1889. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



31 



of early Pears. It does not bear early unless 

 your trees are headed low: but It is a capi- 

 tal yielder in due time, and delicious 



Rosticzer might also be mentioned as pre- 

 ceding Bartlett; but while of good quality 

 it is not as good as it has been ranked, and 

 the tree sprawls abominably. No fruit trees 

 are so individualized as Pears. 



Sheldon is the grandest of Pears and not 

 ttK) many of them can be planted. But pick 

 them when very solid and place in a cool 

 cellar. U yon will, they will not decay for 

 six weeks. If nearly ripened on the tree 

 they will not keep a week. Xo Pear is more 

 delicious than a Sheldon. Large, smooth 

 and a marvelous bearer: the only trouble is 

 that the tree is brittle and soon wears and 

 bears itself out. 



I hardly know how to report on Do\vn- 

 ing's favorite, the Belle Lucrative. It is a 

 dull green Pear, and well ripened it is de- 

 licious. It is too juicy for canning, and only 

 good for dessert. This year it has inclined 

 to form hard knots under the skin, another 

 result of fungus growth. 



Kirtland is a fine Pear but this year has 

 cracked. 



Duchess is doing admirably well and takes 

 to a wet season. If the drought does not 

 compel it to prematurely ripen it will be 

 of fine size, as it is also smooth and bright. 



Seckel I no longer plant tor market. It 

 must once more bring seven dollars a barrel 

 to make It pay as a market Pear. Its leaves 

 drop this year almost as badly as Currant's. 



Louise Bonne is also defoliating but I have 

 picked a fine crop. For a dwarf it is unsur- 

 passed. Such crops are amazing. When 

 possible let these Pears very nearly ripen 

 on the trees, not like most Pears, off. 



Kieffer I have not fruited and have only a 

 single tree, being unwilling to grow so poor 

 fruit. But the tree is very healthy. 



I add this year one more point for Buffum. 

 It is a very good Pear if picked early: and 

 is as handsome as a Peach. The tree is 

 unique in growth; and of great value for 

 the upright form in a lawn. I grow it 

 wholly as a lawn tree. The color of the 

 foliage in Autumn is gorgeous beyond all 

 trees, unless it be Water Maples. 



Anjou is first of all Pears all in all. It is 

 superb in quality, always smooth, large and 

 perfect. It bears enormously and annually. 

 This year it is unaffected in foliage or fruit 

 by mildew or parasite of any sort. The 

 form of the tree is robu.st, evenly spreading, 

 and the foliage very bright. The fruit 

 picked the last of September keeps till 

 Christmas. 



Diel has not cracked at all this year as it 

 sometimes will. Indeed the general diffi- 

 culty with Pears this year is not cracking, 

 but growing rusty, and knotty in some cases. 



Clairgeau I have always stood by as a 

 gloriously beautiful fruit. It is doing finely 

 this year. If picked the last of September 

 It is in eating for Thanksgiving, when we 

 want handsome fruit. But when once It is 

 fit for table it must at once be used or the 

 gold and scarlet skin turns black. 



It is a Pear year, taking the land through 

 and the crop brings only about one 

 dollar a bushel on the average. I have 

 many varieties that I do not report on: 

 partly because we are growing too many 

 Pears. Still is there any fruit that varies 

 more in flavor:' No two Pears are alike, 

 which is more than you can say of Plums, 

 Peaches and Apples. It is a grand fruit to 

 experiment with. But do not grow It unless 

 you have a cool, dry fruit room or cellar to 

 store it when picked. Placed in a warm 

 room it decays at once. There Is not one of 

 the Pears that brings us more profit than 

 Flemish Beauty when it gives fair fruit, but 

 that is not oftener than once in three years. 

 The trees should stand out in an open place 

 exposed well to the sun. As a rule keep 



Pear trees well mulched, and have them 

 forked about Instead of ploughed. 



The Strawberry — Cultivated better 

 than Wild 



tin.\NVILI.E COWING, DELAWARE CO., I.ND. 



I cannot agree with those who claim that 

 wild Strawberries are better in flavor than 

 cultivated varieties. My experience with 

 both kinds has been long and extensive, and 

 I am sure most wild Strawberries are of in- 

 ferior flavor, but they often ripen thorough- 

 ly before they are found and devoured by 

 persons whose appetites are too fierce to be 

 very discriminating. Hunger is an excel- 

 lent sauce. Cultivated varieties, if perfectly 

 ripe, could not be safely marketed but must 

 be picked when fairly colored but still firm. 



During the last .32 years I have found 

 many wild Strawberries on my farm, but 

 none of as delicious flavor as Sharpless, Dun- 

 can or any other first-class variety. Thou- 

 sands of seedling Strawberries are annually 

 growTi in this country by zealous horticul- 

 turists in the hope of producing something 

 better than any of our well-known sorts. 

 Delicious flavor is always desirable in a new 

 candidate for public favor, but a partial lack 

 of it may be overlooked in consideration of 

 a marked advance in other good qualities. 



The Strawberry is, I believe, the most 

 healthful of all fruits. I have seen hundreds 

 of children in Strawberry fields where they 

 Were allowed to eat all the fruit they de- 

 sired, but I never knew one to be made sick 

 by an overdose of well-ripened berries. To 

 the enthusiastic horticulturist there is an in- 

 describable charm attending the cultivation 

 of the Strawberry. It is the first fruit to 

 ripen and is succeeded by no other equal to 

 it in flavor. In beauty and fragrance it Is 

 hardly surpassed by the choicest flowers. 



Wise Selection of Plants and Soil in 

 Strawberry Culture. 



At the meeting of the American Pomolog- 

 ical Society in Boston, two years ago, Mr. J. 

 M. Smith, of Wisconsin, defended the Wil- 

 son Strawberry against the charge of being 

 "run out." Recently Mr. E. S. Goff, of the 

 Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion, has visited Mr. Smith's grounds, and 

 he reports to Garden and Forest that this 

 old variety there continues to yield immense 

 crops, and has not as yet been surpassed in 

 productiveness by any of the more recent 

 Introductions. 



Mr. Smith ascribes his success with the 

 Wilson chiefly to his method of propagating 

 the plants. About ten years ago he noticed 

 the fact that a bed set with plants that had 

 grown from a setting made the preceding 

 spring, and which had, consequently, never 

 yielded a crop of fruit, made a better growth 

 and bore more Strawberries than another 

 bed of plants formed on a setting that had 

 already yielded a crop. Since that time Mr. 

 .Smith ha.s been careful, in setting new beds, 

 to use only plants propagated from those 

 that have never borne a crop, and as the re- 

 sult his Wilsons have fully maintained their 

 original vigor and productiveness. In fav- 

 orable season they still yield as high as 400 

 bushels per acre. The rust, which has been 

 the ruin of this variety iu most localities, 

 does not appear in his newly-planted beds. 

 After a bed has yielded a crop of fruit, how- 

 ever, the plants are severely attacked by the 

 rust: but as Mr. Smith does not usually take 

 more than one crop from a setting, the rust 

 has no opportunity to work harm. 



Mr. Smith generally, after plowing up a 

 bed of Strawberries, devotes the ground to 

 other crops for a year or more before re-set- 

 ting it again with Strawberries. In the 

 spring, however, he found it convenient to 

 re-plant a portion of some beds that had pro- 

 duced Strawberries the preceding year. Al- 

 though this ground had been kept in a high 



state of fertility, the result was most marked. 

 The stand of plants on the ground that had 

 produced a crop the year before was notice- 

 ably thinner and less vigorous, and the yield 

 was smaller by half. 



In one part of the ground, that wa.s occu- 

 pied the second time in succession, another 

 experiment was tried. Mr. Smith departed 

 from his custom here in another particular, 

 and used young plants that had been prop- 

 agated from a bed which had already borne 

 a crop. He expected little from this portion 

 of his field, but he received literally nothing, 

 for the plants, which suffered a double abuse 

 — first, in having been raised from weakened 

 stock, and again, in having been planted in 

 old Strawberry-ground, nnrefreshed by rest 

 and rotation— were so far enfeebled that 

 they were abondoned as worthless and 

 plowed under. 



Strawberry Culture in England. 



Suggestions for American 



Growers. 



The horticultural practices of our breth- 

 ren across the Atlantic often appear to the 

 eye of American cultivators as clumsy as 

 they are thorough. But while in counting 

 cost of crop the item of "labor" is consid- 

 ered secondary to that of "land" (a condi- 

 tion reversed in America), it Is a question 

 whether some of these laborious thorough 

 methods give always the great effects that 

 the European gardener expects of them, or 

 at least whether the same results cannot be 

 obtained in a manner involving less hand 

 labor. On this side of the big water we 

 might often adopt some of the old country 

 thoroughness with profit, provided we can 

 succeed in getting the feature of clumsiness 

 separated from it. 



Trenching the ground two or three feet, 

 and loading it with manure clear down to 

 that depth, is one of these old clumsy but 

 thorough methods, yet in vogue for many 

 crops, especially for Asparagus, Horse Rad- 

 ish and Strawberries. It has been practiced 

 for Asparagus for some time even here, but 

 now we have found that good results are 

 not dependent on the amount of hand labor, 

 nor on the excessive use of manure, wasted 

 in this operation. We are satisfied in any 

 event with the good offices of a common 

 plow, with a good plowman at the handles, 

 of a subsoil plow following in the furrow 

 behind, and of the good manure that we can 

 incorporate with the surface soil by plowing 

 and harrowing m. 



British gardeners now begin to waver in 

 their belief that the old trenching system Is 

 indispensable to best success with Strawber- 

 ries, and as a consequence, the culture of 

 this fruit Is rapidly increasing. With cheap- 

 ened production comes Increased cultiva- 

 tion, larger supply, and lower prices. It is 

 not over twenty years ago that the planting 

 of a few patches, one-half or one acre In ex- 

 tent, was at length described and illustrated 

 in a leading literary magazine in Germany 

 as something wonderful and novel. Now 

 patches many times that size are a common 

 occurence. On the British Islands culture 

 on a large, scale is successfully practiced 

 from the south of England to the extreme 

 north of .Scotland. The Journal of Horti- 

 culture, gives a lenghty description of 

 modern Strawberry culture in England. 



In some of the Kentish Strawberry fields, 

 says our contemporary, the soil appears half 

 composed of gravel or shingle. The subsoil 

 is well broken, provision is being thus made 

 for the escape of water when it might prove 

 injurious, and for its presence in the form of 

 vapor rising upwards to the roots when it is 

 most needed by the plants and crops during 

 the season of growth. Strawberries In strong 

 and even rich soil not deeply worked, or on 

 dry subsoils, suffer from drought far more 

 seriously than they do in sandy or gravelly 



