[890. 



POPULAR GAPDENING. 



115 



better dissolve the society and go to raising 

 Castor Beans, which, he said, paid from $12.00 

 to Slo per acre. 



One man thought the contraction of the cur- 

 rency was the greatest incubus the producers 

 have to carry. 



C. C. Bell, of Biwnville, had no doubt that Mr. 

 Carpenter had given a true account of his ex- 

 perience as a fruit grower. He called attention 

 to the fact that Mr. Carpenter's own figures 

 showed that the Apple was the only fruit that 

 had paid a net profit. He would not advise any 

 one to grow Grajtes lor wine. The public senti- 

 ment is against it. Any man, he said, who will 

 plant the right varieties of Apples in suitable 

 soil and care for them will make it pay. He ; 

 believes that the products of an orchard 

 would pay for the land ever}' year for 

 ten or twelve .vears. He had bought the 

 fruit of a 40-acre orchard every year for 

 six or seven years at prices ranging from 

 8800 to 81,500 yearly. Tet only a smaU 

 portion of this orchard was of good market 

 varieties, the greater part being Hawle's 

 Genet, which is too small to sell well. 



J. C. Evans said that he and Mr. Carpenter 

 were neighbors. He is by no means a 

 commercial fruit grower. Four-fifths of 

 his varieties are utterly worthless. He has 

 about enough of small fruits to supply 

 himself and his neighbors. Very little of ^^^. 

 his fruit goes to market. Notwithstand- •' / 

 ing all these drawbacks his Apples had 

 paid a little profit. 



Varieties. The discussion of varieties 

 showed that the Ben Darts was by all odds 

 considered the most profitable kind to grow. But 

 there is a strong desire to find an Apple of 

 better quality than the Ben Davis that shall be 

 as productive and as profitable, 



C. C. Bell, spoke well of the Clayton as a ship- 

 per, but did not like the very erect growth of 

 the tree. Others had the same objection. 



No one thought the Shannon Pippin of much 

 value. 



The Shackeford is x>erhaps a seedling of the 

 Ben Davis, which it resembles very much. Mr. 

 Patterson could hardly distinguish the fruit 

 from the Ben Da\TS. With him the tree was a 

 straggling grower like the Little Romanite. 



L. A. Goodman found the tree like the Willow 

 Twig, the fruit like the Ben Davis, as large or 

 even larger. 



The Mammoth BlackTwig was but little known, 

 and not thought as desirable as Clayton by Mr. 

 Bell who had bought it in northern Arkansas. 

 Pres. Evans found it a good keeper. 



The Arkansas Black was reported verj' favor- 

 ably from the northern part of Arkansas where 

 it came from. It is a beautiful, dark red Apple 

 resembling the Jonathan, a good keeper with 

 ordinarj- care till May. 



A letter was read from J. C. Plumb of Wis- 

 consin asking what Apple would supercede the 

 Ben Davis. The Gano was named, but the dis- 

 cussion showed that it was superior to the Ben 

 Davis only in color. The quality is so much 

 alike they could not be distinguished by taste. 



The York Imperial was well spoken of. It is 

 productive and keeps well. 



The Minkler and some new seedlings of the 

 same type were said to be among the best known 

 for southwest Missouri. Mr. Wild thought the 

 Minkler would not be as profitable as the Little 

 Romanite, as it is slower in bearing. He thought 

 the Langford better. 



The Yellow Transparent was found to blight 

 badly by A. Ambrose of Vernon Co. Mr. Wild, 

 of Jasper, found it very good as to size, and a 

 few days earlier than the Early Harvest. It did 

 not blight with him worse than the Red June. 



Raspberries. The papers and discussion on 

 this fruit showed that there was a strong feeling 

 in favor of dropping all Red Raspberries for 

 profit. Mr. Patterson had picked them in the 

 morning and had them comeback on him spoiled 

 in the evening. With him Souhegan, Mammoth 

 Cluster, and Gregg were good kinds. Mr. Hollis- 

 ter, a commission merchant, of St Louis, was 

 loth to vote the red Raspberry out of existence. 

 He had shipped Turner berriesgrown insouthem 

 Illinois, successfully to Denver. They were 

 packed in-shallow pint boxes. 



Mr. Goodman thought there must be some- 

 thing in Illinois soil peculiarly favorable to the 

 Red Raspberry. He had never been able to ship 

 them half-way from Kansas City to Denver. 



The Schafler was praised by some, and con- 

 demned by others. Some sold it higher than 

 other kinds; others couldn't sell it at all. Prof ■ 



John W. riiirk, of (.'ohimbia considered it the 

 poorest they had. In a small way it has always 

 been in demand with the writer. 



Strawberries. The Strawberry report of 

 that veteran horticulturist. Samuel Miller, was 

 instructive and interesting. He planted last 

 year mostly of Bubach and Gandy. 



G. W Hopkins, of Springfield had made more 

 money from Windsor Chief than from any other. 

 The Bubach was fine. The Jessie was frost-bitten. 



Blackberries. The Kittatiny seemed to be 

 the favorite Blackberry. Early Harvest had few 

 friends. E. A. Riehl of Illinois, succeeded in 

 growing fine fruit on the Snyder by pinching 

 twice in the summer; first when the canes are 

 about two feet high, second when the laterals 



PLANTING YOUNG CARNATIONS. 



have made a growth of six to twelve inches, 

 thus inducing the growth of a secondary set of 

 small branches. With him the Early Harvest is 

 worthless. TheErie closely resembles the Lawton. 



President Evans approved what Mr. Riehl said 

 of the Snyder. He also found the Taylor a 

 good variety. 



Missouri Fbcits Ahead. Mr. A. Nelson of 

 Lebanon, Mo., a former York State man, told of 

 his success in collecting a car load of fruit and 

 farm products in southwest Missouri and taking 

 them to the Buffalo, N. Y. Exhibition. He 

 made this strong statement; "I can sa.v, with- 

 out fear of contradiction, that the poorest 

 samples of Missouri Apples I had, equalled in 

 ever.v particular the best samples from the four 

 or five eastern states which had fruit at that 

 e.xhibition." After this fruit had been shown at 

 Buffalo he carried some of it to the Inter-State 

 Fair, Elmira where its beautj' excited much ad- 

 miration. 



Peacbthisxing. Mr. Gano, gave his exper- 

 ience in thinning and shipping 100,000 boxes of 

 Peaches. His men thinned from 100 to 1.50 trees 

 each, per day. It was not half the work that 

 might be imagined. He left the Peaches from 

 four to six inches apart on the twigs. Mr. Riehl 

 went farther and said that it is less work to thin 

 fruit than it is not to thin it. It is cheaper to 

 thin the fruit and drop the surplus on the ground 

 than it is to cull and assort it after it is picked. 

 He thought Apples could be thinned by pruning. 



He thins when the Peaches are about the size 

 of marbles or Hickory nuts, and keeps the 

 center of his trees well open so as to preserve 

 the small fruiting twigs all along the length of 

 the main branches Trees must be pruned every 

 year to keep these small twigs in the center. 



As an illustration of the benefits of thinning 

 Peaches E. HoUister told of Peaches that Dr. 

 Huil of IlUnois thinned his fruit, and sold his 

 Peaches for %\:& per peck basket while his 

 neighbors who did not thin sold theirs for 81.75 

 per bushel. 



CONDENSED GLEANINGS. 

 Eed Cedar FeDcil-Wood. The manufacture of 

 this has for years been almost exclusively con- 

 fined to Florida, where this tree grows to a large 

 size and in great perfection. The business has 

 been in the hands of a large foreign house, which 

 supplies a good part of the world with lead 

 pencils, and has been profitable. Large Cedar 

 timber, straight grained and of a suitable quality 

 for pencil stuff, has become scarce in Florida 

 and factories are springing up in different parts 

 of the south, especially in Alabama, where, at 

 Gurley, sawing pencil stuff is already a consider- 

 able industry. The best Red Cedar, however, 

 now left will be found near the Red River, in 

 Texas, and in the Indian Territory, where this 

 tree attains a greater size than it reaches in 

 Florida, while the quality of the lumber is not, 

 probably, in any way inferior. The world has 



become so accustomed to using pencils made of 

 Red Cedar, that it will not readily adapt itself to 

 any others. The supply of this lumber of suit- 

 able qualit.v, however, is not large in proportion 

 to the demand, and cannot hold out many years 

 longer. The Red Cedar is the most widely dis- 

 tributed of North American Conifers, and in 

 some parts of the country it is one of the most 

 common trees; but it is in a few favored locali- 

 ties only that it grows in a way to produce the 

 straight-grained material essential for pencil- 

 making. The distillation of oil of Cedar, for 

 which there is now a large 'commercial demand, 

 from the sawdust and other refuse, has been 

 profitable in the pencil mills of Cedar Keys, 

 Florida, and might be carried on to advantage 

 in other parts of the countrj-. It can be 

 made, of course, from wood of the poorest 

 quality.— Garden and Forest. 



Bean Cleaning Device. The cut plainly 

 shows how the frame or rack that the 

 screen swings on is made. There should be 

 one- fourth inch between screen and stand- 

 ards, so it will work without friction. The 

 standards may be 2 x 3 at base and 2 x 2 at 

 top, or other convenient size; the rack four 

 and a half feet long and boards 1 x 4 or 5 

 inches all nailed on as in cut. Rear parts 

 should be six and a half feet long, and the 

 front ones should be left long until screen 

 is hung in right place. The screen should 

 be high enough to allow a person to stand 

 up and look the Beans over as the pass by. 

 It is hung on good strong Xo. 8 or 9 wire 20 

 Inches long, after a loop is made in each 

 end, and should extend four inches 

 farther beyond the rear posts than beyond the 

 front ones. Put down good steel wire nails 

 through bed pieces of screen, close to side piece 

 clinched on the under side, and bent over on 

 the upper side to form a hook for lower ends of 

 wires ; and same kind of nails, driven in proper 

 place near top of standards to support upper 

 ends of wires. Put strips of lath along the sides, 

 on a slant, to keep the Beans on the wire cloth, 

 five meshes to the inch for Xavy Beans, larger 

 mesh for larger Beans. The incline of the screen 

 should not be so great as to allow the Beans to 

 move of themselves. Allowing ten or twelve 

 inches for swing, nail blocks on the outside of 

 screen, back of and so they will strike the posts 

 as the screen operates. This keeps the Beans 

 mortng and prevents clogging. An upright 

 handle can be fastened on the side of screen. 



Beqoisites for Unshrooma- This toothsome 

 esculent cannot be raised artificially with the 

 same favorable and sure issue as can our veget- 

 ables from seeds. Everyone should bear in 

 mind a few general principles and govern his 

 work by what they suggest. Mushrooms do not 

 prefer a warm atmosphere, but they enjoy a 

 warm bed to grow in. While an excess of 

 water is injurious, the soil must not dry out. 

 In short, I take the fresh droppings from the 

 stable, throw them in a heap, and turn daily 

 until the rank heat and steam has passed away. 

 The mass is then made mto a compact bed m a 

 cool atmosphere, beaten firm with the back of a 

 fork, and when it shows a mild heat the spawn, 

 broken to pieces the size of a Walnut, is mserted 

 a few inches apart, and say two inches of light 

 loam is placed over the surface. There is no 

 use to be impatient or tr.v to hurry the operation. 

 Mushrooms will not appear for several weeks; 

 but meantime it is well to sprinkle any dry spots 

 that show themselves, and this is all that can be 

 done. Darkness is preferable, so that a cool 

 cellar is well adapted for them.— X. X. Tribune. 



Planting Young Carnations. Well rooted Car- 

 nation cutting when potted or boxed off will 

 make at once strong vigorous plants, while those 

 with very small roots, even if quite healthy, 

 take long to start as they become hard. Every 

 young plant should be planted deep and firm 

 enough to enable it to maintain a perpendicular 

 position throughout the season. The plant at 

 the left in illustration represents a j'oung plant 

 put firmly in the ground, and deep enough to be 

 safe from any influence which might affect its 

 stability. It will go right along without stopping 

 if we keep the conditions right for its growth. 

 The figure at the right shows a young plant 

 which has been carelessly potted in the first place 

 and when planted outside, was planted so near 

 the surface that the first puff' of wind sent it 

 over to one side, ready for a wind from opposite 

 direction to send it back again. Under such cir- 

 cumstances we can scarcely expect a plant to 

 amount to very much.— American Florist. 



