•460 FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



OTHER BERRIES. 



Now we have plenty of strawberries, but do not think that will do, for less 

 than a half acre well laid out will supply a medium-sized family with all the 

 small fruit they need, and if you will use your brains as well as your hands 

 there need not be a day from early June until frost comes that you cannot 

 have fresh fruit of some kind. And let that half acre not only be a profit 

 but an ornament to the home. So observe order in all your planting. Do 

 not forget that weeds are not profitable nor ornamental. 



Raspberries come in next ; set them four feet apart in the row, and the rows 

 six feet apart; and the same with gooseberries and currants. Keep them 

 cultivated or mulched. Cut out old raspberry canes as soon as the fruit is 

 off ; allow only as many new shoots to grow as are needed for fruiting, and 

 pinch off the end when three or four feet high. I have the Cregg and the 

 Miami black caps. The red raspberries and blackberries are not so easily 

 kept just where you want them, but we must have them, although those 

 great thorns of the Kittatinny blackberry do not give one much pleasure in 

 trimming and caring for them ; but you had better do that than depend on 

 the fence corners. My Wilson blackberries I lay down and cover with 

 marsh hay for winter protection. This fruit comes in just when we most 

 need it. I have some of the Wachusett Thornless, but the fruit thus far with 

 me has been almost worthless. Keep them in rows three feet wide; cut out 

 the old canes when through bearing, and pinch back the new growth when 

 five feet high. 



GRAPES. 



Our last small fruit of the season is the grape, and that if properly packed 

 with fine cork can be kept until in the winter. Grapes should be set eight 

 feet apart in the rows, and the rows twelve feet apart. The vine for the 

 first year should bear but a single shoot, the second year, two shoots. Upon 

 an old vine each shoot usually bears three clusters; if the stem beyond the 

 last cluster is pinched off at two or three leaves, the fruit will be larger and 

 the stem stronger. 



I am in favor of fall pruning, or at least the work should commence 

 in the fall. I sometimes practice the short spur pruning, that is, 

 cut back to two buds, and then it will need some summer pruning. I prefer 

 the wire trellis. The trellis consists of four wires on posts set at convenient 

 distance, the lower wire two feet from the ground, and the upper one six. 

 The vine should be grown with one or two main stems or trunks from near 

 the ground. Leave these trunks nearly the height of the upper wire, and 

 train the arms along each wire; these should be cut to six or eight buds each, 

 and the shoots as they grow are pinched off during summer, to two or three 

 leaves beyond the last cluster, and as the end buds start out pinch that back 

 to one bud. The fall pruning consists in cutting off the entire arm up to 

 the cane nearest to the trunk, and shortening that cane to six or eight buds. 

 And then I take them from the trellis and lay them carefully on the ground and 

 leave them there until the buds are ready to start in the spring. I have the 

 Delaware, Niagara, Worden, Massasoit (Rogers No. 3), Agawam (Rogers No. 

 15), Salem (Rogers 22) and a few vines of the Concord. They are considered 

 the most hardy grape we have, and will bear fruit when others may fail, but 

 • they are not the best, and report says they are apt to be troubled with the 



