54 



THE ILLINOIS FARMEE. 



Feb. 



h 



t 



MV* 



From the Country Gentleman. 



Good and Bad Fruit 



The remark is often m^'de, tiiat " it ia as easy 

 to raise good fruit as bad." This refers to the va- 

 rieties i)ropagated and ]ilanted out. In other 

 words, it is as easy to graft a pear tree witli a Sec- 

 kcl and Sheldon, as witli a ehoke pear, or a Cobiiar 

 d'Arenberg. We nniy as '.veil raise the Swaar arid 

 Northern Spy as the Avor-<t imaginable sour and 

 astringent eider apple, so far as the oeeupatiou of 

 the ground is coneerned. A frost or chicken 

 grapevine will bear no more than a Delaware or 

 Rebecca ; a horse plum grows no more readily than 

 a Lawrence, Gage or Mcli.uighlin. Ileace all tlie 

 care taken by pomologi.-ts and hoi'tiealtural socie- 

 ties to import, gather up, pi ove. examine, and se- 

 lect the finest and most valiiabh; sorts; fortunes 

 have been invested in e.\periii)ents of this kind, 

 and the expenditure has been repaid. 



But this is not the only care and labor needed 

 to obtain the best fruit — if it came without farther 

 attention, we should rate it t(jo cheaply, and not 

 sufficiently appreciate the blessing. In travelling 

 through the country, and visiting the grounds of 

 fruit raisers and examining thi.> exliiliitions of po- 

 mological society, a very marked diirerenee is ol)- 

 sei'ved in the same variety as grown on different 

 grounds. In one case it is small and poor flavor- 

 ed ; in another it is large, beautiful, rieh and ex- 

 cellent. The owner of the poor iVuit is much dis- 

 appointed in what he exjieeted to see, and consid- 

 ers himself as "badly humbugged" by the nursery- 

 man who sold him the trees. The successful cul- 

 tivator takes his specimens to a fair and svreeps 

 off the premiums with tlieir excLdient quidity 

 and magnificent ai)pearanee. }so\v the ques- 

 tion at once arises, what is the cause of this dil'- 

 ference ? And it is just such questions as v.'e like 

 to hear asked. 



1. The* first, and perhaps tlio most prominent 

 cause, is cultlvalloii. Place a tree in grass land — 

 or give it no cultivation — let the surface become 

 baked hard, lilvc flagging, or allow weeds to cover 

 the surface — and the tree will have a feeble growth, 

 and the fruit, as a necessary consequence, will 

 partake of the condition of the tree. A feeble tree 

 will, of course, bear small fruit. Hence one rea- 

 son why young trees often produce larger and 

 finer specimens than old and stunted trees. Cid- 

 tivation alone has often changed both size and 

 quality in a surprising degree. Some years ago a 

 few trees of the Seckel pear were observed to bear 

 very small fruit ; they were then standing in grass, 

 when the whole surface was subjected to good 

 cultivation. The next crop had pears at least tri- 

 ple in size. A St. Ghislain. tree, on another place 

 in grass land, bore some of its first crops, and dis- 

 appointment was felt at the snnill size and poor 

 quality of the pears. A herd of swine afterwards 

 accidentally rooted up the grass and reduced the 

 land to a mellow surface. The pears that year 

 were greatly increased in size, and so much im- 

 proved in flavor that they would not have been re- 

 cognized as the same. The Duchess Angouleme, 

 when large and well grown, is an excellent fruit. 

 When small, it is perfectly worthless. T. G. Yco- 



mans of Walworth, N. Y.. who has been eminent- 

 ly successful in its cultivation, and obtained $35 

 I)er barrel for it, has found high culture of vital 

 importance, and has remarked that when the spec- 

 imens do not weigh over four ounces, they arc no 

 better ilian a raw potato ; and this, we think, has 

 generally been found true. There is no question 

 whatever that this fine pear, as well as many other 

 fruits, have been placed on the rejected list by 

 some planters for want of good management, and 

 deficient or no cultivation. 



2. There is another requisite for obtaining 

 good fruit — almost as important as the other, and 

 in some respects more so. This is thiiin-'ng the fruit 

 on the tree. And yet it is scarcely ever practiced. 

 Tlie farmer who takes great care not to have more 

 than four stalks of corn in a hill, and who would 

 consider it folly to have twenty, never thins any 

 of the twenty peaches on a small shoot, and they 

 arc crowded, small and flavorless. The gardener 

 who would allow twenty cucumber vines in a hill, 

 would be called an ignoramus by his neighbor who 

 at the same time suffers a dwarf pear to bear five 

 times as nn)ny specimens as it could profitably ma- 

 ture. The herdsman who should attempt to suni- 

 Uit^r ten cows on an acre of pasture, is not greatly 

 unlike the orehardist who allows his apple trees to 

 bear more than the trees could profitably support ; 

 and ten starved cattle would be a counterpart of 

 tiie nuu\erous stunted specimens of fruit. 



E. Moody of Lockport, a very successful fruit 

 marketer, 'lately stated before the Fruit Grov/ers' 

 Society at Rochester, tlnit he had found great pro- 

 fit in thiiming the fruit on his peach trees ; tliat 

 while he had much fewer specimens in consequence 

 of thinning, he had about as many bushels; the 

 larger peaches could be picked in far less time ; and 

 while his fine crop sold readily at a dollar and a 

 li,;lf per basket, his neighbor, who did not practice 

 thinninic, fcimd it diiiieidt to sell his for thirty-sev- 

 en to fifty cents. Tresident Wilder said, in his re- 

 cent address before the American Promological So- 

 ciety, "One of the best cultivators in the vicinity 

 of lioston ha=; reduced this theory te practice, with 

 the happiest effect, in the cultivation of the pear. 

 He produces every year superior fruit, which com- 

 mands the highest price. Some have doubted 

 whether this practice can be made renmncrative, 

 except in its application to the finer fruits. Rut 

 another cultivator who raises an annual crop of tlic 

 best apples, assures us that the secret of his suc- 

 cess is the thinning of the fruit, and he has no 

 doubt of tl'.e economy of the practice." 



These two practices — good cultivation and thin- 

 ning the crop — are the foundation of the diftercnce 

 between such superb and magnificent specimens of 

 the pear as graced the extended tables, aud dense- 

 ly filled the vast hall occupied by the Massachu- 

 setts Horticultural Society, and such miserable 

 fruit as we sometimes see borne on the grass-grown, 

 weed-choked, mice-gnawed, sickly -leaved, forsaken 

 trees on the slipshod farmer's grounds — planted out 

 with hardly the expectation, but rather with a sort 

 of dim ho'pe that they would grow and take care 

 wholly of themselves. 



One of the best things that a horticultural or 

 pomological society could do, would be to place 

 conspicuously on exhibition a collection of such 

 splendid fruit as might be raised under all the fa- 

 vorable influences of good culture and judicious 

 thining ; aud another collection beside it with all 



