228 



The Canadian Horticulturist. 



These six are our choice for the market garden ; perhaps we shall include 

 the Williams after a year's trial. Mr. Greig has favored us with one hundred 

 plants for testing, and our report will appear next season. 



The cherry crop this year is something extraordinary. 

 Given a crop like this, and with such immunity from rot as 

 we have this season, and no small fruit crop would pay 

 better. Even the Yellow Spanish, Rockport Bigarreau, 

 Napoleon Bigarreau and the Elton, though overloaded with 

 fruit, have been harvested without a sign of rot. 



The great problem of gathering has been solved in the 

 Niagara district by the employment of Indian labor. Hun- 

 dreds of Indians and squaws from the Indian Reserve at 

 Brantford are tenting about and picking fruit; and the 

 general testimony of growers is that the work is well done 

 and that these people are honest and respectable. Our crop 

 ran over 500 baskets this season, many of which must 

 have wasted on the trees but for their aid. 



Reine Hortense is the finest cooking cherry grown at 

 Maplehurst out of some twenty-five or thirty varieties. It 

 is a vigorous growing tree and quite productive of fine 

 large fruit ; the skin is a bright, lively red, somewhat 

 marbled and mottled ; the flesh is very tender, with just 

 enough acidity to class it among the sour cherries and to make it a delicious 

 morsel. It is just now, nth July, ripening in the garden, and is preferred by 

 the good housewife above all others, as a cooking cherry. 



This cherry reminds us of one of another very similar variety, the Empress 

 Eugenie, which has similar excellent characteristics ; and so long as our tree 

 endured, no other cherry was wanted for cooking or canning. It grew to a fine 

 size, with an open spreading head, indeed it equalled in strength of growth the 

 most vigorous of the heart cherries ; but, like many of the Dukes and Morellos, 

 it is badly subject to black knot, and in the end it had to be cut down and 

 burned. We notice that the Reine Hortense is also being effected by the same 

 disease, even worse than the Kentish or the Early Richmond. Still, we have 

 confidence in being able to save our cherry trees from this trouble, so long as we 

 are careful to cut off each knot on its first appearance. Our late Kentish trees 

 were almost covered with them two years ago, but the faithful application of the 

 knife was so effectual that we have had little or no occasion to use it since. 



The Vladimir, received from the Association two years ago, is bearing abun- 

 dantly this year with us, as we suppose it is doing with many others. We would 

 like to receive reports from our subscribers concerning its hardiness at the north. 

 The cherry is quite dark colored, and of a very mild, sub-acid flavor, with a 

 slight touch of bitter. It is too small a cherry to be grown for market in Southern 



Reine Hortense. 



