206 Success with Small Fruits. 



More room should also be given to the blackberry than to the rasp- 

 berry. The rows should be six feet apart in the garden and eight feet in 

 field culture, and the plants set three feet apart in the rows. At this 

 distance, 1,815 are required for an acre, if one plant only is placed in a 

 hill. Since these plants are usually cheap, if one is small or unprovided 

 with good roots, it is well to plant two. If the ground is not very fertile, 

 it is well to give the young plants a good start by scattering a liberal 

 quantity of muck compost down the furrow in which they are planted. 

 This insures the most vigorous growth of young canes in the rows rather 

 than in the intervening spaces. As generally grown, they require support, 

 and may be staked as raspberries. Very often, cheap post-and-wire 

 trellises are employed, and answer excellently. Under this system, 

 they can be grown in a continuous and bushy row, with care against 

 overcrowding. 



The ideal treatment of the blackberry is management rather than 

 culture. More can be done with the thumb and finger at the right time 

 than with the most savage pruning-shears after a year of neglect. In 

 May and June, the perennial roots send up vigorous shoots that grow 

 with amazing rapidity, until from five to ten feet high. Very often, this 

 summer growth is so brittle and heavy with foliage, that thunder-gusts 

 break them off from the parent stem just beneath the ground, and the 

 bearing cane of the coming year is lost. These and the following con- 

 siderations show the need of summer pruning. Tall, overgrown canes are 

 much more liable to be injured by frost. They need high and expensive 

 supports. Such branchless canes are by no means so productive as those 

 which are made to throw out low and lateral shoots. They can always 

 be made to do this by a timely pinch that takes off the terminal bud of 

 the cane. This stops its upward growth, and the buds beneath it, which 

 otherwise might remain dormant, are immediately forced to become side 

 branches near the ground, where the snow may cover them, and over 

 which, in the garden, straw or other light litter may be thrown, on the 

 approach of winter. It thus is seen that by early summer jihiching the 

 blackberry may be compelled to become as low and bushy a shrub as we 

 desire, and is made stocky and self-supporting at the same time. Usually, 

 it is not well to let the bushes grow over four feet high, and, in regions 

 where they winter-kill badly, I would keep them under three feet, so that 

 the snow might be a protection. It should be remembered that the 

 Kittatinny is so nearly hardy that in almost all instances a very slight 

 covering saves it. The suckers that come up thickly between the rows 

 can be cut away while small with the least possible trouble ; but leave the 



