Jfkriwr's JHtftttljlg Iftsitcrr. 



CONDUCTED BY ISAAC HILL. 



" Those who labor is the earth are the chosen 1-eopee of God, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposits for substantial and genuine virtue."— Jeffcrson7 



VOL. 10. NO. 8. 



BOSTON, MASS., AUGUST 31, 1848. 



WHOLE NO. 116. 



THE FARMER'S MOXTHLT VISITOR, 

 PUBLISHED BY 



JOHN MARSH, 



ISSUED ON THE LAST DAT OF EVERY MONTH, 



77 Washington Street, Boston, Mass. 



Bedford, N. II 



TERMS.— To single subscribers, Fifty Cents. Ten per 

 Cant, will be allowed to the person who shall send none than 

 one subscriber. Twelve copies will be sent for the advance 

 payment of Five Dollars; twenty-five copies for Ten Dollars; 

 sixty copies for Tirrnty Dollars. The payment in every case to 

 be made in advance. 



tySf-Mmsy nod subscriptions, by a regulation of the Post Master 

 ti' ni i ><il,mtnj in all cases be remitted by the Past Master, free oj 

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9^7-Alt gentlemen who have heretofore acted as Agents are 

 requested to continue their Agency. Old subscribers who 

 come under the new terms, will please notify us of the names 

 already on our books. 



Vines on Forest Trees. 

 In travelling through the States of Massachu- 

 setts and Connecticut a few years since, I was 

 drawn to observe the quantities of grapes grow- 

 ing wild on vines that were climbing over the 

 tops of the forest trees ; most of those which I 

 tasted wen; of good quality, and they grew in 

 abundance without any care whatever. I have 

 often heard people from the above mentioned 

 States, speak of ihe excellent grapes they used 

 to gather from vines on the forest trees. A few 

 years since, a friend of mine took the trouble to 

 collect a quantity of cuttings of the best varie- 

 ties, which he planted in his garden. The vines 

 when they grew were managed with much care, 

 alter the manner that Isabella and Catawba vines 

 are, on open trellises. The consequence was, 

 very little fruit was produced, and that of a very 

 poor quality; and as he thought he had done his 

 best, he at length came to the conclusion that it 

 was the change of location that had made. such 

 a wonderful change in the fruit. It happened 

 that a few tendrils from One of the vines came 

 in contact with the projecting limb of a plum 

 tree, and in a short time the shoots reached the 

 top of tree, and the next year the owner was 

 gratified to see good fruit, and of as good flavor 

 as any that he had ever tasted of the kind in 

 their native place. In several instances 1 have 

 known Isabella vines to run rampant over the 

 tops of large trees, and they have never failed to 

 produce large crops of grapes every year, of bet- 

 ter quality than any that I have ever eaten grown 

 on trellised vines, and without any labor being 

 expended. There is one vine now growing in 

 this town, that produces more grapes than any 

 other six that are managed in the ordinary way ; 

 and what I wish to suggest is this : why cannot 

 Isabella and Catawba grapes be raised to any ex- 

 tent throughout our whole country, on the tops 

 of the scattering trees in the fields, and along 

 the borders of woodlands, and woody ravines, 

 without any labor being expended or required, ex- 

 cept in planting the vines, and training ihem up 

 a permanent post set for that purpose ? There 

 should be three shoots fastened to the sides of 

 the post, with loops of leather, until the begin- 

 ning of March in the second year, at which 

 time the number should bo reduced to one, 

 which is to make the trunk of the vine. It 

 should be protected while it is small with stakes, 

 to prevent injury by cattle or other animals. 

 The vine needs the support of the post until the 

 tendrils obtain permanent bold of the limbs ol 

 the tree, and the body attains sufficient size to 

 withstand any thing that may come against it. 

 The vines should not be set near the body of the 

 tree, because the ground is already occupied by 

 the roots of the tree — but directly under the ex- 

 tremities of the branches on the south side, 



where the vine will receive the warmth of the 

 sun. If the soil is not first rate, it should be tit- 

 ken iiway and re-placed with at least one cart 

 load of rich sods from the roadside, which is 

 much better than any highly manured soil for 

 the vine or any fruit tree. Much has been writ- 

 ten on the management of vines, with many 

 precise rules for pruning, training, manuring, 

 &C, which all amounts to nothing with farmers 

 generally, who have no time to devote to such 

 work. All that our native vines want is plenty of 

 space to extend over, and plenty of air and sun, 

 all of which they receive perfectly if they are al- 

 lowed to run over the tops of the trees. Another 

 advantage in planting vines in the situations that 

 I have described, is that they are rendered more 

 lasting, and will produce fruit lor several gene- 

 rations, judging from specimens that 1 have seen 

 growing in different parts of our country. Wri- 

 ters compute the age of the vine at two hundred 

 years, and they have been known to reach a 

 much greater age; hence in planting a vine we 

 are doing work that need not be repeated soon 

 in the same place if properly done. 



I. HILDRETH. 

 Seneca, April 7, 181S. 



From the Horticulturist. 

 Profits of Fruit Growing. 

 When so many farmers are complaining of 

 small profits, we think it proper to say a little 

 more on the profits of fruit growing. 



Charles Dubois, of Fishkill landing, Dutchess 

 county, N. Y., lias taken thirty-three dollars for 

 the fruit grown on one Frost Gage Plum Tree 

 in one season ; and last season received ninety 

 dollars from the crop of apricots from one 

 tree. 



A lady of Kensington, Pa., has received 

 seventy dollars in a season from one apricot 

 tree. 



A gardener, near Boston, has produced eight 

 thousand quarts of strawberries to the acre, and 

 received twenty cents per quart for them — 

 thus realizing sixteen hundred dollars per acre. 

 An acre of raspberries on Long Island has 

 produced nine hundred dollars worth of fruit in 

 a season. The expense of cultivating, picking 

 ihe fruit, and taking it to market, was one hun- 

 dred and fifty-seven dollars — leaving a handsome 

 net profit of seven hundred and forty-three dol- 

 lars; a larger sum than thousands of farmers re- 

 alize from a farm of an hundred acres. 



Mr. Zieher. of Reading, Pa., has made forty- 

 two gallons of pure grape juice wine from one 

 Isabella vine in a season, worth, when one year 

 old, one dollar and filiy ceuls per gallon — or six- 

 ty-three dollars ; being the interest on one thou- 

 sand and filiy dollars. 



An apple orchard of one acre, principally of 

 the Rhode Island Greening, in Wayne county, 

 N. Y., produced two hundred barrels of selected 

 fruit in '47. Another orchard, of three and one- 

 half acres, produced six hundred and fifty bar- 

 rels. Although the fruit was sold at extremely 

 low prices — being so far in the interior of New 

 York — yet the net proceeds were one hundred 

 dollars per acre. In the vicinity of Philadelphia, 

 such a crop of fruit would have paid a net profit 

 of three hundred dollars per acre. 



John C. Gardner, of Nantucket, Mass., has 

 produced the cultivated cranberry three hundred 

 and twenty bushels to the acre, and found 

 ready sale at four dollars per bushel ; thus re- 

 alizing twelve hundred and eight dollars per 

 acre. 



Many persons will say — " Well, huge profits 

 may be obtained on a small scale, hut nothing 

 can be done on a huge scale." 



We happen, just now, to think of some large 

 operations in fruit culture. Major Reybold, of 

 Delaware, together with bis sous and sons-in- 

 law, own a number of farms, and have about a 



thousand acres in peach orchards. They think 

 nothing of sending five thousand baskets of 

 peaches to market per day, for some weeks, 

 and are supposed to have realized, last sea- 

 son, forty thousand dollars clear of all ex- 

 penses. 



Robert L. Pell, of Pel ham, Ulster county, N. 

 Y., is known to have raised, for several years 

 past, four thousand barrels of Newtown Pippin 

 apples per year; and what he chooses to sell in 

 New York city, will always command six dollars 

 per barrel. Those he sends to Loudon have 

 sometimes sold [at retail] as high as twenty-one 

 dollars per barrel. Last season Mr. Pelfs crop 

 was ten thousand barrels.* Suppose, for argu- 

 ment's sake, that one-third of this amount 

 is swallowed up in expenses, there is still left 

 the handsome sum of forty thousand dollars. 



Dr. R. T. Underbill, of New York, has a vine- 

 yard of twenty acres of Isabella and Catawba 

 grape vines at Croton Point, on the Hudson 

 river. It is a well known fact, that some 

 thousands of baskets of grapes, from this vine- 

 yard, are annually sent to New York, and 

 find ready sale at nine dollars per hundred 

 pounds. 



The doctor says there ought to be started a 

 hundred vineyards immediately as large as his ; 

 and we coincide with him. New York city, 

 with Brooklyn and Williamsburg, is half as 

 large as Paris; and in this latter city, ten 

 million pounds of table grapes are consumed 

 yearly. 



You will, I think, be surprised to hear that 

 many wealthy farmers near Philadelphia buy 

 their apples yearly— this year, at one dollar per 

 bushel; and that too, when they acknowledge 

 that feeding cattle and raising grain does not 

 pay more than three per cent, on the capital in- 

 vested in farming. Some of them mean well ; 

 they have intended to plant out trees every year 

 for the last twenty years. 



B. G. BOS WELL. 



Philadelphia, Feb. 14, 184S. 



[* We know the apple crop at the Pelham farm, last 

 season, was an enormous large one, but we presume our 

 correspondent's estimate of that crop is only an estimate, 

 and not a precisely ascertained amount. \Vc endeavored 

 to obtain an exact account of the product of this really 

 great orchard for 1847, but without success. — Editor.] 



Destruction of fruit buds by Frost. 



M. Quinby of Coxsackie informs us, " For the 

 last ten years, whenever the mercury has fallen 

 more than eight degrees below zero during the 

 winter, the fruit buds of our peaches have been 

 invariably frozen to death; when it remained 

 above that point we have always had fruit. Two 

 years during that time, the coldest weather was 

 exactly eight below zero ; one year it killed all 

 the fruit, the other about half. Consequently 

 that is about the last degree of cold the peach 

 can endure. The fact can be ascertained that 

 the fruit buds are killed any time in the winter 

 after weather warm enough to lake the frost out; 

 the centre then turns black. On the I lib Janu- 

 ary the mercury was 21 degrees below zero. I 

 expected to find peaches killed, but not cherries 

 and plums, which appear to have shared the 

 same fate. It has been suggested that cherries 

 and plums would not have suffered, bad it not 

 been for the warm weather the first part of win- 

 ter, starting the buds. How is it? Ditl the buds 

 start, and were they killed by the subsequent 

 cold ; or is there a limit to their endurance of 

 cold, as well as the peach ?" 



Our correspodeiit is referred to the remarks 

 on p. 181 of the present volume of the Cultiva- 

 tor, showing that it is not low temperature alone 

 which destroys fruit buds. Indeed the fact that 

 the point at which they are killed is placed quile 

 differently by different cultivators, proves this to 

 be the case. When peach buds have been much 



