GOOSEBERRIES AND CURRANTS. 14-5 



Buttner's October Morello is the latest of all cherries. 

 The fruit is large, round, flattened at the stalk end, and 

 indented at the apex, reddish-brown, thin in the skin, 

 and juicy, with a pleasant sub-acid flavour. The stalk 

 is rather long and slender; the flesh is red, reticulated 

 with whitish veins. It is an excellent cherry, especially 

 for culinary purposes, and it ripens in October. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



GOOSEBERRIES AND CURRANTS. 



A DEEP sandy loam is the soil on which gooseberries 

 and currants do best; but they will grow and produce 

 in any free garden soil of pretty good quality, if it be 

 freed from superabundant moisture, and well manured. 

 They will never do in land which retains the mois- 

 ture, but they thrive the better for surface moisture 

 during the growing period, for giving which surface- 

 dressing is then very valuable. They generally do best 

 in an open unshaded spot, but it is sometimes good 

 policy to have a few partially shaded by trees, as they 

 will sometimes, in severe springs, set the fruit when all 

 on more exposed bushes is cut off. 



New varieties are obtained from seed. When the 

 fruit is ripe the seed is cleared from the pulp and sown 

 at once. The next spring give the young plants a little 

 bottom warmth, and they will grow up tall and strong 

 the following summer ; some may bear the second year, 

 and all the third. 



The usual mode of propagation is by cuttings or 

 layers, generally by cuttings. 



Choose for cuttings young, fine, straight, well-grown 

 shoots, and let them be a foot or fourteen inches long, 

 after the immature portion at the top is cut off. If only 

 short cuttings of gooseberries can be obtained, they will 

 strike, if they are planted under a handglass with one 

 eye only above or even with the surface. 



