TOl.. XI. ^O. «. 



AND H R T I C U L T u R A L R E C. I S T E R . 



II 



nuldcws. 'I'lio carln'st snwii, liowfu'r, w«a deci- 

 dcdly llio boat; it woa «ll sown wiili clover and 

 tiiiiudiy in llie apring. Tho lowest nnd bcsl ground i 

 had boon ihc oirlipsit sown wjdi wheal ; it was the ! 

 best adaplod to tho growth of grass ; and tlicro ! 

 was, accordingly, a much nii>ro jiixiiriant coal in 1 

 that part at harvest, than llicrc nnii in the higher | 

 and liirhler part of the field. The coat of grass, j 

 then, could nut Jiavo caused the mildews in the 

 higher and lighter part of the field ; not did il np- ! 

 pircntly increase il in the lower part. The same 

 obnervations would apply to my wheat liiiil season : ' 

 I hail two lots, the soil of which was heavy nnd 

 rtUier Low, but well adapted to grass : at harvest, ' 

 the grass in these lots was luxuriant, while in the : 

 higher groutid — and every body knows that our 

 dry lands in Jersey are not very favorable to the , 

 growlli of grass — had very little grass scattered I 

 over il : llio wheat here was almost worthless,' 

 while tlial which wls standing with a fine coat of 

 gru.-i was goc.d. I believe tlie secret in both yenrs 

 was ill the early sowing of the wheat, the first be- 

 ing pill in about the 5tli, and the residue finished 

 both seasons about the QOlJi of 10th month. 



Have I already taken up loo much room, or shall 

 I remark in passing, that both last year and the 

 year before I had two or three acres of Italian 

 •pring wheat ; both lots were sown on the 1st day 

 of the 4ih month, and clover and timothy sown at 

 the same time : they were both in good order, nnd 

 at harvest the coating of grass was every thing I 

 wished it to be. The crop in IS'SO yielded a liitle 

 more than twenty bushels per sere of fine, plump 

 grain, nnd the straw was yellow, bright and clean, 

 as coulil well be imagined : last year the yield 

 was but eight bushels per aero of miserable grain; 

 the straw was covered with mildew, and a great 

 deal of it destroyed by that other pest, the Hessian 



Should I live to sow wheat again, I will put it 

 in early; and if my good friend, the Colonel, will 

 ?xcuse my obstinacy, I don't mean yet to forego 

 the scattering abroad my grass seed, with a liberal 

 hand, over my grain fields. Z. Y. 



G'ouctster Co., A*. /. 



GRAFTING. 



Formerly it was asserted that roses became 

 black when grafted on black currants, and oranges 

 crimson, if worked on the pomegranate. In point 

 of fact, tho operations are successful in those ca- 

 «C3 only where the stock and scion are very near- 

 ly allied ; and the degree of success is in propor- 

 tion lo tho degree of affinity. Thus, varieties of 

 the same species unite the moEt freely ; then spe- 

 cies of the same genus ; then genera of the same 

 natural order; beyond which the power does not 

 lextend, unless in the case of parasites, like the 

 mistletoe, which grow indifferently upon totally 

 idifferenl plants. For instance, pears work freely 

 upon peats, very well on quinces, less willingly on 

 apples or thorns, and not at all upon plums or cher- 

 ries; while the lilac will take on the ash, and the 

 alive on the phillyrca, because they are plants of 

 thc.»;aiie natural order. M. DeCandollo even says 

 ic has tucceeded, notwithstanding the great dif- 

 ference in their vegetation, to work the lilnc on the 

 ahillyr.ca, the olive on tlie ash, and the bignonia 

 mdicrns on the catalpa ; but plants so obtained, 

 ire very sborl-lived. 



Mr Knight was the first to show the possibility 

 if frdfting SCL9I18 upon roots. An account of his 



niolluiil iif doing tins wuh given iit a very early po- 

 nnd of the e.Mslcnco of Iho Ilorticiiltnral Society, I 

 (June, 1811,) and he at tho same time suggested 

 the possibility of the practice being applied (o > 

 grntting scarce herbaceous plants upon tho roots j 

 of their commoner congeners; nn opcriition now! 

 commonly practised with tho dahlia, pn'ony, nnd 

 other plants of a similar kind ; nnd lately n method < 

 of multiplying combretum purpurcum by similar 

 means, has beon pointed out in the proceedings of, 

 the Ilorliciiltiiral Society. I 



Mere propagation is, however, by no means llic I 

 only object of the graller : another, and still more I 

 important one is, to secure a permanent union be- 

 twcen the scion and stock, so that the new plant 

 may grow as freely nnd us long as if it were on 

 its own boitom, under the most favorable circum- 

 stances. If this is not attended to, the hopes of 

 the cultivator will be frustrated, by the early death 

 of his plant. 



Whenever the stock and graft or bud arc not 

 perfectly suited to each other, an enlargement is 

 well known always lo take place at the point of 

 their junction, and generally to some extent, either 

 nbove or below it. This is particularly observable 

 in peach trees which have been budded at any 

 considerable height from the ground, upon plum 

 stocks ; and it appears to arise from the obstruc- 

 tion which the descending sap of the peach tree 

 meets with in the bark of the plum stock; for the 

 effects produced, both upon the growth and pro- 

 duce of the tree, are similar to those which occur 

 when the descent of the sap is impeded by a liga- 

 ture, or by the destruction of a circle of bark. In 

 course of time this difference between the scion 

 and stock puts an end to the possibility of the as- 

 cending or descending fluids passing into each 

 other, and the death of the scion is the result. In 

 all the cases I have seen, this has arisen from the 

 power of horizontal growth in the stock and scion 

 being different; and I doubt whether it ever pro- 

 ceeds from any other cause. For example : the 

 hawthorn and the pear are so nearly allied, that 

 the latter may be easily worked upon the former; 

 the hawthorn, however, is a slow growing bush, or 

 small tree — the pear is a large forest tree of rapid 

 growth ; and the pear will grow an inch in diame- 

 ter while the hawthorn is growing half.aii inch. — 

 LindUy's Theory of Horticuttvre. 



EXHAUSTION OF SOIL. 

 It is not by mere exhaustion that potted plants 

 render the soil unfit for their support. B^ery one 

 kuowe that the soil of a farm will not bear, year 

 after year, the same kind of crop, but that one kind 

 of produce is cultivated on a piece of ground one 

 year, and is succeeded by some other kind ; which 

 practice, in part, constitutes the important system 

 of rotation of crops. Not, however, tc refer to 

 matters extra-horticultural, it (s notorious that an 

 apple orchard will not immediately succeed upon 

 the site of an old orchard of the same kind of fruit, 

 and that no amount of manuring will enable it to 

 succeed : a wall border in which fruit trees have 

 been long grown, becomes at last insensible to ma- 

 nure, and requires to be renewed ; and not to 

 dwell upon an undisputed fact, dahlias do not like 

 the soil in which dahlias were grown the previous 

 year. This class of phenomena cannot be explain- 

 ed upon the principle of soil being exhausted, be- 

 cause that exhauftion is made good and yet to no 

 purpose, unless we assume that land contains 

 something mineral, wliich each species prefer to 



feed on, and which ii not contained in manure. — 

 Ibid. 



UKANCHES MADF. FRUITFUI.nV RINGING. 

 If the sterile branch of a tree is ringed, it ceaa- 

 es lo be sterile ; nnd this con only bo accounted 

 for upon the supposition that the secreted iiinlter 

 of the brnnch, instead of being conveyed away into 

 tho trunk and roots, is stopped by the annular in- 

 cision, above which il is conipelled to accumulate. 

 If B tree that is unproductive bo transplanted, it 

 begins to bear: in this case the operation injurca 

 its roots, Bop is therefore less abundantly supplied 

 in the succeeding season to the leaves ; the leaves 

 are therefore less able to grow than they previous- 

 ly were, and they consequently do not consume 

 the nutritious matter lying in the branches, and 

 which they would have expended, had lliey beerj 

 able to grow with their former vigor; hence the 

 nutritious matter accumulates, and flower buds ar« 

 formed. — Ibid. 



CANKER. 

 Mr Reid, of Balcarras, has shown that one of 

 the causes of canker nnd immature fruit, even in 

 orchards, is the coldness of the soil. He found 

 that in a cankered orchard, the roots of the trees 

 had entered the earth to tho depth of three feet; 

 and he also ascertained that during tho summer 

 months, the average heat of the soil at six inches 

 below the surface, was GI degrees ; at nine iiichen, 

 ."i? degrees ; at eighteen inches, .50 degrees; and 

 at three feet, 44 degrees. He took measures to 

 confine tho roots to the soil near the surface, and 

 the consequence was, the ('isappearanco of canker 

 and ripening of the fruit. — Ibid. 



TRANSPLANTING. 

 I agree with Mr Macnab, that the earliest time 

 at which planting can be cfTected, is upon th« 

 whole the best; a conclusion to which he has come 

 from his extensive practice, in which my own ob- 

 servation of a great deal of planting for the last 

 twentyfive yoara coincides, and which is in all re- 

 spects conformable to theory. As soon as a plant 

 has shed its leaves, it is as much at rest for iht 

 season as it will be at any subsequent period, un- 

 less it is frozen ; its torpor, indeed, is greater at 

 that time, because its excitability is completely ex- 

 hausted by the season of growth, and it has had 

 no time to recover it. If at that time a root is 

 wounded, a process of granulation or cicatrisation 

 will commence, just as it docs in cuttings ; and 

 from that granulation roots will eventually pro- 

 ceed. Now it is obvious that since roots must bo 

 wounded in the process of transplantation, the 

 sooner the wound is made the better, because it 

 has the longer time in which lo heal ; and there- 

 fore the earlier in the autumn transplanting is ef- 

 fected, the less injury will be sustained by the 

 plant submitted to the process : in the technical 

 language of the gardener, " it has more time to 

 establish itself." — Ibid. 



Grapery an a large scale. Nicholas Biddic, it 

 is said, has a grapery on his farm on the banks of 

 the S-huylkill, wliich cost him one hundred thou- 

 sand dollars. The finest of all European grapes 

 are produced there every month in the year. 



Tho best protection against drought that can be 

 conveniently practiced lo a great extent, is fre- 

 quently stirring the earth, so as to keep it light 

 and loose. 



