186 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[May, 
The worms or slugs are small, keep upon the 
under side of the leaf, and the bush is often 
stripped of foliage before their presence is sus- 
pected. The worms, when they attain their 
growth, enter the ground, undergo their changes, 
and the flics appear to lay eggs for a new crop. 
Powdered White Hellebore dusted over the 
bushes destroys the worms at once. A light 
dusting from a dredging-box is all that is needed. 
A correspondent in the Country Gentleman 
suggests covering the ground around the bushes 
■with coal ashes to the depth of fiyeor six inches. 
The idea is that the coal ashes present a barrier 
to the exit of the fly from the ground in the 
spring. Concerning this, " Walks and Talks" 
■writes : " Try the coal ashes, but at the same 
time watch the bushes, and as soon as you see 
the little, beadlike eggs on the under side of the 
lower leaves, crush them with the thumb and 
finger. The flies come out of the ground aud 
deposit their eggs ou the first leaves they come 
to. On neglected bushes there are generally 
a dozen or more suckers round the basil. The 
eggs will be found on these. Cut them all off, 
except one or two which maybe needed to form 
new wood. In this way you will destroy hun- 
dreds of worms and benefit the bushes at the 
same time. Remove all the useless wood from 
the bush, and place it in the sun or burn it. 
You will have more and much finer fruit. 
This work should be done early in the spring." 
The correspondent who complains that his 
fruit prematurely ripens and is worthless, will, 
if he carefully examines the berries, probably 
find within each a minute maggot. The only 
remedy we can suggest is to gather and destroy 
all such fruit before the insects have time to 
mature and prepare for a brood the next year. 
Farm and Family Gardens. 
The Native American race is one of meat- 
eaters, and our carnivorous propensities are 
quickly adopted by citizens whom we adopt. 
There is no reason why they should accept our 
vices with their naturalization, and there is 
every reason why we should engraft their vir- 
tues upon the Native American stock. Germe ns, 
French, Italians, aud Swedes, are ail famous for 
having good vegetable gardens. The majority 
of our best gardeners are English and Scotch, 
and sons of Erin set up for gardeners even be- 
fore they have had lime to shuffle off their Old 
Country brogans. If the good-wife knows how 
to use vegetables, she will accomplish a great 
saving of meats, both fresh and salt,and the meals 
will be much better relished, and more health- 
ful. If she does not know, there is the more 
necessity for providing an abundance of all sorts 
of delicious vegetables to put her up to doing 
her part well. At all events, then, plant a gar- 
den — give it the best manure, well rotted, and 
plenty of it. Put it on three inches thick, and 
spade, fork, or plow it in. It will not make a 
big hole in the manure pile unless one sets out 
to ra'se vegetables enough for all the neighbor- 
hood, which might pay very well. It is not too 
late to begin gardening early iu May, though 
April is the proper time to layout, manure, and 
plow, to say the least. Those who begin now 
may with a very little more labor and the use 
of liquid manure have their tables supplied 
quite as early as man}'- whose gardens were 
planted a month earlier. Carry good farm 
practice into the garden, and use good garden 
practice upon the farm. As a rule, short rows 
are a nuisance. A twelve or sixteen-foot board is 
frequently used in sowing the seed, ami its length 
may sometimes determine the width of the beds 
and length of the rows. The use of the board is 
twofold — as a guide to the rake stale in mark- 
ing the drill in which the seed is to be sown, 
and as a walk while sowing and covering by 
hand. Of course, it is not used when a seed- 
drill is employed. The secret of good garden- 
ing is thorough tillage combined with clean cul- 
ture and high manuring. This cannot be if the 
soil is wet, and it can hardly be the first year, 
if the soil is a very stiff clay, first brought under 
eulture, but almost any other ground may 
sustain a fine garden if labor and manure be 
ungrudgingly applied at first. The amount of 
labor is really no tax, if the garden only gets 
the odd minutes which might otherwise be lost. 
The women of the family, from the wife to 
Bridget or Dinah, will rejoice in an occasional 
opportunity to gather up their dimity and do 
a little weeding. Bridget and Katharina will 
probably show unusual aptness at hoeing cab- 
bages, cauliflowers, and Kale. Only take a little 
pride in starting the garden well, and the result 
will be favorable; for the excellence of its prod- 
ucts, as soon as lettuce, early beets, green peas, 
and little sweet carrots, make their appearance 
on the table, will supply a motive to diligent 
continuance in well-doing. The Hints about 
Work in the Garden, on the third or fourth page 
of every number of the Agriculturist, are fresh 
every month, and constitute a safe guide for 
either the novice or the experienced gardener. 
" i ■»»»■ — >-» 
The Grape Vine— How it Grows and What 
to Do with it. — ith Article. 
Though the proper season for pruning is past, 
we talk about the operation, as we wish to have 
this series of articles connected, and they will 
be useful for reference in autumn. If we have 
seemed to dwell too much upon a few elemen- 
tary facts it is because of their importance. It 
has been attempted to explain clearly the parts 
of the vine, and to insist upon the point that 
all the fruit is borne by the green shoot that 
starts from the bud in the spring. If we leave 
upon a vine a dozen buds, we may have as many 
shoots, and if we cut all away but one bud, but 
one shoot will grow. No plant is more plastic, 
so to speak, than the vine, and the various ways 
in which it is trained are almost bewildering in 
their number. Yet, while it yields itself so 
readily to our will, there is nothing more obsti- 
nate and perplexing than an old and neglected 
vine. Whatever is to be done with the vine, it 
must he taken in hand when young, and have 
constant care, and an annual pruning. Last 
mouth we showed how to establish the vine by 
cutting it back each year, and growing a single 
shoot until a strong aud vigorous one should be 
obtained. This might be continued indefinitely, 
but would give us very little fruit. The vine 
being well rooted and in vigorous growth, our 
object is to extend it, and the obvious way to do 
this is to allow more than one bud to grow. 
Let us take the simplest case for the next step, 
and suppose that this spring two buds have 
grown and formed two shoots. Next autumn 
the appearance of the vine will be that shown 
iu figure 8— two canes, each like the single one 
grown the year before, and each, like that, fur- 
nished with buds. If it were desirable, the vine 
might be kept to two canes. To do this, the up- 
per cane would, at pruniug time, be cut entirely 
away, and the other cut back to two buds, which 
the next year would produce two more canes, 
and soon. To extend the vine a little more we 
cut each of the canes of fig. 8 back to tw'o buds 
each. If neither of these four buds meet with 
any accident during its summer's growth, the 
autumn appearance of the vine will be that 
shown in figure 9. The vine may he kept in 
this condition from 3*ear to year, and it is a very 
good system of pruning to follow where space 
is limited ; it is often adopted for specimen 
vines where it is desirable to show a large num- 
ber of varieties near one another, or for testing 
Fig. 9. 
new sorts. To keep the vine in this shape, the 
pruning is very simple ; the upper two canes — 
the two that start the highest up on the stem — 
are cut away entirely, and the other two are cut 
back to two bud's. The vine when primed will 
appear as shown iu figure 10, with four buds 
ready to furnish the four shoots for the next 
year. In practice it is customary to leave one 
more bud than is needed, aud cut the canes to 
three buds. This is done for fear the upper bud 
may be winter-killed, as sometimes happens. 
The superfluous third 
bud is removed in spring 
when all danger is over. 
A moment's thought 
will show how easy it is 
to extend the vine with 
four canes into one of 
eight. Instead of cutting 
away two of the four 
canes, as just described 
for the vine of figure 9, 
we cut all four back to 
two buds each. One who has read or seen 
something of vines will ask, " But where are 
your canes for wood and canes for fruit ?" That 
belongs to another "system," and we have not 
reached that yet; we prefer to follow out the 
present one, and then take up another. It is to 
be understood that in the manner of treating 
vines as here described, the shoots will all pro- 
duce laterals, and these must be pinched in the 
