GARDENING. 



27 



MUSHROOMS KAIbKU *'ROM HOME-MADE SPAWN 



crs than to have it worked out at the 

 local planing mill in your own village. 

 And it makes greenhouse building very 

 simple and quickly done. The house may 

 be heated from the residence, or indepen- 

 dently with an oil stove arrangement, or 

 a base-burner hot water boiler. 



The Fruit Garden. 



TflE FRUIT GARDEN. 



Gathering the apples and pears is what 

 now concerns us most. They are drop- 

 ping so fast that if we let them hang much 

 longer on the trees we won't have many 

 prime fruits to save. We pick up the best 

 of the windfalls and lay them aside for 

 early or immediate use; but all the hand 

 picked fruit are carefully put into barrels 

 having several openings in their sides. 

 We keep thesebarrelsinacool, airy, shady 

 place, and set on boards to keep them off 

 the ground, and covered over to save 

 them from rain. That is with apples. 

 Hut we store the pears two to three deep 

 on shelves in a cool, airy room, darkened 

 in the day time. As soon as the pears 

 begin to ripen we must reduce their bulk 

 by spreading them out to one or two 

 thick. Pears spoil quicker than apples 

 and need more attention. 



It is now a good time to renew our 

 plantations of blackberry bushes; in 

 transplanting them cut the canes back 

 considerably, and be very careful to pre- 

 serve the piece of underground stem or 

 cross root from which the canes have 

 sprung. Raspberry bushes may also be 

 transplanted, but in both cases it will be 

 |)rudent to lav down the canes this com- 

 ingwinter and coverthem andthecrowns 

 well with several inches of earth over 

 winter. As a rule growers prefer plant- 

 ing raspberries in spring. 



cut out most of the old brush and gave 

 them a good dressing of old chips, rotten 

 wood and long manure, and have kept 

 them free from grass and weeds ever since. 

 With the same treatment our red currants 

 and gooseberries have yielded well, but 

 the black currants have borne very little. 

 They start to grow all right in the spring 

 but in a short time the leaves become 

 shriveled and are covered with whitish 

 spots, the spots on the underside of the 

 leaf becoming brownish as the leaf gets 

 older. The young leaves appearing later 

 in the season are pale. They either fail to 

 bloom, or what is more usual, fail to set 

 fruit and most of what does set never 

 comes to full growth. What is the best 

 thing to do with such bushes? Enclosed 

 are some of the leaves forvou tot 



The black currant leaves are badly in- 

 fested with a fungous leaf parasite, Sep- 

 toria Ribis, which causes the foliage to 

 become spotted and comparatively worth- 

 less. There is nothing to be done to save 

 the leaves of this vear, but for next sea- 

 son spray once a week with Bordeaux 

 mixture beginning as the buds unfold in 

 spring. 



TflE BLACK CURRANT BUSHES DON'T BEAR 

 FRUIT. 



The Rev. S. H. McNcd. Ontario, writes: 

 We have 30 to 4.(1 black currant bushes 

 which in their present condition are un- 

 profitable. When we came here fouryears 

 ago the bushes werelarge, brushy and in a 

 heavyblue grass sod. I dugaway the sod. 



MULCflINO STRAWBERRIES. 



C. H. McN., Chesley, Ont., writes:— In 

 giving directions how to winter straw- 

 berries all writers say not to mulch till 

 the ground is frozen hard and some say 

 "hard enough to carry a wagon." Here 

 the snow falls before the ground freezes. 

 I never saw the groimd frozen too hard 

 to dig up nicely with the spade. The 

 snow usually lies till the last of March. 

 But from that till the weather becomes 

 warm there is enough freezing and thaw- 

 ing to injure strawberries. When shall 

 we mulch? 



At Dosoris we mulch our strawberry 

 grounds somewhere about the end of 

 November or early in December, no mat- 

 ter how hard or light the frost is. Before 

 that time we have several sharjj frosts 

 and thaws, but the ground is seldom 

 locked up for the winter sooner than the 



middle or end of December, and some- 

 times not then. Of course it is much 

 easier to do the work when the ground is 

 frozen than when it isn't, and wc always 

 choose a frosty morning or day; but after 

 wc get on the mulching we let it stay 

 there irrespective of the weather till the 

 first of April or thereabout. And when 

 we apply the mulching the ground is 

 seldom hard enough to bear up a wagon, 

 our climate isn't so rigorous. Last June 

 both Mr. Ellwanger and Mr. Barry of 

 Rochester saw the p'antation here when 

 it was in bearing, and both of them ex- 

 pressed thtmselves as seldom having seen 

 a finer one. There is no hard set rule. 

 We would mulch your strawberry patch 

 just before we expected snow, no matter 

 whether the ground was frozen or not. 



The Vegetable Garden. 



THE VEGETABLE GARDEN. 



It is now an important time in this de- 

 partment. We are daily expecting frost 

 and must prepare for it. If )'ou have a 

 patch of young snap beans, or a few rows 

 of Henderson's dwarf Lima, or some late 

 sown tomatoes, or a bed of New Zealand 

 spinach, you can save them for a while by 

 setting frames and sashes over them, and 

 banking about the frames with a little 

 dirt to keep all snug and warm. With 

 mats, sedge or straw cover the sashes in 

 the event of frosty weather. Get the cold 

 frames prepared for Itttuces. Use rich 

 mellow soil. Plant thickly, say 7 inches 

 apart each in the case of Boston Market. 

 Get up the frame boards for the winter 

 spinach. See that the turnips and beets 

 are kept clean and the ground about them 

 hoed and mellow to induce quick growth 

 and tender roots. Before sharp frost 

 conies all of these root crops should be 

 pulled, topped and stored. We won't pull 

 them here before the end of the month or 

 early next one. Keep the ground mellow 

 and clean about recently sown spinach 

 and kale, so as to give them a good start 

 in life. 



Mushrooms. 



HOME-MADE MUSHROOM SPAWN. 



A year ago Mr. S. Edward Paschall, a 

 seedsman and market gardener of Doyles- 

 towu. Pa., sent us ten bricksof his home- 

 made mushroom spawn for trial, with 

 the request: "If the spawn is good or 

 medium, or poor, I would like your frank 

 opinion. * * I may say that I have 

 none to sell." That was spawn enough 

 to plant a goodlj' sized bed and insure a 

 fair test, and we had the pleasure of re- 

 porting that we found the spawn to be as 

 potent as any we had ever used, and it 

 produced a fine crop of mushrooms with 

 us. 



Our illustration, from a flash light pho- 

 tograph, shows a portion of one of Mr. 

 Paschall's test beds that yielded I'j 

 pounds to the square foot, and we are in- 

 debted to his courtesy for its use here. 



To include in a paper on mushrooms 

 read by us last winter before the Mass. 

 Hort. Society, Mr. Paschall very kindly 

 told us all about how he made this spawn, 

 but as the Transactions of the Society 

 containing that paper have not yet been 

 published, we will give you his method a 

 written by himself, in his own newspape* 



