1887. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



47 



winter kill, altliousjli with aiKither snil t\w 

 result niiKlit be diirerent. 



Mr. Kooii thinned all his fruit but the 

 Karly Crawford to about four inches apart, 

 but thought live was better. He believed in 

 the profitableness of thinniiiK; that you 

 ha<l better fruit, more growth and sreater 

 likelihood of a K<>od crop the ne.xt year. His 

 experience was that desired results were not 

 obtained unless the thinning was dune early. 



Fruit Bleaching Condemned. 



JOEL W. .SMITH, M. D., KLOVD Cd.. HAVA. 



It should be stopped by enlightened public 

 sentiment and by stringent laws. In Popi'- 

 LAI5 Gardening for November A. M. Purdy, 

 of Palmyra, N. Y., says: "We use brimstone 

 (sulphur) in bleaching Apples and all kinds 

 of fruit." The maj<u-ity of consumers are 

 probably not even aware of the practice, 

 else complaints would have been made, as it 

 is certainly an injurious and fraudulent 

 thing to do. Fortuiuitely it is not (juite un- 

 iversal, but fashion and self interest will 

 soon make it so, unless it is checked. 



It is found that bleaching positively im- 

 pairs the natural fruit flavor— that God 

 made— and its value as food, and if not di- 

 rectly poisonous, it is believed to be injurious 

 to health, and is a fraud which is likely to 

 be contagious. Why the practice has be- 

 come so general is doubtless because one 

 evaporator man does it and so another must, 

 or else not have so fine looking or so salable 

 an article. On the whole it is a short-sighteil 

 policy, for the well founded prejudice that 

 largely i>revails against it is reducing the 

 consumption of dried fruit immensely. 



Take it in my own family, and in many 

 others that have come under my notice, they 

 have nearly discarded the white or sulphur 

 bleached dried Apples and other fruits as 

 far as we knew it was done. Consequently 

 where our family formerly used about a 

 barrel of No. I dried Ajjples — those evapor- 

 ated rapidly preferred to slow or sun dried- 

 each year, we have latterly almost ceased 

 to use them, and simply because it has be- 

 come almost impossible to obtain good 

 wholesome umloctoixd fruit. 



Whiteness is not so desirable a quality sis 

 healthfulness and honest dealing. Besides 

 rapid drying, and mostly in the dark, will 

 produce a very light colored fruit. Close ob- 

 servers know that the unbleached fruit has 

 the best flavor. 



Plain jelly, made from various fruits, but 

 mostly from Apples is a most wholesome as 

 well as clieaj) article, usually made direct 

 from fi-esh cider, but is also terribly adul- 

 terated in some of the larger cities. It is no 

 longer a secret either as to the extent and 

 character of the fraud. There are other de- 

 ceptions, and perhaps equally bad, but which 

 I must omit to even mention. Public health 

 is public wealth, and should be guarded in 

 respect to all food to the extent of avoiding 

 even the appearance of evil as far as passible. 



Fruit Notes from Central Ohio. 



While eating Apples to-tlay from Connec- 

 ticut and Michigan we were led to consider 

 some of the advantages of railroad trans- 

 portation, and the blessings that some parts 

 of tlie coimtry produces fruit abundantly 

 one year while other parts prcjduce none. 

 This section will not average one bushel of 

 winter Ap])les to the orch,-ird; «'e rely wholly 

 upon other States for our supply this year. 



Of Pears, the crop was abundant. Peaches 

 only a partial crop. Small fruits were a 

 heavy crop. The prospects for a full crop of 

 the latter another season is not very flatter- 

 ing, especially Strawberries. This dry sea- 

 son has been hard on them; old beds scarcely 

 producing any new plants, and new beds, 

 unless set very early, have not made much 

 of a matted row. It being so dry. even up to 



the present, that runners have only partially 

 rooted, there will necessarily be a scarcity 

 of plants for the trade in the spring; and 

 also of Kaspberries, from the fact that the 

 hot weather blackened nearly all of the tips 

 before they were long enough to set in the 

 ground for plants. 



It is true that Kaspberries and Blackber- 

 ries will not stand so nuich cold when the 

 ground is dry as when it is wet, for then the 

 chances are greater tliat they may get win- 

 ter killed. A. M. N., Licking Co., O. 



Some Flowers Reported on From 

 Pansy Park. 



F. W. GOODELL, DWIOHT, MA.SS. 



Maiiijoid (lolil NiiiKirt, .sent out last 

 spring by an English firm as a remarkably 

 tine dwarf with large tlowers. is not worth 

 cultivating. Flowers small and i)oor and 

 not one in twenty comes double. 



French Muriijoht Biittfrflij, sent out by 

 the same firm, is elegant when true, the 

 flowers being bright yellow, each petal 

 evenly edged with maroon, but it needs 

 several years more of selection to fix its 

 character, as only two or three plants in 

 a hundred come double. 



TropO'Dl tun Lo)iliia nu)fi. Perhaps it may 

 not be generally known that this is the best 

 of the climbing Tropieolums for outdoor cul- 

 ture. The flowers are more bi-illiant and 

 more freely produced than the common T. 

 majus. A trellis about a 100 feet long has 

 been ablaze with them for several months. 

 Dinihlc Esi'lioltziux. There is no such 

 thing as a good double Escholtzia, the near- 

 est to it being an occasional plant Ijearing 

 flowers with a double row of jjetals. 



Pontcili'Tln cnisyi IK'S major is a new and 

 most desirable addition to aquatic plants. 

 T. crassipes seldom flowers under cultiva- 

 tion, but this variety blooms freely in shal- 

 low water. The flowers are of a rosy lilac 

 color, about two inches across and produced 

 in spikes like a Hyacinth. It is also very 

 interesting from a botanical point. The 

 stems of the leaves have curious bulb-like 

 oval enlargements in the middle filled with 

 air, which enables the whole plant to float. 

 The plants produce runners much like a 

 Strawberry plant, and new plants with re- 

 markable rapidity. A single plant set in my 

 acquatic garden in June has covered a space 

 six feet across with a mass of 'MO plants. 



Papaver pavunhun or Pcucock Puppy, in- 

 troduced from Europe with a lengthy and 

 glowing description, is a humbug. It is a 

 native of Turkestan. The plant makes a 

 slender growth from six inches to a foot tall, 

 and the flowers, instead of being of a bril- 

 liant scarlet as described, are of a dull red, 

 of small size and no beauty. 



The "Running Out" of Varieties 

 Considered. 



One of the liest papers read tjefore the 

 recent meeting of the American Pomological 

 .Society in Boston was that of J. M. Smith, 

 Green Bay, Wisconsin, on "The Deteriora- 

 tion of our Small Fruits." 



Mr. Smith asked the question, Is deteriora- 

 tion a necessity? He said that Nature im- 

 proves very slowly throughout the vegetable 

 kingdom, and he thinks there is no reason 

 for believing that our wild Strawberries 

 are any better or worse than they were 2,000 

 years ago. Under certain conditions they 

 may have disappeared from certain places, 

 only to reappear again later. If they are 

 annihilated it is for some sufficient cause, 

 but not by the Creator. 



But if we do improve a variety will the 

 improvement remain? Many varieties have 

 failed; was this neces.sary? Mr. Smith asked 

 what is an improved Strawberry plant and 

 answered his question by saying that it was 

 the result of a much higher cultivation, or 



perhaps civilization, than it could receive in 

 nature. His experience showed that if you 

 keep up a proper standard of high culture 

 and judicious treatment there would be no 

 deterioration. Many new varieties are petted 

 to the last degree, making a magnificent 

 showing in plant grf)wth as well as in fruit, 

 and then they pass to the treatment that 

 ordinary cultivators can bestow, and because 

 this is not congenial, they fail. If we allow 

 a Strawberry to bear fruit, and then plant 

 the weakly, dwarfed runners that it pro- 

 duces, we cannot hope for a healthy, vigor- 

 ous continuation of the variety. 



Mr. Smith considered the Wil.son an illus- 

 tration of the fact that varieties did not 

 run out. Originated nearly 40 years ago, it 

 is still a popular variety in many sections, 

 and in his own experience still the most 

 profitable variety he could grow. Although 

 it originated so long ago and was the pioneer 

 market Strawberry, doing more to popular- 

 ize this fruit than all other kinds put togeth- 

 er, it was yet the standard of comparison, 

 and had never been beaten in yield per acre. 

 In the speakers own successful growing 

 of the Wilson, since IWil, he has found two 

 requisites necessary, (hie was rich land, 

 the other to be planted alone under favora- 

 ble circumstances; the fruit-producing ca- 

 pacity of the Wilson was so great as to leave 

 it little strength to maintain itself in com- 

 petition with varieties which produce light 

 crops of fruit and big crops of runners. 



His method of cultivation is to plant but 

 once on the same ground, using healthy 

 vigorous runners from young plants that 

 have not been weakened by bearing, plant- 

 ing three feet by one foot, and training the 

 runners like spokes to a wheel, so that the 

 plants will not all be in a bunch. He plants 

 in April and all blossoms are kept off the 

 first summer. The Strawberry patch is 

 kept constantly under supervision, and 

 weeds are not allowed to appear. The crop 

 is picked in June of the following year, and 

 then the bed is turned under to be planted 

 for several years with something else. The 

 ground is nuide rich and thoroughly pre- 

 pared by siibsoiling and superior tillage. 



His crops have been uniformly large for 

 many years. He referred to the year 1876, 

 when one fourth aci'e of Wilsou-'s yielded a 

 fraction less than 100 bushels. In 188«, 3^ 

 acres in the midst of a great drought aver- 

 aged 2M bushels to the acre. The crop of 

 the past extremely unfavorable season, when 

 cold winds in the spring and the unparal- 

 leled drought of the summer conspired 

 against it, showed a yield of -SSi bushels per 

 acre for three acres. Even with these heavy 

 yields by high culture he thinks the plants 

 are stronger than when he began in 18lil, 



In conclusion he urged giving the plants 

 such soil, food and culture as they require 

 for doing their best, or they will sufl'er in 

 some manner. This rule has been broken 

 and the sulfering is ui)on us. He belie\es 

 the law is inflexible. We cannot expect 

 Providence to work miracles to save our 

 plants and fruits, in the face of sheer neglect 

 on our part. The only wonder is that the 

 deterioration complained of in many <iuar- 

 ters had not been much greater. 



4S4. Caring for and Planting Bulbs. Gludi- 

 olus shiiuld be taken up after several sharp 

 frost*, the bulbs dried and cleaned off, placed in 

 paper bu^, labelled, and stored in a dry, vtml, 

 but fnist-proiif situation. The Oxalis requires a 

 similar treatment, but as the bulbs are smaller 

 they should be placed in boxes filled with dry 

 sand. Caladiums should have the leaves re- 

 moved as soon as destroyed by frost, and three 

 or four days afterward earefully lifted and 

 stood in sand in a dry, I'onl i-ellar, or else placed 

 underneath the Rrecii-hoii.se .--luire. Dahlias may 

 be treated as uo\ised for Caladimus, care bein^ 

 taUiMi to lalii'l the tubers securel.v, and then 

 tlie\' laii be iikiied in barrels or boxes, and stored 

 for'tlie niuter in a dry. frost-proof cellar. Tu- 

 Uiis for next season's bloom raa.v be planted at 

 anv time before the ground becomes frozen, but 

 the earlier in fall the better.— C. E. P. 



