THE GENESEE FARMER. 



189 



VALUE OF BLACKBERKIES FOR WINE. 



BK New Yorlc Tribune in an article on black- 

 ies has the following estimate of their value 

 vine: 



leside the object of raising blackberries for 

 fruit, to eat or sell, there is another of equal 

 Drtance. A very palatable wine or cordial can 

 [lade, which, if sold at the usual rates, will 

 e the crop a very profitable one, for 80 quarts 

 awton blackberries, and 90 lbs. of double re- 

 i sugar, will make a barrel of wine, such as 

 commanded $2 a gallon for several years in 

 ' York. Now, if we count the wine at a 

 lesale price of only $1 a gallon, and reduce the 

 i of berries, the following would be something 

 the 



ITEMS OP COST OF 'WINE. 



liheU (80 quarts) of berries, for a barrel, at 6J^c ?5 00 



imds of sugar, at ll>>^c io 85 



ling and mixing 65 



ost per barrel $16 00 



le product of wine per acre yielding 100 bush- 

 f berries, would be 40 barrels, costing, exclu- 

 of berries, $11 a barrel, and selling at $1 a 

 )n, for $1,200. 



pon this calculation, will the market ever be 

 ;ed, or will the cultivation of the crop, which 

 3 no more than a crop of corn, exclusive of the 

 ing, ever cease to be renumerative ? 

 lere is another thing in this connection. We 

 », we do, we shall send Ohio whisky to France, 

 le run through the stills upon the lees of the 

 J press, which we buy back at a high price 

 sr the name of brandy. From blackberry 

 t we can make a very superior brandy at less 



and far more tit for medicinal purposes. We 

 also make blackberry sirup, if we have the 



in abundance, that will cure all the summer 

 jlaints in the community, and save the lives of 

 rmy of children every year. 

 >r sirup, no water is added to the juice and 

 r. For wine, after the sugar is well dissolved 

 •equent shaking of the barrel, it is filled up 



water and allowed to ferment, and then treat- 

 j all domestic wine should be. 



IK Striped Bug. — One of the remedies for 

 itriped bug in melon and cucumber patches is 

 nmended in the Philadelphia Farmer and 

 lener. It consists in arranging the hatching 

 )ring chickens so as to bring out the brood 

 t the time that the striped bugs appear, and 



set one or more coops, according to the size 

 le melon patch, among the vines or hills, each 



containing a brood of small chickens freely 

 iug in and out of the coop, but keeping the 



carefully confined. These little chicks he 

 i the most industrious and vigilent scavengers 

 he ever met with. Not a bug escapes them, 

 ;her they are on the vine or on the earth, and 



pick them off easy and daintily, without 

 y the least injury to the melons, or even dis- 

 ng a single leaf. By the time that the brood 

 licks get old enough to scratch, a younger 

 d can be substituted, and the older ones re- 

 Jd, 



"WALKS AND TALKS IN THE GARDEN." 



Messrs. Editors. — Under the above heading, 

 page 152, May number of your paper, it tells how 

 the writer of the article " last spring set out fifty 

 or sixty peach trees, and designs to train them so 

 low that the branches can be bent down and 

 pegged to the ground so that the snow will protect 

 them." Now I will make the writer of the above 

 a fair oflt'er, viz : If he will persevere in his desigiis, 

 and will every autumn after having pegged down 

 the branches, cover them with evergreen boughs, 

 (for fear he may lack a covering of snow) I will, 

 for a very small premium, warrant him a crop of 

 peaches every year. I have, away down here in 

 this region of ice and granite, some thirty peach 

 trees, but the blossom buds almost universally 

 winter kill, and I get nary a peach from those 

 branches exposed to the colds of our winters. 



In the spring of 1861, after a winter of deep 

 snows, a number of the limbs of the trees that 

 were covered with snow blossomed, and I had a 

 few dozen peaches in autumn. In the fall of 1861 

 I bent down a few of the lower limbs of some of 

 the trees and confined them near the ground by 

 wooden hooks. All of those thus fastened down 

 bore full crops last year. Last fall I procured some 

 twenty-five or thirty suitable hooks and pinned 

 down a large number of branches ; they have come 

 out this spring fresh and sound, and are now aearly 

 in blossom, while I do not think there will be a 

 single blossom on any of the trees above the snow- 

 line. I have no doubt that peaches can be grown 

 here annually if the trees are so trained as to liave 

 their limbs staked to the ground and cover them 

 with spruce, pine or hemlock boughs. Snow- 

 would answer the same purpose, but we are not 

 always sure of it. Levi Bartlktt. 



WarTier, 2f. M., May, 1863. 



Hoeing Onions.— Our friend S. W., whose 

 " Notes for the Month " came to hand too late for 

 insertion in this number, says : 



''You say that the hoe should not be used among 

 onions. This is rather a startling theory to us old 

 stagers on clay loams, where fifty per cent of the 

 purest sand we can find this side the sea shore will 

 not prevent the soil from crusting over after every 

 shower. But you again vindicate the hoe ' as a 

 fertilizer ' in your ' Walks and Talks in the Gar- 

 den.' Mulching or top dressing might do instead 

 of the hoe for onions, if they did not, as you say, 

 require the heat of the sun. Mulching with tan 

 or str^w might do for strawberries, but I have 

 thought that the acid of Wilson's Albanies was 

 improved almost to sweetness when the surface was 

 scarified with the hoe enough to destroy the early 

 weeds, and to hasten the ripening of the plants by 

 letting the rays of the sun warm their roots." 



The article alluded to was taken from an English 

 paper. We did not intend to be understood as 

 endorsing it. We do not see how the hoe can be 

 dispensed with during the early stages of the 

 growth of the onion, neither do we think a light 

 hoeing could do any harm. 



