448 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 402 



The Germination of Nuts. 



IT is a very common notion in the north that nuts — butter- 

 nuts, for instance — will not grow until they are frozen, and 

 that this freezing is necessary to open their shells. A mo- 

 ment's thought ought to recall the fact that many of the 

 hardest-shelled nuts are native to regions where freezing is 

 unknown. As for our northern nuts, they drop with or before 

 the foliage of the trees which bear them ; and in the still air of 

 the forest or grove the snow lies level, while the dead leaves, 

 with the snow, constitute, even here in northern Vermont and 

 adjoinmg Canada, one of the most perfectly frost-proof cover- 

 ings, habitually made use of in our gardens to protect our half- 

 hardy and tender plants in winter. 



Some — indeed, I think many, if not all our northern nuts — 

 retain their vitality, under favorable conditions, for many years. 

 Having last spring a call for a lot of young Butternut-trees, I 

 planted a considerable quantity of nuts which liad been kept in 

 a shed-loft for four or five years. Every nut vegetated, and 

 they have all made a growth of from ten to twelve inches 

 during the season. These nuts have unquestionably been sub- 

 jected to a temperature far below zero every winter since they 

 were gathered, but none of their shells were cracked or 

 loosened. I do not think their vitality would have been pre- 

 served had this occurred. 



So far as my observation and experience have yet extended, 

 in reference to the vitality of nuts (and these cover a consider- 

 able extent of territory — from Canada to Tennessee), they 

 rarely vegetate extensively near the trees from which they fall. 

 Perhaps tliis is chieHy due to the activity ot boys and squirrels 

 in harvesting the crop. Where the trees stand closely there 

 may also be a lack of sun-force to start germination. If it were 

 not for its rough strong shell the butternut would have a very 

 extensive sale, for in quality it is decidedly superior to the so- 

 called English walnut, and it will endure a much colder 

 climate. 



Newport, Vt. 



r. H. Ho ski lis. 



Trenching in Vegetable Garden. 



INDEPENDENTLY of marmres garden soils may be im- 

 proved in many ways, and at no season of the year can 

 these improvements be better carried out in this section than 

 the last part of October and lirst half of November. The prin- 

 cipal plan for making soils better is to pulverize them deeply 

 by diggmg and trenching. This makes finer particles and a 

 greater surface for the rootlets of plants to feed upon ; it ena- 

 bles them more easily to penetrate in every direction in 

 search of food and promotes a free circulation of air and 

 water. There are few gardens which would not be vastly 

 benefited by such trenching, and especially is this true of gar- 

 dens which have been under cultivation for thirty or forty 

 years, or even more. In Great Britain, where many gardens 

 have been cultivated a century, and others much longer, it 

 would not be possible to secure the best crops by merely 

 gorging the land with manure year after year. I have in mind 

 a vegetable garden in England which has been constantly 

 cropped for over two hundred years, and still produces vege- 

 tables of the very highest quality. 



Digging and trenching render the humidity of the soil more 

 uniform, so that the plant-food winch is held in solution by 

 water is made available for all the roots. Fertilizers are use- 

 less unless they are dissolved, and thus prepared to be taken 

 up into the circulation of the plant. During the spring and 

 early summer months soils need to be warm to stimulate 

 root-action and to help the decomposition of manures, and 

 deep digging and opening helps in this way. 



In trenching, care must he. taken to regulate the work accord- 

 ing to the depth of soil. If trenched too deep the best soil is 

 buried under tlie crude infertile subsoil, in which vegetation 

 will not flourish. We endeavor to trench a portion of our 

 vegetable garden each fall, and usually go three spits deep, 

 this being as deep as the roots of most of the plants penetrate, 

 but for Parsnips and other root crops it is best to go deeper if 

 the quality of soil will permit. In some soils there is less 

 necessity for trenching than in others, but where the ground 

 has been in constant cultivation for half a century, as in our 

 case, such an operation cannot be dispensed with if crops of 

 high quality are desired. 



When trenching, a good dressing of well-rotted manure 

 should be worked in if the ground is of a heavy clayey con- 

 sistency, as much of ours is. Sharp sand, wood-ashes, lime, 

 lime rubbish or broken shells all help to break its tenacity and 

 make it work more pleasantly. Light, sandy and gravelly soils 

 are naturally warmer than stiff and heavy soils, and while they 

 do not produce as fine a quality of crops, they are useful for 



early crops, which mature more quickly than on heavier land. 

 These light soils are not readily benefited by manures, as the 

 finer particles are washed away by the rains ; they are im- 

 proved by the addition of strong loam, which should be 

 applied in sufficient quantity to form a compost which will 

 retain moisture enough for garden crops. 



Generally speaking, a moderately tenacious soil is the best 

 and most productive, but as earlier crops can be had from a 

 lighter kind it is advantageous to have both in a garden. 

 Where the ground is very stiff and clayey, if it can be thrown 

 up rough cast before winter, the frost will help to pulverize it 

 and make it work better another season. 



Taunton, Mass. IV. N. Craig. 



Correspondence. 



Frosts and Fruits. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — It is very common to err in estimating the damage done 

 to a fruit crop by late frosts in the spring. The present year 

 affords a remarkable illustration of this fact. The reports gath- 

 ered from various points in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 

 West Virginia and Maryland immediately after the severe 

 frosts of the second week of May, indicated a very general 

 destruction of all the large and small fruits, and every kind of 

 fruit which I carefully examined in the western part of Penn- 

 sylvania was actually blackened — apples and pears being then 

 as large as peas. In fact, the cold was so severe and the time 

 of it so unfortunate that even the new growth of three or four 

 inches on the Oaks was entirely blackened in certain places. 

 Gardeners generally had their Tomato plants set out, and their 

 early Beans had vegetated ; these were totally destroyed, and in 

 the rush for more seeds the local stores were exhausted of their 

 supply. All this made it natural to prophesy that fruit and 

 certain vegetables would be scarce and high-priced. 



Now, having lived through the season, we can look back- 

 ward and observe that this has been a year of plenty. There 

 seems to be no county or slate where apples are grown that 

 reports a want of this staple fruit, and the prevailing wholesale 

 price for the best winter apples is no higher than it was during 

 the harvest of the great crop of 1893. In this valley, among 

 the mountains of central Pennsylvania, orchards on neie;hbor- 

 ing farms were very differently affected by the frosts — in one 

 case resulting in an entire failure of fruit ; in the other, a very 

 large crop of fine fruit. This singling out of certain orchards 

 seems to have been without apparent reason. Orchards ex- 

 tending up the mountain sides yielded full crops on the trees 

 of the upper portions and generally failed below. The College 

 Apple orchard of five hundred trees was in full bearing, and 

 being an experimental orchard it contains about seventy-five 

 varieties of apples. No variety seemed to be severely tried 

 by the frosts, but all matured as full a crop as they are accus- 

 tomed to do. Grapes were also very irregularly affected by 

 these frosts of May, but, in general, more severely than the 

 large fruits. In small vineyards, where the damage was least, 

 some varieties exhibited greater resistance than others. Con- 

 cord, Delaware and Worden proved the hardiest. 



Pennsylvania Experiment Station. George C. ButZ. 



Doubling of Flowers. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir. — I venture to offer the following note in view of some 

 allusions to the manner in which flosvers become double. 

 The phenomena known as doubling, a frequent occurrence 

 in the garden or greenhouse, is generally a transformation of 

 the stamens to petals or sepals or a replacement of the sta- 

 mens by the latter organs. The sexual reproductive system 

 in plaiUs is a modification of the vegetative system, and 

 gradual transitions exist between the sepals and the pistil, as 

 is plainly seen in the flower of a Water-lily. It is also seen in 

 the Canna, the showy portion of which is composed of trans- 

 formed stamens, which in many cases still persist to the 

 petal-like organs. It should be remembered also that in the 

 evolution of the reproductive system the pistil has been more 

 widely modified from the original leaf-form than other organs, 

 the stamens less, the petals still less, and the sepals and bracts 

 comparatively little. It is important also to note that a closer mor- 

 phological relation exists between the leaves and the perianth, 

 and between the leaves and stamens, than between the sta- 

 mens and pistils. It is not ditficult, therefore, to see, because 

 of the close interrelationship ot the vegetative and reproduc- 

 tive organs, that if the one is highly forced and made variable, 

 the other must necessarily be affected. 



