222 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[June, 
and sandiest part of our grounds, yet it flour¬ 
ishes finely. It is usually recommended to 
grow this in “ Rhododendron soil,” which 
means soil with a considerable amount of peat 
mixed with it. It would probably grow better 
in such a soil, but we hope that the lack of it, 
will not deter any one from trying the Rhodora 
in any good garden soil. The name Rhodora 
is from the Greek word for rose, on account of 
the color of the flowers. Plants may be ob¬ 
tained from the native localities, and they are 
kept by some of the nurserymen. 
- «>-.— — « «— — «-• - 
Training and Pruning the Tomato. 
The French method of pruning the tomato 
to a single stem, and keeping this tied to a 
stake five or six feet long, though not to be 
commended for general culture, has its particu¬ 
lar uses. In localities where the season is too 
short to allow the fruit to ripen without extra 
care, this manner of training may be profitably 
adopted. In gardens in more favored climates, 
a few plants grown in this way will give fruit 
earlier than the general crop, and the speci¬ 
mens, as a general thing, will be finer. The 
PRUNING THE TOMATO VINE. 
objections to the method are, that it takes too 
much time, and the plant does not yield all the 
fruit it would if not so restricted; while with 
large varieties the clusters are apt to break away 
by their own weight, unless great care is taken 
to support them. To those who have leisure, 
the training will afford abundant employment, 
and the sight of a well-managed plant, loaded 
with clusters from the bottom to the top, is 
worth working for. As the tomato differs in 
its manner of growth from most plants, we give 
a diagram showing the manner of pruning. 
The majority of plants produce flowers either 
upon the end of the stem, or from the axils of 
the leaves. In the tomato, the flower clusters 
appear, not in the axils of the leaves, but con¬ 
siderably above them—about midway between 
two leaves. In pruning for this style of train¬ 
ing, as soon as the first cluster of flowers a, or 
rather of flower-buds, shows itself, the vine is 
cut off above the next leaf, as shown by the 
line b in the diagram. The bud in the axil of 
this leaf below will soon push out a shoot c, 
which is cut off in the same manner, as soon as 
it is sufficiently developed to show the cluster, 
and in this way the cutting is continued until 
the desired hight is reached. Shoots will start 
from the axil of every leaf, but these must be 
kept cut off, which will be found no little task, 
and the stem must be kept carefully tied to 
the stake with ties that will not cut it. The 
tomato is such a rampant grower that it will 
need daily care, if this method of training is 
strictly followed; and unless it is carried out, it 
had better not be undertaken. 
. — « -l-t. — 
Don’t Sow too Early. 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
A decision was rendered recently in one of 
the Philadelphia courts against the claim for 
damages made by Jacob Kessler, a market- 
gardener, who brought suit against Mr. Dreer, 
the well-known seedsman of Philadelphia, for 
having sold him Early York cabbage seed that 
“run to seed.” The seedsmen of the wdiole 
country are indebted to.Mr. Dreer, and no doubt 
will tender him their hearty thanks, for the grit 
he showed in standing a suit rather than to 
compromise, as the chances were more than 
even against him, the sympathies of the jury 
being most likely to be with the complainant 
in such a case. The ventilation of such a mat¬ 
ter is exceedingly instructive to those engaged 
in gardening operations, as w r as shown by the 
facts elicited on the trial, the gist of which was, 
that Mr. Kessler had sowm the 
cabbage seed on the 5th of Sep¬ 
tember instead of the 15th, and 
that error, combined with an 
unusually mild and growing fall, 
practically lengthened the season, 
so that the cabbage plants became 
“ annuals ” — running to seed 
within the year of sowing—rather 
than forming heads and acting as 
“biennials,” as was expected of 
them. Now 7 , j ust here an excel¬ 
lent lesson comes in with another 
vegetable. Most of our so-called 
scientific gardeners are English, 
Scotch, Irish, or Germans; they 
come here, most of them, with 
a thorough contempt for our 
rougher style of doing things (a 
practical style born of our necessi¬ 
ties in the higher cost of labor); 
and it is next to impossible 
to convince one in a dozen of them, that 
there is anything in horticultural matters 
here, that he needs to be informed of. Ac¬ 
cordingly, if he wishes to raise celeiy, he 
starts his seed in a liot-bed in February, just as 
he would have done in England, and is aston¬ 
ished to find in July that, instead of forming a 
thick and solid stalk, as it w T ould have done 
there, it spindles and runs to seed. If his 
knowledge of the art had been based on 
common sense, instead of the blind routine 
practice attained in a colder climate, he would 
have known our season—from April 1st to July 
1st—would sum up nearly the same mean of 
temperature here as it would there, from Feb¬ 
ruary 1st to July 1st; and hence it was not 
only unnecessary here, but dangerous to the 
welfare of the crop, to sow such biennial plants 
as celery in any other place but in the open 
ground, and that not before April. It w 7 as just 
such an error that the market-gardener made 
who sued Mr. Dreer. He had been following 
likely in the English or German method, and 
paid the penalty not only of losing his crop, 
but losing his lawsuit, by not adapting bis prac¬ 
tice to our conditions of temperature. As the 
matter of sowing the seeds of cabbage, cauli¬ 
flower, and lettuce to make plants to winter 
over in cold-frames, is one in which there is a 
widespread interest, I may here state that the 
time of sowing in fall, in a country having such 
an area and difference of latitude as ours, is 
somewhat difficult to gauge; but taking the 
latitude of New York as a basis, the safest time 
we have found to sow is from the 10th to the 
15tli of September. Of late years we have in¬ 
clined rather more to the latter date, and have 
even sown as late as the 30th September, with 
excellent success, in warm, well-sheltered posi¬ 
tions, in a rich, w'ell-prepared soil. In connec¬ 
tion with this subject, I w'ould refer to the evils 
arising from the too common practice of many 
of our agricultural and horticultural journals, 
of selecting from English papers articles that 
often seriously mislead. For example, a Bos¬ 
ton magazine not long ago copied a long article 
from the English Journal of Horticulture , tell¬ 
ing us, in a very patronizing way, how to prop¬ 
agate the golden tricolor-leaved geraniums. 
The writer laid great stress on having a sharp 
knife, and cutting the slip in a particular man¬ 
ner, then to insert it in silver sand, and a lot of 
other nonsense, that any boy of six months’ prac¬ 
tice here would have known was absurd; but, 
above all, the operation was to be performed in 
July! He might have got the sharpest knife 
that was ever made, and the purest silver sand 
that ever lay on the seashore, but he would 
have utterly failed in our climate, if he attempt¬ 
ed the work in July. This is only one of 
scores of such absurd selections as we see 
yearly in some of our horticultural journals. If 
the conductors of such have not original mat¬ 
ter to fill up with, better far that they leave 
their pages blank than to show their utter ig¬ 
norance of w T hat is suitable to our climate. 
Gardening in Iowa. 
BY A WESTERN MAN. 
I was quite interested in an article on gar¬ 
dening by the author of “Walks and Talks,” 
but we farmers in the West will but few of us 
take the trouble to prepare the ground as there 
directed. I will give you my plan, and, as it is 
not patented, any one may follow it who 
wishes: first, have two gardens, or a fence divid¬ 
ing the garden into two compartments, and have 
them well fenced. Now, to start with I have a 
few rules which, if they are not mathematical 
axioms, yet are important—1st, whatever is 
worth doing, is worth doing well; 2d, in order 
to have a good garden, the ground must be pre¬ 
pared the year beforehand; 3d, that in Western 
gardening, as in Western farming (or for that 
matter wherever laud is cheap), the object is to 
raise as much as possible from a given amount 
of icork instead of a given quantity of land. 
Now, for the preparation; we premise that every 
farmer keeps stock, and, as labor is scarce and 
high, we wish to bring it to our assistance, and 
have it help us to make our garden. We used 
sheep, as they are the best. As soon in the 
spring as the ground is dry, plow the land, and 
harrow down smooth, then yard the sheep; 
and if the yard can be adjoining the pasture, 
induce the sheep to take their “nooning” in 
the garden that is to be. No danger of its get¬ 
ting too rich,even on our black prairie soil. After 
it has lain about a month, plow and ridge up 
the ground, as is commonly done for sweet- 
potatoes, plowing as deep as possible with two 
horses; plow again, and make the ridges where 
the furrows were. It is better to plow thus as 
often as once a month, but it is quite important 
that it should be plowed in ridges as high as 
possible, just before it freezes up. Keep the 
sheep on even through the winter, provided 
