A JOG IN THE FRTJIT GARDEN. 



BY THE LATE A. J. DOWNING. 



When the month of November comes, it is worth while to look about a little, 

 and see how yon stand in the garden and orchard. You must be a miracle of 

 expertness if you have not failed in some crop or other, or if some tree or plant 

 has not baffled your wits. Well, this being the case, now is the time to look 

 about, and resolve either that you will succeed better next year, or that you will 

 abandon that crop altogether. 



So, go into your kitchen garden. If your soil is poor, or worn out and full of 

 insects, this is the very time of all others to doctor it; and here is my prescrip- 

 tion, which I have proved over and over again : Clear off the plot of ground to 

 be renovated, and cover it with a good dressing of fresh stable mcnmre, with the 

 litter in it. Begin at one side of the plot, and throw up the soil into ridges, 

 digging it about eighteen inches deep, and mixing the manure through the soil 

 as you dig. Here let it lie all winter. The atmosphere and the frost will have a 

 grand chance to do their best in bettering the quality of the soil itself; and the 

 essence of the manure will not only be all taken up by the soil, but its coarseness 

 will be broken down by the spring, so that your plot will be in the best possible 

 order for vegetables when the swallow comes. 



If you are troubled with grubs and insects in the ground (and you must be 

 something more than a " big bug" yourself, if you are not), then you must also 

 treat it with a dose of salt. Scatter any refuse or coarse cheap salt over the 

 earth, before you begin to ridge it up, at the rate of a bushel to the eighth part 

 of an acre — or eight bushels to the acre. Put on at this season, it will do no 

 harm to anything vegetable, and will thoroughly rid you of these enterprising little 

 gentry, that crawl out of the ground in May and June, and quietly play Guy 

 Fawkes to the roots and stems of the tenderest things that the pot boils. Be- 

 sides, leaving out of sight the virtue of salt as a manure, it helps all dry soils 

 amazingly, giving them greater attraction for moisture, and greater power to 

 hold it in dry weather ; and that is no mean thing for a crop that gets thirsty in 

 mid-summer. 



In the review of your forces at this season, before they go into winter quarters, 

 it is ten to one but you will find, staring you in the face — possibly not ten paces 

 from your door-steps — some excellent old friends, whose acquaintance you begin 

 to be ashamed of, and are sorely tempted to cut at once. I mean some good old 

 fruit trees, still very sound and healthy, but utterly refusing, for years past, to 

 bear any good fruit. Possibly they are Yirgalieu or Butter Pears, Pippin or 

 Pearmain Apples, whose good name is a thing handed down to you by your 

 ancestors ; and you are therefore not a little sorry to ctd them. Don't do it. 

 Let us have a little talk over these trees. 



Did they ever bear good fruit in this soil ? " Bless you, yes ! — such fair golden 

 skins, and luscious, melting flesh, as I seldom see now-a-days." How long ago 

 is it that they have stopped bearing such fruit ? " Say a dozen or fifteen years." 

 What have you done for them ? " Not much — scraped the bark, washed it with 

 soapsuds — spread a little compost over such as stand in the grass. Those that 

 stand in the garden, you know, are in good rich soil ; so, of course, they could 

 not want for manure." 



This is what my friend says ; but 1 don't believe a word of it — I mean of the 

 last part, that they " don't want for manure." If I were a " Hoosier," or a 

 Buckeye," I should say they don't want "anything else." Have not they the 



=(^^ 



YoL. YII.— November, 1857. 34 



