October, 1891. 
167 
ORCHRRD 
GARDEN 
Orchard Notings. 
THE RUSSIAN PLUMS. 
The only plum that has proved profitable 
to plant in northern New England, outside 
of the cultivated native varieties of the 
Northwest and the East, has been that 
known as Mooer’s Arctic. This is much like 
the Lombard, but smaller. It is not strictly 
iron-clad, but as it bears very young and 
very profusely, the recent practice, where 
it is a little tender, is to lay the young trees 
down; — first digging away the earth at one 
side, and confining them in a prostrate posi- 
tion by crossed stakes. When this is done 
in the lee of a fence, the snow drifts over 
them, and the result is seen in immense 
crops of very salable fruit. To facilitate 
this laying down, the roots, in planting, are 
drawn to each side, and the earth is dug 
> away on the side to which the tree is bent. 
Such roots as are formed on the opposite 
side are cut with the spade. This treatment 
dope not injure the trees. In the spring the 
restraining stakes are removed, and one is 
used to each tree to hold it erect. 
But with the new Russian plums we 
have two advantages over the Arctic,— in 
trees that will stand the winters in their 
natural positions, while many if not all of 
them are larger, handsomer, and of better 
quality. Only two of these have yet fruited 
with me, out of six or eight kinds received 
from Prof Budd. These are the Early Red 
and the White Nicholas. The former is a 
prune-shajied freestone, ripening in north- 
ern Vermont from the middle to the last of 
August. When fully ripe it is reddish-pur- 
ple, and very handsome, as well as very 
good. In size it is about medium. The tree 
bears young and is productive, but the 
fruit is quite as subject to the attacks of the 
curculio as any of the old sort, — which is 
not the case with the Arctic, at least in this 
^ section. So far as I can see, the >l little 
Turk ” lets the Arctic alone severely, and 
the result is a big crop almost every year. 
The tree is consequently short-lived, and is 
practically grown as a fan- shaped bush. 
The White Nicholas is a rather large, oval 
plum, of almost exactly the color of the 
Early Red, so that the name, if I haye it 
true, is a misnomer. The tree is a very 
upright grower, while the Early Red is low 
and spreading. The fruit of White Nich- 
olas is a cling, ripening early in September, 
and when fully ripe is very good for eating 
fresh. It is not yet worth while for me to 
say anything of Hungarian, Moldavka, No, 
20 Voronesh, and some six or seven other 
Russian plums that have not yet fruited 
here, except that they are all hardy and good 
growers, and all quite distinct from our 
old sorts. 
WELL, AT LAST! 
It is a queer thing that, though we have 
’* had the Russian pears in America for nine 
years, I have heard of nobody who has been 
able to bite into a ripe specimen of one of 
them in all that time. About three years 
ago the well-known Canadian horticulturist 
Mr. A. Jack, of Chateauguay, Quebec, re- 
ported quite a crop of Bessemianka on some 
top-worked grafts in his garden; but before 
they were ripe they were stolen. Last year, 
my hopes were excited by the report of Prof. 
Budd, of Iowa, that the trees in the College 
orchard were bearing; but when I reminded 
him, later in the season, of my desire to see 
a single specimen, he regretfully replied 
that they had all been taken before matu- 
rity by the laborers engaged on additions to 
the college buildings. This year my own 
trees, after blooming ineffectually for two 
previous seasons, showed fruit on a number 
of them; and now, Sept. 5, I am able to re- 
port, from prematurely ripened specimens 
that we may be sure of at least one iron-clad 
pear that is of very good dessert quality. 
The flesh is buttery, — not, in these speci- 
mens, perfumed like the Bartlett, but a good 
deal like it in flavor, and “ good enough.” 
In size this pear is from small to medium, 
color grass green ripening to greenish- 
yellow, without any redness or russet. 
Flesh yellowish-white, and very juicy. It 
is unmistakably a fine dessert pear, and as 
it is reported from Russia to be productive, 
and a good keeper for its season (Sept.), it 
bids fair to be a very useful fruit for us of 
the cold North. 
THE HAAS APPLE. 
This fruit, which appears to have origi- 
nated in the city of St. Louis, and was there 
known— or probably the original tree, — as 
the “ Gros Pommier ,” (Big Apple tree,) is 
ver y popular in the upper Mississippi Valley 
as a large, handsome and productive sort. 
It has been widely recommended for its 
hardiness, but it is not what we call an 
■“ iron clad,” and is short-lived in northeast- 
ern Vermont, either root or top grafted. 
But where it succeeds it is a good and profi- 
table apple for market or home use. As a 
synonym it is known as the Fall Queen. If 
I have it true, there seems to be two types 
of it, for while it is described and figured as 
a striped apple in the books, it is solid color- 
ed of a deep red on my trees, and I have also 
received from Iowa specimens of the same 
color, which were sent me by a Mr. Pherrin 
under another name. Mr. P. don’t think it 
is the true Haas, but after seeing a specimen 
Prof. Budd expressed the belief that the 
solid color only shows that jt was grown on 
sandy soil. As the other characters are 
similar, it very probably is as the Professor 
thinks. Anyway, the Haas is a valuable 
fall apple where it is successfully grown, 
being so large, handsome and prolific. In 
season it succeeds Oldenburgh, and is a 
longer keeper. — T. H. Hoskins. 
June Apples. 
Our earliest southern apple is the Carolina 
Red June, coming in during the first of 
that month. It is two or three weeks 
earlier than either Early Harvest, or Yellow 
Transparent, but if it were not such a 
smooth, beautifully shaped and colored 
apple, it could not be so popular, for it has 
little flavor. On young trees in good soil, 
this richly-colored apple grows to good size, 
and bears well. Indeed the June apple crop 
is surer than most others, as it blooms early 
and its thick leaves protect the fruit from 
the late May frosts which blacken peaches 
an inch in diameter and cause them to drop, 
also scattering our apple crop thickly over 
the grass. The Red June tree is usually 
grafted upon other stocks and I have ob- 
served that the apples are earlier or later as 
influenced by an early or late stock. 
Grafted upon sweet apple stock, the fruit is 
richer and much more palatable. The Red 
June is a poor keeper, here at the South. 
It is said to succeed well in New York, and 
probably keeps better there. The perfume 
of this apple is delicious, and it has a pecu- 
liar habit of blooming twice a year, and 
bearing a second crop of comical little 
apples that will keep till Christmas. It is 
a great favorite with children, who will 
barter almost any thing in their possession 
for a red-cheeked June apple. Grown upon 
its own roots it is vigorous and healthy, and 
a good bearer, but somewhat tender. Cut- 
tings of the well ripened wood, buried with 
the lower ends up this autumn and reversed 
in a shady place next April, will fonp fin 3 
well-rooted little trees during tlje season. 
Yellow Transparent is also a beautiful 
apple, ripening in June. It is of a rich 
lemon-yellow color, and the children, who 
must have descriptive names, call it “ Gold 
Apple.” Like the Red June it has a very 
fair, smooth, glossy skin, and delicate sub- 
acid flavor. The tree is very hardy, being 
of Russian origin, and might be expected to 
thrive better in a cold climate, but so far it 
has done finely here on my place, in western 
North Carolina. The fruit is of medium 
size, roundish, flattened and firm, keeps 
better than Red June, but is not so large or 
attractive. The tree is an abundant bearer. 
Early Harvest, is finer flavored, and 
better for cooking and eating than either of 
the above apples, it is lai-ger also, but not 
being so attractive does not sell so well, 
neither is it so sure a crop. The tree is a 
moderate grower, low and spreading in 
habit; fruit roundish-flat, tart in flavor un- 
til well ripened and ‘-mealy mellow,” pale 
yellow in color. 
But the queen of all June apples is, to my 
mind, the Golden Sweet ! There are some 
old trees on this place that must be seventy 
or more years old, great, tall, spreading 
giants, that the winds have rocked and tha 
storms have lopped out of all shapeliness, 
and still, every June, down from their 
branches drop yellow globes, as rich and 
tempting as those golden apples of Hesper- 
ides. As a general thing, I do not like sweet 
apples, finding them flavorless and dull, for 
all uses except baking, but here is one that 
sells as fast as you can get it into market, 
that grows to fine large size, with smooth, 
glossy yellow skin, rich, sweet and vinous, 
mellowing and yellowing up into an apple 
whose flavor and odor would tempt the gods. 
Sweet apples, unquestionably, are healthy 
and fattening beyond all other fruits, and in 
the summer the writer fairly lives “under 
sweet apple boughs;” for Golden Sweet be- 
ginning to ripen in June, has still (Aug. 22,) 
a fair showing of fruit upon its boughs, I 
