i6o 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



April, 1 910 



Write down this list of peas, and you will not go amiss; 

 for very early Gradus and Thomas Laxton — and for later 

 take Heroine and Improved Stratagem. None of these 

 need brushing. A good housekeeper needs a few herbs, and 

 a few peppers. One of the most important is summer 

 savory. As for corn, I use my own cross-bred varieties; 

 but as you cannot get these, I recommend the White Mexi- 

 can and the Black Mexican, for their richness of quality. 

 I think you will improve them both if you let them mix. 

 The black sort is latest. When it comes to beans, once 

 more I use my own hybrids. These are mostly crosses of 

 Horticultural and Lima, of which I have started over five 

 hundred sorts — retaining only about a dozen for cultiva- 

 tion. The pods are about six or seven inches in length, and 

 two or three in circumference — solid white. These, cooked 

 pod and all, in their prime 1 hold to be the best vegetable in 

 existence. The catalogues offer you something of this sort, 

 and one of mine can be found in Vick's catalogue. 



Anyone who has once pulled from his own ground fresh 

 vegetables, of these improved sorts, will never be quite con- 

 tent with the stuff which is most generally found in market. 

 Nowhere else has a change in sorts and in quality gone on 

 more surely. My advice is that you try but very few novel- 

 ties, when they are first advertised; yet try a few. Every 



catalogue maker is bound to offer you something novel each 

 year — generally no improvement at all, or worse. But 

 never forget that half the pleasure of a vegtable graden is 

 in the growing of it. Do not turn loose into it hired help, 

 any further than you absolutely must. Get up early in the 

 morning and fuss with your plants. You will learn some- 

 thing new every day, and by and by you will feel utterly lost 

 if you cannot have your morning drill with the beans and 

 corn. At the same time, be sure to be experimenting in 

 the way of creating something new. Try your hand at a 

 new sort of corn or beans or peas; but it is best to make a 

 specialty and concentrate your efforts. Cross-breeding is 

 not a difficult affair. You have only to grow, in close prox- 

 imity, two or three sorts, and nature will do the mixing. 

 Then you select one or two of the very finest ears for seed, 

 and each year you will get something new. Reject almost 

 everything, selecting and preserving for plantmg only the 

 choicest, and along this road there will be steady improve- 

 ment. Mr. Livingston has given us a long succession of 

 grand tomatoes; others are working among the corns, while 

 others are improving celery and lettuce. Our future vege- 

 table garden will be something as far ahead of the present 

 as the present is ahead of the stock planted by our fore- 

 fathers in New England. 



The Double Flowering Cherry 



By D. Z. Evans, Jr. 



N A large lawn, where a showy, handsome 

 tree is desired, one really out of the ordi- 

 nary, and one second only to the magnolia 

 in point of beauty, my choice is that of 

 the double flowering cherry. Why these 

 trees are not more often seen is no doubt 

 due to the fact that they seem to be so 

 very little known, especially in the north, though I have 

 seen a number of them in the spacious southern lawns, in 

 all their striking beauty. 



This tree is a true cherry in all its general characteristics 

 of growth, form and leaf, differing only in seldom if ever 

 producing fruit. In fact, I have never known one to fruit 

 at all, though I have heard of one or two not well authenti- 

 cated cases where a few cherries have been found on such 

 trees. The tree is a fairly rapid grower, producing a beau- 



tiful shapely head, and annually yielding a great profusion 

 of large and beautiful double flower blossoms, which when 

 fully developed, resembling a miniature rose and having the 

 long cherry stems. They are hardy, easily grown, and 

 why the nurserymen and florists do not push the sale of this 

 beautiful tree seems strange. They come into flowering 

 when from three to five years of age and are much longer 

 lived than the ordinary cherry, perhaps for the reason that 

 they do not have to stand the strain of fruiting. 



One of the largest and handsomest trees of this kind 

 that I ever saw was several years ago, and it stood in the 

 lawn of an old time southern homestead, in Cecil County, 

 Maryland. It was then some fifteen years old, and being in 

 full bloom, its strikingly beautiful appearance made it con- 

 spicuous amongst the many handsome native and foreign 

 trees and shrubs scattered over the capacious grounds. 



