210 



THE GENESEE FARMER 



August 27,1831 



the succuleacy of turnips, cabbages, and the 

 other common culinary vegetables; but the 

 Paris markets approach to equality with those 

 of London, in mushrooms, salads, and aro- 

 matic herbs, during summer, and surpass us 

 in those articles during winter. 



December 20. — Observed a great quantity 

 of excellent cauliflowers ; endive and chic- 

 cory, blanched in different degrees; lamb's 

 lettuce, scorzonera, Teltow turnips, solid 

 celery, common white turnips, very long 

 leeks; onions, rather small; excellent field 

 cabbage, in immense quantities ; savoys, 

 large heaps of mushrooms, and to the best of 

 our judgment at the time, every vegetable 

 seen in the London markets about the same 

 season, with the exception of brocoli, sea- 

 kale, asparagus, and forced rhubarb. The 

 fruits were Chasselas grapes, Calville and 

 reinette grise apples, a few indifferent pears, 

 different kinds of service, cornel berries, 

 walnuts and filberts, and sprigs of orange- 

 blossoms, as in September. It is but fair to 

 mention that we failed in being at the mar- 

 ket sufficiently early in the morning to see 

 things in their best state. We shall now 

 glance at some of the market gardens. 



The Field Market-Garden of M. Cadet 

 de Mars at Aubermlliers. — OctA. Auber- 

 villiers is a small village about a league from 

 Paris, and M. Cadet de Mars' grounds oc- 

 cupy 50 or 60 acres round it. This garde- 

 ner has been repeatedly mayor of this vil- 

 lage, and he is unquestionably at the head 

 of the field market gardeners in the neigh- 

 borhood of Paris. He was, as he told us, 

 a peasant ; but it is impossible to see his im- 

 posing manly figure and open generous 

 countenance without feeling that he is noble 

 by nature. He is upwards of seventy; and 

 he began the world without a penny, and 

 without education; but he is now proprie- 

 tor of the grounds which he cultivates, be- 

 sides houses and other property. He has 

 lately ceded his,grounds, with the exception 

 of a few acres for his own amusement, to 

 his children ; and lives quietly with his wife, 

 an excellent woman, about twenty years 

 younger than himself. This old man is full 

 of gayety and spirits, content with his past 

 life, and apparently happy. He has always! 

 had the greatest curiosity respecting other 

 countries, and this still breaks out every time 

 he sees a foreigner. He told us that he would 

 travel through England, provided his wife 

 would accompany him. He once went as 

 far as Havre with a friend who was going to 

 England, for the sake of seeing the sea, and 

 lie speaks with raptures of the visit. He 

 takes an interest in all that is passing in the 

 world, and spoke much of America ; the 

 government of which he admire^ beyond 

 that of all other countries, and which he 

 hopes France will one day adopt as a model. 

 He spoke much of the first revolution, of 

 which he had witnessed many of the most 

 interesting scenes. In politics and morals, 

 indeed, he is far beyond his contemporaries ; 

 and is, in short, as far as an unlettered man 

 can be, all that Jefferson or Lafayette could 

 wish him to be. He made his fortune chief- 

 ly by taking large contracts to supply the 

 hospitals. The largest contracts he ever 

 had were made with the Hospice Salpetri- 

 cre ; for which on gourd-day, i. e. the day 

 on which the vegetable used in the soup ser- 

 ved to the inmates is the pumpkin or the 

 gourd, he used to supply G000 lbs. He has 

 had a fruit of the mammoth gourd which 

 weighed 190 lbs. He had also large con- 



apply to very hardy plants, but, relatively tu 

 them, it appears to be one well deserving 

 the consideration of British gardeners. 



In the ground which M. Cadet de Mar? 

 has retained for his own amusement, there is 

 a wall covered with peach and apricot trees, 

 very well trained in the fan manner. Along 

 its top there is a projecting trellis, support- 

 ed, at an angle of about 60 c , by struts a- 

 butting against the wall, about 2 ft. lower 

 than the top ; and this trellis is covered with 

 vines. The upper parts of the peach and 

 apricot trees were evidently injured a little 

 by the shade of the vines ; but we were told 

 that the latter were of some use to the for- 

 mer, in spring, by protecting their blossoms 

 from the perpendicular cold. The trellis 

 was loaded with grapes, which, from the path 

 in front, had a very rich appearance. There 

 were a great many dwarf apple trees in this 

 garden, trained en goblete ; the sort prefer- 

 red was the reinette de Canada. Behind M- 

 Cadet de Mars' house is a small walled gar- 

 den, formerly, if we are not mistaken, the 

 burying-ground of a religious establishment, 

 the church of v\hich is now one of M. Cadet 

 de Mars' barns and is filled with apples and 

 onions. There are some very large stand- 

 ard apricot trees in this garden, and a very 

 old vine which bear abundantly ; and we 

 saw a stack of onions as large a haystack. — 

 The onions are stacked by alternating them 

 with thin layers of rye straw; the straw at 

 the outside of the stack being doubled in 

 over the onions, so that none of them ap- 

 peared to view. We have seen carrots stack- 

 ed in the same manner with wheat straw in 

 England. 



~ WEEVIL. 

 It has become a matter of much import- 

 ance with farmers and millers to prevent, if 

 possible the destruction which this little in- 

 sect yearly makes in grain. Various meth- 

 ods have been resorted to for this purpose, 

 but none has yet been found sufiicienly effi- 

 cacious to be generally adopted. In the 

 hope however that some means may be dis- 

 covered that will have the desired effect, we 

 will gladly communicate the result of any 

 attempt at this object, and with a this view 

 we give the following method as practised 

 by Col. Drake of this vicinity, for two or 

 three years past with entire suceess, viz : — 

 In mowing or stacking his wheat he sprinkles 

 a small quantity of salt over each laver ot 

 sheaves. Four or five quarts to the hund- 

 red dozen he has found quite sufficient. — 

 By this means he has preserved his wheat en- 

 tirely free from weevil while his neighbors 

 have complained of great damage. Of the 

 security thus afforded he says he is altogeth- 

 er convinced from an experiment made last 

 year. Having omitted to salt a small part 

 of his wheat, he found it on examination 

 very much eaten, while the salted wheat re- 

 mained entirely undisturbed, although in tin- 

 same mow. One advantage, it is to be no- 

 ticed, which this method possesses over every 

 other, is that the straw is most equal to the 

 best timothy hay, and the cattle will eat it. 

 we are informed, in preference. Let it bt 

 tested. — Leb anon (Ohio) Srar. 



Consolation. — An old lady once being vc 

 ry sorely afflicted with a disorder usually 

 denominated hysterics, imagined she could 

 not breathe, and appealed to her husband 



heat; having remarked that after a severe I on the occasion, with 'Mr , 1 can't 



winter, provided it were short, bulbs flower- breathe.' 'Well, my dear,' returned the af- 



tracts with the manufacturers of sugar from 

 the beet root; especially during the years 

 1812 and 1813, when the price of sugar in 

 Paris was 5f. per lb. These companies fail- 

 ed, for the most part, in 1814 and 1815, 

 when sugar fell to 14 sous per lb. His sons 

 still cultivate large quantities of mangold- 

 wurtzel for feeding cows ; and it deserves to 

 be remarked, that these cultivators, and al- 

 so others in their neighborhood, who former- 

 ly used to gather a part of the leaves to sell 

 as fodder while the plants were growing, 

 have now left off the practice, from finding 

 that it lessens the size of the roots. 



In the field garden culture practised here, 

 and in other field gardens in the neighbor- 

 hood of Paris, the soil is ploughed for the 

 crop with a two-wheeled plough ; but all the 

 operations of cleaning and gathering the 

 crop are performed by manual labor. Irri- 

 gation, either by manual labor or by chan- 

 nels on the surface, is seldom resorted to. — 

 There is no regular rotation of crops ; but 

 in general, after three or four crops of veget- 

 ables, a crop of wheat is taken, or the land is 

 sown with lucerne, under which it remains 

 from two to five years. Turnips are seldom 

 sown in the spring because the drought and 

 insect destroy them ; but in August after the 

 crop of peas, wheat, or rye is removed, they 

 are sown with success. Onions and leeks 

 are sown together in February : neither 

 grows large. The onions are removed ear- 

 ly in September, and the leeks remain to 

 be taken up as wanted. Small leeks are 

 preferred in the Paris market, as having 

 more flavor ; and the same as to onions anil 

 asparagus. Where the soil is deep, soft, and 

 inclined to moisture, the marshmallow is cul- 

 tivated for the apothecaries, and found to 

 pay well, because suitable ground for this 

 plant is rare on secondary limestone. As- 

 paragus is grown in single rows along the 

 bottom of shallow trenches, and, instead of 

 covering the plants during winter as we do 

 in England, their crowns or buds are laid al- 

 most bare, so as to receive the first influ- 

 ence of the sun in spring. As the plants 

 begin to push they are earthed up. A part 

 of the grounds is planted with vines, in rows 

 about 8 ft. apart, between each row of which 

 is a row of asparagus ; and in the rows of 

 vines are asparagus plants, which alternate 

 with the vines. When the vines are in fruit 

 the stalks of the asparagus are tied together 

 in bundles, to admit more air to the vines. 

 On expressing our surprise at the practice of 

 laying bare the buds of asparagus during 

 the winter, M. Cadet de Mars acknowledg- 

 ed that highly succulent varieties of aspara- 

 gus, grown in deep, richly manured soil 

 such as might be seen in some private gar- 

 dens, and particularly in that of the king at 

 Versailles, would sutler from this practice ; 

 but that field asparagus, such as that before 

 us, was neater a state of nature and sufl'er- 

 ed no injury. He observed that a covering 

 of earth or litter, while it prevented the es- 

 cape of heat, at the same time prevented its 

 entrance ; and he gave as an instance in fa- 

 vor of the practice, the well known early 

 flowering of bulbs planted on the surface, 

 as done with crocuses about Paris, in com- 

 parison with those which are inserted some 

 inches deep in the soil. He is of opinion that 

 cold serves to force forward plants, as well as 



ed earlier, and asparagus was readv to cut 



sooner. Of csurse this doctrine can only 



:\ 



fectionate husband, 'I would not trj 

 nobody wants you should.' 



