112 
House & Garden’s 
FRESH BERRIES — WIT H CREAM 
Wherein the Wares of the Howling Huckster and the Avaricious Fruit Store Man Achieve that 
Elusive Perfection Through the Medium of the Home Garden 
I N the planning of even a modest kitchen 
garden the desirability of the small fruits 
—currants, raspberries, blackberries, etc.—is 
often overlooked. The thoughts of beginners 
especially are prone to center on vegetables, to 
the exclusion of the berries, which, while of 
perhaps less nourishing value, are nevertheless 
highly important articles of diet. 
The requirements of these cane and bush 
fruits are not exacting. Any fairly sunny, 
well drained soil which will produce a good 
general vegetable crop will be suitable. Such 
necessary care as spraying, pruning, mulching, 
etc., is easily given and amounts to little 
enough compared with that which the regular 
vegetable garden demands. 
As soon in the spring as the ground is dry 
enough to crumble is the time to plant. The 
stock should be ordered, therefore, early; but 
before deciding what to get you should look 
the ground over carefully and decide exactly 
how much space will be available. In doing 
this the following planting distances should be 
kept in mind: 
Raspberries ought to be planted 3' or 4' apart 
in the row; blackberries and dewberries, 5'; 
currants, 4'; gooseberries, 5'. If only a single 
row is to be planted, perhaps along a fence or 
at the edge of the garden, these figures 
will suffice. If, however, you decide 
upon two or more parallel rows, you must 
allow an average distance of 6' between 
the rows, to leave room for you to move 
about comfortably while attending to the 
cultivation, picking, etc. 
All of the good nurseries supply varie¬ 
ties of small fruits in great numbers. It 
would be out of the question to set down 
here anything like a comprehensive list 
of these, but you will not go far wrong if 
you make your choices from the following: 
Raspberries: The King (extra early); 
Cuthbert; Columbian; Reliance; St. Re¬ 
gis Everbearing; Cardinal; Palmer 
(black); Golden Queen (yellow). 
Blackberries: Mercereau (early); 
Early Harvest; Early King; Snyder. 
Heavy bearing bushes can re¬ 
sult only when wisely selected 
and well cared for plants are 
used 
Black raspberries should find 
a place in the small fruit bor¬ 
der. Many prefer them to the 
red form 
Unlike the true cane fruits, 
currants bear only on mature 
and thoroughly ripened hard 
wood 
The best red raspberries, when 
grown at home, lack the 
somewhat pithy character of 
those in market 
Currants: Perfection; Fay's Prolific; Lee’s 
Prolific (black); White Grape. 
Dewberries: Premo (early); Lucretia. 
Dewberries ripen somewhat earlier than rasp¬ 
berries, but in other respects are quite similar 
to them. 
Gooseberries: Industry (English variety 
well suited to our climate); Houghton’s Seed¬ 
ling; Downing; Golden Prolific. 
A liberal amount of well rotted manure dug 
into the soil where the plants are to go will 
prove a paying investment for higher quality 
fruit. For blackberries and raspberries, too, 
you must provide stakes or some other supports. 
