to do well. Fruit large, green, changing to
yellow when dead-ripe; flesh firm, breaking; flavor very
rich. Ripe from February to May. This apple is culti-
vated in extraordinary abundance at the East both for
home and foreign markets. They sell in London, at six-
pence a piece. The farm of R. L. Pell contains 2,000 bear-
ing trees of this variety; a note descriptive of which we
give from Downing:
“One of the finest orchards in America is that of Pell-
ham farm, at Esopus, on the Hudson. It is no less remark-
able for the beauty and high flavor of its fruit, than the
constant productiveness oftrees. The proprietor, R. L. Pell,
Esq., has kindly furnished us with some notes of his experi-
ments “on fruit-trees, and we subjoin the following highly
interesting one on the apple.
““¢ Hor several years past, I have been experiment-
ing on the apple, having an orchard of 2,000 bearing
Newtown Pippin-trees. I found it very unprofitable to
wait for what is termed the ‘bearing year,’ and it
has been my aim to assist nature, so as to enable the
trees to bear every year. I have noticed that from the
excessive productiveness of this tree, it requires the inter-
mediate year to recover itself—to extract from the earth
and the atmosphere the materials to enable it to produce
again. This it is not able to do, unassisted by art, while it
is loaded with fruit, and the intervening year is lost; if,
—---
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 399
however, the tree is supplied with proper food it will bear
every year; at least such has been the result of my experi-
ments. Three years ago, in April, I scraped all the rough
bark from the stems of several thousand trees in my
orchards, and washed all the trunks and limbs within reach
with soft soap; trimmed out all the branches that crossed
each other early in June, and painted the wounded part
with white lead, to exclude moisture and prevent decay. I
then, in the latter part of the same month, slit the bark by
running a sharp-pointed knife from the ground to the first
set of limbs, which prevents the tree from becoming bark-
bound, and gives the young wood an opportunity of ex-
panding. In July I placed one peck of oyster-shell lime
under each tree, and left it piled about the trunk until
November, during which time the drought was excessive.
In November the lime was dug in thoroughly. The follow-
ing year I collected from these trees 1,700 barrels of fruit,
part of which was sold in New York for four, and others in
London for nine dollars per barrel. The cider made from
the refuse, delivered at the mill two days after its manufac-
ture, I sold for three dollars and three-quarters per barrel ot
thirty-two gallons, exclusive of the barrel. In October I
manured these trees with stable manure in which the
ammonia had been fixed, and covered this immediately with
earth. The succeeding autumn they were literally bending
to the ground with the finest fruit I ever saw, while the
other trees in my orchard not so treated were quite barren,
the last season having been their bearing year. I am now
placing round each tree one peck of charcoal dust, and pro-
pose in the spring to cover it from the compost heap.
““¢ My soil is a strong, deep, sandy loam on a gravelly
subsoil. I cultivate my orchard grounds as if there were
no trees on them, and raise grain of every kind except rye,
which grain is so very injurious that I believe three suc-
cessive crops of it would destroy any orchard younger than
twenty years, I raised last year in an orchard containing
400 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
twenty «acres, trees eighteen years old, a crop of Indian
corn which averaged 140 bushels of ears to the acre.’”
29. Raw y’s JANET, OR JENNETTING.— Tree round
topped, a little spreading and handsome. Wood strong,
slow gruwth, short jointed, and the healthiest, perhaps, of
all orchard trees. Does not bear young; but when estab-
lished, a great bearer every year, unless overloaded, when
it rests a year. It is the finest of all apples to graft on the
root, and should be always so propagated in the nursery;
if budded, it being a late starter in spring, the stock will
put out its branches before the bud, and make great trou-
ble. Fruit medium sized; color green striped with red;
roundish but inclined to sharpen toward the eye; flesh
white, melting, very juicy; flavor mild and delicate.
Ripens from February to May. This is, and deserves to be,
an exceedingly popular apple in all the West. The tree
is remarkably healthy; it blooms ten days later than other
varieties, and therefore seldom loses a crop by spring frost ;
but the bloom is very sensitive to frost if overtaken; the
fruit is very relishful; keeps as well as the Newtown Pippin,
and by many, and by this writer among the number, is much
preferred to that noted variety. It has the peculiar excel-
lence of enduring frost without material injury ; a property
which has enabled cultivators to save thousands of bushels
of fruit which by sudden and early cold had been severely
frosted.
Tue reason that the Cockle-bur, that great pest on farms,
cannot be destroyed by being cut off once a year, is that
nature has provided for its propagation by bestowing on it
seed vessels which ripen at two different times of the year.
This will be found to be the case on careful examination.—
Western Farmer and Gardener.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. - 401
ORIGIN OF SOME VARIETIES OF FRUIT.
Tue history of our fine fruits has many curious points of
interest to the zealous pomologist. It is made up of
skill, felicitous blunders, discoveries, and profitable acci-
dents.
The Flemish pears, with which so large a portion of the
calendai of new pears is filled, were the products of scienti-
fic efforts. In like manner, many of the finest fruits ori-
ginated by Knight, were by a scientific, although a different,
process. On the other hand it would be difficult to find
fruits superior to those in the making of which only Nature
had a hand.
The Duchesse @& Angouléme, a pear without a rival, in its
season, was found in 1815, growing wild in a hedge, near
Angers, in the department of Maine et Loire, France.
The Washington, one of our finest native pears, was
likewise discovered in a thorn hedge, at Naaman’s creek,
Delaware, by Gen. Robertson. He was removing a fence
on his farm about forty-five years ago; he found the young
tree nearly grown.
The Zewis is a native of Massachusetts. Mr. Downer, of
Dorchester, a critical judge of fruits, was acquainted with
the original tree ten years before he thought it worth a
place in his garden. He visited it three times, and was
each time disinclined to cultivate it; it was not until he had
seen a tree taken from it, growing in cultivated ground,
that he adopted it. It now ranks among the finest native
pears.
Dearborn’s Seedling was-discovered by General Dearborn
in a cluster of syringas and rose bushes, forming a part of a
border to an avenue. Pears seem to have great fondness
for hedges, borders, ete. The discoverer attempted to
remove the tree, then, apparently, about five years old, to
his nursery for a stock; but digging two feet deep, and
finding no root but the tap root, he feared that deplanting
402 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
might kill it. It was left to grow, and has proved to be
one of the first-class pears.
Downer’s late cherry, was a stock in the nursery row, and
several times budded with other kinds; the buds always
failing, the tree was allowed to fruit, and proved one of the
best, if not ¢he best, of late cherries.
Knight's Black Eagle was raised from the seed of the
Bigarreau fertilized by the May Duke. When it bore, the
fruit was so inferior that the London Horticultural Society
peremptorily rejected it. Mr. Knight determined to head
the tree down and graft into it other sorts. But he had
given the tree to a daughter, with whom it was a favorite,
and she refused to have it sacrificed. Each year, subse-
quently, showed an improvement in the fruit; and now it
stands in the first class of cherries. This is one among
many instances, which show that young seedlings do not
exhibit the true qualities of the fruit for several years after
they come to bearing.
The Red-cheek Melocoton peach was accidentally obtained
by the late Wm. Prince, Flushing, Long Island. He had
budded the Kennedy’s Caroline upon a stock, and below
the point of inoculation a branch of the original stock had
shot up into bearing. Sending a servant to gather the
budded fruit, he was surprised by his bringing, and, as he
declared, from this tree, a free-stone peach. On examining,
he found the cause as stated above, and was so much
pleased with the new kind that he cultivated it.
Tux best stock a man can invest in, is the stock of a
farm; the best shares are plow-shares; and the best banks
are the fertile banks of the rural stream: the more these
are broken the better dividends they pay.
{
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ax 4a
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 405
THE QUINCE.
WE have nothing to say that has not been well said by
Downing, in his most interesting chapter on the Quince.
Mis Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, by the way, is
beyond all question the best pomological manual, all things
considered, which has appeared at home or abroad.
To return to the quince; we marvel that so few trees
have found a place in our collections of fruit. Quinces bear
transportation, and will, upon an average, bring two dollars
a bushel. They sell extravagantly high every year, and yet
no one seems to take the hint.
Our favorite mode of increasing the quince, is by layers.
The tree being low and inclined to be bushy, there is always
an abundance of suitable wood to lay down. Twenty or
thirty or even more rooted plants may be obtained in a
single season ; and the layers throw out such a profusion of
roots that the only difficulty will be to separate each plant
with its roots from the tough and matted abundance which
will be found to have filled the soil. If laid down in the
spring, they may be removed by midsummer, a cool and
moist day being chosen, and the plants shaded until they
start again to growing. If this is done, a second set of
layers may be put down to remain over fall and winter and
be removed the next spring.
Trees intended for the fruit-compartment of the garden
should be trained to a single stem, when they will make a
low and not altogether unsymmetrical tree; at any rate, a
tree much more convenient than the quince bush which we
usually find in our garden corners.
Where the seed is to be planted, they should be prepared ;
they are covered with a thick mucilaginous matter which
restrains their quick germination. Let them be put into
water for twelve hours, and the water will become nearly
as thick as paste. Pour it off and repeat the operation
until they are nearly clean; mix them with sand and sow
them immediately.
404 -LAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
CUTTING AND KEEPING GRAFTS.
Many experienced orchardists suppose the best time for
cutting grafts to be immediately on the fall of the leaf in
autumn.
Grafts should be cut in mild weather, when the wood is
entirely free from frost. Select the owtside limbs and the
last year’s growth of wood,
Too much care cannot be observed in keeping the varie-
ties separate. 'Tie up in bundles and mark the names of
each kind as soon as cut. A moment’s carefulness may save
years of vexation.
When the grafts are to be used at home, it is well to lay
them in the cellar where frost will not reach them, and
slightly cover them, so that they shall not evaporate the
moisture which they contain. 'Too much wet injures them.
Half-dry sand is as good as anything, and if packed in an
old nail-keg and put ina cool place, they will require no
further attention until it is time to use them.
When grafts are to be sent to a considerable distance,
they should be carefully wrapped in moist cloth, with folds
enough to exclude the air entirely. For convenience of
carrying they may be packed, in this condition, in a box,
and the space filled in with cotton-wool, chaff, bran, or any
similar substance.
It is stated by some, that grafts taken from the lower
limbs of trees will produce fruit the soonest ; while those
from the middle and top and from the upright shoots will
make trees of the finest form. We confess a slight preju-
dice against the lower limbs of trees, as it was thence that
“‘ switches” were cut in the mischievous days of our youth,
wherewith to apply Solomon’s doctrine of discipline.
Whether they will make upright trees, we cannot say ; but
they are supposed to have a tendency to make upright
men,
—
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 405
FROST-BLIGHT.
Ir is a matter of great importance that all cultivators of
fruit unite in making observations on this subject, and that
it, may be done with some unity of purpose.
1. Let the examiner select trees upon which are seen
small water-shoots, that have evidently grown late in the
fall. Usually, a tuft of withered leaves will indicate them.
Examine also all the new wood which retains terminal
leaves or is winter-killed at the tips.
2. The pith will be, in apples, an iron-rust color, and in
pears greenish black or pepper color; the inner skin will be
discolored, and the wood of a greenish, waxy appearance.
On cutting down to the point where these shoots unite with
the branch or trunk, the diseased sap will be found to have
discolored the whole neighborhood. In many cases which
we have examined, half the trunk is affected. We exam-
ined a bearing pear-tree, which to the eye has not one
sion of unhealthiness, but which, on cutting, is found
to be affected throughout, and will, undoubtedly, die in
spring.
3. Let a comparison be instituted between trees in differ-
ent circumstances. |
Is there any difference between slow-growing varieties
and those which grow rapidly ?
Is there any difference between trees in cold, northern
aspects, Whose sap, in autumn, would not be likely to be
excited, and those with southern aspects ?
Is there a difference between trees upon a fat clay or
rank loam of any kind, and those upon a warm, dry, sandy
loam. It is supposed that any causes which produce a
coarse, watery, flabby tissue in a tree, predispose it to
injury by frost, and thus to the blight; and that the fine-
ness and firmness of texture of trees growing in a sand-
loam on a gravelly subsoil give them great power of endur-
ance.
406 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
4. Let trees which are found to be in an injured condi-
tion be marked and examined again as follows:
(1.) At the breaking up of winter, to see if any change
of condition has taken place.
(2.) At the breaking of the bud into leaf.
(3.) At the full development of leaf and when the down-
ward current of sap is begun.
5. It isa matter of great importance to ascertain whether
the character of the season which follows such frost-injuries
as have befallen fruit-trees in this region, modifies the dis-
ease. Some think that blight will follow without regard to
the ensuing season; others suppose that a dry, and warm
season will very much prevent the mischief; but that a
moist and warm spring and summer, will give it a fatal
development.
It is ardently to be hoped that accurate observations will
be made, and upon a large scale. We presume that it need
not be added that the exact truth of facts is the first step
toward any sound explanation ; and that our object should be
to find out facts, and then, afterward, to deduce principles,
Borne Porators.—Not one housekeeper out of ten
knows how to boil potatoes properly. Here is an Irish
method, one of the best we know. Clean wash the potatoes
and leave the skin on; then bring the water to a boil and
throw them in. As soon as boiled soft enough for a fork to
be easily thrust through them, dash some cold water into
the pot, let the potatoes remain two minutes, and then pour
off the water. This done, half remove the pot-lid, and let
the potatoes remain over a slow fire till the steam is evapo-
rated ; then peel and set them on the table in an open dish.
Potatoes of a good kind thus cooked, will always be sweet,
dry and mealy. A covered dish is bad for potatoes, as it
keeps the steam in, and makes them soft and watery.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 407
SEEDLING FRUITS.
ALREADY the varieties of hardy fruits have become s0
numerous, that not only can they not all be cultivated, but
the mere list of names is too bulky to be printed. Down-
ing’s book gives a list of 181 apples. The London Horti-
cultural Society’s Catalogue, expurgated at that, gives 900
kinds of apples, and 1,500 have been tested in the Society’s
gardens. Manning’s experimental grounds and nursery at
the time of his death, contained 1,000 named varieties of
the pear! Swollen as is the list, there are scores annually
added ; many under the advice of scientific bodies; many
have popular approbation; many from the partialities of
some parental nurseryman; and many come in, as evil came
into this world, no one can tell how.
It has become necessary, therefore, to exclude many from
the catalogue, and especially necessary that none should
enter without the very best passport. In the main, one set
of tests will serve, both for receiving and expurgating ; for
no matter how long a fruit has been on the list, it should be
ejected if, being out, its qualities would not gain it a fresh
admission. There are no hereditary rights, or rights of
occupancy, in pomological lists.
Titles, rank, antiquity, pedigree and other merciful means
of compensating a want of personal merit, may do for men
but not for apples. A very glorious pomological reforma-
tion broke out in the London Horticultural Society’s gar-
dens at Chiswick, and that Luther of the orchard, Mr.
Thompson, has abolished an astonishing number of sine-
cures, and reformed, if not worthless rotten boroughs, very
worthless apples and pears. The Society’s first catalogue
issued in 1826. Its third catalogue was published in De-
cember of 1842. The experience of the intervening six-
teen years led to the total rejection from their list, on the
ground of inferiority, or as synonyms, of 600 varieties of
apples ; 139 of cherries ; 200 of gooseberries ; 82 of grapes,
468 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
80 of strawberries ; 150 of peaches; 200 of pears; and 150
of plums. Only twenty-eight peaches are allowed to stand ;
and only twenty-six strawberries out of the hundreds that
were proved. We have no similar society in the United
States whose authority would be generally acknowledged.
Our only resource is the diffusion of the very best fruits
that every neighborhood may have a standard of compari-
son by the reduction of experience to the form of rules.
Although it is difficult to lay down general rules‘on this
subject, there are three which may be mentioned.
1. No fruit should be admitted to the list and none
retained upon it, which is decidedly poor.—One would sup-
pose this truism to be superfluous as a rule. But it is only
necessary to go out into seedling orchards in any neighbor-
hood to find small, tough, and flavorless apples, which hold
their place alongside of orchards filled with choice grafted
fruit.
2. No seedling fruit should be added to the list, which
ts in no respect better than those of the same period of
ripening already cultivated—It is not enough that an
apple is nearly or quite as good as another favorite ap-
ple. It must be as good in flavor, and better in some of its
habits.
3. In testing the merits of fruit, an estimate should be
the result of a consideration of all the habits, jointly, of the
tree and of the fruit.—lIt is in the application of this rule
that great experience and judgment are required. This
will be plain, if one considers how many essential particu-
lars enter into a first-rate fruit beside mere flavor.
Of two fruits equal in flavor, one may surpass the other
in tenderness of flesh, in juiciness, in delicacy of skin, and
in size. It is rare that any single fruit combines all these
excellences, and therefore it is that we retain several vari-
eties, among which such properties are distributed.
There are many fruits which, having good substance and
flavor, derive their value from some single peculiarity.
=
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 409
Thus a fruit may be no better than many others, but the
tree, blooming very late in spring, is seldom overtaken by
prowling and irregular frosts. Some of our best fruits have
stingy bearing-trees, or trees of very tender and delicate
habit ; and we are obliged to tolerate more hardy and pro-
lific trees with fruit somewhat inferior.
A few fruits are retaimed on the list because they have
the singular property of being uninjured by frosts, and
others because, though not remarkable for flavor, they are
endless keepers, of both which properties the Rawle’s Jen-
netting is an example.
In fruits designed for market, beauty and abundance
must be allowed to supersede mere excellence of flavor.
Some very rich fruits are borne in such a parsimonious way
that none but amateurs can afford tree-room.
Nor are we to overlook nursery qualifications ; for, of two
fruits equally good, preference should be given to that
which will work the kindliest in the nursery. Some will
bear grafting on the root, some will not; some take well by
budding, and grow off promptly and with force; others
are dull and slugglish, and often reluctant to form the new
partnership. While then it will always be to the nursery-
man’s interest to work such kinds as he can sell the most of
—he has a right, in so far as he directs the public judg-
ment of his neighborhood, to give a preference, among
equal fruits, to such as work the surest and strongest. It
is as much the interest of the purchaser and the public to
have the freest growing sorts, as it is the nurseryman’s
interest. Thus, if another Seckle pear could be found grow-
ing on the tree of Williams’ Bon Chrétien, it ought to sup-
plant the old Seckle tree, which, in spite of its incomparable
fruit, is a vexatious thing to manage; and, as often in the
case of other and fairer fruit, makes one wonder how such
amiable and beautiful daughters ever had such a surly and
crusty old father.
A pomological censor must also have regard to varieties
410 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
of taste among men, and to commercial qualities of fruit,
and to its adaptation to soil and climate.
No one man has a right to make his tongue the monarch
over other people’s tongues. Therefore, for instance, it is
none of our business, if a rugged mouth chooses to roll a
slice of the austere Vanderveer pippin, like sin, as a sweet
morsel under his tongue. The mild delicacy of an apple,
which fills our mouths with admiration, would be mere insi-
pidity to all who are favored with leather mouths. So that
there must be toleration even among apple-mongers.
Nor are the humbler tests of cooking to be overlooked.
Some fruits are good eaters and poor cookers; some cook
well but are villainous to the taste when raw; some will
stew to a fine flavor and sweetness without sugar, and some
have remarkable jelly properties. But after the largest allow-
ance is made for taste, hardiness, keeping, prolific bearing,
color, size, texture, season, adaptation to soils, etc., etc.,
there will be found, we think, a large number of tenants in
our nurserymen’s catalogues, upon whom should be instantly
served a writ of ejectment.
TIME FOR PRUNING.
We do not believe in severe pruning at any time. If a
man has the education of his orchard from the start, it is an
utter abomination to leave his trees in such a condition as
to require it. If, however, one comes into possession of a
much abused orchard, or of a seedling orchard; or, if a_
single tree is to be changed, or an old tree is to be headed
back for health’s sake, then it may be necessary to prune
with a free hand. But in such cases, the change should
not be attempted in one season, but divided between two.
There is, we suppose, a critical time in which pruning
will injure the tree. It is after the sap is in full motion, the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 411
vegetable system impleted, but before the pores and sap
passages have acquired a contractile power. Thus, if a
grape is pruned when the buds begin to swell, the wood
does not contract, and the vine bleeds to excess. But if
pruned after the leaves are as large as the palm of the
hand, no injury ensues from cutting, for now the sap pas-
sages contract and close speedily.
Thus if a tree be handled before or after this period, it
does not suffer; but if pruned at this critical state of the
wood, it will bleed, the stump part will become diseased,
probably from the relaxed state of the woody tissue, and
canker will ensue—a word indicating, we presume, simply
a state of decay, covered by or accompanied with, some
sort of fungus growth.
Pruning before this critical time, is sometimes the most
convenient. But if it be a question, at which of the two
periods is the tree in a state to suffer the least, and to
recover the soonest, we say, after it is in full leaf and well
a-growing, viz. the last of May and the first of June. The
wood has then a contractile force, does not bleed; the tree
is making new wood with great energy, and has therefore
a full supply of organizable matter with which promptly to
heal the wound.
Mr. O. V. Hill thus speaks in the Boston Cultivator:
“Fruit growers at the present day, are generally of the
opinion, that the proper time for pruning is the last of
May or early in June, when the tree is in full leaf and in a
vigorous, growing state. This, on many accounts, appears
to be the most suitable season, as the wounds heal much
more rapidly, the tree throws out less suckers, canker is
avoided and the sap circulates freely to every part of the
tree; but there are some objections to pruning in the
early part of summer, which I do not recollect to have seen
noticed. Any one who is familiar with vegetable physi-
ology is aware that there is a new layer of wood and a new
layer of bark deposited every year, and that in June this
412 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
process is in active operation; the newly-forming wood and
bark are then consequently in a tender and imperfect state,
and very susceptible to injury. Standing in the forks of
the branches as it is sometimes necessary to do in pruning,
will frequently separate the bark and wood, especially in
young trees at this season. In grafting late in the season,
this is frequently the case; sometimes where the ladder is
placed against a branch it will remove the bark; and in
sawing, unless the saw runs very clear, and the teeth are
fine, the same results will follow; if pruning is done
in June, it should be performed with the greatest cau-
tion.”
The New York Harmer and Mechanic, commenting on
the above, says:
“The best time for pruning apple-trees is, as yet, we
believe, undetermined by the most experienced orchardists,
but we are of opinion that the early part of June is, for
reasons above given by Mr. Hill, to be preferred. The
objection arising from the fear of injuring the bark of the
tree can easily be obviated by: having the operator use
moccasins instead of shoes, and surrounding the upper
round of the latter with straw or flannel.”
Downing says: :
“We should especially avoid pruning at that period in
spring when the buds are swelling, and the sap is in full’
flow, as the loss of sap by bleeding is very injurious to most
trees, and, in some, brings on a serious and incurable can-
ker in the limbs,
“There are advantages and disadvantages attending all
seasons of pruning, but our own experience has led us to
believe that, practically, a fortnight before midsummer is
by far the best season, on the whole, for pruning in the
northern and middle States. Wounds made at this season
heal over freely and rapidly ; it is the most favorable time
to judge of the shape and balance of the head, and to see at
a glance which branches require removal; and all the stock ~
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 413
of organizable matter in the tree is directed to the branches
that remain.”
Some of the western States are so much earlier than
that of New York, that early June will be equivalent to the
time specified by Downing. We have now fortified the
opinion which we heretofore expressed, by good authority,
and by what seems to us good reasons. As it is, however,
with some, yet a debated question, we shall carefully insert
the experience of any man for or against our position.
PLUMS AND THEIR ENEMIES.
Mouttirupes of men have had plum-trees, and every year,
for ten years, have seen the fruit promise fair at first and
then prematurely drop, without knowing the reason. Even
well-informed men have said to us that it arose from some
defect in the tree, from too much gum, from a worm at the
root, ete.
The plum-tree is very hardy; is less subject to disease
than most fruit-trees; its fruit is highly prized; and the
varieties of it are numerous and many of them delicious,
By a proper selection of trees a succession of fruit may be
had from July to November. The trees are usually sure
and enormous bearers, every year. With so many good
qualities the cultivation of the plum is well-nigh probibited,
as a garden or orchard fruit, by the valor of one little bug!
The Curculio (a very hardy fellow, with a constitution
yet unimpaired by such a name as Rhynchenus Nenuphar /)
is a small beetle, about a quarter of an inch long, which
attacks the plums almost as soon as the fruit has set. They
seek this, and almost all smooth-skinned fruits, as a place ot
deposit for their eggs. Many of the facts which we shall
414 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
narrate, were mentioned to us by Mr. Payne of Madison,
who has closely and curiously observed this depredator.
An incision is first made, of semicircular form, by a little
rostra or lancet which he carries in his head for this very
purpose. After the opening is made, the curculio deposits
an egg therein; then changing positions again, it carefully,
with its fore legs, secures the egg in its nidus, and pats the
skin under the edge of which its treasure is hidden, with
repeated and careful efforts of its feet. Where fruit abounds
it deposits, usually, but one to a plum. But we have had
trees, just beginning to bear, whose few plums were scari-
fied all over.
The egg hatches to a worm, and this feeds on the plum,
causing it prematurely to fall; the imsect issuing from it,
enters the ground, to undergo its transformations, and soon
to reappear, a beetle, ready for fresh mischiefmaking pro-
pagation.
The climate of the West is entirely glorious for all man-
ner of insects. They can put the East to shame in the mat-
ter of aphides, cockroaches, cutworms, army and wire-
worms, curculios, peach-worms, grubs, etc., etc. There are
many questions relating to the history of insects, about
which eastern writers are in doubt, not at all doubtful
with us.
1. Do the larve remain in the ground all the residue of
the summer, and come forth only in the ensuing spring ?
In cold latitudes it may be so. Harris says, that they
undergo their transformation in twenty days. Downing
admits this of a few stragglers. But the main supply of
bugs, he thinks, remains all summer and until spring, in the
ground, But with us the curculio is not exclusively an early
summer insect. It is found, in its appropriate haunts,
through the whole warm season. Mr. Payne put plums
containing the worms into a glass, and in eleven days
obtained full-grown curculios. In cool regions they pro-
bably have but an annual generation; but in warm and
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. Ato
long summers, in the West, they reproduce often in each
season.
2. The mode of ascent has been a matter of doubt. J.J.
Thomas, in the Fruit Culturist says: “It has the power of
using its wings in flying; but whether it crawls up the tree
or ascends by flight, appears not to be certainly ascer-
tained.”
Downing admits that it flies, but says, ‘“‘ How far this
insect flies is yet a disputed point, some cultivators affirm-
ing that it scarcely goes further than a single tree,
and others believing that it flies over a whole neighbor-
hood.”
Kenrick says: ‘‘ They crawl up trees,” and he quotes an
author as saying: “That of two trees standing so near each
other as to touch, the fruit of one has been destroyed and
the other has escaped; so little and so reluctantly do these
insects incline to use their wings.” Dr. James Tilton says,
in the “Domestic Encyclopedia,” that “they appear very
reluctant to use their wings, and perhaps never employ
them but when necessity compels them to migrate.”
It is true that the curculio, in cold and chilly weather, is
disinclined to fly; but give it a right murderously hot day,
and “McGregor’s on his native heath again.” Just before
a thunder storm, in summer, in a still, sultry, sweltering
day, they may be seen flying among the trees as blithely as
any house-fly ; alighting on your arm, or hand, and spring-
ing off again as nimbly as a flea.
All remedies founded on the idea of their crawling pre-
ferences will be signal failures. Troughs about trees, bats
of wool, bandages of all kinds about the trunk to impede
the ascent will be found as useful as would high fences to
keep crows from a cornfield, or birds from the garden.
All remedies for this pest succeed to a charm where the
curculio does not abound; and almost every one of them
fails in places really infested them.
In cities, and in country places which are far remuved
416 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
from all orchards or gardens, the crops may be saved. It
is not difficult to defend a tree against all the curculios that
are bred upon it. Pavements; hard-rolled gravel; gather-
ing up, daily, the fallen plums and destroying them; the
application of salt, and many other remedies may succeed
where the curculio from other gardens or orchards cannot
easily migrate to supply the trees with a fresh brood.
Trees in cities, and in retired places, on this account, often
bear plenteously.
But of what use is it to destroy five hundred larve, if
twice that number of emigrants, from some other quarter,
are anxious, the next spring, to sgwat upon your trees, or
to enter them, in land-office style, most nefariously? All
remedies founded on the destruction of the larvee will be
totally useless if your trees can be reached from some
infected point abroad, as we have found to our sorrow. In
our own experience, and in that of other amateur-cultivators
of fruit, the pavement, salt, and all have been “ love’s labor
lost.” But in the experience of others, in climates where
the curculio does not abound, or in secluded situations, they
have proved effectual.
The remedies to be employed, in ordinary cases, must be
such as will constantly molest the insect at his work.
Inclosures, in which swine root, and rub against the trees;
lanes, where cattle resort, to‘rub off their hair in spring, to
shade themselves in summer—these are the best situations.
In yards and gardens plum-trees should be placed upon the
most frequented paths; close to the well, by the kitchen
door, near the wood-house, so that, as often as possible,
they may be jarred in passing and repassing.
Where a few trees stand apart in the garden, it is said
that, daily, morning and evening, by spreading a sheet
under them, and giving the tree a sudden and violent blow
with a mallet, the insects will drop and may then be
gathered and destroyed. This should be performed while
it is cool, as then, only, the curculio is somewhat torpid. H
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 417
this course is pursued, a block should be put upon the tree,
to receive the stroke, with a bit of carpet or some soft pad
to it, that the bark may not be injured. A white sheet
should be spread under the tre2 to catch the falling
robber.
A few trees will suffice for a private family, and the fruit
must be earned by careful watchfulness.. Those who are
too indolent, or careless, or indifferent to the luxury to
bestow the requisite attention through the months of May
and June, may spare themselves the trouble of planting
plum-trees. Plum orchards are not to be thought of.
Although the curculio chiefly delights in the plum, it
scruples at no fruit. It may be found upon peaches, cher-
ries, nectarines, apricots, gooseberries and currants,
ROOT GRAFTING.
Wate nothing can be done out of doors in the nursery,
the process of root grafting may be carried on, and the
stock be ready for setting as soon as the grounds are open
in spring.
When this method of grafting is employed with discretion,
it greatly aids the nurseryman. It is a resource in case he
cannot procure stocks to bud or graft upon; it makes finer
and handsomer trees; and it can be carried on at a season
of leisure; and the scions, being early in the ground, have
a longer season of growth by two months than buds, or
ordinary grafts.
Although any healthy root with some fibres will answer
to graft upon, yet experienced nurserymen prefer the tap
roots of young seedling stocks. Those who have apple and
pear stocks which are to be removed, should employ the
open weather of winter to raise them. The tap roots may
418 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
be taken for grafting purposes and the stocks put away in
cellars, or buried in the ground.
We do not know that there is any difference in favor of
the root of one variety over another; but it will not do to
propagate every variety of fruit by this method. Expeii-
ence has shown that some sorts do better by root grafting
than in any other way; but other kinds are very apt to
be winter-killed ; and some varieties have such a straggling
habit of growth, that it would be extremely difficult to train
them to a good head; and such sorts, therefore, require to
be budded or grafted high up on good stocks.
The roots being washed, are cut into four or five inch
pieces; and the scions prepared as for ordinary grafting.
Splice, or tongue grafting is the most convenient method.
Woollen yarn, cut to ten or twelve inches’ length, is wound
around it closely at the point of junction. Let the grafting
wax be kept in a melted state, by being put in a pan, over
a few coals. Holding the work over the pan, with a spoon
pour a portion of the liquid all over the yarn; it hardens
immediately, and the whole may be set in rows in a box
and covered above the poimt of union with moist sand,
and kept in a cellar till it is time to turn them out in the
spring.
Tue cherry, plum, pear and apple trees, in a diseased
condition, will often throw up numerous and_ thrifty
sprouts that will offer to an inexperienced cultivator invit-
ing temptations to multiply his stock at a rapid rate
with little labor. If he be deceived by these appearances,
and propagate his valuable kinds upon these diseased
growths, his efforts will ultimately result in his disappoint.
ment.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 419
BLIGHT AND INSECTS.
Iy an article on employing suckers of fruit-trees for
stocks, which we shall copy, Dr. Kirtland says:
“The practice of grafting and budding pears upon this
quality of stocks has extended a diseased action, a kind of
canker among our pear orchards, that has, in some instances,
been mistaken for blight, a disease that has its origin im the
depredations of a minute coleopterous insect, which has
been satisfactorily described in all its stages of transforma-
tion by Dr. Harris, and other Massachusetts entomologists.”
That the fire-blight is, to any considerable extent any-
where, but especially at the West, occasioned by an insect,
is an idea, we believe, totally unsupported by facts, That
some injury has been done by the scolytus pyri, the investi
gations of Mr. Lowell and Professor Peck leave no room to
doubt. But we are not satisfied that, even in these cases,
they were the cause of the dlight, but only an accidental
concomitant. Did Mr. Lowell or Professor Peck always
find this beetle upon blighted trees? Was it found in
every blighted limb? Did not blight occur without these
insects? Has any one of New England since found the
blight to proceed from the gnawings of this beetle ?
Has any one found this beetle before the blight occurred
at its mischievous work, or is it only after the blight is seen
that the beetle is found? If the scolytus pyri has been found
only after the tree is thoroughly affected, there is reason to
suppose that it did not come until after the disease had pre-
pared the way for it.
We are seriously skeptical of this alleged cause. What-
ever may be true of the blight at the East, the blight in the
West is unquestionably not an effect of the scolytus pyri.
We have examined with the utmost pains, multitudes of
trees in all soils—several of our shrewdest nurserymen have
searched year by year, and we have, unfortunately, had too
tauch opportunity and too many subjects, and yet no insect
420 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
or insect-track has been detected, except those which have
attacked the tree in consequence of the blight.
To be sure, we can find bugs, black, brown, green and
grey, but the mere presence of an insect is nothing, though
with many, it seems enough, when a tree is blighted, if a
bug is found on it, to determine the parentage of the mis-
chief. Nor do the published accounts of insects, found on
blighted trees, increase our respect for this theory. The
observations seem to have been not thorough enough, and
not carefully made, and the reasonings even less philo-
sophical. Men have searched for a theory rather than for
the mere facts in the case. But by far the greatest num-
ber of those who write, give no evidence of relying upon
any observations which they have themselves made, but go
back perpetually to the old precedents, Mr. Lowell and
Professor Peck, without being at any pains to verify them.
Has Dr. Kirtland ever found the scolytus pyri? Has he
ever, in time of extensive blight, found it under such cir-
cumstances as to satisfy his mind that it was the real cause
of fire-blight ? or does he rest satisfied that blight is occa-
sioned by an insect simply because so it is set down in good
books? The canker may be mistaken for blight by those
who have not been acquainted with either; but surely, no
one who has ever attentively examined one real case of fire-
blight would ever mistake it for anything else, or anything
else for it. .
The insect theory we regard as wholly untenable except
for special, local, peculiar ravages which are not properly
blights. The blight is a disease of the circulation. It
affects every tissue of the plant. It is not a disease from
exhaustion of sap by the suction of aphides, as Dr. Mosher,
of Cincinnati, supposed, for the trees have a plethora rather
than scarcity of sap; it lacerates the sap-vessels, bursts the
bark, flows down the branches, and dries in globules upon
the trunk. On cutting the tree, if the blight is yet new,
the texture of the alburnum will be found to resemble what
_
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 42]
is called a water-core in the apple, its color is of a dirty
greenish hue, soon changing by exposure to brown and
black. But if the blight is old, the wood is of a dingy
white, the alburnum colored likeiron rust, and the bark of a
brownish black. These appearances are incompatible with
any idea of exhaustion by the gnawing of the scolytus pyri,
or the suction of aphides, which would result in mere shrink-
ing of parts, dryness and death. If insects have a hand in
the mischief, it is by the secretion of poison, of which fact,
we have never seen the trace of proof, although it has often
been suggested, and is by some empyrically asserted. To
our minds the insect-poison-theory is imaginary. It is
entirely convenient to refer every excrescence, or shrinking
of parts, every watery suffusion, wart, discoloration, crump-
ling leaf, wilting, etc., to poison, and still more convenient
to find the insect so atomic that it cannot de found, and thus
to heap the multiform sins of the orchard on the scape-goat
of a hypothetical insect.
As to electricity, as no one knows anything about this
‘elemental sprite, his out-goings or in-comings, we are like to
have acted over again all the caprices of witch-times, when
elves and gnomés cut up every prank imaginable, and when
any prank, which was cut up, of course was performed by
them. Everybody is agog about electricity. But we
respectfully suggest that it is one thing to ascertain facts
by cautious, guarded experiments or careful observation,
and quite another to set down everything, which one does
not know what else to do with, to electricity, simply because
it may be so for aught that we know to the contrary.
People reason somewhat in this wise ; electricity performs
a vast number of very mysterious operations, therefore,
every operation which is mysterious is performed by elec-
tricity. We believe electricity to have something to do
with it, only because it seems to have concern with every
living, growing thing.
We believe that the blight is, in all eases, the effect ot
499, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
frost upon the sap. We have, until recently, supposed it
to arise from autumnal freezing, while the tree is in fall
growth. We are now inclined to suppose that severe freez-
ing and sudden thawing at any time, autumn, winter or
spring, when the sap is in motion, will result in blight.
The blight of 1844 was from the freezing of growing trees
in the autumn of 1843, and the premonitory stages were
clearly discernible in the tree during tke whole winter
months before it broke out in its last malignant form.
When a warm winter allows continuous motion of sap,
and sudden, severe freezing with rapid thawing occurs, we
suppose it to cause a variety of blight. We are making
investigations on this head, but are not yet prepared to
speak with certainty.
When a sudden violent freezing overtakes growing trees
in spring, with rapid thaws, it, we suppose, results in a
light resembling the autumn-caused blight.
We are diligently searching into this whole matter, and
hope to throw some light upon it.
But now comes ¢he question. What is it that makes
some trees so obnoxious to this evil while others escape?
Why are some orchards generally affected, and contiguous
orchards entirely saved ?
It is very plain that the blight occurs, as a general disease,
in some seasons more than in others, because it depends upon
the peculiar condition of the season, the time and degree
of frosts. But it does not seem so clear why, when these
conditions are favorable to blight, one tree should suffer, and
the next in the row should not; why one orchard should
be depopulated, and another in the same town not touched.
We think that light will be afforded on this point by a
consideration of the texture of trees.
When trees are rapidly grown by stimulating manures,
or upon strong clay loams, or from any other cause, the
wood is coarse, the passages enlarged, the tissue loose and
spongy. The tree passes a great volume of sap—it is but
imperfectly elaborated (as is seen by the late period to
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 423
which such trees defer the bearing of fruit), and the tissues
formed by it are correspondingly imperfect in wholesome-
ness, compactness, and solidity of parts. The tree is bloated
—is dropsical.
On gravelly soils, or loams with a gravelly subsoil, or on
any kind of soil, which gives a slow and thorough growth,
the wood is fine, close and perfect; the vessels are not
expanded, their sides are firmer, less sensitive to sudden
changes of temperature, and when exposed to them better
able to resist them.
Whatever soil produces rank or coarse wood, a flabby
tissue will be subject to blights. Whatever soil induces
a fine-grained, compact fibre, and vigorous tissue, will be
free from blight. The same is true of the various methods
of cultivation ; those who drive their trees, who aim chiefly
at a rapid and strong growth, will give their trees a con-
dition requisite for blight. ‘Those who pursue a more cau-
tious, a slower method, and look to the guality rather than
the quantity of their wood, will be comparatively free
from blight.
To be sure, there may be seasons so extreme that blight
will occur in the most healthy tree; so disease will occur in
the most temperate men; yet temperance, conformity to
the laws of nature, is the rule of health, and nonconformity
the preparation for disease.
Meanwhile, will those who are unfortunate enough to have
a good opportunity for observing, examine—
1. The soil and subsoil of blighted trees ?
2. The habit of the tree, as to rankness of growth ?
3. The character of the cultivation which has been em-
ployed ?
4. In short, the relative condition of orchards and trees
which have escaped or been blighted, as to fineness and
closeness, and health of texture. It is high time that this
matter should be minutely investigated. It is the oppro-
brium cultorum.
424 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
APPLES. FOR HOGS.
Farmers are afraid of sour apples; if stock have only
sour fruit they are injured; but let both sweet and sour
grow in the orchard, and experience has determined that
they will, of themselves, eat the due proportion of each.
Cattle and hogs are as fond of variety in fruit as men are.
In raising potatoes, pumpkins, apples, etc., for animals, it is
frequently supposed that the larger and ranker the growth
the better; that, at any rate, cattle fare as well on coarse-
grained vegetables as on others. But a rank, coarse, watery
vegetable is no better for an ox than for a man. The
nutritious principle is the same to man or beast. A fine-
fleshed, highly nutritious apple or potato is as much better
for stock as itis for man. If a variety is not fit for men, it
is not worth while to cultivate it at all. Cattle show them-
selves to be of this opinion when left to range; they avoid
coarse, rough herbage, and pick the sweetest and highest
flavored. Let the dest sorts of apples be planted for stock.
If one has a seedling orchard which it would be worth while
to graft over for human use, let not its poor, miserable fruit
be fed to hogs; let it be grafted over even if one means to
use it for stock.
PuLLiInG orF Potato FtowErs.—The man who makes his
potato-ground feed flowers, prevents it feeding his children.
Every ounce of matter consumed by the flowers is so much
taken from the consumption of the family.
To RESTORE an exhausted, or rather tired field, it should
be sown in grass, and stock fed upon it during the winter
months. Hogs fattened upon tired land enrich it very
much,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 425
THE FLOWER GARDEN.
Spring Frowertne-Buitss.—When crocus, hyacinths,
narcissus, tulips, have done flowering, let the seed stalks
be cut down, as the ripening of the seed severely taxes and
exhausts the powers of a plant. Some persons are accus-
tomed, after the bulbs have flowered, to cut off the tops, as
if to do the most mischief possible. The success of the next
year’s flowering will depend very much on the care given
to your beds now. Many bulbs, as the tulip, form entirely
new bulbs; and others, as the hyacinth, form the flower
bud for the next season. The /eaf is the indispensable
means of doing this; in it are perfected the juices which are
returned and deposited in the root. If the bed is left to be
choked with weeds, and your bulbs robbed of nutriment, or
if the soil is left compact, or if there is too much moisture,
or on the other hand, too little, the bud or bulb for the
next year will be weakened. A very deep bed, or a sandy
soil, will sufficiently prevent the effects of too much
water.
The surface should be mellowed by the hand, and _ tho-
roughly weeded. The mosé¢ careful cultivators raise their
bulbs every year. The careful at least every third year.
The careless let them alone and wonder, from year to year,
why their bulbs do so poorly—“ The moles must eat them,
or, worms probably injure them ;” but the worst worm in a
flower-garden is careless indolence. When balbs are raised,
it should not be done until the leaves are dry.
GuapioLtus.—We are surprised that this fine soldier-like
plant is not more extensively employed to adorn gardens,
yards, and lawns. A few varieties only are found in our
gardens. Great attention has been given in Europe, espe-
cially in Belgium, to raising new varieties, and many mag-
nificent kinds are now found in European collections which,
so far as we know, are not to be had for love or money in
426 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
America, The bulb, or rather corm,* increases very rapidly,
and by a little attention one may obtain from a few, a very
large supply. They may be planted with good effect in
rows, in clumps, and in beds, but not singly. A sandy
loam, well mixed with leaf-mold, is their delight. We
usually remove the top soil, and then take out and reject
about twelve inches of the subsoil, making in all about
twenty inches’ depth; return the top earth, together with
enough compost of leafmold, sand, and thoroughly
decayed manure, to fill it; plant about four inches deep,
measuring from the top of the corm. When your plants
are growing, examine every day; if you see a sawdust-like
matter about them, they need attention. On searching, a
perforation will be found in the stem. With a penknife slit
the stem down from the hole until you reach the worm
which caused the mischief. If this course is not properly pur-
sued, you will lose stem and root. With a thin strip of bass
matting, or a bit of green ribbon, the stem may be tied and
fastened to a rod for support. In door-yards, and in the
scanty grounds of city yards, clumps of ten or fifteen gladioli
would have a very beautiful appearance, especially if dif
ferent varieties, instead of being mixed, should be planted
in separate but contiguous patches.
Tuserose.—The beauty of its pure, white florets, but
especially the delightful odor of this fragrant flower, has
rendered it a favorite wherever it is known. It is very
* Bulbs are of two kinds: those which have a number of coats, or
skins, one within the other, like the hyacinth, which are called tunicated
bulbs; those which consist of a number of scales, only attached to the
base, like the lily; but what are called corms, are only a solid mass of
feculent matter, and which modern botanists do not allow to be bulbs,
but call underground stems. Corms do not require taking up so often
as bulbs; and when they are intended to remain for several years in the
ground, they should be planted from four to six inches deep at first; as
every year a new corm will form above the old one; aud thus, if planted
to> near the surface, the corm, ina few years, will be pushed out of the
ground.—Loudon.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWEKS AND FARMING. 427
tender to frost, and must not be planted out until about
the first of May. It is to be treated like the gladiolus. Its
effect is heightened by being put in a half shade, where its
pure white is relieved by a green background. The flower
stem rises from two to three feet and requires a rod to sus-
tain it. The fragrance is so powerful that a few plants will,
at evening, scent a whole garden; a circumstance well
known to owners of pleasure gardens, who render their
grounds very delightful by dispersing these, and other odo-
riferous flowers, in various parts of their grounds, thus
loading the dewy evening air with delicious perfume. They
may be planted in ten-inch pots and sunk in the ground
until they have begun to blossom, when the pots may be
raised and conveyed to the parlor or veranda. A single
plant will sometimes make a room disagreeable by its exces-
sive odor.
The roots are imported to England from Italy, as that
climate is too humid and cool too perfect them for flower-
ing. But, in our soil and climate, we have found no diffi-
culty in raising, from offsets, the finest possible bulbs. No
yard or garden should be without tuberoses.
Priants in Pots.—It is better when one has ground at
hand, to turn out plants which have been housed through
the winter into the open garden. Roses, geraniums,
azaleas, cape jasmins, fuchsias, etc., will be wonderfully
invigorated by such treatment. The tea and Bengal roses
can hardly be brought to perfection in pots, and those who
have only seen the penurious growth and diminished and
sparse blossoms in the parlor have no idea of the beauty of
these roses. We usually excavate a place two feet square
and two feet deep for each rose, filling it with sandy loam
very highly enriched with leaf-mold and decayed manure.
The trouble will be repaid four fold; for nature has never
made a plant that forgets to be grateful for attention.
In turning out plants, put the left hand in such a way
upon the top as that the stem shall come between the
428 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
second and third finger, then invert the pot and give the
bottom of it two or three sharp raps, when the pot will
come off. Ifthe plant is in a lively, growing state, and the
outside of the ball of earth is covered with fine, white, new
roots, it will be best to put the ball into the ground with-
out disturbing the roots at all. But if the plant is not grow-
ing, the earth may be carefully worked out from the roots
with the hands, taking care to break the fibres as little as
possible. Spread out the roots as much as possible in every
direction, and cover with fine earth.
Rose bushes will need attention soon, as worms and bugs
begin their depredations. When the number of bushes is
limited, hand-picking every day or two is best. For a
large collection one must resort to more general methods.
Drench your shrubs, which aphides and worms infest, with
soapsuds, made of two pounds of whale-oil soap to fifteen
gallons of water. This is by far the most efficacious—the
only efficacious—course for destroying insects.
As flower-seeds come up, see that they are well weeded,
and if crowded, thin them out. We would recommend the
cultivation of some old-fashioned flowers. Nothing is more
showy than a bed of poppies of mixed colors. Holyhocks
are becoming very great favorites, and we saw recently
flowers as magnificent, and as well worth having, as any
dahlia. The varieties of lupine should be sought for, and
for those who have seen nothing but the white and blue
lupines we make an extract from Mrs. Loudon’s “Com-
panion to the Flower Garden ””—an admirable work, which,
though professedly written for ladies, may be used with
profit by everybody who cultivates a garden.
“ Luprnus.—Leguminose.—The Lupine. A genus of
herbaceous annuals and perennials which contain some of
our most beautiful border flowers: yellow, blue, white, and
pink lupines are among the oldest border annuals; LZ. nanus
is a beautiful little. annual, with dark blue flowers, a native
of California, and requiring the usual treatment of Cali-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 429
fornia annuals. ZL. mutabilis and Cruicshankii are splen-
did plants, growing to the height of four or five feet, and
branching like miniature trees. Z. Polyphyllus and its
varieties are perennials, and they are splendid and vigorous-
growing plants, with spikes of flowers from one foot to
eighteen inches in length; ZL. nootkatensis is a handsome
dwarf perennial, and £. arboreus, when trained against a
wall, will attain six feet in height, and in sheltered situations
it will grow with equal vigor trained as a bush tied to a
stake; L. latifolius is a perennial from California, with
very long spikes of blue flowers. All the species will
thrive in common garden soil; the annuals are propagated
by seed sown in February or March, and the perennials by
division of the roots.”
PREPARATION OF SEED FOR SOWING.
Many persons suppose that when seeds have been select-
ed, nothing is necessary but to put them into the ground
just as they are. A careful preparation of seed, both for
field or garden use, will add much to the success of a
planting.
1. AssortInG SxEEps.—In every lot of seed there are
many imperfect ones; some are insectiferous, some are un-
ripe, some are the extreme terminal seeds, small and weak,
some are very often a little moldy. In some way all de-
fective seeds should be removed.
Then it should be remembered, that the soundest and
largest seeds will produce plants of a corresponding vigor,
and that by planting only the healthiest, the variety is kept
pure—or even improved.
For garden use hand picking will suffice. We pour our
corn on a table, and select only the kernels which are plump
and large, rejecting any which show an intermixture ot
430 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
other varieties. Beet seed requires careful winnowing,
nearly one-fourth, as they are usually sold, being unfit for
planting. Peas are more uniform in size and quality, and
require but little selection. Melons, squashes, and cucum-
bers should be culled, or better yet, be put into water; only
those which sink promptly should be used, the swimming
and floating ones being light and trashy. Beans are apt to
be imperfect. We have usually found occasion to reject full
one-third of every quart, for seedsmen are apt to put in
every seed that grows, whether they will ever grow again
or not. There is no dishonesty certainly in this; but if one
would habitually screen or select, and put up only the very
choicest, he would ultimately get a higher price, and secure
for his seed a universal demand.
2. Soaxine SEEDS.—Some seeds will not germinate for a
long period, unless they are artificially brought forward.
Locust seeds are scalded before planting. Peas are scalded
to kill the bug, when thusinhabited. The cypress vine seed
require soaking to induce a quick germination, Celery
seed is very sluggish unless soaked.
Seeds are often steeped in prepared liquids to force their
growth. Old seeds, whose powers of germination are much
diminished, are made to vegetate by being put into a weak
solution of oxalic acid. Wheat is pickled in salt brine, then
rolled in lime, as a preventive of smut.
Corn is protected from worms by copperas water; and
peas are put into train oil to guard them from moles and
mice. T'anner’s oil, and a solution of saltpetre are often
used; the first for turnip-seed, to protect them from a
destructive insect; and the latter for all seeds, as a stimu-
lant to their growth and to guard against worms and bugs.
Some excitement was made in Scotland, not long ago, by -
the great effects alleged to have been produced by so pre-
paring seeds that they would contain in or on themselves all
those fertilizing qualities usually looked for in the soil. It
is possible, by employing chemical mixtures, or coatings, to
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 431
make the seed germinate with great vigor, and to establish
itself strongly; but we do not suppose any process can be
made to reach beyond this. No mere soaking or coating
can extend its influence through the whole growth of the
crop. . ;
When seeds are soaked they anticipate the weeds in com-
ing up, especially seeds planted in May and June, and this
is a very important object, as crops are, often, almost smoth-
ered with weeds before they are large enough to be weeded.
SOWING FLOWER SEEDS — TRANSPLANTING.
Many flower-seeds require no more skill in planting than
do peas or beans, for they are as large and as easily ger-
minated. But very many are small, and some extremely
small, and if planted too deeply, they will not shoot, or
will shoot very feebly. .
Select a free-working and rich piece of ground—a sandy
loam is best, and a stiff clay the worst—let it be spaded
deeply, incorporating very thoroughly-rotted manure, 7. e.
manure full two years old and which will crumble in the
hand as fine as sand. With a fine-toothed rake reduce every
lump and bring the surface to the finest state of pulveriza-
tion. If the seed is very small, it had better be mixed
with a little sand, or dry soil, to increase the bulk. The
sowing will be easier and more equal. Scatter the seed
upon the bed; then with the hands or a fine garden sieve,
sift fresh and mellow earth upon it from a quarter to half an
inch in depth. To bring the earth compactly about the
seed, spat the bed with moderate strokes with the back ofa
spade. Ifthe weather is very dry, water the bed at evening
with a watering-pot—to pour it from a pail or cup would
wash up the surface. Keep the plants from weeds, and
when they are one or two inches high, they may be trans.
432 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
planted to the places where they are to stand. Balsams,
larkspurs, poppies, and, indeed, most flowers do better by
being transplanted. The operation checks the luxuriance
of the plant, and increases its tendency to flower.
Sometimes seeds are planted where they are to remain;
the treatment is precisely the same as before, except they
are thinned out instead of transplanted. No mistake is
more frequent, among inexperienced gardeners, than that
of suffering too many plants to stand together. One is re-
luctant to pull up fine thriving plants; or he does not reflect
that what may seem room enough while the plant is young,
will be very scanty when it is grown.
There is much taste to be displayed in arranging flowers
in a garden so that proper colors shall be contrasted. It is
important that proper colors should be matched im a gar-
den, as on a dress.
PARLOR PLANTS AND FLOWERS IN WINTER.
Tur treatment of house plants is very little understood,
although the practice of keeping shrubs and flowers during
the winter is almost universal. It is important that the
physiological principles on which success depends should
be familiarly understood; and then cultivators can apply
them with success in all the varying circumstances in which
they may be called to act.
Two objects are proposed in taking plants into the house
—either simple protection, or the development of their
foliage and flowers, during the winter. The same treat-
ment will not do for both objects. Indeed, the greatest
number of persons of our acquaintance, treat their winter
plants, from which they desire flowers, as if they only
wished to preserve them till spring; and the consequence
is, that they have very little enjoyment in their favorites.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 433
HOUSE PLANTS DESIGNED SIMPLY TO STAND OVER.
Tender roses, azaleas, cape jasmins, crape myrtles, or-
anges, lemons, figs, oleanders, may be kept in a light cellar
if frost never penetrates it.
If kept in parlors, the following are the most essential
points to be observed. The thermometer should never be
permitted to rise above sixty degrees or sixty-five degrees ;
nor at night to sink below forty degrees. Although plants
will not be frost-bitten until the mercury falls to thirty-two
degrees, yet the chill of a temperature below forty degrees
will often be as mischievous to tender plants as frost itself.
Excessive heat, particularly a dry stove heat, will destroy
the leaves almost as certainly as frost. We have seen plants
languishing in a temperature of seventy degrees (it often
rising ten degrees higher), while the owners wondered what
could ail the plants, for they were sure that they kept the
room warm enough!
Next, great care should be taken not to overwater. Plants
which are not growing require very little water. If given,
the roots become sogged, or rotten, and the whole plant is
enfeebled. Water should never be suffered to stand in the
saucers; nor be given, always, when the top-soil is dry.
Let the earth be stirred, and when the znterior of the ball
is becoming dry, give it a copious supply; let it drain
through thoroughly, and turn off what falls into the saucer.
PLANTS DESIGNED FOR WINTER FLOWERING.
It is to be remembered that the winter is naturally the
season of vest for plants. All plants require to lie dormant
during some portion of the year. You cannot cheat them
out of it. If they are pushed the whole year they become
exhausted and worthless. Here lies the most common error
of plant-keepers. If you mean to have roses, blooming
geraniums, etc., in winter, you must, artificially, change
484 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
their season of rest. Plants which flower in summer must
rest in winter; those which are to flower in winter must
rest either in summer or autumn. It is not, usually, worth
while to take into the house for flowering purposes any
shrub which has been in full bloom during the summer or
autumn. Select and pot the wished-for flowers during sum-
mer; place them in a shaded position facing the north, give
very little water, and then keep them quiet. Their ener-
gies will thus be saved for winter. When taken into the
house, the four essential points of attention are light,
moisture, temperature, and cleanliness.
ae Ines —The functions of the leaves cannot be health-
fully carried on without light. If there be too little, the
sap is imperfectly elaborated, and returns from the leaves to
the body in a crude, undigested state. The growth will be
coarse, watery, and brittle; and that ripeness which must
precede flowers and fruit cannot be attained. The sprawl-
ing, spindling, white-colored, long-jointed, plants, of which
some persons are unwisely proud, are, often the result of
too little light and too much water. The pots should be
turned around every day, unless when the light strikes
down from above, or from windows on each side; others
wise, they will grow out of shape by bending toward the
light.
2. Moisturre.—Different species of plants require differ-
ent quantities of water. What are termed aquatics, of
which the Calla -dithiopica, is a specimen, require great
abundance of it. Yet it should be often changed even in
the case of aquatics. But roses, geraniums, etc., and the
common house plants require the soil to be moést, rather
than wet. Asa general rule it may be said that every pot
should have one-sixth part of its depth filled with coarse
pebbles, as a drainage, before the plants are potted. This
gives all superfluous moisture a free passage out. Plants
should be watered by examination and not by time. They
require various quantities of moisture, according to their
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 435
activity, and the period of their growth. Let the earth be
well stirred, and if it is becoming dry on the inside, give
water. Never water by dribblets-—a spoonful to-day,
another to-morrow. In this way the outside will become
bound, and the inside remain dry. Give acopious watering,
so that the whole ball shall be soaked; then let it drain off,
and that which comes into the saucer be poured off. But,
in whatever way one prefers to give water, the thing to be
gained is a full supply of moisture to every part of the
roots, and yet not so much as to have it stand about them.
Manure-water may be employed with great benefit every
second or third watering. For this purpose we have never
found anything of value equal to guano. Besides water to
the root, plants are almost as much benefited by water on
the leat—but of this we shall speak under the head of
cleanliness. 3
3. TEMPERATURE.—Sudden and violent changes of tem-
perature are almost as trying to plants as to animals and
men. At the same time, a moderate change of tempera-
ture is very desirable. Thus, in nature, there is a marked
and uniform variation at night from the temperature of the
day. At night, the room should be gradually lowered in
temperature to from forty-five degrees to fifty degrees, while
through the day it ranges from fifty-five degrees to seventy
degrees. Too much, and too sudden heat will destroy
tender leaves almost as surely as frost. It should also be
remembered that the leaves of plants are constantly exhal-
ing moisture during the day. If in too warm an atmos-
phere, or in one which is too dry, this perspiration becomes
excessive and weakens the plant. If the room be stove-
heated, a basin of water should be put on the stove to sup-
ply moisture to the air by evaporation. Sprinkling the
leaves, a kind of artificial dew, 1s also beneficial, on this
account. The air should be changed as often as possible.
Every warm and sunny day should be improved to let in
fresh air upon these vegetable breathers.
436 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
4. CLEANLINESS.—This is an important element of health
as well as of beauty. -Animal-uncleanliness is first to be
removed. If ground-worms have been incorporated with
the dirt, give a dose or two of lime-water to the soil. Next
aphides or green-lice will appear upon the leaves and stems.
Tobacco smoke will soon stupefy them and cause them to
tumble upon the shelves or surface of the soil, whence they
are to be carefully brushed, or crushed. If one has but a
few plants, put them in a group on the floor; put four
chairs around them and cover with an old blanket, forming
a sort of tent. Set a dish of coals within, and throw ona
handful of tobacco leaves. Fifteen minutes’? smoking will
destroy any decent aphis.
If a larger collection is on hand, let the dish or dishes be
placed under the stands. When the destruction is completed,
let the parlor be well ventilated, unless, fair lady, you have
an inveterate smoker for a husband ; in which case you may
have become used to the nuisance.
The insects which infest large collections of green-houses,
are fully treated of in horticultural books of directions.
Dust will settle every day upon the leaves, and choke up
the perspiring pores. The leaves should be kept free by
gentle wiping, or by washing.
Wartr CLover is an important grass on flourishing old
meadows. It grows very thick at the bottom of the other
grass, although in a good season it will grow to the height
of from twelve to sixteen inches. I have seen it in low
spots completely covered for weeks together. Therefore -
land which produces abundant crops of grass, would require
extensive draining for grain, and seeing that plowing such
land destroys its life, it is far better to keep it in grass con
tinually.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 437
PARLOR FLOWERS AND PLANTS IN WINTER.—(A77. 2.)
THERE are so few who care enough for flowers to trouble
themselves with them during the winter, that it seems
almost unkind to criticise the imperfections of those who
do. But it is very plain that, for the most part, skill and
knowledge do not keep pace with good taste. Vot to point
out defects to those who are anxious to improve would be
the real unkindness.
There are two objects for which plants are kept over.
Plants are housed for the sake of their verdure and
bloom during the winter ; or, simply to protect them from
the frosts. Our first criticism is, that these two separate
objects are, to a great extent, improperly united. Tables
and window-stands are crowded with plants which ought to
be in the cellar or ina pit. Plants which have bloomed
through the summer wi// rest during the winter. To
remove them from the heat and dust of the parlor—to place
them in a dry, light, warm cellar, will certainly conduce to
their entire rest, and the parlor will lose no grace by the
removal of ragged stems, falling leaves, and flowerless
branches. When a large quantity of plants are to be pro-
tected, and cellar room is wanting, a pit may be prepared
with little expense. Dig a place eight or ten feet square,
in a dry exposure. The depth may be from five to six feet.
Let the surface of this chamber be curbed about with a
plank frame, the top of which should slope to the south at
an inclination of about three inches to the foot. This may
be covered with plank except in the middle, where two
sash may be placed. The outside of the plank may be
banked up with earth, and if light brush or haulm be placed
upon the top, in severe weather, it will be all the better.
The inside may be provided with shelves on every side for
the pots, and thus hundreds of plants may be effectually
protected. During severe freezing weather the sash should
be covered with mats, old carpet, straw or anything of the
438 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
kind; and in very cold weather this should not be removed
during the daytime: for if the plants have been touched
with frost, the admission of light will destroy or maim them,
whereas, if kept in darkness, they will suffer little or no
injury. Several families may unite in the expense of form-
ing a cold-pit and thus fill it with plants at a small expense
and very little inconvenience to each. Very little if any
water should be given to plants thus at rest.
Even where plants are wanted to bloom in the parlor late
in the winter, it is often better to let them spend the fore-
-part of the winter in the cellar or pit.
Our second criticism respects the character of winter col-
lections.
The most noticeable error is the strange crowd of plants
often huddled together, as if the excellence of a collection
consisted in the number of things brought together. Every-
thing that the florist sees in other collections has been pro-
cured, as if it would be an unpardonable negligence not to
have what others have. Hence we sometimes see scores
of plants, very different in their habits, requiring widely
different conditions of growth, reduced to one regimen,
viz. a place near the window, so much water a day, and
one turning round. This summary procedure, of course,
soon results in a vegetable Falstaff’s regiment; some plants
being long, sprawling, gangling, some dormant and dumpy ;
some shedding their leaves and going to rest with unripe
wood, some mildewed, a few faintly struggling to show
here and there a bewildered blossom. In such a collection
the eye is pained by the entire want of sympathy arising
from jumbling together the most dissimilar kinds; from the
want of robust health, and from the entire disappearance
of that vivid freshness and sprightliness of growth, com-
pact while it is rapid, which gives a charm to well man-
aged plants.
All plants which are not growing, or for whose growth
your parlors are not suitable, should be put into the cellar
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 439
and should there be allowed to stand over in a state of rest.
According to your accommodations, select a few vigorous,
symmetrical, hearty, healthy plants for the window. One
plant well tended, will afford you more pleasure than twen-
ty, halfnurtured.
In our dwellings, one has to make his way between two
extremes in the best manner that he can. Without a stove
our thin-walled houses are cold as an ice-house, and a frosty
night sends sad dismay among our favorites. Then, on the
other hand, if we have a stove, the air is apt to be parched,
and. unwholesome, fit for salamanders, fat and torpid cats
and dozing grandmothers. There is not much choice be-
tween an ice-house and an oven. There can be no such
thing as floral health without fresh air and enough of it.
This must be procured by frequent ventilation.
PROTECTING PLANTS IN WINTER.
Very many shrubs, vines, roses, etc., usually regarded as
tender, may yet be safely left standing in the garden if
properly protected.
The neck of plants, zt. e. that part at which the roots and
stem come together, requires thorough protection ; both
because it is the most tender (as some say), and because it
is at this point, that freezing and sudden thawing must
occur. The black soil absorbing heat rapidly, the neck of
a plant will be first and most affected by the morning sun;
and this is the reason, we think, rather than any special
tenderness of parts, why plants are killed at the crown of
the root. Let the ground be well covered with leaves or
with coarse manure, and let it come up three or four inches
high on the stem. It is better to have the top strawy,
rather than dark colored manure.
440 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
It is the sun, and not the frost, that, for the most part,
kills the stems of half-hardy plants. Protection is often,
therefore, only thorough shading. The Bengal tea, and
noisette roses are left out at Philadelphia and at Cincin-
nati without detriment.
Drive a stake by the side of the plant, and drawing up
the branches to it, cover them with straw, or bass-matting
wrapped around them. Kegs, barrels, boxes, etc., may be
turned over such as are not too high and will sufficiently
protect them. Air-holes should be bored in barrels, ete.,
and the north side is the best for the purpose.
Grape vines which need protection should be loosened
from the trellis or wall, pruned, laid down on the ground
and earth thrown over them three or four inches deep.
Isabella and Catawba grape vines will need no protection.
TO PRESERVE DAHLIA ROOTS.
Tuer least frost destroys these roots. In warm and damp
cellars they rot. Very many persons have no cellars at all
(a very frequent destitution at the West); others are so
small and moist, as to be unfit (our own, for instance) ; and
the extreme variations of temperature during the day and
night make sitting-rooms and their closets very unsafe
places for them. The labor of packing them in sand is not
great to those who have it ready or men to procure it ; but
to ladies, and especially to many in towns and cities who
are enthusiastic cultivators of flowers, but grievously vexed
with- poverty of pocket, this plan is inconvenient.
Why may not dahlias be kept in the soil? We think
there is not the least doubt that they can be protected from
JSrost and heat. Every one knows that in spading up in
the spring the dahlia beds of the previous year, large sec-
tions of the tubers, which had broken off when the main
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 441
roots were removed, are found in a fresh and sound condi-
tion.
Let a pit be dug say two feet deep, the roots carefully
disposed in it, covered with soil, and the whole protected
by coarse litter, straw, etc. We do not advise any to ad-
venture their whole stock in this manner; but we design
to select the inferior sorts from our stock and treat them
thus; and if successful, we shall, another year, try our
whole stock.
HEDGES.
1. WuereE a hedge is properly made and carefully trim-
med, it is the most beautiful fence that can be made; and,
as an object of beauty, it may be well to form hedges in a
wood country; but as a mode of general fencing we deem
it totally inappropriate to the condition of a country abound-
ing in timber. The labor of setting and tending it until it
is established, is tenfold more than is required for a timber
fence; a hedge requires from five to eight years for its
establishment ; and every year of this time it must be well
tended ; when grown, it requires annual shearing ; which,
on a long line of fence, is a labor to which few farmers will
submit for the sake of appearances. It is lable to get out
of order by disease, or the death of particular parts; and, |
if neglected a few years, it becomes ragged, a covert for
vermin and mischievous animals. In yards, gardens, and
lawns, hedges should be grown for ornament, and to serve
as screens, and backgrounds.
Upon the estates of the affluent where money is less valu-
able to the owner than decorations, hedges should be estab-
lished. Hedges may also be economical in a prairie coun-
try; the labor and expense of making and keeping may be
less than would be the cost of timber; but on farms ina
442 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
woodland district they are to be regarded as a lweury; and
like all luxuries, they are expensive.
2. The white thorn will do very well for hedges if care-
fully tended. The usual materials for hedges, at the Kast,
are the English white thorn (crategus oxycantha), the
buskthorn (rhamnus catharticus), Newcastle thorn (ecra-
tegas crus-galli), honey locust (gleditschia triacanthos),
red cedar (juniperus Virginiana), the Washington or Vir-
ginia thorn (crategus cordata).
The Osage orange (maclura aurantiaca) has been high-
ly recommended ; it is eminently beautiful, and if proved
to be good for hedging, should be employed. Privet makes
a sightly hedge, but is thornless. The Washington thorn
is employed in this neighborhood by Aaron Aldredge; it
is very beautiful; will require eight or ten years to give it
maturity.
3. When the thorn is used, the berries should be gath-
ered and mashed, in the fall, and the seed exposed, mixed
with moist sand, to the frost of winter. In the spring they
should be sown in nursery rows, and at a year old, they
should be transplanted. A reserve of plants should be kept:
in the nursery to supply vacancies which may occur.
The ground should be thoroughly and deeply pulverized
by plowing (spading would be much better) and the plants
set about six inches apart. The ground should be kept
entirely free from weeds; this may be done in a profitable
manner by planting bush beans on each side, the tending
‘of which will keep the hedge clean, the ground mellow,
besides the profit of the crop. Dr. Shurtliff, of Boston,
gives the following brief but excellent directions:
‘Prepare your land in the best manner ; use suitable plants
of thrifty growth, the older the better; assort and accom-
modate to the different kinds of soil ; preserve all the roots,
but crop the tops, leaving only few buds; keep a few in
your nursery; set them sloping to the north, and leave the
ground a little concave about the roots; keep them clear
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 443
of grass and weeds, and add a little earth to the roots at
each hoeing; clear away the leaves at autumn; trim the
side branches carefully, and leave the main stems to nature
till they are six feet high, then crop off the tops to the
height you mean to have your hedge. It will look like a
wedge with the sharp end upwards, and will exhibit a most
beautiful appearance.”
WATERING TREES, ETC.
We have observed many persons copiously watering
young trees and garden plants.
1, In many cases much water is a positive injury. The
roots draw up a larger supply of liquid than there is vigor
in the tree to digest or appropriate. In such cases the
tissue is enfeebled, the roots decay, and the tree perishes in
the trying heats of July and August.
2. It often happens that wetting the tree itself is much
better than watering the root. Take a watering-pot and
drench the leaves, and limbs and trunk, several times in a
day. Inasmall tree a large bunch of cotton or rags may
be put in the crotch and saturated with water. It will gra-
dually trickle down the stem, and also evaporate, keeping
the leaves in a moist medium. This trouble is worth while
in case of rare trees difficult to be obtained. <A tree per-
spires as really as an animal oraman. Every leaf is fur-
nished with stomata or pores, the number and size of which
determine the amount of perspiration. Of course, as they
vary in different plants, there is a corresponding difference
in the amount which they perspire. Plants which grow in
exposed situations, scorched by the sun, have a structure
which admits but slight perspiration, while those which grow
in the shade and in moist places perspire copiously.
It is upon this state of facts that watering the tree itself
444 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
is beneficial. The exhalation from the leaf is diminished,
and sap retained within the tree. Beside this, the leaf and
young green bark absorb some moisture.
3. Where watering is resorted to it should not be upon
the surface ; especially is this injurious in clay soils. The
moisture is immediately exhaled, and the sun hardens the
wet earth into a crust, nearly as impervious to light, and
air and moisture, as if it were sheet-iron. Let a slight
trench be opened, and after the water has sunk away,
replace the earth and pulverize it. In this way no baking
will take place.
4, But the best method of watering by the root, is that
which is technically denominated mulching. Cover the
surface of the ground beneath the tree or shrub with three
or four inches’ thickness of coarse, strawy manure. If
watered through this the earth will not bake; the moisture
will not evaporate; the root will be shielded from the sun,
and enriched by the infiltration of the juices of the manure.
LABELS FOR TREES.
Ir is of great importance for every farmer to preserve the
names of his fruit-trees; and no amateur cultivator should
think himself worthy of a name whose garden and fruit
ground is not registered and labelled.
It is best in every case to have a fruit-book, in which
should be entered the name of each tree, its place, time of
planting, from whom obtained, how old it was from the
graft or bud, when set out, its size, condition, ete.
Such a book, kept in the house, is a sure and permanent
record of the names of your fruit-trees. Beside this, each
tree should have a dadel attached to it. For, in passing
through an orchard or fruit garden, it is desirable to know
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 445
the names of trees without the inconvenience of carrying
your book under your arm. The labels are for daily use;
the book keeps a permanent record, so that if a label be lost
the name of the tree does not go with it. It is quite pro-
voking to examine a friend’s premises without being able to
learn the name of a single tree. Beside, every cultivator
should know the names of his trees as well as of his cattle;
otherwise they will get local names, and the same fruit have
a new name in each orchard.
TRANSPLANTING EVERGREENS.
Tue general impression that evergreens are very difficult
to transplant is not well founded if one will observe a few
directions.
The best time for transplanting is when the tips begin
to show fresh growth in spring. This is exactly the
reverse of directions in English books, which denounce
spring, and enjoin fall transplanting—in the climate of Eng-
land, doubtless with good reason; and it is a good illustra-
tion of the caution necessary before imitating, in our
climate, the most skillful foreign practices.
A friend informs us that he has always totally lost all
his fall transplantings; not saving ten in a hundred; and
other men say they have had similar experience, and 7¢ 7s
a settled fact that fall transplanting of evergreens is bad
practice.
The best method of removing is to lift the plant with as
many roots and fibres as possible. More care should be
vsed in this respect than in the removal of fruit-trees;
indeed, there is little risk when good roots are obtained and
kept in a moist condition. In planting, the most successful
operators that we have seen, mix about half and half com
446 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
mon soil and old retten wood from the forests, filling it in
carefully about the roots and covering the surface with sub-
stances which will prevent too much evaporation of mois-
ture, as litter, decayed wood, sods grass side down, ete.,
ete
The old wood employed should be thoroughly decom-
posed; and that of the hackberry, maple, and beech are
preferred. The decayed wood of the black walnut and oak
do not seem congenial to plants.
When large trees are to be removed it is often done with
success in the winter, by opening a trench about the tree
and permitting the ball of earth to freeze pretty thoroughly.
The tree is then undermined and upon a sledge easily
removed to its destination. The hole for its reception
should have been dug while the ground was unfrozen, and
it will be necessary to wait until it thaws before it can again
be filled in about the tree.
FLOWERS, LADIES, AND ANGELS.
Ir ladies wish to get into the very best company pos-
sible, we do not know of any pleasanter way than is detailed
in this beautiful scrap from a German poet:
A flower do but place near thy window glass,
And through it no image of evil shall pass.
Abroad must thou go? on thy white bosom wear
A nosegay, and doubt not an angel is there;
Forget not to water at break of the day
The lilies, and thou shalt be fairer than they;
Place a rose near thy bed nightly sentry to keep,
And angels shall rock thee on roses to sleep.
And pray what will happen if a gentleman does all this?
For one, we bave a personal curiosity to know; for we do
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 447
all these things and a good many more. If any other
angels have hovered about us than angelic flowers, we make
an especial request to them not, hereafter, to be so shy
about it. Our natural eye would delight to behold in
veritable substance all the flower-spirits which our ideality
spies lurking in our garden-blossoms.
HORTICULTURAL CURIOSITIES.
Mr. Hovey, editor of the magazine which bears his name,
had oceasion during the year 1844 to visit Europe, for pro-
fessional objects; “not the least was that of giving some
account of the condition of gardening in that country, from
whose works, whose practice, and experience, our own cul-
tivators have derived so much knowledge.”
We cull from the several numbers already published in
his magazine, the most interesting facts.
RHODODENDRONS.—Speaking of the Liverpool botanical
gardens, he says:
“The principal clumps were filled with rhododendrons of
various kinds, which do remarkably well; the climate, from
its humidity, seems to suit them, and most of the plants
were clothed with branches from the base to the top. R.
altaclerense we saw six feet high; how fine must be its
numerous clusters of splendid rosy blossoms! From the
time we entered this garden, where we first saw the rhodo-
dendrons in abundance, until we returned home, we were
constantly impressed with the importance which this shrub
is destined to hold in our gardens. Although a native of
our woods and forests, it is scarcely known out of our native
habitats; yet abroad we see it the first ornament of the
garden. By hybridization, and the production of an
immense number of seedlings, during the last fifteen years,
it has been increased in splendor, until it now almost equals
448 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
its tender, but gorgeous eastern sisters. How long shall
our gardens be deficient in this great ornament ?”
Fucustas, or Lapies’? Earprop.-—Nothing will be more
surprising to those who have cultivated this beautiful plant,
and thought it well grown if a foot high, and brilliant if a
dozen blossoms showed at once, than the magnificent size
and flowering of /uchsias as seen in England.
At the Sheffield Botanical Gardens Mr. Hovey saw the
Fuchsias globosa major, upwards of twenty feet high, the
stem, at the base, being two inches through! Its drooping
branches were clothed with thousands of flowers; another
variety, “called Youngit grandiflora was also twenty feet
high, and equally strong, with innumerable flowers: this
plant was only seven years old. It is almost impossible for
those who have never seen specimens more than four or
five feet high, to imagine the great beauty of such gigantic
plants; notwithstanding their size they were well grown,
being of symmetrical shape, and with vigorous and healthy
foliage; they were planted in very large tubs, about two
feet deep and two feet in diameter.
“The splendid # fulgens and corymbifiora we also saw
here upward of ten feet high, and full of their showy
flowers.”
The Regent’s Park Garden occasions the following
remarks :
“ Fuchsia globosa was, perhaps, as beautiful as anything
which we saw for this subject. There is an opinion pre-
valent that fuchsias in our climate do not do well in the
open border; but we suspect such an idea has been pre-
maturely formed without experience, for we recollect seeing
in the garden of Mr. Johnson, of Lynn, three years ago,
plants, which were then in profuse bloom, and had been so
all summer, turned out of the pots into the soil; the proba-
bility is that the plants have not been abundant enough to
give a fair trial, As they are easily propagated, and may
be sold almost as cheap as verbenas, we hope to hear of
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 449
experiments being tried to test their capability of enduring
our warm sun.”
At Chiswick Mr. Hovey saw the original tree of Wil-
liams’ Bon Chrétien pear (the Bartlett of Boston gardens).
It was hale and healthy.
Tuties.—Mr. H. visited Mr. Groom, at Clapham; “‘ pre-
parations were making for planting out the great collection
of tulips in October. For this flower Mr. Groom is famous ;
he has raised several very splendid seedlings, some of which
are priced as high as five hundred dollars, and a great num-
ber at one hundred dollars each (£21 sterling). It would
seem to those who know little of the tulip that this was
something of a tulip mania; but the tulip is a most gorgeous
flower, and when once a love for it takes possession of the
amateur, and he obtains a knowledge of its properties, there
is scarce anything he would not sacrifice to obtain the
choicest kinds. In England, there are many collections
valued at thousands of pounds. In this country the tulip is
but little valued, and a bed of the most common kind
attracts nearly as many admirers as one of the choicest and
high-priced flowers.”
Dwarr Purar-rrees—“The garden is laid out with
_ numerous walks, and the borders of them were filled with
bearing trees. They were from six to ten feet high, trained
in pyramidal form, and many of them full of fruit. This
mode of growing trees appears to be universally adopted
‘around Paris; we scarcely saw a standard tree. The
advantages of the pyramidal or quenouille form are, that, in
gardens of moderate extent only, a collection of two or
three hundred kinds may be cultivated; they occupy but
little room, being placed about six feet apart, and being
pruned in, they do not throw sufficient shade to injure any-
thing growing near them. They afford greater facilities
for examining the fruit while growing, and for picking it
when ripe; the trees are not so much shaken by high winds,
and the large kind of pears do not so easily blow off: the
450 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
facilities for making observations upon the wood and leaves,
are also greater; and, as regards appearance alone, they
are, when well managed, far more beautiful than standards,
To those who wish to plant out large quantities for orchard
cultivation, they would not, of course, be recommended ;
but for the garden, the pyramidal form should be
adopted.”
ALPINE STRAWBERRY.—This variety is especially valu-
able from its propensity to bear all the summer. At the
gardens of the Luxembourg, Paris, Mr. Hovey says:
“The Alpine strawberry is cultivated very extensively
for the supply of the royal tables throughout the whole
summer and autumn, and one-quarter was devoted to this
fruit; the plants were set out in long rows, with alternate
plantations of dahlias, which were now in most profuse
bloom; a great many of them were the fancy sorts, which
are greatly admired and extensively cultivated im and
around Paris. One of the finest we saw was the Beauty
of England, purple tipped with white; and every flower
distinctly marked. The strawberries are set out in August
or September, and the following season produce abundantly ;
or they may be raised from seed in the spring, and planted
out to bear a crop in the autumn. <A moist soil and half
shady aspect is most favorable, and, in our climate, to
expect success, such a locality should be selected if possible ;
an abundance of fruit may then be expected. The best
berries were as large as the finest Woods we generally see
in our market. We recommend all who love this delicious
fruit to try the experiment of their cultivation. Such pro-
fusion as we saw them exposed for sale in the cafés of Paris,
shows that there can be no great difficulty in the way of
success,”
_—
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 451
THE CORN CROP.
Tue valleys of the West are regarded as the corn-fields
of the world, and the people seem to regard the crop of
corn as the foundation crop. Lately wheat is becoming a
rival, particularly in the northern part of Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Our real object, is, not to
theorize,—to teach “ book farming”—but to lay before prac-
tical men practical results, to inform them of what has been
done. We give on page 382 the method of cultivating the
potato as employed by eminent and successful cultivators.
We here present the modes of cultivating corn which have
produced the largest crops.
W. C. Youne’s Meruop.—Mr. Young is a Kentucky
farmer, and raised 195 bushels of shelled corn to the acre.
When this was first published it quite staggered the faith of
eastern farmers. This roused the zeal of Kentucky, and
the Dollar Farmer sets forth the manner, and adds a series
of explanations, all of which we give. We must say, that
such a depth, for seed on stiff soils—on any soil except
the lightest and mellowest, and on these, in a cool or rainy
spring, would not be proper. Neither could planting be
done in March in the latitudes of Indiana unless in the
sovthern part, and then only in early seasons. That
Mr. Young did produce 195 bushels to the acre, we feel just
as certain as that we now hold a pen in our hand. It was
measured by as respectable gentlemen as any in Jessamine
County—gentlemen appointed for the purpose by the Jes-
samine Agricultural Society. And let it be remembered
that this was no first experiment on a single acre. The
corn was planted and cultivated according to the method
long adopted by Mr. Young, and his whole crop was pro-
nounced equal to the five acres measured. This extraordi-
nary crop was produced in 1840, a year very favorable to
corn; but we are told by Mr. Young that in the dryest
years he does not get less than 100 bushels to the acre.
452 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Here then is not “ book farming,” but a method of cultiva.
tion practised for years by a plain, practical, but intelligent
farmer. Here then is actual experience for a course of years,
the very thing the farmer says he must have before he can be
convinced! But, reader, are youconvinced? No. Youcan
not get round the experience, provided it was experience,
and you will take a short way of evading the matter by sim-
ply saying that you don’t believe a word of the whole story.
Strange as it may seem, these worthy farmers that.
go so strong for facts and experience, and who yet deny
all facts and all experience that do not tally with their
own notions—these very farmers are fond of arguing, and
like mightily to have the reason or rationale of things
explained; and many a one of them will yield to the theory
who will not yield to a fact. Well, then, let us look into
the theory of Mr. Y.’s practice. Hear him:
‘“‘ My universal rule is, to plow my corn land the fall pre-
ceding the spring when I plant; and as early in the spring
as possible, I cross-plow as deep as circumstances will per-
mit ; and as soon as this is done, I commence checking off—
the first way with my large plows, and the second with my
small oues; the checks three feet by three, admitting of
working the land both ways. And then I plant my corn
from the 20th to the 25th of Mareh—a rule to which I adhere
with scrupulous exactness; planting from eight to twelve
grains in each hill, covering the same from four to six
inches deep, greatly preferring the latter depth. So soon
as my corn is up of sufficient height, I start the large har-
row directly over the rows, allowing a horse to walk each
side; harrowing the way the corn was planted; and on
land prepared as above and harrowed as directed, the hoe-
ing part will be so completely performed by this process,
tha. it will satisfy the most skeptical. Then, allowing the
corn thus harrowed, to remain a few days, I start my small
plow with the bar next the corn; and so nicely will this be
done, that when a row is thus plowed, so completely will
—————<
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 453
the intermediate spaces, hills, etc., be lapped in by the
loose earth, occasioned by this system of close plowing, as
to render any other work useless for a time. I thin to four
stalks upon a hill, never having to transplant, the second
plowing being performed with the moldboard toward the
rows of corn; and so rapid has been the growth of the corn
between the first and second plowings, that this is per-
formed with ease; and when in this stage, I consider my
crop safe—my general rule being, never to plow my corn
more than four times, and harrow once. My practice is, to
put a field in corn two successive years, then grass it, and
let it lie eight years—a rule from which I never deviate.
Now, I do not pretend that the labor bestowed upon a sod-
field to put it in a state of thorough cultivation, does not
meet with a fair equivalent from one crop; but I presume
-no farmer will doubt when I say the second year’s crop
from sod land is better than the first, with not more than one
half the labor. The best system of farming is to produce the
greatest amount of profit from the smallest amount of labor.”
Now what are the essentials of this method ?
First—Fertitity of soil, kept up by his system of manur-
ing and grass, of which we shall not speak.
Second—Early planting. In consequence of this, the
corn matures before the dry season commences, and every
farmer knows that plenty of rain will make a good crop of
corn in. almost any soil. They all know that the essential
thing for corn is rain, and there is generally plenty of rain
till about the 1st of July. Mr. Young might plant his corn
considerably later and have it come up as early, and grow
off more rapidly, by soaking it in a solution of saltpetre.
Thus would the effect of frost and chilly mornings be in a
degree avoided, while we feel confident, from our own expe-
rience, all injury from the cut-worm would be avoided.
Third—Close planting. Every farmer must know that
to produce the heaviest possible crop, a certain number of
stalks must be upon the ground. It is often observed that
454 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
the great sin of American agriculture is too thin sowing.
Gruss is nearly always sowed too thin, and the same is true
of small grain. In England they sow four and five and
sometimes six bushels of oats to the acre; in this country
generally not more than a bushel or a bushel and a half.
Hence in England they yield three or four times as heavy as
in this country ; while in this country we never hear of an
extraordinary crop where less than three or four bushels
to the acre were sown. Now, we venture to affirm that no
very large corn crop was ever grown unless it was planted
more than usually thick. In the crop of George W. Wil-
liams, of Bourbon county, Kentucky, the corn was planted in
rows two feet apart, with a stalk every foot in the rows.
This crop produced 167 bushels to the acre. But there is
another important advantage of close planting. The corn
very soon becomes so dense that the ground is shaded, and
the growth of the grass is prevented, and the moisture
retained in the soil. By this method of cultivation, no
grass is ever allowed to absorb the moisture from the earth,
or to take up the nutritious gases which ought to be appro-
priated exclusively to the corn.
Fourth—Deep planting. This probably operates favor-
ably by giving the roots a bedding where the soil is always
moist. Another advantage may be that the roots are thus
not so liable to be broken by the plow in cultivation. But it
must be here noted, that by Mr. Young’s methed, the corn
is “laid by” before the roots are so extended as to be liable
to much injury from the plow.
Fifth and last—It will be observed that, by Mr. Young’s
method, the soil is kept very friable and loose, and that to
a considerable depth. This may be considered the all-
essential point in husbandry. One of the chief advantages
of all manures is, so to divide the soil that the atmos-
phere, from which plants derive their principal nutri-
ment, may freely penetrate to the roots of the plants. In
such a loose soil, too, it is well known that much less rain is
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 455
requisite than in a stiff, cold, close soil. For this reason,
gravel, sand, or sawdust is often the best manure that can
be put upon a stiff soil. In the fall of the year, Mr. Young
turns down very deep a thick-rooted sod of eight years’
standing. The vegetable matter in the sod will obviously
keep the soil very loose for a year or two by mechanical
division, as well as by the slow fermentation of this matter
in the soil. But this is not all. The soil is deeply broken
up before planting; it is harrowed thoroughly as soon as
the corn comes up, and then there is a rapid succession of
plowing, until the ground is shaded by the corn, and plow-
ing is no longer possible or necessary. No doubt the
plow is preferable to the hand-hoe or cultivator in the case
of Mr. Young; for it makes the soil loose to a greater
depth, and we have already explained that, according to
his method, the roots of the corn are not exposed to injury
from the plow.
We append to this account of Mr. Young’s method, that
of several other cultivators, and are indebted for them to the
Western Farmer and Guardian. In Mr. Miller’s account
the reader will observe the depth of planting in a stiff clay.
Mr. Surron’s Merernop.—Mr. James M. Sutton, of
St. George, Delaware, who raised upon seventy-nine acres
6,284 bushels of corn, and who gives an accurate and
detailed account of the condition and cultivation of each
field, makes this remark in relation to the use of the plow:
“In order to test the advantage of the cultivator over
the plow, for tilling corn, he had five rows in this field that
he lapped the furrow to, with a plow, previous to going
over it the last time with the cultivator. He soon dis-
covered that the growth of these five rows fell short, in
height, of those adjacent, and yielded one-fifth less corn.
“There is no doubt but the true mode of tillmg corn,
especially where sod-ground is used, is to plow deep, and
use nothing but the fallow and flake-harrow for its cultiva-
tion. By not disturbing the sod plowed down, it remains
456 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
there as a reservoir of moisture, and an exhilarating prin-
ciple throughout the season, to the growth of the corn.”
Upon Mr. Sutton’s report of his crop, Judge Buel adds
the following:
“The management which led to the extraordinary pro-
duct of corn, should be deeply impressed upon the mind of
every corn-grower. 1, The ground was wet dunged with
LONG manure; 2, it was planted on a grass lay, one deep
plowing; 8, it was well pulverized with the harrow; 4,
the plow was not used in the after-culture, nor the corn
hilled, but the cultivator only used; 5, the sod was not
disturbed, nor the manure turned to the surface; and 6,
the corn was cut at the ground when it was fit to top.
These are the points which we have repeatedly urged in
treating of the culture of this crop; and their correctness
is put beyond question by this notable result. The value of
lime and marl are well illustrated in the second experiment.”
Mr. Charles H. Tomlinson, of Schenectady, N. Y., in giv-
ing an account of his experience says:
“The two last years’ corn has been raised in the follow-
ing manner, on the Mohawk Flats near this city. If in
grass, the land is plowed and well harrowed, lengthwise of
the furrow, without disturbing. the sward. The ground is
then prepared for planting, by being marked out two and a
half feet one way and three feet the other. The last season,
the field was rolled after being planted, with evident benefit,
as it made it level. When the corn is three inches high,
the cultivator is passed through both ways; and twice
afterward it is used in the same manner; no hills are made,
but the ground is kept level. Neither hand-hoe nor plow
are used, after the corn is planted. Fields manured with
coarse manure have been tilled in the same manner, Corn
tilled in this way is as clean of weeds as when tilled in the
usual way: it isno more liable to be blown down, and the
produce equally good. It saves a great deal of hard labor
which is an expensive item in the usual culture of corn.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 457
Last October, ten rods were measured out in two different
places, in a corn-field, on grass land—the one yielding ten,
the other nine, bushels of ears. In one corn-field, after
the last. dressing in July, timothy and clover-seed were
sown, and in the fall the grass appeared to have taken as
well as it has done in adjoining fields where it had been
sown with oats.”
Upon which Judge Buel again remarks: “ All, or nearly
all, the accounts we have published of great products of
Indian corn, agree in two particulars, viz. in not using
the plow in the culture, and in not earthing, or but very
slightly, the hills. These results go to demonstrate, that
the entire roots are essential to the vigor of the crops, and
to enable them to perform their functions as nature designed,
must be near the surface. If the roots are severed with
the plow, in dressing the crop, the plants are deprived of a
portion of their nourishment; and if they are buried deep
by hilling, the plant is partially exhausted in throwing out
a new set near the surface, where alone they can perform all
their offices. There is another material advantage in this
mode of cultivating the corn crop—it saves a vast deal of
manual labor.”
The preceding considerations justify us in recommending,
that in the management of the Indian corn crop, the fol-
lowing rules be observed, or at least partially, so far as to
test their correctness.
1. That the corn harrow and cultivator be substituted
for the plow in the culture of the crop.
2. That the plants be not hilled, or but slightly so—this
not to prevent the soil being often stirred and kept clean, and,
3. That in harvesting, the crop be cut at the ground as
soon as the grain is glazed.
Again, in reference to the system of level cultivation of
corn, Judge Buel remarks:
“The experience of the last two years has been sufficient
to admonish us, that without due precaution, our crops of
458 ; PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Indian corn will not pay for the labor bestowed on the cul-
ture; and yet, that where due attention has been paid to
soil, manure, seed and harvesting, the return has been
bountiful, notwithstanding bad seasons. Having been uni-
formly successful in the culture of this crop, we feel
justified in repeating some leading directions for its manage-
ment.”
‘“‘ APYTER-CULTURE.—In this the plow should not be used
if the corn harrow and cultivator can be had, and if used,
should not be suffered to penetrate the soil more than two
or three inches. The plow tears the roots, turns up and
wastes the manure, and increases the injuries of drought.
The main object is to extirpate weeds, and to keep the
surface mellow and open, that the heat, air and moisture
may exert better their kind influences upon the vegetable
matter in the soil, in converting it into autriment for the
crop. At the first dressing with the hand-hoe, the plants
are reduced to four, or three, in a hill, the surface is broken
among the plants, the weeds carefully extirpated, and a lit-
tle fresh mold gathered to the hill. At the second dressing,
a like process is observed, taking care that the earthing
shall not exceed one inch and a half, that the hill be broad
and flat, and that the earth for this purpose be not taken
from one place, but gathered from the surface between the
rows, where it has been loosened by the cultivator.”
MR. MILLER’S METHOD.
‘““GrorGeTown x Roans, Kent Co., Md.
“T have just finished measuring the corn that grew this
year on a lot of mine of five and a half acres, and have
measured 1054 barrels and one bushel of ears, making 103
bushels of corn per acre. The following is the manner in
which I prepared the ground, etc. The scil is a stiff clay:
and one and a half acres of said lot was in clover last year,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. - 459
the balance in wheat. I put 265 two-horse cart loads of
barn-yard manure on it: the manure was coarse, made out of
straw, corn-tops and husks, hauled into the yard in January
and February, and hauled out in March and April, conse-
quently was very little rotted. I spread it regularly and
plowed it down with a large concave plow, seven inches deep.
I then harrowed it twice the same way it was plowed. I then
had the rows marked out with a small plow, three feet ten
inches wide, and one and a half inches deep. I planted my
corn from eighteen to twenty-two inches apart, and covered
it with hoes: just drawing the furrows over the corn,
which covered it one and a half inches below the sur-
face. When the corn was four inches high, I harrowed it,
and thinned it to two stalks in the hill: in about two weeks
after harrowing, [ cultivated it: about the 15th of June I
cultivated it again, which was all the tillage I gave it. We
farmers of the eastern shore count our corn by the
thousand: I had 38,640 hills on my lot, and I think my corn
would have been better had I planted earlier: I did not
plant until the last of April. I think the planting of corn
shallow and working it with the cultivator is much the best
way, especially on clover lay?
Mr. Horxiys’? Metrnop.— Soil and Culture——tThe soil
is a warm sandy loam. It was plowed deep in the autumn.
About the first of May, I carried on, and spread all over
the ground, about thirty loads of stable and barn-yard
unfermented manure, then rolled and harrowed the ground
well, being careful not to disturb the sod, which was timo-
thy, and mown the summer preceding; and on the 9th and
19th of May planted the same, two and a half feet between
the rows, and fifteen inches between the hills. It was
dressed with ashes when it made its appearance above
ground, On the 10th June commenced weeding and thin-
ning, leaving from two to four of the best spears in each
hill, the whole averaging about three spears in a hill. After
this I ashed it again, using in all about ten bushels of good
460 P PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
unleached house ashes. On the 10th of July commenced
hoeing, and at the same time took off all the suckers—put
no more about the hills than we took from them, but care-
fully cleaned out all the weeds from the hills. The seed
was prepared by simply wetting it with warm water, and
rolling it in plaster.
“ HAarvEsTING.—The corn was cut up on the 18th Sep-
tember at the ground, and shocked in small shocks; and on
the 9th of October it was housed and husked, and subse-
quently threshed and measured.
“‘ Propuct.—Ninety-nine bushels of first-rate corn, with-
out even a nubbin of soft or poor grain, owing to the fact,
probably, that there were no suckers on which to grow
them.”
POTATO CROP.
THE potato crop has never been as much attended to in
this region as in New York, and New England: We
believe, however, that its value is becoming apparent, and
that potatoes will be produced to a much greater extent
than hitherto. Reserving some remarks of our own to a
future number, we insert the methods of cultivation, em-
ployed by eminent cultivators.
SPURRIER’s Mernop or Curtivation.— Be careful,” says
he, “to procure some good sets; that is, to pick a quantity
of the best kind of potatoes perfectly sound and of a toler-
ably large size; these are to be prepared for planting by
cutting each root into two, three or more pieces, minding
particularly that each piece be furnished with at least one
or two eyes, which is sufficient. Being thus prepared, they
are to be planted in rows not less than eighteen inches dis-
tant: if they are to be plowed between, they must not be
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. . 461
less than three feet, andif four feet apart the more
eligible,
“The best method I have found by experience is to make
a trench either with the spade or plow, about five inches
deep, and put long dung or straw at the bottom, laying the
sets on it at their proper distances, which is from 9 to 12
inches apart, covering them with mold. They must be kept
clean from weeds.”
Mr. Knicur’s Pran.— He recommends the planting of
whole potatoes, and those only which are of fine medium
size—none to be of less weight than four ounces. The
early sorts, and, indeed, all which seldom attain a greater
height than two feet, are to be planted about four or five
inches apart in the rows, centre from centre, the crown ends
upward, the rows to be from 2 feet 6 inches to 3 feet’
asunder. The late potatoes, which produce a haulm above
3 feet in height, are to be planted 5 or 6 inches apart, centre
from centre, in rows 4 or 5 feet asunder. The potatoes to
point north and south and to be well manured.”
Mackenzir’s Pran.— Work the ground until it is com-
pletely reduced and free from root weeds. Three plowings,
with frequent harrowings and rollings, are necessary in both
cases, before the land is in a suitable condition. When this
is accomplished, form the drills; place the manure in the
drills, plant above it, reverse the drills for covering it and
the seed, then harrow the drills in length.
“It is not advantageous to cut the seed into small slips;
for the strength of the stem at the outset depends in direct
proportion to the vigor and power of the seed-plant. The
seed-plant, therefore, ought to be large, rarely smaller than
the fourth part of the potato; andif the seed is of small
size, one half of the potato may be profitably used. At all
events, rather err in giving over large seed than in making
it, too small; because, by the first error, no great loss can
ever be sustained; whereas, by the other, a feeble and late
crop may be the consequence. When the seed is properly
462 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
cut, it requires from ten to twelve hundred weight of’ pota-
toes, from 124 to 15 bushels, where the rcws are at 27 inches
distance; but this generally depends greatly upon the size
of the potatoes used; if they are large a greater weight
may be required; but the extra quality will be abundantiy
repaid by the superiority of the crop, which large seed
usually produces. Plant early in May.”
Barnum’s Pran.— Plow deep and pulverize well by
thoroughly harrowing; manure with compost, decomposed
vegetables or barnyard manure; the latter preferable.
When coarse or raw manure is used it must be spread and
plowed in immediately. Stiff clay soil should always be
plowed the fall previous. Lay your land in drills 27 inches _
apart, with a small plow, calculated for turning a deep, nar-
row furrow running north and south; lay on the bottom of
the drills 2 inches of well-rotted barnyard manure, or its
equivalent, then drop your potatoes, if of the common size,
or what is more important, if they retain the usual quan-
tity of eyes—if more, they should be cut to prevent too
many stalks shooting up together: put a single potato in
the drills or trenches 10 inches apart, the first should remain
uncovered until the second one is deposited, to place them
diagonally in the drills, which will afford more space
between the potatoes one way, than if laid at right angles
in the rows. The covering may be performed with a hoe,
first hauling in the furrow raised on each side the drill,
then carefully take from the centre of the space the soil to
finish the covering to the depth of 34 or 4 inches; by taking
the earth from the centre of the space on either side to the
width of 3 inches, it will leave a drain of 6 inches in the
centre of the space and a hill of 14 inches in width gently
descending from the drill to the drain, the width and depth
of the drill will be sufficient to protect the plant against any
injurious effects of a scorching sun or drenching rain. The
drains in the centre will at all times be found,sufficient to
pass off the surplus water.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 463
“When the plant makes its appearance above the surface,
the following mixture may be used: for each acre take 1
bushel of plaster and 2 bushels of good ashes, and sow it
broadcast as even as possible; a moist day is preferable for
this operation—for want of it, a still evening will do.
“The operation of hilling should be performed once and
once only during the season; if repeated after the potatoe
is formed it will cause young shoots to spring up, which
retards the growth of the potatoe and diminishes its size.
If weeds spring up at any time they should be kept down
by the hand or hoe, which can be done without disturbing
the growth of the stalk.
“My manner of hoeing or hilling is not to haul in the
earth from the space between the hills or rows, but to bring
on fresh earth sufficient to raise the hill around the plant 14
or 2 inches; in a wet season the lesser quantity will be suffi-
cient, in a dry one the larger will not be found too much.
The substance for this purpose may consist of the scrapings
of ditches or filthy streets, or the earth from a barnyard that
requires levelling: where convenient, it may be taken from
swamps, marshes, the beds and banks of rivers or small
sluggish streams at low water. If planted on a clay soil,
fresh loam taken at any depth from the surface, even if it
partakes largely of fine sand, will be found an excellent top-
dressing. If planted on a loamy soil, the earth taken from
clay pits, clay or slaty soil will answer a valuable purpose;
in fact, there are but few farms in the country but what
may be furnished with some suitable substance for top-
dressing, if sought for. The hoeing and hilling may be per-
formed with facility by the aid of a horse and cart, the
horse travelling in the centre of a space between the
drills, the cart-wheels occupying the two adjoining ones,
thereby avoiding any disturbance or injury to the growing
plants.”
Mr. Barnum’s method has attracted great attention, from
the fact that he actually raised from 1,000 to 1,500 bushels
464 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
of potatoes to the acre! When this was first published it
was received with great incredulity; calls were made for
the method of cultivation, which drew forth an elaborate
article from Mr. B., of which the above is but a morsel. It
afterward was stated, and the most authentic and unques-
tionable evidence adduced in proof, that Mr. Barnum
raised, upon experiment, at the rate of more than 3,000
bushels to the acre. Now, although the labor and the great
amount of seed required would prevent the cultivation of
many acres of land thus, yet it is worth a trial in a small
way; and if one acre can be made to produce 1,000
bushels, it will be as much as is usually dug from five acres ;
and it is questionable whether the labor and seed for five
acres are not more than that required by Mr. B.’s method
for one.
Mr. A. Rozgrnson’s Pian.—He says: “If I plant low
ground, I plow my ground in beds in a different direction for
the water to drain off, then harrow lengthwise of the fur-
rows and small lands; having a number of them, side and
side, I take a light, sharp horse-harrow, and harrow cross-
wise of the beds, which pulverizes the ground and fits it
well for planting, leaving a small space between the rows,
which answers for two purposes, one for a guide for the
rows for dropping: this is done by dropping in the middle
of the tracks of the harrow, which is easily and correctly
performed, by any small boy. It also serves completely to
fill up all cracks or holes, the seed lying fair and easy. I
then drop my manure directly over the seed potatoes, ana
when covered up, the seed is safe from inundation, by
being some inches above the surrounding surface: the seed
lies warm under this manure, the rains drain into the mid-
dle furrows; I plant three feet distance; it takes the most
of the surface that is pulverized to cover the potatoes, and
by the time they are twice well hoed, my hills are as I want
them to be. They naturally rise’ high above the surface in
the form of a sugar-loaf: this hill is to turn off heavy rains,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 465
and it naturally keeps the potatoes from being too moist,
and they are often injured thereby. I have found that
three feet each way is the most proper distance to insure a
good crop; I plant three common sized potatoes in the
hill; it is no use to cut them: if cut small, the vines come
up small and weak, grow fast and fall down.”
The following method we take from an able writer in the
Louisville Journal, signing himself “ Grazier :”
“The ground selected for potatoes should be dry, where
no surface-water will rest. it should be rich; if not natur-
ally so, it must be made so by a sufficient quantity of good
manure. It should be plowed twice, and at least twelve
inches deep. After the first plowing, it should be har-
rowed and cross harrowed; and after the second plowing,
harrowed again, and if not very friable and free from clods
it should then be rolled. The mold cannot be too fine, as
on the depth of the plowing, and fineness of the earth,
depend the retention of that moisture so indispensable to
the health and maturing of all bulbous roots in particular.
The ground thus prepared, should then be opened off in
drills, three feet from the centre of one to the centre of the
other, and, if practicable, running north and south. When
opened, if manure is to be applied, is must then be hauled
in carts; the horse going down between the drills, the bed
of the cart will cover two drills, where the manure can be
pulled out at intervals, in quantity sufficient, not only for
the two drills described, but for one on each side in addi-
tion; all of which one hand, following with a fork, can
easily distribute and spread in the four drills.
“This done, the ground is ready for the seed. I shall
first describe the whole of the cultivation and harvesting
necessary, and then speak of the seed and its preparation
separately. The seed should be dropped in the manure,
twelve inches apart, and as quickly as a drill is planted, the
plow should follow and cover it in. The double mold-
board plow, which is the proper implement for the business,
466 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
will cover two drills by going once up and once down the
field; if the single mold-board plow is used, it will of
course cover but one drill by the same operation. When
your ground is thus gone over, your land will all be im high
drills, and can rest so for about one week, when you must
take a two-horse harrow, and harrow your drills aeross,
leaving your field as level as before your drills were opened.
There is no danger, as some would suppose, of disturbing
your seed.
“In a few days, when you can see your plants distinctly
above ground, from one end of your drills to the other, you
must take your one-horse plow, and go up and down each
drill, running the land side of your plow as close to the
plant on each side as you safely can, throwing the earth
away from it, which operation will leave your field in raised
drills between your plants. Ina few days after this you
take your double mold-board plow, and go down the centre
of the blank drills, covering all your plants nearly out of
sight, observing as you go along that the weight of earth is
thrown against, and not on, the plants. Then, in some
days after, when your plants are well over the top of your
drills, take your scuffle, an implement not unlike your cul-
tivator in this country,sand for which the cultivator can be
substituted, and go over your whole field between the drills,
giving the earth a good stirring, and not be afraid of
encroaching a little at each side on the drill. At this stage,
a boy should follow the scuffle, and pull up any weeds that
appear on the top or sides of the drills. In a few days
after this, when your plants are strong and well up, you go
down the centre between the drills, with your double mold-
board plow, the wings well apart, and throw the earth well
up to the plants. This must sometimes finish the cultiva-
tion, if the vines have spread and are closed too much, but
generally the vines will allow it, and the crop be much
benefited by one more scuffling; but this time take par-
ticular care not to disturb the drill at the bottom, as the
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 467
bulbs are now forming and spreading; then gently run
your double mold-board plow through the whole field again,
narrowing the wings of it, which will have the effect of
adding the earth, and compressing it to the bottom of the
drill, where the bulbs are forming, rather than throwing it
up tothe stalk at top, where there is sufficient already.
This finishes the cultivation.
“To prepare the seed you must select well-shaped, even
potatoes, not too small nor too large. Cut them, leaving one
good eye at least to every set; prepare them from two to
three weeks at least, before you plant; and each day, as you
cut, roll your sets in pulverized lime, and spread them on
the barn floor to dry: when dry, heap them in a corner till
taken out to plant. If this plan is pursued, and the ground
selected and prepared as directed, you may rest satisfied
that so sure as the laws of nature are invariable, and that
like effects follow like causes, as sure will a good and sound
crop of potatoes be produced in this climate with no vari-
ation in the result, except what may be occasioned by the
vicissitudes of the season.
“Ten tons of potatoes, two thousand two hundred and
forty pounds to the ton, is considered a fair crop in Ire-
land. Twelve tons an extra one—equal to three hundred
and seventy bushels the first, and four hundred and forty-
four bushels the second, allowing sixty pounds to the
bushel, which I have found to be about the average weight
of a bushel here. I have grown four crops of potatoes in
this country, in two different situations and latitudes (six
acres the smallest quantity cultivated any season). Each
crop was treated in every particular as here described,
and in three instances out of the four, I got a little over
four hundred measured bushels to the acre. The fourth
crop was only about three hundred and fifty bushels to the
acre, caused by the peculiarity of the season, which pro-
duced an almost entire failure with my neighbors, under
their management.”
468 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
POTTING GARDEN PLANTS FOR WINTER USE.
Rosks, geraniums, chrysanthemums, Cape jasmins, ete.,
which have been put into the garden borders, should
be prepared for removal to the parlor for winter, before
frost, else the plants will not be established in the pots
when removed to the parlor, and will thrive but poorly.
Select the pot which is to receive each plant, draw a cir-
cle about the plant of the size of the pot, then thrust a
sharp spade down so as to cut all the roots at the line of the
circle described. Let the plant remain, watering it tho-
roughly ; and if it droops, let it be sheltered from the sun,
In a few days new roots will begin to form within the ball
of earth described by the circle, and in three or four weeks
that ball may be carefully lifted, placed in the potfor which
it was measured, and it will go on growmg as if nothing
had happened to it. If one waits till frost, then digs up the
plant without a previous preparation of its roots, i will of-
tentimes not recover from the violence during the winter.
But by the method suggested above, roses, etc., will go on
growing and blooming through the winter.
THERE are many who suppose it necessary to leave the
second growth of grass undisturbed, to rot on the ground,
in order to preserve the fertility of old meadows in grass
where top dressing with manure is not resorted to. But
such management is oftentimes extremely hurtful, and the
injury is proportioned to the amount left untrodden and
unfed. If the amount left standing, or laying loose upon
the surface, be considerable, it makes a harbor for mice,
which will, under cover of the old grass, intersect the sur-
face of the land with paths innumerable, from which they
cut all the grass that comes in their way.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING 469
MARY HOWITT’S USE OF FLOWERS.
Heprz is another of those beautiful gems which can never
be brought to the light too often. And when more appro-
priately than in the middle of our spring-time, while burst-
ing buds and fragrant blossoms are delighting every
sense ?
God might have made the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak-tree and the cedar-tree,
Without a flower at all.
We might have had enough, enough
For every want of ours,
For luxury, medicine, and toil,
And yet have had no flowers.
The ore within the mountain mine
Requireth none to grow,
Nor does it need the lotus flower
To make the river flow.
The clouds might give abundant rain,
The nightly dews might fall,
And the herb that keepeth life in man,
Might yet have drunk them all.
Then wherefore, wherefore were they made
And dyed with rainbow light,
All fashioned with supremest grace,
Upspringing day and night?
Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountains high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no man passeth by?
Our outward life requires them not,
Then wherefore had they birth?
To minister delight to man—
To beautify the earth.
470 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALE
To comfort man, to whisper hope
Whene’er his faith is dim,
For whoso careth for the flowers,
Will much more care for Him.
fe chest
WHAT ARE FLOWERS GOOD FOR?
“] wave said and written a great deal to my countrymen
about the cultivation of flowers, ornamental gardening, and
rural embellishments ; and I would read them a homily on
the subject every day of every remaining year of my life,
if I thought it would induce them to make this a matter of
particular attention and care. When a man asks me, what
is the use of shrubs and flowers, my first impulse is always,
to look under his hat and see the length of his ears. Iam
heartily sick of measuring everything by a standard of
mere utility and profit; and as heartily do I pity the man,
who can see no good in life but in the pecuniary gain, or
in the mere animal indulgences of eating and drinking.”—
Colman’s Agricultural Tour.
We protest against the sauciness of the italicized line.
Mr. Colman never feels any such impulse; and if he does,
he ought to suspect his own ears. Nothing is more prepos-
terous than interflagellations among men on the matter of
likes and dislikes. Every man selects Ais ruling passion,
and scoffs at such as do not grow enthusiastic with him. A
market gardener rails at a florist for fol-de-rol trifles; and
the florist looks at the length of the fellow’s ears who has
nothing but turnips, onions, and cabages; while a big
Miami farmer, who puts in his five-hundred-acre corn-patch,
by way of summer amusement, regards both as small affairs.
We find no fault with those who possess a super-ardent
enthusiasm for flowers; but when they throw it in other
people’s faces, and cull them brutes and asses, for not liking
pretty flowers, we think the thing has been carried quite far
enough. We love good manners along with pretty flowers.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 471
THE BLIGHT IN THE PEAR-TREE.*
ITS CAUSE AND A REMEDY FORIT.
THE year 1844 will long be remembered for the exten-
sive ravages of that disease hitherto denominated jire-blight.
Beginning at the Atlantic coast, we have heard of it in
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indi-
ana, and as far as Tennessee; and it is probable that it has
been felt in every fruit-growing State in the Union where
the season of 1843 was the same as that west of the Alle-
ghany range, namely, cold in spring, dry throughout the
summer, and a wet and warm fall, with early and sudden
winter.
In Indiana and Ohio the blight has prevailed to such an
extent as to spread dismay among cultivators; destroying
entire collections—taking half the trees in large orchards—
affecting both young and old trees, whether grafted or
seedings in soils of every kind. Many have seen the labor
and fond hope of years cut off, in one season, by an invisible
destroyer, against which none could guard; because, in the
conflicting opinions, none were certain whether the disease
was atmospheric, insect or chemical.
I shall now proceed to describe that blight: known in the
western States (without pretending to identify it with the
blight known in New York and New England), to examine
the theories proposed for its causation, and to present what
now seems to me the true cause.
I. Descriprion.—Although the signs of it, as will appear
in the sequel, may be detected long before the leaves put
out in the spring, yet its full effects do not begin to appear
until May, or if the spring be backward, until June. On
the wood of the last year will be found a point where the
* Read before the Indiana Horticultural Society, and communicated by
Mr. Beecher to Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, December, 1844.
472, PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
bark is either dead and dry, or else at the same point the
bark will be puffed, softened, or sappy with thickened sap
—these two appearances indicating only different degrees
of the same blight. Wherever the bark is dead and dry,
the limb will flourish above it, make new wood, ripen its
fruit, but perish the ensuing winter. In the other case, as
soon as the circulation of the sap becomes active, the point
described shows signs of disease, the leaf turns to a darker
brown than is natural to its ordinary decay, beg nearly
black, and the wood perishes.
The disease, at first, blights the terminal portions of the
branch; but the affection spreads gradually downward,
and sometimes affects the whole trunk. The time from the
first appearance of the blight to that im which any affected
part dies, is various ; sometimes two or three weeks—some-
times a day only; and sometimes, but rarely, even a few
hours consummate the disease.
On dissecting the branch, the wood is of a dirty, brown-
ish, yellow color; the sap thick and unctuous, of a sour
disagreeable odor, like that of a fermented watermelon, on
the tops of potato vines after they have been frosted. In
still, moist days, where the blight is extensive in an orchard,
this odor fills the air, and is disagreeably perceptible at
some distance from the trees.
Sometimes the bark bursts, the sap exudes, and runs
down, turning black; and its acridity will destroy vegeta-
tion on which it may drop, and shoots, at a distance from
the trunk, upon which the rain washes this ichor, will soon
perish. When we come to treat of the cause of this dis-
ease, it will be important to remember this malignancy of
the fluids.
We are carefully to distinguish these appearances, pecu-
liar to what I suppose ought to be called winter-blight, from
another and a swmmer-blight. In this last, the leaf is affected
at first in spots; gradually the whole leaf turns russet
color and drops. Along the wood may be seen the hard-
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 473
ened trail as of a slimy insect, of an ash color. The wood
suffers very little by this summer-blight, and sometimes
none. The winter-blight is found on almost all kinds of
trees. This summer it has affected the apple, the pear, the
peach, the quince, the English hawthorn, privet, black
birch, Spanish chestnut, elder, and calycanthus. I enume-
rate the most of these kinds on the authority of J. H.
James, of Urbana, Ohio, and C. W. Elliott, of Cincinnati,
having observed it myself only on fruit-trees.
II. TuHrortes.—A variety of theories exist as to the
causes of this disease. Some are mere imaginations; some
are only ingenious; and some so near to what I suppose to
be the truth, that it is hardly possible to imagine how the
discovery was not made.
The injury is done in the fall, but is not seen till spring
or summer, or even the next fall. Thus, six months or a
year intervene between the cause and the effect—a sufficient
reason for the difficulty of detecting the origin of the evil.
1. Some have alleged that the rays of the sun, passing
through vapors which arise about the trees, concentrate
upon the branches, and destroy them by the literal energy
of fire. Were this true, the young and tender shoots would
suffer first and most; all pear-trees would suffer alike ; all
moist and hot summers would be affected with blight ; her-
baceous plants would suffer more than ligneous: all of
which results are contrary to facts.
2. Some have supposed the soil to contain deletencus
substances, or to be wanting in properties necessary to
health. But in either case such a cause of the blight ap-
pears untrue, when we consider that trees suffer in all soils,
rich or poor; that, in the same soil, one tree is blighted
and the next tree escapes; that they will flourish for twenty
years and then blight; that a tree partially diseased recoy-
ers, and thrives for ten or more years without recurrence of
blight.
3. It has been attributed to violent and sudden changes
474 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
of temperature in the air and of moisture in the earth; to
sudden change from sward to high tillage ; and the result is
stated to be an “‘overplus” of sap, or a “surfeit.” All
these causes occur every year; but the blight does not
every year follow them. Changes of temperature, and vio-
lent changes in the condition of the soil, may be allied with
the true cause. But when only these things exist, no blight
follows.
4, Others have attributed the disease to over-stimulation
by high manuring, or constant tillage; and it has been said
that covering the roots with stones and rubbish, or lay-
ing the orchard down to grass, would prevent the evil.
Facts warrant no such conclusions. Pear-trees in Gibson
County, Indiana, on a clay soil, with blue slaty subsoil,
were affected this year more severely than any of which
we have heard. Pears in southern parts of this State, on
red clay, where the ground had long been neglected, suf
fered as much as along the rich bottom lands of the Wa-
bash about Vincennes. If there was any difference it was
in favor of the richest land. About Mooresville, Morgan
County, Indiana, pears have been generally affected, and
those in grass lands as much as those in open soils. Aside
from these facts, it is well known that pear-trees do not
blight in those seasons when they make the rankest growth
more than in others, They will thrive rampantly for years,
no evil arising from their luxuriance, and then suddenly
die of blight.
5. It has been supposed by a few to be the effect of age,
the disease beginning on old varieties, and propagated upon
new varieties by contagion. Were this the true cause, we
should expect it to be most frequently developed in those
pear regions where old varieties most abound. But this
disease seems to be so little known in England, that Lou.
don, in his elaborate H’neyclopedia of Gardening, does not
even mention it. Mr. Manning’s statement will be given
further on, to the same purport.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 475
6. Insect theory: The confidence with which eastern
cultivators pronounce the cause to be an insect, has m part
served to cover up singular discrepancies in the separate
statements in respect to the ravages, and even the species
of this destroyer. The Genesee Farmer of July, 1848,
says, “the cause of the disease was for many years a mat-
ter of dispute, and is so still by some persons; but the ma-
jority are now fully convinced that it is the work of an
insect (scolytus pyri). T. W. Harris, in his work on insects,
speaks of the minuteness and obscure habits of this insect,
as ‘‘reasons why it has eluded the researches of those per-
sons who disbelieve in its existence as the cause of the
blasting of the limbs of the pear-tree.’ Dr. Harris evi-
dently supposed, until so late as 1843, that this insect in-
fested only the pear-tree ; for he says, “the discovery of
the blight-beetle in the limbs of the apple-tree, is a new
fact in natural history; but it is easily accounted for, be-
cause this tree belongs not only to the same natural group,
but also to the same genus as the pear-tree. It is not,
therefore, surprising, that both the pear and the apple-tree
should occasionally be attacked by the same insect.” [See
an article in the Massachusetts Ploughman, summer of
1843, quoted in Genesee Farmer, July, 1843.]
This insect is said to eat through the alburnwm, the hard
wood, and even a part of the pith, and to destroy the
branch by separation of part from part, as a saw would.
On these facts, which there is no room to question, we
make two remarks.
Ist. That the blight thus produced is limited, and proba-
bly sectional or local. No account has met my eye which
leads me to suppose that any considerable injury has been
done by it. Mr. Manning, of Salem, Mass., in the second
edition of his “ Book of Flowers,” states that he has never
“ had any trees affected by it’—the blight. Yet his garden
and nursery has existed for twenty years, and contained
immense numbers of trees.
476 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
2d. It is very plain that neither Mr. Lowell, originally,
nor Dr, Harris, nor any who describe the blight as caused
by the blight-beetle, had any notion of that disease which
passes by the same name in the middle and western States.
The blight of the scolytus pyri is a mere girdling of the
branches—a mechanical separation of parts; and no men-
tion is made of the most striking facts incident to the great
blight—the viscid unctuous sap; the bursting of the bark,
through which it issues; and its poisonous effects on the
young shoots upon which it drops.
We do not doubt the insect-blight ; but we are sure that it is
not our blight. We feel very confident, also, that this blight,
which from its devastations may be called the great blight,
has been felt in New England, in connection with the insect-
blight, and confounded with it, and the effects of two dif-
ferent causes happening to appear in conjunction, have
been attributed to one, and the least influential cause.
The writer in Fessenden’s American Gardener (Mr. Low-
ell?) says of the blight, “it is sometimes so rapid in its
progress, that in a few hours from its first appearance the
whole tree will appear to be mortally diseased.” This is
not insect-blight ; for did the blight-beetle eat so suddenly
around the whole trunk? Now here is a striking appear-
ance of the great blight, confounded with the minor blight,
as we think will appear in the sequel.
This theory has stood in the way of a discovery of the
true cause of the great blight; for every cultivator has
gone in search of insects; they have been found in great
plenty, and in great variety of species, and their harmless
presence accused with all the mischief of the season. A
writer in the Furmer’s Advocate, Jamestown, N. C., dis-
cerned the fire-blight, and traced it to “small, red, pellucid
insects, briskly moving from place to place on the branches.”
This is not the scolytus pyri of Prof. Peck and Dr. Harris.
Dr. Mosher, of Cincinnati, in a letter published in the
Farmer and Gardener for June, 1844, describes a third
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 477
insect—“ very minute brown-colored aphides, snugly secreted
in the axilla of every leaf on several small branches; . . .
most of them were busily engaged with their proboscis
inserted through the tender cuticle of this part of the petiole
of the leaf, feasting upon the vital juices of the tree. The
leaves being thus deprived of the necessary sap for nourish-
ment and elaboration soon perished,. . . while all that part
of the branch and trunk below, dependent upon the elabo-
rated sap of the deadened leaves above, shrunk, turned
black, and dried up,” p. 261.
Lindley, in his work on Horticulture, p. 42-46, has de-
tailed experiments illustrating vegetable perspiration, from
which we may form an idea of the amount of fluid which
these “ very minute brown-colored aphides ” would have to
drink. A sunflower, three and a half feet high, perspired
_ in a very warm day thirty ounces—nearly two pounds; on
another day, twenty ounces. ‘Taking the old rule, “a pint
a pound,” nearly a quart of fluid was exhaled by a sun-
flower in twelve hours; and the vessels were still inflated
with a fresh supply drawn from the roots. Admitting that
the leaves of a fruit-tree have a less current of sap than a
sunflower or a grape-ving. yet in the months of May and
June, the amount of sap to be exhausted by these very
minute brown aphides, would be so great, that if they
drank it so suddenly as to cause a tree to die in a day, they
would surely augment in bulk enough to be discovered
without a lens. If some one had accounted for the low
water in the Mississippi, in the summer of 1843, by saying
that buffaloes had drank up all the upper Missouri, and cut
off the supply, we should be at a loss which most to pity,
the faith of the narrator, or the probable condition of the
buffaloes after their feat of imbibition.
But the most curious results follow these feats of suction.
The limbs and trunk delow shrink and turn black, for want
of that elaborated sap extracted by the aphides. And yet
every year we perform artificially this very operation in
478 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ringing or decortication of branches, for the purpose of
accelerating maturation or improving the fruit. Every year
the saw takes off a third, a half, and sometimes more, of a
living tree; and the effect is to produce new shoots, not
death. Is an operation which can be safely performed by
man, deadly when performed by an insect? Dr. Masher
did not detect the insects without extreme search, and then
only in colonies, on healthy branches. Do whole trees
wither in a day by the mere suction of such insects? Had
they been supposed to pozson the fluids, the theory would
be less exceptionable, since poisons in minute quantities
may be very malignant.
While we admit a limited mischief of insects, they can
never be the cause of the prevalent blight of the middle
and western States—such a blight as prevailed in and
around Cincinnati in the summer of 1844—nor of that .
blight which prevailed in 1832. The blight-beetle, after
most careful search and dissection, has not been found, nor
any trace or passage of it. Dr. Mosher’s insect may be set
aside without further remark.
I think that further observation will confirm the follow-
ing conclusions :
1. Insects are frequently fund feeding in various ways
upon blighted trees, or on trees which after ward become so.
2. Trees are fatally blighted on which no insects are dis-
cerned feeding—neither aphides nor scolytus pyri.
3. Multitudes of trees have such insects on them as are
in other cases supposed to cause the blight, without a sign
of blight following. This has been the case in our own
garden.
III. Causz or tHE Brigut.—The Indiana Horticultural
Society, early in the summer of 1844, appointed a committee
to collect and investigate facts on the Fire-Blight. While
serving on this committee, and inquiring in all the pear-
growing regions, we learned that Reuben Reagan, of Putnam
County, Ind., was in possession of much information, and
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 479
supposed himself to have discovered th» cause of this evil ;
and to him we are indebted for a first sug gestion of the cause.
Mr. Reagan has for more than twelve years past suspected
that this disease originated in the fall previous to the sum-
mer on which it declares itself, During the last winter
Mr. Reagan predicted the blight, and in his pear-orchards
he marked the trees that would suffer, and pointed to
the spot which would be the seat of the disease; and his
prognostications were strictly verified. After gathering
from him all the information which a limited time would
allow, we obtained from Aaron Alldredge, of Indianapolis,
a nurseryman of great skill, and possessed of careful,
cautious habits of obgervation, much corroborative informa-
tion ; and particularly a tabular account of the blight for
nine years past in his nursery and orchard.
The spring of 1843 opened early, but cold and wet, until
the last of May. The summer was both dry and cool, and
trees made very little growth of new wood. Toward
autumn, however, the drought ceased, copious rains satu-
rated the ground, and warm weather started all trees into
vigorous, though late, growth. At this time, while we
hoped for a long fall and a late winter, on the contrary we
were surprised by an early and sudden winter, and with
unusual severity at the very beginning. In the West,
much corn was ruined and more damaged; and hundreds of
bushels of apples were caught on the trees and spoiled—one
cultivator alone losing five hundred bushels. Caught in this
early winter, what was the condition of fruit-trees? ‘They
were making rapid growth, every part in a state of excite-
ment, the wood unripe, the passages of ascent and descent
impleted with sap. In this condition, the fluids were sud-
denly frozen—the growth instantly checked; and the
whole tree, from a state of great excitability, was, by one
shock, rudely forced into a state of rest. Warm suns, for
a time, followed severe nights. Wkat woud be the effect
of this freezing and sudden thawing upon the fluids and
480 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
their vessels? We have been able to- find so little written
upon vegetable morbid anatomy (probably from. the want
of access to books), that we can give but an imperfect account
of the derangement produced upon the circulating fluids
by congelation. We cannot state the specific changes pro-
duced by cold upon the ascending sap, or on the cambium,
nor upon the elaborated descending current. There is rea-
son to suppose that the two latter only suffer, and probably
only the last. That freezing and thawing decompose the
coloring matter of plants is known; but what other decom-
position, if any, is effected, we know not. The effect of con-
gelation upon the descending sap of pear and apple-trees, is
to turn it to a viscid, unctuous state. It assumes a reddish
brown color; becomes black by exposure to the air; is
poisonous to vegetables even when applied upon the leaf.
Whether in some measure this follows all degrees of con-
gelation, or only under certain conditions, we have no means
of knowing.
The effect of freezing and thawing upon the tissues and
sap-vessels is better known. Congelation is accompanied
with expansion; the tender vessels are either burst or lace-
rated; the excitability of the partsis impaired or destroyed ;
the air is expelled from the aériferous cavities, and forced
into the passages for fluids; and lastly, the tubes for the
conveyance of fluids are obstructing by a thickening of their
sides.* The fruit-trees, in the fall of 1843, were then
brought into a morbid state—the sap thickened and dis-
eased ; the passages lacerated, obstructed, and probably, in
many instances burst. The sap elaborated, and now pass-
ing down in an injured state, would descend slowly, by
reason of its inspissation, the torpidity of the parts, and the
injured condition of the vessels. The grosser parts, natu-
rally the most sluggish, would tend to lodge and gradually
collect at the junction of fruit-spurs, the forks of branches,
* Lindley’s Horticulture, p. 81-82.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 481
or wherever the condition of the sap-vessels favored a lodg:
ment. In some cases the passages are wholly obstructed ;
in others, only in part.
At length the spring approaches. In early pruning, the
cultivator will find, in those trees which will ere long deve-
lop blight, that the knife is followed by an unctuous sap,
and that the liber is of a greenish yellow color. These will
be the first signs, and the practised eye may detect them
long before a leaf is put forth.
When the season is advanced sufficiently to excite the
tree to action, the sap will, as usual, ascend by the albur-
num, which has probably been but little injured ; the leaf
puts out, and no outward sign of disease appears; nor will
it appear until the leaf prepares the downward current.
May, June and July, are the months when the growth is
most rapid, and when the tree requires the most elaborate
sap; and in these months the blight is fully developed.
When the descending fluid reaches the point where, in the
previous fall, a total obstruction had taken place, it is as
effectually stopped as if the branch were girdled. For the
sap which had lodged there would, by the winds and sun,
be entirely dried. This would not be the case if the sap
was good and the vitality of the wood unimpaired; but
where the sap and vessels are both diseased, the sun affects
the branch on the tree just as it would if severed and lying
on the ground. There will, therefore, be found on the tree,
branches with spots where the bark is dead and shrunk
away below the level of the surrounding bark; and at
these points the current downward is wholly stopped.
Only the outward part, however, is dead, while the albur-
num, or sap-wood, is but partially injured. Through the
alburnum, then, the sap from the roots passes up, enters
the leaf, and men are astonished to see a branch, seemingly
dead in the middle, growing thriftily at its extremity. No
insect-theory can account for this case; yet it is perfectly
plain and simple when we consider that there are two cur-
482 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
rents of sap, one of which may be destroyed, and the other
for a limited time go on. The blight, under this aspect, is
nothing but ringing or decortication, effected by diseased
sap, destroying the parts in which it lodges, and then
itself drying up. The branch will grow, fruit will set,
and frequently become larger and finer flavored than
usual.
But in a second class of cases, the downward current
comes to a point where the diseased sap had effected’ only
a partial lodgment. The vitality of the neighboring parts
was preserved, and the diseased fluids have been undried
by wind or sun, and remain more or less inspissated. The
descending current meets and takes up more or less of this
diseased matter, according to the particular condition of the
sap. Wherever the elaborated sap passes, after touching
this diseased region, it will carry its poison along with it
down the trunk, and, by the lateral vessels, in toward the
pith. We may suppose that a violence which would destroy
the health of the outer parts, would, to some degree, rup-
ture the inner sap-vessels. By this, or by some unknown
way, the diseased sap is taken into the inner,* upward cur-
rent, and goes into the general circulation. If it bein a
diluted state, or in small quantities, languor and decline will
be the result ; if in large quantities, and concentrated, the
branch will die suddenly, and the odor of it will be that of
frost-bitten vegetation. All the different degrees of mor.
tality result from the quantity and quality of the diseased
sap which is taken into circulation. In conclusion, then,
where, in one class of cases, the feculent matter was, in the
fall, so virulent as to destroy the parts where it lodged, and
was then dried by exposure to wind and sun, the branch
above will live, even through the summer, but perish the
next winter; and the spring afterward, standing bare amid
green branches, the cultivator may suppose the branch to
* See Lindley, p. 32.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 483 .
have blighted that spring, alth ugh the cause of death was
seated eighteen months before. When, in the other class
of cases, the diseased sap is less virulent in the fall, but
probably growing worse through the spring, a worse blight
ensues, and a more sudden mortality.
We will mention some proofs of the truth of this explana-
tion.
1. The two great blight years throughout the region of
Indianapolis, 1832 and 1844, were preceded by asummer and
fall such as we have described. In the autumns of both
1831 and 1843, the orchards were overtaken by a sudden
freeze while in a fresh-growing state ; and in both cases the
consequence was excessive destruction the ensuing spring
and summer.
2. In consequence of this diagnosis, it has been found
practicable to predict the blight six months before its devel-
opment. The statement of this fact, on paper, may seem
a small measure of proof; but it would weigh much with
any candid man to be told, by an experienced nurseryman,
this is such a fall as will make blight; to be taken, during
the winter into the orchard, and told, this tree has been
struck at the junction of these branches; that tree is not at
all affected; this tree will die entirely the next season ; this
tree will go first on this side, etc., and to find, afterward,
the prediction verified.
3. This leads us to state separately, the fact, that, after
such a fall, bliighted-trees may be ascertained during the
process of late winter or early spring pruning.
In pruning before the sap begins to rise freely, no sap
should follow the knife in a healthy tree. But in trees
which have been affected with blight, a sticky, viscid sap
exudes from the wound.
4. Trees which ripen their wood and leaves early, are
seldom affected. This ought to elicit careful observation ;
for, if found true, .t will be an important element in deter
mining the value of varieties of the pear in the middle and
484 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
western States, where the late and warm autumns render
orchards more liable to winter blight than New England
orchards, An Orange Bergamot, grafted upon an apple
stock, had about run out ; it made a small and feeble growth,
and cast its leaves in the summer of 1843, long before frost.
It escaped the blight entirely ; while young trees, and of the
same kind (we believe), standing about it, and growing vig-
orously till the freeze, perished the next season. I have
before me a list of more than fifty varieties, growing in the
orchard of Aaron Alldredge, of Indianapolis, and their history
since 1836; and so far as it can be ascertained, late-grow-
ing varieties are the ones, in every case, subject to blight ;
and of those which have always escaped, the most part are
known to ripen leaf and wood early.
5. Wherever artificial causes have either produced or
prevented a growth so late as to be overtaken by a freeze,
blight has, respectively, been felt or avoided. Out of 200
pear-trees, only four escaped in 1832, in the orchard of Mr.
Reagan. These four had, the previous spring, been trans-
planted, and had made little or no growth during summer
or fall. If, however, they had recovered themselves, dur-
ing the summer, so as to grow in the autumn, transplant-
ing would have had just the other effect ; as was the case
in a row of pear-trees, transplanted by Mr. Alldredge in
1843. They stood still through the summer and made
growth in the fall—were frozen—and in 1844 manifested
severe blight. Mr. Alldredge’s orchard affords another
instructive fact. Having a row of the St. Michael pear (of
which any cultivator might have been proud), standing
close by his stable, he was accustomed, in the summer of
1848, to throw out, now and then, manure about them, to
force their growth. Under this stimulus they were making
excessive growth when winter-struck. Of all his orchard,
they suffered, the ensuing summer, the most severely. Of
twenty-two trees twelve were affected by the blight, and
eight entirely killed. Of seventeen trees of the Bell pear,
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 485
eleven suffered, but none were killed. All in this region
know the vigorous habit of this tree. Of eight Crassane
Bergamot (a late grower), five were affected and two
killed. In an orchard of 325 trees of 79 varieties, one in
seven blighted, 25 were totally destroyed. Although a
minute observation was not made on each tree, yet, as a
general fact, those which suffered were trees of a full habit
and of a late growth.
6. Mr. White, a nurseryman near Mooresville, Morgan
County, Indiana, in an orchard of from 150 to 200 trees,
had not a single case of the blight in the year 1844, though
all around him its ravages were felt. What were the facts
in this case? His orchard is planted on a mound-like piece
of ground; is high, of a sandy, gravelly soil: earlier by a
week than nursery soils in this county; and in the summer
of 1843 his trees grew through the summer; wound up
and shed their leaves early in the fall, and during the warm
spell made no second growth. The orchard, then, that
escaped, was one on such a soil as insured an early growth,
so that the winter fell upon ripened wood.
7. It may be objected, that if the blight degan in the new
and growing wood, it would appear there; whereas the
seat of the evil, ¢. e. the place where the bark is diseased
or dead, is lower down and on old wood. Certainly, it
should be; for the returning sap falls some ways down
before it effects a lodgment.
8. It might be said that spring-frosts might produce this
disease. But in the spring of 1834, in the last of May,
after the forest-trees were in full leaf, there came frost so
severe as to cut every leaf; and to this day the dead tops
of the beech attest the power of the frost. But no blight
occurred that year in orchard, garden or nursery.
9. It may be asked why forest-trees do not suffer. To
some extent they do. But usually the dense shade pre-
serves the moisture of the soil, and favors an equal growth
during the spring and summer; so that the excitability of
486 PLAIN AND PLEASANT LALK
the tree is spent before autumn, and it is going to rest
when frost strikes it.
10. It may be inquired why fall-growing shrubs are not
always blighted, since many kinds are invariably caught by
the frost in a growing state.
We reply, first, that we are not to say that every tree or
shrub suffers from cold in the same manner. We assert it
of fruit-trees because it has been observed; it must be
asserted of other trees only when ascertained.
We reply more particularly, that a mere frost is not sup-
posed to do the injury. The conditions under which blight
is supposed to originate are, a growing state of the tree, a
sudden freeze, and sudden thawing.
We would here add, that many things are yet to be
ascertained before this theory can be considered as settled ;
as the actual state of the sap after congelation, ascertained
by experiment; the condition of sap-vessels, as ascertained
by dissection; whether the congelation, or the thawing, or
both, produce the mischief; whether the character of the
season following the fall-injury may not materially modify
the malignancy of the disease; seasons that are hot, moist
and cloudy, propagating the evil; and others dry, and cool,
restraining growth and the dsease. It is to be hoped that
these points will be carefully investigated, not by conjec-
ture, but by scientific processes.
11. We have heard it objected, that trees grafted in the
spring blight in the graft during the summer. If the stock
had been affected in the fall, blight would arise from 7¢ ; if
the scion had, in common with the tree from which it was
cut, been injured, blight must arise from 7¢.
Blight is frequently caused in the nursery; and the cul-
tivator, who has brought trees from a distance, and with
much expense, has scarcely planted them before they show
blight and die.
12. It is objected, that while only a single branch is at
first affected, the evil is imparted to the whole tree; not
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 487
only to the wood of the last year, but to the old branches,
We reply, that if a single branch only should be affected by
fall-frost, and be so severely affected as to become a reposi-
tory of much malignant fluid, it might gradually enter the
system of the whole tree, through the circulation. This
fact shows, why cutting is a partial remedy; every diseased
branch removed, removes so much poison; it shows also
why cutting from below the seat of the disease (as if to fall
below the haunt of a supposed insect), is beneficial. The
further the cut is made from that point where the sap has
clogged the passages, the less of it will remain to enter the
circulation.
13. Trees of great vigor of constitution, in whose system
but little poison exists, may succeed after a while in reject-
ing the evil, and recover. Where much enters the system,
the tree must die ; and with a suddenness proportioned to
the amount of poison circulated.
14, A rich and dry soil would be likely to promote early
growth, and the tree would finish its work in time; but a
rich and moist soil, by forcing the growth, would prepare
the tree for blight; so that rich soils may prevent or pre-
pare for the blight, and the difference will be the difference
of the respective soils in producing an early instead of a late
growth.
IV. Remepy.—So long as the blight was believed to be
of insect origin, it appeared totally irremediable. Ifthe fore-
going reasoning be found correct, it will be plain that the
scourge can only be occasional; that it may be in a degree
prevented ; and to some extent remedied where it exists.
1. We should begin by selecting for pear orchards a
warm, light, rich, dry and early soil. This will secure an
early growth and ripe wood before winter sets in.
2. So soon as observation has detérmined what kinds are
naturally early growers and early ripeners of wood, such
should be selected; as they will be least likely to come
under those conditions in which blight occurs.
488 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
3. Wherever orchards are already planted; or where a
choice in soils cannot be had, the cultivator may know by
the last of August or September, whether a fall-growth is
to be expected. To prevent it, we suggest immediate root-
pruning. This will benefit the tree at any rate, and
will probably, by immediately restraining growth, prevent
blight.
4. Whenever blight has occurred, we know of no remedy
but free and early cutting. In some cases it will remove
all diseased matter; in some it will alleviate only; but in
bad blight, there is neither in this, nor in anything else that
we are aware of, any remedy.
There are two additional subjects, with which we shall
close this paper.
1. This blight is not to be confounded with winter-kill-
ing. In the winter of either 1837 or 1838, im March a deep
snow fell (in the region of Indianapolis) and was immediately
followed by brilliant sun. Thousands of nursery-trees per- ~
ished in consequence, but without putting out leaves, or
lingering. It is a familiar fact to orchardists, that severe
cold, followed by warm suns, produce a bursting of the
bark along the trunk; but usually at the surface of the
ground.
2. We call the attention of cultivators to the disease of
the peach-tree, called “The Yellows.” We have not spoken
of it as the same disease as the blight in the pear and the
apple, only because we did not wish to embarrass this sub-
ject by too many issues. We will only say, that it is the
opinion of the most intelligent cultivators among us, that
the yellows are nothing but the development of the blight
according to the peculiar habits of the peach-tree. We men-
tion it, that observation may be directed to the facts.
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 489
PROGRESS OF HORTICULTURE IN INDIANA.*
1 am induced to send you some remarks upon Horticul-
tural matters, from observing your disposition to make your
magazine not merely a record of specific processes, and a
register of plants and fruits, but also a chronicle of the
yearly progress and condition of the Horticultural art. I
should be glad if I could in any degree thus repay the pleas-
ure which others have given me through your numbers, by
reciprocal efforts.
The Indiana Horticultural State fair is held annually, on
the 4th and 5th of October. Experience has shown that it
should be earlier; for, although a better assortment of late
fruits, in which, hitherto, we have chiefly excelled, is se-
cured, it is at the expense of small fruits and flowers, The
floral exhibition was meagre—the frost having already visit-
ed and despoiled our gardens. The chief attraction, as, in
* an agricultural community, it must long ccntinue to be, was
the exhibition of fruit. My recollection of New England
fruits, after an absence of more than ten years, is not dis-
tinct ; but my impression is, that so fine a collection of fruits
could scarcely be shown there. The luxuriance of the peach,
the plum, the pear and the apple, is such, in this region, as
to afford the most perfect possible specimens. The vigor
of fruit-trees, in such a soil and under a heaven so conge-
nial, produces fruits which are very large without being
coarse-fleshed ; the flavor concentrated, and the color very
high. It is the constant remark of emigrants from the
Kast, that our apples surpass those to which they have been
accustomed. Many fruits which I remember in Connecticut
as light-colored, appear with us almost refulgent. All sum-
mer and early fall apples were gone before our exhibition;
but between seventy and a hundred varieties uf winter ap-
* A letter published in Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, February,
1840.
490 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
ples were exhibited. We never expect to see finer. Our
most popular winter apples are: Yellow Bellflower ; White
Bellflower (called Detroit by the gentlemen of Cincinnati —
Horticultural Society—but for reasons which are not satisfac-
tory tomy mind. What has become of the White Bellflower
of Coze, if this is not it?) Newtown Spitzenberg, exceed-
ingly fine with us; Canfield, Jennetting or Neverfail, escap-
ing spring frosts by late blossoming, very hardy, a great
bearer every year; the fruit comes into eating in February,
is tender, juicy, mild and sprightly, and preferred with us
to the Green Newtown pippin—keeping full as well, bearing
better, the pulp much more manageable in the mouth, and
the apple has the peculiar property of bearing frosts, and
even freezing, without material injury; Green Newtown
pippin; Michael Henry pippin (very fine); Pryor’s Red,
in flavor resembling the New England Seek-no-further ;
Golden Russet, the prince of small apples, and resembling a
fine butter-pear more nearly than any apple in our orchards
—an enormous bearer; some limbs exhibited were clustered
with fruit, more like bunches of grapes than apples; Milam,
favorite early winter; Rambo, the same. But the apple
most universally cultivated is the Vandervere pippin, only a
second or third-rate table apple, but having other qualities
which quite ravish the hearts of our farmers. The tree is
remarkably vigorous and healthy; it almost never fails in a
crop; when all others miss, the Vandervere pippin hits; the
fruit, which is very large and comely, is a late winter fruit—
yet swells so quickly as to be the first and best summer
cooking apple. If its flesh (which is coarse) were fine, and
its (too sharp) flavor equalled that of the Golden Russet, it
would stand without a rival, or near neighbor, at the very
head of the list of winter apples. As it is, it is a first-rate
tree, bearing a second-rate apple. A hybrid between it
and the Golden Russet, or Newtown Spitzenberg, appropri-
ating the virtues of both, would leave little more to be
hoped for or wished. The Baldwin has never come up to
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 491
its eastern reputation with us; the Rhode Island Greening
is eaten for the sake of “auld lang syne;” the Roxbury
russet is not yet in bearing—instead of it several false
varieties have been presented at our exhibitions. All the
classic apples of your orchards are planted here, but are
yet on probation.
Nothing can exhibit better the folly of trusting to seed-
ling orchards for fruit, for a main supply, than our experi-
ence in this matter. The early settlers could not bring
trees from Kentucky, Virginia or Pennsylvania—and, as
the next resort, brought and planted seeds of popular ap-
ples. A later population found no nurseries to supply the
awakening demand for fruit-trees, and resorted also to plant-
ing seed. That which, at first, sprang from necessity, has
been continued from habit, and from an erroneous opinion
that seedling fruit was better than grafted. An immense
number of seedling trees are found in our State. Since the
Indiana Horticultural Society began to collect specimens of
these, more than one hundred and fifty varieties have been
sent up for inspection, Our rule is to reject every apple
which, the habits of the tree and the quality of its fruit
being considered, has a superior or equal already in cultiva-
tion. Of all the number presented, not six have vindicated
their claims to a name or a place—and not more than three
will probably be known ten years hence. While, then, we
encourage cultivators to raise seedlings experimentally, it
is the clearest folly to reject the established varieties and
trust to inferior seedling orchards. From facts which I have
collected there has been planted, during the past year, in
this State, at least one hundred thousand apple-trees. Every
year the demand increases. It is supposed that the next
year will surpass this by at least twenty-five thousand.
In connection with apple orchards, our farmers are
increasingly zealous in pear cultivation. We are fortunate
in having secured to our nurseries not only the most ap-
proved old varieties, but the choicest new pears of British,
492 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
Continental or American origin. A few years ago to eaca
one hundred apple-trees, our nurseries sold, perhaps, two
pear-trees ; now they sell at least twenty to a hundred.
Very large pear orchards are established, and in some in-
stances are now beginning to bear. I purchased Williams’s
Bon Chrétien in our market last fall for seventy-five cents
the bushel. This pear, with the St. Michael’s, Beurré Diel,
Beurré d’Aremberg, Passe Colmar, Duchesse d’Angouléme,
Seckel, and Marie Louise, are the most widely diffused, and
all of them regularly at our exhibitions. Every year ena-
bles us to test other varieties. The Passe Colmar and
Beurré d’Aremberg have done exceedingly well—a branch
of the latter, about eighteen inches in length, was exhib-
ited at our Fair, bearing over twenty pears, none of which
were smaller than a turkey’s egg. The demand for pear-
trees, this year, has been such that our nurseries have not
been able to answer it—and they are swept almost entirely
clean. I may as well mention here that, beside many more
neighborhood nurseries, there are in this State eighteen
which are large and skillfully conducted.
The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their general
cultivation. Apple-trees, not under ten feet high, and finely
grown, sell at ten, and pears at twenty cents; and in some
nurseries, apples may be had at séx cents. This price, it
should be recollected, is in a community where corn brings
from twelve to twenty cents only, a bushel; wheat sells
from forty-five to fifty ; hay at five dollars the ton. During
the season of 1843-44, apples of the finest sorts (Jennetting,
green Newtown pippin, etc.), sold at my door, as late as
April, for twenty-five cents a bushel—and dull at that. This
winter they command thirty-seven cents. Attention is in
creasingly turned to the cultivation of apples for exporta-
tion. Our inland orchards will soon find an outlet, both to
the Ohio River by railroad, and the Lakes by canal. The
effects of such a deluge of fruit is worthy of some specula-
tion. It will diminish the price but increase the profit of
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 493
fruit. An analogous case is seen in the penny-postage sys-
tem of England. Fruit will become more generally and
largely an article, not of luxury, but of daily and ordinary
diet. It will find its way down to the poorest table—and
the guantity consumed will make up in profit to the dealer,
what is lost in lessening its price. A few years and the
apple crop will be a matter of reckoning by farmers and
speculators, just as is now, th2 potato crop, the wheat crop,
the pork, ete. Nor will it create a home market alone.
By care it may be exported with such facility, that the
world will receive it as a part of its diet. It will, in this
respect, follow the history of grains and edible roots, and
from a local and limited use, the apple and the pear will
become articles of universal demand. The reasons of such
an opinion are few and simple. It is a fruit always palat-
able—and as such, will be welcome to mankind whatever
their tastes, if it can be brought within their reach. The
western States will, before many years, be forested with
orchards. The fruit bears exportation kindly.- Thus there
will be a supply; a possibility of distributing it by com-
merce, to meet.a taste already existing. These views may
seem fanciful—may prove so; but they are analogical.
Nor, if I inherit my three score years and ten, do I expect
to die, until the apple crop of the United States shall sur-
pass the potato crop in value, both for man and beast. It
has the double quality of palatableness, raw or cooked—it
is a permanent crop, not requiring annual planting—and it
produces more bushels to the acre than corn, wheat, or, on
an average, than potatoes. The calculations may be made,
allowing an average of fifteen bushels to a tree. The same
reasoning is true of the pear; it and the apple, are to hold
a place yet, as universal eatables—a fruit-grain, not known
in their past history. If not another tree should be set in
this county (Marion County), in ten years the annual crop
of apples will be 200,000 bushels. But Wayne County has
double our number of trees; suppose, however, the ninety
494 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
counties of Indiana to have only 25 trees to a quarter sec-
tion of land, 7. e. to each 160 acres, the crop, of fifteen bush-
els a tree, would be nearly two miilions.
The past year has greatly increased the cultivation of
small fruits in the State. Strawberries are found in almost
every garden, and of select sorts. None among them all is
more popular—or more deservedly so—than Hovey’s Seed
ling. We have a native white strawberry, removed from
our meadows to our gardens, which produces fruit of supe-
rior fragrance and flavor, The crop is not large—but con-
tinues gradually ripening for many weeks. The blackberry
is introduced to the garden among us. The fruit sells at
our market for from three to five cents—profit is not there-
fore the motive for cultivating it, but improvement. I have
a white variety. ‘“ What color is a black-berry when it is
green?” We used to say red, but now we have ripe black-
berries which are white, and green black-berries which are
red. Assorted gooseberries and the new raspberries, Fran-
conia and Fastolff are finding their way into our gardens.
The Antwerps we have long had in abundance. If next
spring I can produce rhubarb weighing two pounds to the
stalk, shall I have surpassed you? I have a seedling which
last year, without good cultivation, produced petioles weigh-
ing from eighteen to twenty ounces. My wrist is not very
delicate, and yet it is much smaller in girth than they were.
In no department is there more decided advance among
our citizens than in floriculture. In all our rising towns,
yards and gardens are to be found choicely stocked. All
hardy bulbs are now sought after. Ornamental shrubs are
taken from our forests, or imported from abroad, in great
variety. Altheas, rose acacia, jasmin, calycanthus, snow-
berry, snowball, sumach, syringas, spicewood, shepherdaia,
dogwood, redwood, and other hardy shrubs abound. The
rose is an especial favorite. The Bengal, Tea and Noisettes
bear our winters in the open garden with but slight protec-
tion. The Bourbon and Remontantes will, however, drive
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 495
out all old and ordinary varieties. The gardens of this
town would afford about sixty varieties of roses, which
would be reckoned first rate in Boston or Philadelphia.
While New England suffered under a season of drought,
on this side of the mountains the season was uncommonly
fine—scarcely a week elapsed without copious showers, and
gardens remained moist the whole season. Fruits ripened
from two to three weeks earlier than usual. In conse-
quence of this, winter fruits are rapidly decaying. To-day
is Christmas, the weather is spring-like—no snow—the ther-
mometer this morning, forty degrees. My Noisettes retain
their terminal leaves green; and in the southward-looking
dells of the woods, grasses and herbs are yet of a vivid
green, Birds are still here—three this morning were sing-
ing on the trees in my yard. There are some curious facts
in the early history of horticulture in this region, which I
meant to have included in this communication ; but insen-
sibly I have, already, prolonged it beyond, I fear, a conve-
nient space for your magazine. I yield it to you for cut-
ting, carving, suppressing, or whatever other operation will
fit it for your purpose.
BROWNE’S AMERICAN POULTRY YARD.*
Ler no man turn up his contemptuous nose at this Trea-
tise until he has traced the manifold relations of eggs and
capons to cake, company, and civilization. Banish the barn-
yard, and the universal aldermanhood would shrink and
grow lean; cup-cakes and sponge-cakes, omelets, whips and
legionary confections, would become mere dreams of re-
membrance.
Every friend of the trencher, every notable housewife,
* Published by A. O. Moore & Co., New York. Price $1 00.
496 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK
complacently glorious amidst stacks of praised and devoured
cake, has an interest in this book. There is, therefore, a
certain interest which every civilized community should
take in the progress of the great art of fowl-breeding.
There are striking analogies, also, which should be noticed
by every comparative psychologist. The doctrine of trans-
migration has some of its strongest proofs in the Kingdom
of Poultry. The glowing comb, the haughty carriage, the
resplendent tail-feathers, and ostentatious crowing ofthe
lord of the barn-yard creation, reveals to the sagacious
reasoner either the origin or destination of many other
“lords of creation.”
Nor can one mistake the resemblances traceable in the
gentler sex of hens. Some there are industrious only in
scratching and cackling, but nervous, gadding, restless ;
never content at home, never so happy as when at work in
a new-made garden, and sagacious always of the very spots
which are most precious in the owner’s eyes. Are these
the types of human busybodies, or are these resemblances
only accidental? Others are discreet, domestic, prolific,
useful and happy hens, human and feathered. Many there
are neglectful. Some fowls are laborious egg-layers, but
poor setters; others disdain the pains of laying, but are
quite willing of a leisure summer’s month to set awhile
upon other eggs.
In the management, too, of their families, can any can-
did man resist the evidence of resemblances and affiliations
between hens and humanity? Here a hen walks forth
from her nest with but a single chick; the whole farm is
too small for her anxious spirit. On this one precious
pledge she bestows more clucking, more research and
scratching, than a discreet old matron of many broods
would upon five annual generations! And after all, what
is the little brat good for—lazy and worked for, but never
taught to work, it lives a few. months petted and spoiled—
dies of neglect, or is anatomized by some science-loving
ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING, 497
weasel! Other, and unnatural hens there are, to whom
the vast brood of peeping, chirping chicks is but a burden.
They seem to have thoughts of their own, and are per-
plexed and interrupted by the cares needful for their
household. Could we pry into the secrets of this race,
doubtless there would be found to be literary mothers, too
busy for the general good to have much time for special
duties. We cannot stop now to draw out these analogies,
so well worthy the study of mental philosophers; else we
should exhibit the distinctions of rank, race, and culture, in
this interesting kingdom. There are nice questions of
pedigree, there are points in relation to feathers and top-
knots, combs and spurs, tail-feathers and wing-feathers,
neck-hackles and toes, which are worthy the attention of
any Calhoun of the barn-yard. The more savory but
homely considerations of fattening, slaying, dressing, sell-
ing, stuffing, cooking, carving, distributing, eating and
digestion, must be left to our readers’ own reflections.
Meanwhile, any man that owns a hen, or has a coop in
prospect, may buy this book, certain of his money’s worth,
Book-farming and book-fowling are better than nothing,
. REFLECTIONS ON THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR.*
Tue labor of another year nas passed beyond our reach.
We can alter nothing, and the past is of no use to us except
as a Jesson for the future. The soil that the plow ripped
up, in the spring, has yielded its harvest, its work is closed,
its fruits garnered. The tree whose boughs grew green
when the singing of birds proclaimed that spring was come,
has ripened its fruit, perfected its growth, its store is
gathered, and its leaves are lying beneath it, and slowly
* A.D. 1845.
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498 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK “™ 4) b Or |
returning to the earth from which they sprang. Only here
and there, on a bright morning, do we see one of those
birds which, a few months ago, builded their nest, watched
their young, or taught the nestlings how to fly—young and
old, with their grace of motion and sweet notes, are gone
to a fairer clime. These changes one cannot help noticing ;
and no meditative mind can avoid many thoughts which
flow out of them. Where are the harvests garnered which
grew in the soil of the human heart? What thoughts and
generous purposes have been ripened and stored up like
fruit, and what ones have fallen and perished like leaves?
Our vernal orchards never stood, within our remembrance,
in such a glory of bloom; yet when the fruit should have
set, most of the blossoms proved vain. And how many
good purposes and fair resolutions have so perished within
us! Have we, like the trees which we love and care for,
made growth, of root and branch? Everything in nature
has gradually assumed a preparation for winter. Those
frosts and that ice which would have sent such mischief
upon the leaves of summer, now lie, without harm, upon
orchard and garden. Are we ripe and ready, too, for such
a winter as adversity brings upon men?
THE END.
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