1887. 



POPULAR GARDENING. 



171 



and sellers of preserves into communication, 

 meaning if any one wished to buy home-made 

 preserves I would be glad to let them know of 

 women all over the country who made them to 

 sell, every woman who had a dozen extra 

 jars at present or in prospect rushed to the con- 

 clusion that I had a string of purchasers anxious 

 to buy fruit in fabulous quantities, and be- 

 sought for customers. I turned canvassing 

 agent, went into confectionaries, groceries, res- 

 taurants, etc., inquiring for the chances of 

 selling home-made preserves, and how they 

 could be made to sell. I made out to learn 

 that the price of home-made preserves was the 

 main thing in the way, and that they must be 

 put up attractively to sell at any price. 



Well, there is something to be said for price. 

 \'ery few people can afford to pay 15 cents a 

 glass for jelly, except a stray tumbler for sick- 

 ness. It is distinctlj' a luxury, more so than 

 confectionery. Most families in town can't 

 atford the high priced *' home-made," they will 

 not eat the glucose trash of the factories, but 

 they can go without either and not feel the loss. 

 To tell the truth, jellj' is not needed in any rank 

 of life, even jelly cake is better made with jam. 



*'Jam for the millions," says Mr. Williams^ 

 the scientific writer on food, and there is noth- 

 ing better or more profitable. The whole fruit 

 is used in making, greatly to the grower's profit, 

 from one half to two-thirds less sugar is needed, 

 and the man of moderate means, or the house- 

 keeper who will study economy, can buy for 

 15 cents at least enough pure fruit jam to give 

 her family a good helping apiece for one meal. 

 I bought Crosse i!t Blackwells Orange Marma- 

 lade in large fruit bottles, neat enough for the 

 lea table for 15 cents this spring, and the jams, 

 Plum, GJooseberry and Currant are IT cents in 

 the same size. They looked beautiful, the most 

 exacting taste could detect no flavor amiss, 

 they relished, they were healthy. 



Jellies cannot be made to pay, but jains'and 

 fruit syrups can. If 3 cents worth of fruit, 

 with 5 cents worth of sugar and package does 

 not sell profitably at 15 cents, then I fear fruit 

 never can be said to pay in any shape. Apple 

 butter, made the old way with spice in, sold in 

 wooden packages, will sell and afford profit at 

 S cents a pound ; some farmers say much less. 



Wine jam, or jam of all fruits boiled in the 

 newly pressed juice of Grapes without sugar, 

 the favorite German way, will sell by the car 

 load, for the uses of jelly to eat with roast 

 moat, or to use with cake. You can make three 

 times as much jam of the same quantity of 

 Ijerries as jelly; and when you can take a 

 tempting, relishing preserve, ready made for 

 the table, in the good old fashioned way right 

 to people's doors, as farmers used to bring their 

 Apple butter to town, people will buy it and 

 a^k for it, and engage it the fall beforehand. 



I bought something called cider apple sauce 

 carried at my Boston grocer's lately. The 

 name appealed to my taste and memory, but it 

 left a taste all day as if the mouth had been 

 lined with tin foil, and symptoms that were 

 not good generally. Had it been in a five pound 

 wooden box, like the Canada Raspberry jam, it 

 would have had value among family supplies. 



Any well made preserve will keep as well in 

 a tight box as in tin or breakable ware. The 

 box is as easily sealed as any package, and I 

 hope to see good sweet maple boxes of Apple 

 and rium preserve taking the place of the rows 

 of tins on grocery shelves. Tin will do for 

 vegetables, barring Tomatoes. There is a grow- 

 ing demand for Tomatoes not put up in metal 

 cans, and there is profit for the men who earli- 

 est meet the want. A paper can of clean st"aw 

 or wood pulp treated properly would be much 

 better than tiii, because not corrosive, or thin 

 glass, because unbreakable. 



Make your jam and fioiit butter, put up in 

 sweet butter firkins that have been used, and 

 about the first of December load on to the 

 sleigh and take them to the nearest town of 

 any size. Call from house to house with sam- 

 ples, go to the hotels and eating saloons, and 



talk your ware into people. That is the way 

 new soap and cerealine, and ink and books are 

 introduced, indeed, goods of every kind. People 

 Jo not know enough to buy what they need, or 

 what is to their benefit till it is talked into them. 

 Get 3'our price right and then sing to them of 

 your preserves till they buy to their own good. 



Gleaningrs from the Rural Press. 



Save the Squash and Cucumber Vines To out- 

 wit the Siiuash bugs, and the striped fellows that 

 eat up your Cucumber vines when small, use fresh 

 cow dung diluted to about the consistency of thick 

 cream. Apply this freely on the vines and foliage. 

 This is offensive enough to the insects to keep them 

 off. while at the same time it is a source of joy to 

 the plants. The substance is not very nice to 

 handle, or to look at. but it is at once a good fertil- 

 izer and a protection. Insect enemies are multi- 

 plying, and new methods even if they are not nii-e 

 must be adopted to head them off. It is certain 

 that the liquid cow dung will protect the Cucumber 

 vines.— Stockman and Farmer. 



How Soil was Made. Professor Agassiz says 

 that all the materials on which agriculture depends 

 are decomposed rocks, not so much rocks that un- 

 derlie the soil, but those on the surface and brought 

 from considerable distances, and ground to powder 

 by the rasp of glaciers. The penetration of water 

 into the rocks, frost, running waterand baking suns 

 have done something, but ice vastly more. In a for- 

 mer age the whole of the United States was covered 

 with ice several thousand feet thick, and this ice mov- 

 ing from north to south by the attraction of tropical 

 warmth, or pressing weight of ice and snow behind, 

 ground the rocks over which it passed into the 

 paste we call the soil. These masses of ice can be 

 tracked as surely as the game is tracked by the 

 hunter. Among the Alps, glaciers are still in pro- 

 gress. The stones and rocks ground and polished 

 by the glaciers, can easily be distinguished from 

 those scratched by running water. The angular 

 boulders found in the meadows and terraces of our 

 rivers not reached by water can be accounted for 

 in this way.— Popular Science News. 



Gladiolus for Exhibition: Shading the Flowers. 



The plants should be growing in the richest soil 

 available, and be well supplied with liquid manure 

 in the growing season. Keep at all times well pro- 

 tected from the wind by a stout stake, and when 

 the plant commences to flower get two boards (See 

 engraving) fully 2 feet long and 7 or 8 inches wide; 

 nail these securely at right angles on the top of the 

 stake, nail a Ihin shred of wood along the bottom 

 inside and also along the inside of the boards length- 

 wise so as to form a rough groove and a stop at 

 the bottom for a pane of glass Then get a pane of 

 glass to slide down and fit in the groove, let the 

 stake be securely fixed in the ground, tie the spike 

 so that it will lie steady between the boards to face 

 the sun. and slide in the glass. The advantage of 

 this is, the action of the sun through the glass elon- 

 gates the spike and shields it from the wind As 

 the riowei-s open whitewash the portion of gla.ss im- 

 mediately opposite the expanding flowers. This 

 will prevent the sun destroying their bright colors 

 and cause them to be longer in opening. If this is 

 followed daily with care, long spikes of flowers will 

 be obtained before the lower blooms begin decaying, 

 a point of the greatest importance on the exhibition 

 stand.— London Journal of Horticulture. 



Cultivation and Pear Blight. Probably forcing 

 the trees to a very rapid grow^th is the cause, mure 

 than anything else, of Pear blight. The Pear tree 

 is a slow grower, and does not bear until it is a fair 

 sized tree, but growers have compelled the im- 

 proved varieties to assume conditions not suitable 

 for health and vigor, which render the tree subject 

 to the blight and other diseases incidental to 

 Pears. Two fruit-growers at Newfield, N. J , pro- 

 cured the same varieties of Pears from the same 

 nursery, and put the trees in the ground at the 

 same time. They were cultivated differently. One 

 grower yearly put his orchard to garden crops, 

 with occasionally corn, applying liberal dressings 

 of manure, under which treatment the trees grew 

 rapidly, bore early, and gave large yields. His 

 neighbor used his orchard for growing grass, which 

 was occasionally plowed and seeded to grass again. 

 This orchard has to-day trees only half the size of 

 those in the orchard that had hoed crops. It haa 

 never borne as well as the other. The blight, how- 

 ever, has nearly destroyed the orchard that looked 

 the most promising, while the slow-growing trees 

 are as sound as when first set out. The orchard 

 that gave its owner such heavy yields is nearly 

 destroyed, but in the other not a tree is affected 

 with blight. These orchards were aUke in every 



ordinary respect, soil included, but were differently 

 treated. — Practical Farmer. 



Horizontal Training of Grapes. Kach added 

 year's experience convinces us further of the 

 superiority nf horizontal training for vines; and we 

 are graduuti}' substituting flat trellis for erect ones, 

 and prefer them of good height- seven feet or 

 over. The thrip has become a pest here and as 

 the flies shelter on 

 the under side of the 

 leaves we can readily 

 drench them to death 

 by using a syringe or 

 force pump. Water 

 alone is serviceable, 

 but the addition of 

 some kerosene emul- 

 sion makes it very 

 effective. The grapes 

 hanging free under 

 the screen of foliage 

 attain full perfection, 

 and are more readily 

 biifrged, if their best 

 quality and preserva- 

 tion are especially 

 desired, or if left un- 

 bagped they are less 

 lialile to injury by 

 birds than on erect 

 trellis. The canes 

 should be well separ- 

 ated and tied dow-n 

 close to the rods, 

 which should be far 

 enough apart to allow 

 of head and shoulders 

 rising through for 

 convenience of prun- 

 ing, etc., if the bower 

 be wide. But for a 

 single long row of 

 vinej'ard vines a trel- 

 lis need not be over 

 three feet wide. One 

 of the most useful 

 positions for such a 

 bower is as an awning 

 or screen for lower 

 windows and back 

 doors, to shade the 

 lower story of a house on the sunny side. There is 

 always abundant fertility and moisture for the vines 

 to gather up. and they ripen more perfectly under 

 the reflection of heat from the walls; and, as their 

 leaves are continually inhaling moisture copiously, 

 one always feels an agreeable coolness imder a wide 

 luxuriant grape arbor, even on the hottest days. 

 It can be made quite a handsome extension of the 

 lower portion of a house.— Cor. N. Y. Tribune. 



Flowers as Educators, The lessons of early 

 childhood are those we remember longest, hence, 

 the schoolhouse, outside as well as in, should be- 

 come a source of instruction. Neatness is the first 

 principle to be inculcated. Without this all garden- 

 ing operations are devoid of charm. Simplicity in 

 arrauKcment is of the utmost importaLce. The 

 best elTect we can produce with the least amount 

 of labor will prove most desirable. It is a great 

 mistake to plant anything, even a single tree, in the 

 portion allotted to play. Space should be pro- 

 vided close around the building and skirting the 

 boundaries of the grounds. Shade is essential, but 

 it must not interfere with outdoor games. A few 

 trees set reasonably near the building is in order, 

 and an occasional specimen or small clump at in- 

 tervals planted close to the outer edge of the 

 grounds will have a pleasing effect. Ou the north- 

 ern bouudry of the place should be planted a belt 

 of evergreens to serve as a wind-break. Along the 

 southern limits, as well as at the sides, may extend 

 a border with easy flowing outlines for hardy 

 shrubs and flowers. Perennial plants are the best 

 for the purpose, as they re<-iuire little care. Inter- 

 spersed among these a few bulbs of Gladiolus, 

 Tuberoses, Tiger flowers, etc., will assist in making 

 a fine show of flowers and accustom the children to 

 the various classes of plants; real object lessons, at 

 once attractive and useful. lu front of the school 

 building (and every such edifice should front the 

 south) may be placed one or more flower beds for 

 either a few annuals or the tender Coleus and 

 Geraniums. <_>ver the walls should cling the pretty 

 little -Japan Ampelopsis, and the doorway must be 

 festooned with a selection from the long list of 

 available ornamental vines. All these plants will 

 be teaching their silent lessons every day. and with 

 judicious hints from the teacher instniction will b-s 

 given that will prove a source of Ufe-long pleasure 

 and profit.— JosiAQ Hoopes, in Philadelphia Pre»s. 



A Shade for Gladiolus 

 Flowers. 



