V OL. LVII. No. 2546. 
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 12, 1898. 
*1 PER YEAR. 
THE HOME FRUIT GARDEN. 
SUGGESTIONS FOR PLANTING IT. 
The Tales of a Tree Agent. 
Arrangement of Fruits. —There are few home 
plots so small that fruits cannot be grown. If there 
is no opportunity for planting the orchard fruits by 
themselves at regular intervals, there are still bound¬ 
aries to the place, and along these boundaries, and 
scattered in the border masses, apples, pears and other 
fruits may be planted. It is not to be expected that 
fruits will thrive as well in these places 
as in well-tilled orchards, but some¬ 
thing can be done, and the results are 
often very satisfactory. Along a back 
fence or walk, one may plant a row or 
two of currants, gooseberries or black¬ 
berries, or he may make a trellis of 
grapes. If there are no trees along¬ 
side the border, the fruit plants may 
be placed close together in the row, 
and the greatest development of the 
tops may be allowed to take place 
laterally. If one has a back yard 50 
feet on a side, there will be opportu¬ 
nity, in three borders, for six to eight 
fruit trees, and bush fruits between, 
without encroaching greatly upon the 
lawn. In such cases, the trees are 
planted just inside the boundary line. 
Use of Dwarf stock, —For very 
small areas, and for the growing of 
the finest dessert fruits, dwarf trees 
may be grown of apples and pears. 
The apple is dwarfed when it is worked 
upon certain small and slow-growing 
types of apple trees, as the Paradise 
and Doucin stocks. As sold in this coun¬ 
try, the Doucin is usually the better. 
The pear is dwarfed when it is grown 
upon the root of quince. Dwarf apples 
and pears may be planted as close as 10 
feet apart each way, although more 
room should be given them if possible. 
The trees should be kept dwarf by 
vigorous annual heading-in. If the 
tree is making good growth, say one to 
three feet, a half to two-thirds of the 
growth may be taken off in winter. A 
dwarf apple or pear tree should be kept 
within a height of 12 or 15 feet, and it 
should not attain this stature in less 
than 10 or 12 years. A dwarf apple 
tree, in full bearing, should average 
from two pecks to nearly a bushel 
of first quality apples, and a dwarf 
pear should do somewhat better than 
this. 
What Tree Agents Say. —Buy 
first-class trees of reliable dealers. It 
rarely pays to try to save a few cents 
on a tree, for quality is likely to be 
sacrificed. A t the present time, nursery 
stock is so cheap, that one need not 
quibble about prices. Agents who rep¬ 
resent reliable nurseries, and who bring 
proper credentials, are to be trusted; but there are 
irresponsible scamps traveling over the country who 
sell most astonishing stock. They are usually plausi¬ 
ble fellows, and they have the knack of weaving a 
few slender threads of science into a fabric of which 
the warp and woof are credulity and humbug. A cor¬ 
respondent who was visited by an enterprising agent, 
sends me the following account, the statements in 
which would cause Ananias to burn with envy : 
“ A representative of a nursery was in to sell me 
some trees. He says that yellows (1) and black-knot (2) 
are caused by a lack of vitality; that the fruits, not 
being indigenous to this country, have run out (3); 
that nurserymen get their seed from the canning fac¬ 
tory and cider-press, and hence get seed from diseased 
trees which produce their kind, i. e., diseased stocks, 
which they graft without regard to kind or quality (4). 
He says that a sweet apple ought not to be grafted 
upon a sour apple stock, or a colored apple upon a 
light apple, and vice versa, or a yellow peach upon a 
white peach stock (5), etc.; that if they are, they 
produce mongrels and not their kind (6). In fact, he 
says that fruit should not be grafted but budded (7); 
that wood never grows to wood, and that the wood of 
the end of the graft often decays, and this decay is 
communicated to the heart of the tree, which becomes 
black throughout its whole length and does not grow 
well and dies in a few years (8). He says that a plum 
or cherry tree that has black-knot on the limbs, also 
has it on its roots, and the whole tree is affected, as is 
proved by the blackened heart (9); and that it is due 
to deterioration and is not parasitic. Another result 
of this deterioration, he says, is the thinning of the 
sap by an excess of water; that tree sap will not 
freeze until the mercury falls to 28 degrees below 
zero, but that the thin sap (which also more readily 
rises) freezes at 10 or 12 degrees higher, hence fruit is 
often winterkilled which would not be if the trees 
had sufficient vitality to produce good sap (10). He 
says that his nursery and only two others in the 
United States import their peach seeds from Persia, 
their apple from Russia, their plum and cherry from 
Germany, which are the natural habitats of these 
fruits (11); that they bud a sweet apple upon a sweet, 
a sour upon a sour, a red upon a red, a 
late upon a late, and the same way 
with peaches and other fruits, as nearly 
as they can, the kind upon the same 
kind (12); that a man does not breed a 
race horse to a draught horse, or a 
Short-horn to a Jersey, if he expects 
good stock ; so with fruit (13). By get¬ 
ting their seed from the home of the 
fruit, they escape the disease caused by 
removal to a strange country, and in- 
breeding and diseased seed (14). By 
budding they get a better union than 
by graft, and hence get a hardier tree 
which grows faster, lives longer and is 
not so easily winterkilled (15); by breed¬ 
ing similar kinds together, they get 
better fruit and truer to name, and as 
their trees are hardy, they are thrifty 
and bear early, the apple at eight years 
and the peach at four or six years from 
the seed (16).” 
What to Say Back. — I have num¬ 
bered the various statements, that I may 
hang them on the girdle of Mephisto. 
1. Peach yellows is believed by all the 
best authorities to be a specific disease. 
2. Black-knot is known to be the result 
of the attack of a fungus. 3. Fruits do 
not run out because of mere transfer to 
another country, or because they are 
not indigenous to a country. 4. Of 
course, stocks are grafted without re¬ 
gard to their kind or quality, because 
there is no way of telling what kind or 
quality of fruit they will bear until 
they begin to bear ! When they begin 
to bear, they are too old to make into 
nursery stocks. There is no reason for 
saying that, because seeds come from 
canning factories and cider mills, they 
are diseased. Run-wild trees, as well 
as cultivated ones, may be diseased. 
With the possible exception of peach 
yellows, there is, probably, no common 
disease of tree fruits which is trans¬ 
mitted to the offspring through the 
seeds. 5. A mere sophistry. 6. The 
scientific world is waiting for proofs of 
just such hybridity as this. 7. There 
is no essential difference between bud¬ 
ding and grafting. Some methods of 
grafting are to be condemned in certain 
cases, but no man can safely make such 
a sweeping comparison. 8. Has enough 
truth to mislead. Old or heartwood does not grow 
again. It does not heal. The callus covers it. If 
decay sets in, the decay may extend far into the heart, 
for this decay is the work of a fungus. 9. Nonsense. 
10. The sap and the tap-root are the particular bogies 
of horticultural quacks. It is safe to make almost any 
statements concerning them, since the fruit-grower 
cannot disprove them, even though the statements 
may be little more than cunning nonsense. 11. Tell 
us the names of those three nurseries ? But it is un¬ 
fortunate that Persia is not the natural habitat of the 
AERIAL STEMS AND ROOTS OF THE MEXICAN JUNE CORN. Fig. 346. 
See Page 770. 
