106 



JOTTENAL OP HORTICULTU'RE AND COTTAGE GARDENEE. 



[ February 7, 1866. 



1 



.entered upon its ripening period. A week of cold weather, 

 or a drought of a fortnight during the growing period, 

 puts in peril not the size merely, but also the quality of the 

 produce. Big Apples lU-e unfortunately only too seldom 

 first-rate for dessert, still, as a rule applied alike to big sorts 

 and little, the largest fruit on a given tree are also the 

 choicest in flavour and in texture. The Golden Pippin has 

 chai-ms in its veiy littleness, bat the biggest of the same 

 crop are invariably the best. In passing, it may be asked. 

 Has it been noticed that in fruits generally, when colour is 

 a constant quality, does not the flavour bear some relation 

 to the intensity of the colour ; the brighter and the more 

 brilliant the red, the richer and more luscious the juice ? 

 Not that highly coloured vai'ieties are in any way superior 

 to those of dull russet, but in varieties having a tendency 

 to colour, or even to russet, are not the .individual fruits 

 in which that tendency is most strongly developed, also the 

 best? 



Of the positive increase of size, however, there is one 

 portion that would seem more jjroperly to belong to the 

 ripening than the growing period. I refer to that rapid 

 increase in the size of the Cherry and Plum accompanying 

 the change of colour. Does the actual weight of dry solid 

 matter increase dm-ing this change ? or is the increased size 

 only an accommodation of the size of the vessels to the 

 altered nature of their contents, which are now less amy- 

 laceous and more sacchai-ine ? The latter are soluble in 

 ■water, the former not so. Is the increase in weight not 

 wholly or principally in water absorbed during the ripening 

 process 'i 



Though not so patent, a similar increase seems to take 

 place in the early part of the ripening period of Pears, and 

 I think also of Apples. 



The gi-eat agents in fru-thering the production of good 

 fruit during the growing period are light, heat, and mois- 

 ture. All these ai'e essentials during the entii-e life of the 

 plant ; but, as during the blossoming period, a moderate 

 proportion of each seems all that is requisite for our open-air 

 British fruits ; and as, whilst the fruit is ripening, light and 

 heat in quantity, with only a very limited supply of moistui-e, 

 seem the most favourable conditions, so during the growing 

 period an abundant supply of all three is a necessity. Of 

 light and heat we have never enough to satisfy ua, and, 

 somewhat strangely, the limited quantity of the one has 

 been almost universally accepted as a circumstance we must 

 submit to, and, quite as odd, endeavour to compensate for 

 by a disproportionate increase of the other. Some day when 

 we have learned to concentrate upon 9 square feet of soU or 

 leaves the solar rays that would otherwise fall upon two, 

 three, or five times that superficies, we shall have more 

 light thrown upon fruit and fruit-culture. 



Of moisture, the third e.=sential during the growing period, 

 we want abundance, and yet we may have more than enough. 

 The natural supply, more especially in this country of natu- 

 ralised fruit trees, where we want a dry soil and atmosphere 

 to ripen our Cherries in, at the very time when precisely 

 opposite conditions are required for Apples and Pears, is 

 proverbially fickle. So thoroughly, indeed, are we at war 

 with the elements that we may be longing for dry weather 

 for one Cheriy, whilst another CheiTy equally good would 

 Buffer from lack of moisture. The clouds persist in dropping 

 their fatness at most unreasonable times, and always either 

 too much or too little. And here comes in the great ques- 

 tion of house sewage and irrigation generally, forced on the 

 attention of both gardener and farmer by the trying season 

 of 1864. Prophets like " Upwaeds and Onwards," who for 

 fifteen years back have been crying aloud in the wilderness 

 to a very heedless generation, have not preached altogether 

 in vain, and the lover of good fruit will see that he, too, may 

 share in the good tilings foretold if he but consent to turn 

 to its proper use what, if it run to waste, entails heavy 

 retribution upon the spendthrift in a fearful crop of half the 

 ills an hospital is heir to. 



Implying by the term " house sewage" all the excreta of 

 the household very largely diluted with water, it may be 

 accepted at once as the cheapest, most offcctivo, and most 

 elegant mcdinm by which in the fruit garden the soil may 

 be compensated for what is abstracted from it by the fruit. 

 The term " elegant " may be a little out of place in a matter 

 of manure, but nearly all ac^ectives arc relative only. As 



Liebig says- — and a very odd remark it is to occur in a volume 

 on agricultural chemistry — " At all times the better has 

 always been the enemy of the good ;" so is house sewage, 

 applied as I saw it yesterday, elegance itself alongside my 

 neighbour's ashpit-emptying of last week. If your garden 

 produce more food than your family consume, and ai-tificial 

 manure be necessaiy, add it in a soluble state to yovur sewage ; 

 it is then in the best of all conditions to assist successful 

 fruit-culture. However vegetables may thi'ive on such fai-e. 

 Strawberries and Gooseberries, here at least, rejoice in 

 copious libations of even extra strength. " Upwaeds and 

 Ok~\vakds " says better still for Apples and Pears, and aU 

 analogy coincides with his successful practice. 



Of ail the rainfall in this country in the coui'se of the year 

 somewhat less than one-half finds its way through the crust 

 of the soil, re-appearing, perhaps, in springs and rivulets ; the 

 remainder and greater part is returned to the atmosphere 

 by evaporation from the surface of the soil, or from the leaves 

 and other parts of plants. This, however, is but an imperfect 

 statement of the case, for fi-om T.eU-asoertained data it has 

 been calculated that in the summer months in the eastern 

 counties of England the evaporation of moisture reaches as 

 high as 97 per cent, of the entire rainfall in the same period. 

 No doubt for a considerable period much of this is retained 

 by the soil, contributing to the furtherance of vegetable 

 growth, and finally escaping to the air through the stomates 

 of the leaves after having fully accomplished its mission ; 

 but the fact that such a small proportion as scarcely 3 per 

 cent, should find its way through the soil by filtration, shows 

 what a fearful check even a very moderate drought must 

 entail upon such fi-uits as are at the time in their growing 

 period. If, as should be, the rootlets are near the surface, 

 the effect is proportionately increased. 



Very unfortunately for the fruit-gi'ower, meteorologists 

 are not all gardeners. Theii- recorded observations are not 

 tabulated, as they might and should be, first of all in re- 

 lation to vegetation, the chief end that makes the weather 

 worth studying. We are still treated to the antiquated 

 tables of mean temperatm-e of days and months, as if that 

 were the essential element in the measm-ement of the atmo- 

 sphere's caloric, to the vfrtual suppression, or nearly so, of 

 the average and extreme maxima and minima, which are 

 the only very important points. Very hot days and very 

 cold nights may be the best of all weather, and yet the 

 tables indicate a July with a mean temperature below the 

 average. So, too, as to rainfall. We may have three very 

 wet days in the beginning of the month, and as many near 

 its close, evidencing quite a maximum of wet, and yet the 

 weather of the month may be characterised by intense dry- 

 ness. Mr. Glaisher, in his abstracts, is happily reforming 

 the method of expressing weather facts, and gives us, both 

 as to heat and rainfall, the length in number of days, of 

 cycles of heat or cold, rainfall or dryness. This is reason- 

 able. We may have a few very cold days, which pull down 

 heavily the average maximum of an otherwise very brilliant 

 month ; or an average month, less favourable to plant- 

 progress than a month with alternate cycles of heat and 

 cold, resulting in the same average maximum as the other. 

 Ere long, I hope, in every garden we shall have a cheap 

 sunshine-indicator, measuring the most potent influence 

 of aU, the duration each day, and at what times of the 

 day, of the direct solar rays — wonder-working, above all 

 things else, in both animal and vegetable worlds. Now 

 that we know so much, we can afford to look half lovingly, 

 as well as half pitifully, upon the ancient fire-worshippers 

 of the old time before us. 



With so fickle a friend as rainfall to help us to grow 

 delicious fruits, sometimes deluging us beyond our heart's 

 content, at others withholding the longed-for showers, we 

 may consider ourselves as twice blest in having it within 

 our power to make at least a portion of it do double duty. 

 Wo have happily not often, as in 1800, a preponderance of 

 really wet weather all summer through. We have oftener 

 to regret the lengthened intervals between the wet cycles ; 

 and at these times, by previously carefully storing up the 

 water which usually runs to waste, we have, in u-rigation, 

 and, in a double sense, in house sewage plentifully diluted, 

 the moans of supplying the deficiency in the natural ele- 

 ment. 

 I may have failed fully to comprehend the system of irri- 



