78 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



January, 



A List of Pears. 



E. P. POWELL, ONEIDA CO., N. Y. 



A good list of Pears for market as well as 

 for home use should include: 



1. Tyson. There Is no early Pear to equal 

 this. I shall never forget my first acquain- 

 tance with it. It is a great bearer and if 

 headed low, as all Pears should be, comes 

 early into fruit. The tree is upright, open, 

 stout and healthy. Season, August. 



3. Bartlett, to the exclusion of Clapp's 

 Favorite, which Is decreasing in favor with 

 growers and shippers. Season, September. 



3. Howell. This is a grand and handsome 

 Pear; growth strong and does well either as 

 a dwarf or standard. 



4. Flemish Beauty. This variety cracked 

 badly for a few years but is doing grandly 

 now. It needs an open, sunny location and 

 must not be at all crowded. Let the land 

 also be well drained. 



5. Sheldon, the finest table Pear in the 

 world, and good for canning also, but not 

 as good as Flemish Beauty, Bartlett and 

 Louise. Picked early in September and 

 stored in a cool cellar, it will be in good order 

 for two months. It is large and handsome 

 and the tree is very productive. Even the 

 smallest Pears on the tree are always deli- 

 cious; so there is no waste fruit. 



6. Louise Bonne. This Pear was tor a 

 time under a cloud, but it is an admirable 

 fruit. The tree is always loaded and if kept 

 well opened to the sun the fruit is finely 

 flavored. It should not be picked too soon; 

 indeed, it is one of those sorts that should 

 be left on the trees till frost, then placed in 

 cool rooms to ripen slowly, 



7. Onondaga. This Pear is too large, too 

 prolific and generally too well flavored to be 

 left out of the list. But I have had astrin- 

 gent Onondagas. The tree is a noble, large- 

 headed grower and bears young. 



8. The Seckle everybody knows and while 

 it is no longer profitable for market, it is so 

 delicious that it must remain for home use. 



9. Clairgeau. This Pear is the most 

 beautiful of all as well as the largest and 

 heaviest. When ripening it colors up in 

 crimson and gold. It must be picked about 

 October first and stored, and is fit for use 

 about the last of November. It has one 

 drawback, it must be marketed at once, as 

 the coloring on it turns black. 



10. D'Anjou— the noblest Roman of them 

 all. This tree is perfect in form and grows 

 with great rapidity. The quality of the 

 fruit is simply superb. The Pear is smooth, 

 large, light green, ripening to a lemon 

 yellow, melting, juicy and refreshing. It 

 should be picked in October and will keep 

 until Christmas. It is the Pear for profit. 



n. Lawrence, for early winter, is a capital 

 sort, smooth, bright, prolific and sweet. 



13. The Jones Pear promises to be the 

 best for midwinter and Josephine de Malines 

 for late winter. 



Besides the above I grow a group of 

 Buffums on my tree lawn, for their upright 

 form much resembling the Lombardy Pop- 

 lar. It also gives the most gorgeous coloring 

 of all Pears as to autumn foliage. 



Mulch your Pears when set and always 

 keep them mulched. Let no manure be 

 put in about the roots, but top dress with 

 manure if the land is poor. Seckels and 

 some others need considerable stimulating 

 and feeding by top dressing. Don't plow 

 your Pear orchard, but fork about the trees 

 thoroughly and then renew the mulch. 



Scrape the bark and dig out all bark 

 borers; the wood borers seldom attack Pears; 

 kill ofl" profe.ssioual tree trimmers; let no 

 suckers or weak shoots grow; keep the trees 

 headed low; head back halt the growth the 

 first five years; it is also essential to keep 

 the top open and let the trees stand far 

 enough apart to be freely open to sun and air. 



Good materials for mulching are coal ashes 

 (anthracite), hardwood sawdust, loose ma- 

 nure and other substances. 



The best dwarfs are Louise Bonne. Howell 

 and Duchess, with all odds in favor of 

 Louise. Among the very good sorts I have 

 not included in the above are Dr. Reeder, 

 Bosc; in some localities and double worked. 

 Gray Doyenne, Beure Superttn, Belle 

 Lucrative, a sweet and great bearer, but 

 too dull in color, and White Doyenne or 

 Virgalieu, which is no longer cracking as 

 it did tor a time. 



The Fifty Million Dollar Soldering 

 Iron. 



Recent telegraphic dispatches have stated 

 that Lewis McMurray, and others, had 

 obtained a verdict in the United States 

 Circuit Court against George R. Emerson 

 proprietor of a fruit canning establishment 

 at Somerville, Mass., for using a patent 

 soldering iron without the permission of 

 the owner of the patent. It was fvu-ther 

 stated that " Counsel for the defendant said 

 if the plaintiffs should proceed against all 

 who have infringed the patent they could 

 probably collect .*.50,U0U,U()O. Suits are to be 

 instituted against all manufacturers who 

 have violated the rights of the plaintiffs. 



Mr. C. M. Fenton. secretary of the Erie 

 Preserving Company, of Buflfalo, has been 

 asked if this decision afl'ected his company. 

 He replied that. he supposed that they had 

 ,at one-time u.sed this iron, which was prob- 

 ably that known as the Tillery patent, but 

 that they had discarded it some time ago 

 for a German-silver steel solderer, with 

 which 5,000 cans could be made in a day, 

 against 3,000 with the Tillery, and were now 

 getting ready to use a machine made in 

 Chicago, which was almost human in its 

 operations, the unsoldered can going into it 

 on a train, and coming out finished. 



He did not imagine, though, he said, that 

 the big companies would accede to such a 

 decision without appealing it, unless they 

 could comi)romise with the patentee at 

 reasonable rates. Emerson was a small 

 manufacturer, as the small verdict, fi93 

 showed, and there would be further resist- 

 ance. He did not see.why some larger firm 

 was not sued. The Erie Preserving Com- 

 pany, with which he is connected, is turning 

 out 3,.50O,000 cans of preserves this year, 

 and the award of $1.87 per thousand would 

 amount at this rate to $(i,545 per year so 

 long as this iron was used. 



In this connection it may be stated that a 

 new company has lately been formed out of 

 the Erie Preserving Company by way of di- 

 vision. The old company still exists, but 

 the jelly-making interest, itself a large one, 

 has been made separate to see which is the 

 more profitable. The new company is to be 

 called the Buffalo Conserve Company with 

 acapitalstock of *13.'5,O00. 



The canning busine.ss is said not to be so 

 profitable this year as last. "We have to 

 contend with a curioussort of competition," 

 said Secretary Fenton. " After a good year 

 a large number of small concerns will 

 spring up. They will not put money enough 

 into the business to meet obligations when 

 those who have fiirnished fruit cans, etc., 

 begin to press. They have nothing but 

 goods to meet the demands with and they 

 throw their only assets on the market 

 for what they can get. This breaks down 

 prices, of course, but to counterbalance this 

 feature of our business, there is much en- 

 couragement found in the rapid growth of 

 the foreign trade. Phirope does not seem 

 to know how to can fruit. We have just 

 sent 1,000 cases of Apples in gallon cans to 

 England and Scotland. The California 

 fruits are in great demand, and the San 

 Jose Packing Company has this year sent 

 four carloads to the Czar of Russia." 



Selection of Seeds. 



N. V. L., ADAMS CO., ILL. 



Says Peter Henderson, who in this matter 

 may well speak as one having knowledge: 

 " No matter how carefully the selection of 

 seeds is made, deterioration will take place 

 when the crop is grown under conditions 

 uncongenial to it." And again: "When 

 seeds are sown in a latitude unsuited to 

 their development they will invariably per- 

 petuate weak progeny." 



Now, instead of these conditions rightfully 

 opposing the careful selection of seed, they 

 are properly in favor of it. If the conditions 

 are unfavorable to the plant, then we may 

 as well go elsewhere for seed, but should be 

 none the less careful in selecting it. Or, if 

 we conclude to use home grown seed, the 

 fact stated by Mr. Henderson makes it all 

 the more important to make a careful selec- 

 tion. While it is true that the most careful 

 selection of seed will not prevent the deter- 

 ioration of a crop grown under unsuitable 

 conditions, it is equally true that the con- 

 tinued use of poor seed will cause the deteri- 

 oration of crops surrounded by favorable 

 circumstances; also, that where the condi- 

 tions are unfavorable we may retard, and in 

 some cases prevent, the deterioration of the 

 crop by using only the very best seeds. 



One frequently sees statements made by 

 persons of unquestioned reliability, about 

 the results from seed selection, that are 

 puzzling. Perhaps when we know the rea- 

 son the matter will then appear very simple 

 indeed. As an example of these puzzling 

 things, at one of the Wisconsin Farmers' 

 Institutes held this year, Mr. .1. M. Smith 

 said: " Last spring I saved a bushel of the 

 seed ends (of Potatoes) and planted them by 

 themselves right in the middle of the piece 

 of two or three acres that I was planting, 

 and I found that when we came to dig them 

 the yield was just about the same, and the 

 Potatoes about the same size. But those 

 coming from the seed ends were nearly a 

 week earlier than the others." 



Now, we might say that one swallow does 

 not make a summer; that likely if Mr. 

 Smith did the same thing this year he would 

 get a different result. But at the same 

 meeting Mr. Lockwood corroborated Mr. 

 Smith. Mr. L. said: " Having tried the ex- 

 periment for seven years I find that the seed 

 end invariably produces an earlier Potato." 

 Experiments covering seven years ought to 

 be well nigh conclusive, especially when 

 the results were the same every year. 



Now, why not plant the seed ends for our 

 very early crops? Quite often getting the 

 crop on the market a week earlier makes all 

 the difference between a handsome profit 

 and a disagreeable loss. 



Of course the gain of a few days in the 

 time of marketing other garden crops would 

 be equally profitable. Peas are a fine case 

 in point. Now at the New York Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station it was determined 

 one season to see how much could be gained 

 by selecting the earliest pods for seed. 

 There were gathered for the purpose the 

 earliest and the latest ripening pods from a 

 row of Tom Thumb. One hundred seeds of 

 each were planted from these selections 

 April 31, and again May 13. 



Of the first planting the early pods gave 

 Peas fit for use in 68 days; the late pods in 

 74 days. Of the second planting the early 

 pods gave Peas fit for table use in .5f; days; 

 the late pods in 00 days. Nor was all the 

 gain in the earliness of the crop. The ear- 

 lier ripening Peas vegetated better in both 

 cases, the average difference in their favor 

 being Wi.i' percent. Also, there wasadiffer- 

 ence in favor of the early Peas of 3.3.5 pods 

 per plant and of .015 Peas per pod. 



This station has also experimented with 

 Oats, planting small and large plump supe- 

 rior grains, making the conditions otherwise 



