J AXUABY, 19 1 .5 



THE GARDEN M A G A Z I N E 



187 



Because it took the experts of this estab- 

 lishment three years to nurse this new type 

 to this point. Here and there — they 

 pointed out the plants — a specimen would 

 still show a tendency to revert to the orig- 

 inal form with drooping flowers. They are 

 willing to work three years longer before 

 offering this new type for sale, in order to 

 eliminate this tendency. Then the world 

 will really have something well "fixed" and 

 worth-while — something that would meas- 

 ure up to the high standard of perfection 

 striven after in that establishment. 



HOW NOVELTIES ORIGINATE 



Novelties in both vegetables and flowers, 

 are evolved by either selection or cross- 

 fertilization. Both methods are good, al- 

 though novelties evolved by cross-fertili- 

 zation are more apt to revert to one or the 

 other of the parent type from which they 

 came. In working to produce novelties by 

 cross-fertilization, the gardener takes the 

 pollen from one flower and carries it, by 

 means of a fine brush, to another flower 

 with different qualities as to color, size, or 

 shape. 



The pollenized flowers are then marked 

 with strips of colored cloth or raffia. When 

 the seeds mature, they are carefully saved, 

 handled separately from the rest of the 

 crop, and are sown with special care the 

 following spring. A motley assortment of 

 seedlings is usually the result. As a rule, 

 some of these seedlings show more or less 

 of the improvements which the gardener 

 set out to attain. After that, the process 

 of evolving the "novelty" becomes a case 

 of patient selection and elimination of 

 undesirable elements. 



Novelties from crossing are fickle in their 

 habits and it often takes many years to 

 eliminate those traits which cause a nov- 

 elty to be of doubtful value to the grower. 

 Cases are cited among flowers where even 

 after many years of selection, it proved 

 utterly impossible to get the new sort to 

 come true to the desired type. Conscien- 

 tious growers will, in such a case, state 

 frankly when sending out such novelties, 

 that "only 75 per cent, of the flowers come 

 double" or "true to color" or make such 

 other qualifying statement as may be 

 needed. 



Evolving novelties bv selection calls for 



The process of crossing in detail; applying pollen to the 

 pistil after removing the stamens 



a high order of intelligence. The gardener 

 must have in mind a firmly fixed ideal, and 

 must not lose sight of that ideal during a 

 long period of years. 



WHERE NOVELTIES COME FROM 



All European countries, engaged in seed 

 production, furnish their quota of new 

 things every year. England favors us with 

 extra fine peas, cabbages, rutabagas, swedes, 

 beets, and some flowers. English peas I 

 found to be of a greener color than those 

 grown anywhere else; also, it will prove 

 difficult to find better rutabagas and 

 Swedish turnips than those which come 

 from England. Holland leads in cabbage, 

 cauliflower, radish, spinach, and turnips. 

 The Dutch growers export five million 

 dollars' worth of cabbage, cauliflower, and 

 spinach to Great Britain every year — 

 proof of the quality of these products of the 

 quaint Netherlands. France surpasses in 

 beets, celery, onions, and radishes. Seventy- 

 five per cent, of all the beet, celery, onion, 

 and radish seeds imported by us originates 

 in France. Germany contributes lettuce 

 parsley, carrot, parsnip, and 90 per cent, of 

 all the floral novelties. 



Nobody has doubted Germany's leader- 

 ship in the production of "worth-while" 

 floral novelties since 1822 when Christian 

 Lorenz evolved the first pure yellow variety 

 of Ten-Week stock. 



NEW VEGETABLES THIS YEAR 



In England I found two splendid new 

 peas ready for introduction. "First of the 

 Season" is an extra early wrinkled sort 

 producing plenty of fine pods on vines 

 about 2\ feet high. Pods usually contain 

 about eight peas of the most delicious flavor. 

 If this sort can be acclimated I would not 

 be surprised to see it take, in due time, the 

 place of Gradus, which all of us know as a 

 notoriously "shy" yielder. The other new 

 pea is "Laxton's Superb" — a smooth, blue 

 seeded sort producing pods twice as large 

 as those of the popular Pilot. Since it 

 matures fully as early as Pilot it should 

 prove a winner as a market gardening 

 variety. Vines grow about 2! feet tall, 

 are very vigorous, and bear big crops. 



It was in Witham, county of Essex, Eng- 

 land that I found a grower busy on the 

 difficult job of ridding Swiss chard of its 

 "earthy" flavor. Swiss chard is so easily 

 grown, and produces such big quantities 

 of splendid greens, that it deserves to be 

 more generally cultivated than is the 

 case to-day. Its one drawback has been 

 the decidedly "earthy" flavor and our 

 English grower has succeeded in almost 

 eliminating it. The new sort — called 

 Cooper's Mammoth — is of distinct pale 

 green color with leaves of truly mammoth 

 dimensions. The increased size of the 

 leaves has not affected the brittle quality of 

 the leafstalks or "ribs" which may be 

 served as a good substitute for creamed 

 asparagus. 



In Holland I found a vegetable that is 

 not exactly a novelty and yet, it is so little 

 known or grown in this country, that I 



Hand work on crossing petunias to combine in one 

 plant the desired characters now found in separate speci- 

 mens. It may take many years to "fix" the combination 

 by successive crossing and selection 



consider it worth mentioning. Rumex 

 patientia is a sort of perennial spinach that 

 stays out in the open ground all winter, 

 comes up very early in the spring and may 

 be cut continually all summer. In the 

 middle of July, while looking at fields of it 

 in North Holland, the second crop was just 

 about six inches tall and there was surely 

 as healthy a mass of deep green, juicy 

 leaves as I have ever seen. As far as I 

 could learn it is a species of dock and 

 the Dutch grower was inclined to call it 

 Winter Sorrel. Whether it is identical 

 with the sorrel, listed by some of our 

 seedsmen, I cannot tell. 



In France, the number of eligible novel- 

 ties proved surprisingly small. There were 

 a few special beets and some oddly shaped 

 muskmelons. The latter are hardly suit- 

 able for this country and the quality of our 

 native varieties seems far superior to me. 



Among the real surprises of my tour, I 

 count a beautiful white pepper, which I 

 found in German)-. White King, as 

 the variety is called, is of a creamy white 

 color, which the peppers retain until they 

 have reached full size. Thev grow to be 



Opening a miniature flower to remove the stamens before 

 they can shed their pollen 



