HARDY FRUITS FOR SMALL GARDENS. 



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basket into another. Each fruit should be deliberately placed in 

 the smaller basket used for gathering, and transferred (if needs be) 

 from it by hand carefully into a larger basket or, better still, big 

 tray, and thence again transferred by hand on to the store shelf. 

 What are known as " trug baskets " or " bodges " are far better 

 than wicker baskets, which are themselves apt to indent and bruise 

 the fruit. All bruised and diseased fruits should be put aside 

 with windfalls for immediate use, and should never on any 

 account be stored with good ones for keeping. The Apple-store 

 (if there be no proper* fruit-room) should be in a shed as equable 

 in temperature as possible, not exposed to hot sun or to extreme 

 cold. Facing north or east is best. A light thatch put on over 

 (outside) the roof and sides, and refreshed every third year or so, is 

 an admirable way of converting a common shed into a very fair 

 fruit-store. There should be no window, and the door must shut 

 very closely. Inside it should be entirely surrounded with tiers of 

 open shelves, not solid, but made of strips of wood about a third 

 of an inch apart to admit free circulation of the air. The Apples 

 should be laid stalk downwards upon these shelves, preferably a 

 single layer only upon each, but never more than three Apples 

 deep, all being placed carefully in position one by one. A little 

 extra care in this way will be a thousandfold repaid. Each variety 

 should be kept by itself, and plainly labelled, and a look should 

 be given every now and then over the different shelves, and any 

 fruits showing symptoms of decay removed at once. 



2. Plums for Cooking. — Of these five will perhaps suffice, 

 though I should prefer seven. Ewers' Early Prolific, ripe the first 

 week in August, one of the finest-flavoured Plums known, should 

 be in every garden. The next, for mid- August, should be The 

 Czar. For the third, at end of August, choose either The Sultan 

 or Belgian Purple. For the fourth Victoria should certainly be 

 chosen. I have never known it fail, and it almost always gives 

 quite a heavy crop requiring to be thinned, and the thinnings 

 make excellent green plum jam about the second week in August. 

 For the fifth, to use in the middle and towards the end of Septem- 

 ber, take either Pond's Seedling or Monarch. Then I would, if 

 possible, add a tree of Damson, either Farleigh, or Bradley's 

 King which is grand in the last days of September, and one of 



* For particulars of a good fruit-room see p. 145. 



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