The Sand Plum 77 



It was the grandest sight in the fruit line that I ever saw. 

 They looked like a large flower garden at a short distance. 

 We cultivate them in our yards and gardens. All you have 

 to do is to set out a few bushes. Soon they will spread until 

 they will make a thicket that one cannot walk through. When 

 they are in bloom they look like a bank of snow. They begin 

 to ripen about the same time that wheat does, and continue 

 to ripen for six weeks to two months. They do not all ripen 

 on the same bush at once. There will be ripe ones and others 

 perfectly green on the same limb at the same time. They are 

 one of the best fruits for cooking that grow. We have a patch 

 of four or five square rods. It gives us all we want while 

 they are going, and then we have a supply for canning. 

 Here is one of the most valuable fruits. Chickens prefer them 

 for a shelter to anything else, both in hot and cold weather. 

 We have a tight straw shed, open on the south side. Days 

 when it was below freezing, the chickens would stay in the 

 plum patch in preference to the sunny shed. Some of the 

 small-sized plums have a bitter taste, still are very juicy and 

 acid. I do not know how they will succeed further north. 

 Since I have been here I have sent several lots of seeds and 

 roots to different narties in different states, but have never 

 got reports from any of them. I sent a lot of seed to a nurs- 

 ervman in Indiana. He advertised them in his catalogue as 

 'Kansas Dwarf plum.' " 



Only a few varieties have been propagated by 

 nurserymen, and none of these has attained any repu- 

 tation. The wild plants have very often been taken 

 into cultivated gardens by settlers in Kansas, but they 

 have seldom thrived under cultivation. The sand 

 plum does not seem to be adapted to a wide diversity 

 of soils or climate. In Maryland it blights badly with 

 monilia. Still, this group of dwarf plums is so inter- 

 esting and so promising in some ways that one cannot 

 help expecting something of it in the future. 



