Fruits Just for Fun 



M. G. KAINS 



Here's a Really Rare Sport for the Amateur Gardener — Planted Around the Vegetable Plot, Occupying No 

 Extra Space and Fruits Yield Returns That Far Outstrip Anything Else in Actual Value, for the Household 



Plant raspberries along the fence and harvest a valuable crop 

 from a usually wasted strip 



THE fear that there will be years of wait- 

 ing before they can gather any products, 

 that the plants will take up too much 

 space and use up so much plant food 

 that other plants will be either shaded unduly or 

 robbed and starved, that pruning is an occult 

 ceremony which only those devotees who have 

 reached the inner shrine may practise, and finally 

 that the fruit plants are so badly affected by in- 

 sects and diseases that there is little or no hope of 

 making them live are the principle reasons why 

 people with small gardens hesitate to plant fruit. 

 What a pity that one or other of these errors 

 should prevent any one from enjoying far better 

 fruit than can be bought in the stores! 



11JOW about these actual facts? Mr. W. H. 

 ■*■ -*• Stewart of Setauket, Long Island, has a 

 Wealthy apple tree in very sandy soil which in 

 its third year set and matured fourteen apples, as 

 luscious as beautiful. The tree was then less than 

 six feet tall and had a spread of only about as 

 much. As this variety is noted for its habit of 

 bearing every year the tree will probably have 

 two or three times as many fruits next fall as it 

 had last. For trees that once start to bear tend 

 to continue to do so unless they are prevented 

 by improper pruning which is probably the most 



frequent cause of slow development to the fruit- 

 bearing habit. 



In my own back yard I planted sixteen two- 

 year grape vines in the fall of 1916. Three were 

 stepped upon by the postman coming in the back 

 way and killed. These were replaced in the 

 spring of 1918. Of the thirteen originals, eight 

 bore fruit in 1918, only twenty-two months from 

 the time they were planted. Truly, most of them 

 bore only a few clusters but two yielded about 

 six pounds each of far more delicious fruit than 

 I can buy in the stores, because the varieties are 

 superior to the market kinds. 



The same sort of success attended my planting 

 of currants, gooseberries, and raspberries. With 

 blackberries I was unfortunate on my own place 

 but I have had fruit in fair quantity the second 

 season from planting and in a few cases some even 

 the same year, when "transplanted plants," as 

 the nurserymen call them, were planted. The 

 blackberries I planted last spring are expected to 

 bear fairly well this summer, and I look for an 

 average of at least ten pounds of grapes from each 

 of the older vines and a fair showing from the 

 young ones. My currant bushes should bear an 

 average of four or five pounds each and the goose- 

 berries as much or more. 



These results have been produced under the 

 very serious disadvantage of exceedingly poor 

 soil — merely the earth thrown out of the cellar 

 and spread over the surface of a slope by the man 

 who built the house. To offset this, however, I 

 placed some good soil in each hole and buried 

 around each one a half pail of unbroken bones, 

 collected from the house waste of my own and the 

 neighbors' places. 



I planted Superb and Progressive strawberries 

 (everbearing varieties) in the spring of 1917 and 

 from July to October that season gathered a fair 

 return of fruit in spite of the poorness of the soil, 

 lack of irrigation, and only moderate fertilization 

 with wood ashes from the fireplace and part of 

 the manure from a flock of about eighteen hens. 

 As I planned to make a road to my garage across 

 this strawberry patch no care whatever was given 

 the plants during 1918, and yet the Progressive 

 plants heaped coals of fire on my head in a way 



Orchard fruit may easily be set in the ground that is at present given to annual vegetables. 



nent trees are developing 



So a crop is gathered while the perma- 



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that has made me ashamed of my neglect, yielding 

 well in June and fairly well during July and 

 August. I shall transplant, from that bed to 

 better quarters and expect to have fruit from 

 July to Thanksgiving Day at least, if the season 

 is as open as it was in 191 8. The Superb variety 

 could not stand the treatment I gave and died 

 out. Besides these long-season varieties there 

 were some ordinary kinds in the spring of 1918 — 

 Premier, Dr. Burrill,.Ekey, Chesapeake, and Osem. 

 They were too young to bear last summer but will 

 do well next June. So much for the first theory. 



HOW about fruit plants taking up too much 

 space? Raspberries and blackberries may 

 be placed against the borders of the property — 

 the fences. They will not only be out of the way 

 there but will gather part of their food from the 

 neighbor's yard! 



Among the blackberries, at suitable intervals 

 place a fruit tree, skipping a berry plant to allow 

 the tree to have a chance. If the area is very 

 small, as in my case — only fifty by sixty feet — use 

 dwarf trees. These are satisfactory as far as they 

 go. They give a fair yield of fruit and if good varie- 

 ties are chosen they furnish flavors, odors, and 

 gustatory sensations not buyable at the stores. 



In order to save space and also to provide par- 

 tial shade for my currants and gooseberries I 

 have planted my grape vines alternately with 

 these bushes in two lines bordering the walk from 

 the back door to the poultry yard at the back of 

 the property. The vines are being trained so 

 their trunks will be erect between the bushes and 

 their arms or main branches will extend along 

 horizontal wires, only one of which is as yet in 

 position, but which will consist of three. The 

 one already in place is about five feet from the 

 ground and passes through a small augur hole in 

 each post, fastened tightly at one end but wound 

 around a square piece of wood at the other so it 

 may be loosened in winter and tightened in sum- 

 mer. The other two wires will be placed at the 

 ends of a T cross piece six or eight inches higher 

 up. When the vines grow each summer from the 

 third season forward the shoots will extend from 

 the lower and centre wire over the upper and 

 outer ones thus forming a canopy over the goose- 

 berry and currant bushes. 



Besides the rows of plants I have already men- 

 tioned I have four others in this yard of only 

 fifty by sixty feet; namely, one of raspberries 

 alone, one of red raspberries and dwarf trees, one 

 of black raspberries and dwarf trees, one of cur- 

 rants with trees — a quince, a peach, a plum, and 

 a dwarf pear. Between the outside row on one 

 side and the next one is a twelve-foot space for 

 the garage road. On the other side is a garden bed 

 about ten feet wide. Then come the two rows 

 of grapes, the space between being eight feet. On 

 the other side of the grape rows from the garden 

 bed is a bed of strawberries ten feet wide, down 

 the middle of which is one of the rows of dwarf 

 trees and raspberries. 



'TX) BE sure this is close planting, but, were 

 -*- the soil at all suitable for gardening it would 

 have also produced a considerable variety of veg- 

 etables last season. As it is I am improving it by 

 , the addition of leaf mold, vegetable tops, wood 

 ashes, and poultry manure. I have an asparagus 

 bed about ten by twenty-five feet which will give 

 us some dishes next season and still more from 

 that time forward. By incorporating similar 

 material in the present strawberry bed I will make 

 this area as good as the other in two or three years. 

 With ordinary soil and with liberal feeding there 

 is no reason why fruits and vegetables should not 

 be produced in liberal supply from areas no larger 

 than mine. But even if not, I would far prefer 

 to have the fruit because it is impossible to buy 



