THE PLUM IN KANSAS. y 



hour afterward the plums are taken out and the oven is again shut 

 with a cup of water in it for about two hours. When the water is so 

 warm as just to be able to bear the finger in it, the prunes are .again 

 placed in the oven and left there for twenty-four hours, when the 

 operation is finished, and they are put loosely into small, long and 

 rather deep boxes for sale. The common sorts are gathered by shak- 

 ing the trees ; but the finer kinds, for making French prunes, must 

 be gatliered in the morning, before the rising of the sun, by taking 

 hold of the stalk between the finger and thumb, without touching the 

 fruit, which is laid gently on a bed of vine leaves in a basket. When 

 the baskets are filled without the plums touching each other, they are 

 removed to the fruit room, where they are left for two or three days 

 exposed to the sun and air, after which the same process is employed 

 as for the others, and in that way the delicate bloom is retained on 

 the fruit even when quite dry. 



Propagation and Culture : The plum is usually propagated in 

 this country by sowing the seeds of any free-growing variety (avoid- 

 ing the Damsons, which are not readily worked), and budding them, 

 when two years old, with finer sorts. The stones should be planted 

 as soon as gathered, in broad drills (as in planting peas), but about 

 an inch and a half deeper. In good soil the seedlings will reach 

 eighteen inches or two feet in height the next season, and in the au- 

 tumn or the ensuing spring they may be taken from the seed-bed, 

 their tap-roots reduced, and all that are of suitable size planted at 

 once in the nursery- rows, the smaller ones being thickly bedded until 

 after another season's growth. The stocks planted out in the nursery 

 will ordinarily be ready for w^orking the ensuing midsummer, and, as 

 the plum is quite difficult to bud in this dry climate if the exact sea- 

 son is not chosen, the budder must watch the condition of the trees 

 and insert his buds as early as they are sufficiently firm, say, in this 

 neighborhood, about the 10th of July. Insert the buds, if possible, 

 on the north side of the stock, that being more protected from sun, 

 and tie the bandage rather more tightly than for other trees. The 

 English propagate very largely, by layers, three varieties of the com- 

 mon plum — the Muscle, the Brussels, and the Pear plum, which are 

 almost exclusively employed for stocks with them. But we have not 

 found these stocks superior to the seedlings raised from our common 

 plums (the Blue Grage, Horse plum, etc.) so abundant in all our gar- 

 dens. For dwarfing, the seedlings of the Mirabelle are chiefly em- 

 ployed. Open-standard culture is the universal mode in America, as 

 the plum is one of the hardiest of fruit-trees. It requires little or 

 no pruning beyond that of thinning out a crowded head or takiug 

 away decayed or broken branches, and this should be done before 



