i8o 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 323. 



Notes. 



The variegated form of Evonymus radicans has been con- 

 siderably used of late years for covering walls, but the green- 

 leaved form, trained to a fence or climbing up a rock, is much 

 more beautiful, especially when it is planted in good deep soil. 

 It then makes a luxuriant growth, and its bright foliage and 

 early flowers are very effective. 



During the present year and in former volumes we have 

 often spoken of the beauty of Iris orchioides as a spring-flow- 

 ering plant. A dozen of them planted last year are still making 

 a beautiful show in the Daffodil season. The bright yellow 

 flowers are held up on stems a foot or more in height, and the 

 foliage is broad and vigorous, so that the whole plant has an 

 appearance of sturdy vigor which some of the earlier species 

 lack. 



Just now the large, yellow, ball-like flower-clusters of Ber- 

 beris (Mahonia) Aquifolium are very effective, and specimens 

 in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, attract much attention from vis- 

 itors. This is a hard climate for broad-leaved evergreens, and 

 the foliage of this Mahonia often turns brown in the winter, 

 but when planted in this latitude, where it is shaded from the 

 sun in winter, it usually does well, and when planted in a 

 southerly exposure a few evergreen boughs or some similar 

 protection is advisable. 



It has always been a matter of discussion whether or not it 

 is best to take out the fruiting wood from Raspberry or Black- 

 berry plants as soon as the crop is off. It has been generally 

 argued that the old canes are rather a detriment to the new 

 ones, since they crowd them and do not allow free develop- 

 ment of the plants, and that the old wood can hardly have any 

 value after the fruit is off, and perhaps weakens the plant by 

 taking from the soil the nutriment needed to ripen it up. An 

 experiment was made last year at the Illinois station, in which 

 the old wood was left in one row until spring, while the corre- 

 sponding rows on each side of it were cleaned out in the usual 

 way. The result of this single trial was that the first row 

 yielded seventy-three quarts of good fruit, while the rows from 

 which the old wood had been taken out a year before yielded 

 forty-one and forty-eight quarts respectively. This points to 

 the probability, at least, that the old, but living, canes are of 

 some advantage to the new growth. 



In one of his letters from the Columbian Exposition to Gar- 

 den and Forest, last year, Professor Bailey stated that the 

 display of vegetables made by the state of New York was the 

 most varied and interesting of any in Chicago. It was supplied 

 by the State Experiment Station at Geneva, and an interesting 

 bulletin, prepared by the horticulturist of that station, gives 

 the methods in which the vegetables were grown and shipped. 

 The record is made still more interesting by the fact that the 

 different varieties of the various vegetables are tabulated alpha- 

 betically, with accurate notes as to their earliness, productive- 

 ness, quality and other points of excellence. In the special 

 details for cultivating different vegetables many excellent hints 

 about methods for preparing the soil, training the plants, fer- 

 tilizing, protecting against insects, preparing the vegetables 

 for exhibition by blanching, etc., are given, so that the bulletin, 

 which is numbered 69 of the new series, is really a valuable 

 little manual for the vegetable-garden. 



A hundred acres of Sweet Peas, making a sea of beautiful 

 color and gales of sweet odor, is what the visitor finds on the 

 estate of Mr. Timothy Hopkins, Menlo Park, California. Sixty- 

 four distinct varieties are raised here for seed this year, and 

 the business is constantly growing. Obviously, if Apple Blos- 

 som, or Captain of the Blues or any other given variety, was 

 o-rown last year, the same variety must be planted this year on 

 me same ground in order to ensure constant purity of the 

 stock, for volunteer plants will come up in great numbers the 

 next season. If one acre of Apple Blossom was grown last 

 year and two acres are needed this year, new land which has 

 had no other variety of Peas on it must be occupied, and there- 

 fore a grower who expects his business to increase must ar- 

 range his sowings for several years to come. From that part 

 of the Pea-farm which is devoted to supply the market with 

 flowers, these are cut every day and the plants are kept in 

 bloom for months in succession. The flowers on the plants 

 whichare raised forseed, however, are never cut for market, 

 but are left until the pods ripen when the plants are cut and 

 threshed by horse-power. 



The effect on strawberries of the cold weather several weeks 

 ago is felt in their scarcity and consequent high price, and it 



is not expected they will sell at popular prices until the 

 ripening of the crop north of Maryland and Virginia. As with 

 vegetables, strawberries from the far south are out of favor 

 and bring comparatively low prices. A common price for 

 good berries from Charleston and northward has been thirty- 

 five cents a quart box, and the best seen here this year, from 

 Virginia and Maryland, on Saturday sold at fifteen cents above 

 this price. Late holdings of selected Catawba grapes, packed 

 in three-pound boxes, cost twenty-five cents, and their fresh- 

 ness and flavor are surprising. The last California Easter 

 Beurre pears were in high favor, as much as ten dollars a box 

 being offered for them last week. Large supplies of winter- 

 green berries are noted in some of the fruit-stores. These 

 come from remote parts of the New England states, and be- 

 sides being eaten out of hand are in some demand for sauce. 

 They sell at the low price of fifteen cents a quart. 



In a recent article on the fruit and vegetable trade it was 

 stated in the Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin 

 that New York is in all probability the greatest fruit and veg- 

 etable market in the world. It is so much the largest city in 

 this country that it is unnecessary to examine the statistics of 

 its trade in these articles of food. In the Old World there are 

 larger cities, but their people do not eat anything like the 

 amount of fruit that we do, and it is only necessary to recog- 

 nize these general facts to reach the conclusion that nowhere 

 else in the world is there anything like the traffic in fruits and 

 vegetables, especially early vegetables, that there is here. 

 This view is certainly borne out by the profusion and variety 

 now seen in our markets. Among northern winter vegetables, 

 parsnips, carrots, beets, cabbage, salsify, Brussels sprouts and 

 turnips are still abundant and cheap, while Kalamazoo celery 

 may be had for twenty-five cents a root, and Vineland sweet- 

 potatoes at $6 a barrel. Of the spring vegetables, asparagus 

 was, last week, in greatest abundance in the markets. An ex- 

 perimental shipment of this vegetable from California showed 

 little deterioration from the three-thousand-mile journey, be- 

 yond a suggestion of being water-soaked on the cut ends, and 

 the quality was fair. It sold for twenty-five cents a bunch. 

 Asparagus is now coming from all the coast section north of 

 Charleston. Large stalks from Virginia and New Jersey bring 

 as much as forty cents a bunch. The first few small bunches 

 of tender shoots from Oyster Bay, Long Island, sold quickly on 

 Saturday for seventy-five cents each. Boston hot-house cu- 

 cumbers maintain the price of the past three months, the best 

 selling for fifteen cents each. Mushrooms are now plentiful 

 at fifty cents a quart. Hot-house tomatoes sell at forty cents a 

 pound, a higher price than they would bring so late in the 

 season but for the small supply of first-class tomatoes from 

 southern gardens. The latest addition to the large variety of 

 new crop vegetables from the south are turnips from North 

 Carolina, and flat and crook-neck squashes from northern 

 Alabama. Large and fully ripened Florida tomatoes are 

 twenty-five cents a quart, and a poorer quality may be had at 

 ten cents for a box supposed to contain that quantity. A choice 

 quality of string beans of the green and fancy wax varieties, 

 brought through on express trains, are altogether superior to 

 those shipped on steamers, and bring correspondingly higher 

 prices. Peas, while quoted at wholesale at a considerable 

 advance over the price for Florida peas several weeks ago, 

 continue to sell at the same retail price, one dollar a peck. The 

 first cargo of Egyptian onions arrived last week ; although of 

 harsh flavor they are useful here during the six weeks between 

 the close of the Bermuda onion season and the marketing of 

 the eastern-shore crop. The Egyptian onions are remark- 

 able for their keeping qualities, remaining in good condition 

 in the warehouses for three and four months of our summer 

 weather, and some of them held over in cold storage since 

 last spring are still in sound condition. The five hundred and 

 odd sacks of 112 pounds, already sold, brought $3.25 apiece. 

 As many as 5,000 sacks will arrive during this week, so that ' 

 this high price is but temporary. 



Mr. Myron A. Hunt, after a long period of ill health and sud- 

 denly overwhelmed with grief on account of his wife, who had 

 just been pronounced incurably insane, took his own life last 

 week at his home in Terre Haute, Indiana. Mr. Hunt was one 

 of the most successful and respected florists of the country, 

 and had been for ten years Treasurer of the Society of Ameri- 

 can Florists. His book, How to Grow Cut Flowers, is 

 especially valuable as a record of his own experience, and a 

 revised edition of it has lately been published. Mr. Hunt was 

 a man of high principle, modest, generous and true. He was 

 born in Sunderland, Massachusetts, in 1838. 



