554 



BUDS, BLOSSOMS, FRCITS. 



yer.r $40. Aside from this, I have sold several dollars' 

 worth of plants each spring. This is no great sum, but 

 when we consider the amount that flower-culture gives 

 back in health and pleasure, it pays. Besides, we feel 

 that we can spend this flower-money as we please. I 

 have enjoyed adding to our new home several extras, 

 such as roses and other shrubs, that I should not have 

 felt like asking my husband for, although he loves such 

 things as much as I do and would be glad to indulge me 

 in procuring them if he felt able. In the spring — in 

 April — I put such annuals as need an early start into a 

 hotbed. Asters, balsams, verbenas, stocks, pansies, etc., 

 require a little earlier start than some others, such as 

 alyssum, poppies, candytuft, and petunias. These last 

 will do very well sowed in the open ground. When 

 danger from frost is over, I transplant seedlings to the 

 open ground where I wish them to grow. When this is 

 properly done, the work in weeding is very light, as it 

 can be done mostly with a hoe, nights and mornings 

 while it is cool. — M. J. S. 



Experiences with Asparagus. — My first asparagus- 

 bed was made, with infinite pains and trouble, on the old 

 orthodox plan, with two-year-old plants. For the next 

 bed I raised my own plants from seed and planted them 

 when one year old in trenches about a foot deep, enriched 

 with stable manure. Having a number of roots left 

 over, I planted them with a hoe, just as we plant potatoes. 

 Besides these beds I have here and there through the gar- 

 den quite a number of volunteer asparagus-plants, which, 

 coming up as weeds, escaped the hoe until they had estab- 

 lished a claim to live. Now, of all four beds, the volun- 

 teers are the best, because, as I presume, they have the 

 most room. They get no better treatment than the other 

 plants, indeed not quite so good. Between the other 

 three beds of asparagus there is no great difference. I 

 am trying to keep the banks of an open ditch, or small 

 creek, from caving in by having several rows of asparagus 

 planted on each side. The experiment promises well, 

 both as a means of keeping the ditch in order and as the 

 profitable source of a large supply of asparagus. — W. O. 

 Eastwood, Ontario, Ca?iada. 



Fertilizer for Asparagus. — About six years ago some 

 friends in the country showed me an asparagus-plant 

 with stalks of enormous size. It was a stray plant that 

 had been taken from the roadside and transplanted to the 

 garden. I obtained seeds from the largest stalk, and 

 raised from them a bed of ordinarily fine asparagus, but 

 no stalks so large as those of the parent plant. I learned 

 afterward that my friend's plant was probably highly fed 

 with blood, as pigs were slaughtered near where it grew. 

 So I concluded that large-sized asparagus requires a large 

 amount of suitable fertilizer, and that there is probably 

 not much in the selection of variety. — E. W. L. 



What One Gooseberry-Bush Can Do. — Several 

 years ago, almost accidentally, a single gooseberry-bush 

 was planted at the end of rhy row of raspberries, and 

 there it has grown ever since, surprising us with its yield 

 of fruit and furnishing our table wi'.h a much-prized 

 relish in winter. The plant has never had a trace of 



mildew or blight, and tho currant-worm has been kept 

 off with a pepper-box full of hellebore. My record cf 

 the canning season for two years back has these entries : 

 " i8go, picked six quarts of gooseberries, stewed the fruit 

 till soft, then added sugar at the rate of three-fourths of 

 a pound to one pound of fruit, and cooked the berries 

 gently for an hour ; 1891, picked four quarts of goose- 

 berries, saved a bowlful of the juice after stewing them, 

 and next morning strained and made two glasses of deli- 

 cious jelly." These confections are much liked with 

 meats, and being less common than currant or cranberry 

 sauce, have won much praise from guests. They are 

 rather heavy and rich-flavored, so that a little goes a 

 great ways, and although the record does not seem won- 

 derful, each year's supply has been sufficient for the 

 need of our small family. This plant has received no 

 extra care, being simply kept free from weeds and sur- 

 rounded at fruiting time by a little fence of sticks and 

 crotches to hold the branches off the ground. Last 

 spring it came in for a mulch of strawy manure when the 

 neighboring currant-bushes were similarly favored, and 

 I expect to have gooseberry j.im to give away this year. 

 — Prudence Primrose 



Fruit for Food. — Fruit-culture should be quite as 

 closely associated with family use as with market. I have 

 eaten apples all my life, but never learned how to make 

 the best use of them till last winter ; it is worth living 

 half a century to find out the real value of this fruit. 

 Now we eat apples half an hour before meals instead of 

 afterward. We eat all we want before breakfast and 

 before dinner. The result has been so decidedly in favor 

 of the fruit diet that we have very largely dropped meat. 

 The action of the acid is then admirable in aiding diges- 

 tion, while if eaten after meals the apple is likely to prove 

 a burden. We follow the same line in using grapes, pears, 

 cherries and berries. It disturbed by a headache or dys- 

 pepsia in summer, I climb a cherry tree and eat all I can 

 reach and relish. In order to have cherries all summer 

 I cover a dozen trees with mosquito-netting to keep off 

 the birds. Currants and gooseberries I find very whole- 

 some, eaten raw from the bushes before going to the 

 dining-table. Nature has prepared a large amount of 

 food already cooked, exactly fitted for all demands of the 

 human system. Our kitchen-cooking never equals na- 

 ture's. I am by no means a vegetarian or a fruitarian, 

 but am convinced that we have not yet measured the 

 value of fruit as a diet with milk, eggs and vegetables. 

 Some one being told that such food would not give a 

 workman muscular strength, pointed to his adviser's oxen, 

 saying, "Yet those oxen eat no meat." — E. P. Powell. 



Another Alien Competitor. — The American fruit- 

 grower is to have another competitor, or rather, an old 

 competitor is to enter the field in a new form. For a 

 long time the omnipresent banana has been a thorn in 

 flesh of the fruit-grower — especially the grower of small- 

 fruits. The ease and cheapness with which it is grown, 

 the low rates of water transportation, the freedom from 

 tariff duty, enable the venders to put it on the retail mar- 

 ket at a remarkably low price, which considerably curtails 



