Choosing Fruits for the Home Garden— By w. c. McCollom, ? 



AN EFFORT TO REALLY AID EACH AMATEUR IN CHOOSING VARIETIES THAT WILL FILL HIS 

 PECULIAR NEEDS— AN ENUMERATION OF THOSE THAT ARE OF PROVEN MERIT AND SAFE TO PLANT 



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IF WE are to plant out any fruit trees 

 this spring we must get down to business 

 now in making selections of varieties to suit 

 our special needs. It surely is worth a 

 little careful thought, for the planting of 

 a fruit tree is an investment for years. 

 Too little attention is given to the dis- 

 cussion of the merits of different varieties; 

 for as was said last month, it is not and 



Be explicit in ordering your stock; state 

 carefully exactly what you want. Apples 

 are grafted on "seedling" stock. That is, 

 the nurseryman buys seeds from a cider 

 mill, sows them, and when large enough 

 he uses the plants as the stocks upon which 

 he grafts his salable varieties. These seed- 

 lings are all right for ordinary standard 

 trees, but if you want dwarf trees get 



This apricot tree, in a New York City back yard, gives an abundai 



scious fruits every year 



cannot be absolute — individual pref- 

 erences count for much; still in the lists 

 offered by the nurserymen are always 

 many well-tried kinds that have stood 

 the test of time and are adapted to a wide 

 region. My selections following are made 

 from such. I do not refer to any new, as 

 yet untried, ones simply because I do not 

 believe in recommending such things to 

 others. If a perfectly reliable nurseryman 

 were introducing a new variety, I would not 

 hesitate to try it for myself, but I would 

 not recommend it to others until I found it 

 was really an acquisition. For every good 

 new variety there are twenty introduced 

 that are no real improvement over what 

 we have. 



them on "Paradise" stock. This dwarfs 

 it, and the stock is much hardier than 

 the Doucin stock, which is also used 

 to dwarf apples. Pears are budded. If 

 you want dwarf pears get them on the 

 quince. Peaches and nectarines are 

 budded; but for dwarfs the)' should be 

 grafted on the cherry plum stock. 



Cherries are dwarfed by working them 

 on the cherry plum stock. For open 

 orchard work they should be worked on 

 the Mahaleb or Mazzard stock. Plums 

 and apricots should be on the Myrobolan 

 stock if dwarfs. 



Now as to actual varieties. The most 

 important fruits are apples. We want, if 

 there be room, several of the early sorts. 

 U 



These are: Sweet Bough, yellow and Red 

 Astrachan; but while both are good varie- 

 ties of this type, they are very little earlier 

 than Duchess of Oldenburg, a prolific bearer 

 of good size and first quality fruit. If your 

 space is limited and you do not have room 

 for all three varieties, plant Duchess. 

 Good fall apples are Fall Pippin, a beauti- 

 ful large, yellow; and Gravenstein, a red 

 apple of exceptional quality but having 

 one bad fault of dropping the fruit too 

 early. A little later are Alexander and 

 Beauty of Kent, of even better quality. 

 Alexander is a pinkish red, good sized 

 apple, one of the choicest of apples; Beauty 

 of Kent though larger and of about the 

 same quality, is not nearly so handsome. 



In late varieties, Baldwin ranks high in 

 several essentials. It produces large crops 

 and is a good keeper. Ben Davis, another 

 good keeper, is the prettiest apple we have, 

 in my estimation, and the quality is fairly 

 good on a light soil. Newtown Pippin 

 still holds the lead, as a high quality late 

 keeper, but Rhode Island Greening is the 

 best keeping green apple to date. Rox- 

 bury Rust is the best russet apple and 

 keeps very late indeed. Twenty Ounce 

 is one of the extra large apples which is 

 not lacking in quality. Fallawater and 

 Beitigheimer belong to this class, but are 

 of lower quality. 



When well grown, Northern Spy is per- 

 haps the best all around apple, but it is 

 fastidious about soils, requiring a deep, 

 heavy loam. It certainly will not do well 

 on sandy soils, where however Bismarck, 

 larger than Northern Spy and almost of 

 the same high quality, does quite well. As 

 dwarfs either for training or for open field 

 work, Bismarck, Beauty of Kent, Emperor 

 and Alexander are all good apples. 



The best early pears are Clapp's Favorite 

 and Bartlett. While these are not of 

 recent introduction, there are no new 

 varieties that even approach them in their 

 respective classes. Clapp's Favorite is a 

 large fruit of beautiful color — yellowish 

 green with slight red markings — and a 

 better eating pear would be hard to find. 

 Bartlett is too well known to need de- 

 scribing; it is of the best quality and most 

 prolific. It will certainly outbear Clapp's 

 Favorite. 



In late pears Buerre d' Anjou should be 

 your first selection. It is not what might 

 be called a pretty pear, but when ripe, is 

 excellent for the table, having a very 

 distinct flavor, the tree is a good beare-r 

 and the pears are extra large. Sheldon 

 ranks high as a table pear; the fruit is of 

 fair size, brownish, of good shape and a 

 very good flavor. Duchess d' Angouleme 

 should be given third choice. It is a good 

 all-round late pear, but lacks really dis- 

 tinctive quality. Seckel stands alone — it 



