102 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
•will succeed in raising fine plants, -while many 
will fail, and pronounce the thing a humbug. 
There is no good reason why every one should 
not succeed, as all the Amaranths are easily 
raised from seed—the seeds never failing to ger¬ 
minate if the conditions are right. I will en¬ 
deavor to state what these conditions should 
be. First, then, you may procure your seed as 
soon as you can get it, but don’t think it impera¬ 
tive on you to sow it as soon as you get it, as I 
know is too often done with flower seed. 
One half of all seeds purchased by amateurs 
perish from one or other of the following 
causes. A seed that should not be covered with 
more soil than ’/n or 1 /» of an inch is covered 
often an inch or two in depth, and the delicate 
plant perishes from being unable to push 
through this weight of soil. Or a light seed is 
sown in the open border, at a proper depth 
perhaps, but a dashing rain sweeps it away, or a 
dry spell shrivels the delicate life in the tiny 
seed so that all possibility of germination is 
gone. But the most common error is to sow 
too early, for most of our annual flowers are 
tropical, and if they germinate at all, the chilly 
nights of April, and often of May in this latitude, 
are certain to destroy them. So for such seeds 
as this new Amaranthus, and the others named 
below, the following method is a safe one. 
If you have a greenhouse or liot-bed, sow in 
this latitude (sooner or later. South or North) 
from the first to the tenth of May, in shallow 
boxes (two inches deep), covering say l / iS part 
of an inch with some light kind of soil, such as 
leaf-mold from the woods, sifted through a 
mosquito netting or a sieve of similar fineness 
of mesh; water daily with a very fine rose 
watering-pot, until the seed germinates; or, if 
you have not a suitable watering-pot, place 
porous paper so as to cover all the soil where 
the seeds are sown, pour water gently over the 
paper, and it will quickly pass through it, dis¬ 
tributing itself evenly over the surface of the 
box without disturbing the seeds. When the 
seeds are up sufficient to show the rough leaf, 
which will be in about two weeks after sowing, 
take them up carefully, and replant in similar 
boxes and soil, one inch apart. By the first 
week in June they may be planted out-doors, 
i To those who have not the convenience of 
either hot-bed or greenhouse, a window exposed 
to the south or east in the dwelling-house would 
answer the purpose nearly as well if the same 
care in sowing is used. If wanted for ex¬ 
hibition at agricultural fairs in the autumn, it 
would be best to pot the plants in three or four 
inch flower-pots, setting the pots in the soil 
in the open ground level with the rim. As the 
plants grow, they should be shifted into larger 
pots, until the final shift, which would probably 
require a pot or box one foot in diameter. If 
not wanted for this purpose, plant in the 
open flower-border, but not in pots. 
As this class of annuals is unsurpassed for 
decorative purposes, a fine effect might be pro¬ 
duced by many of your readers at the agricul¬ 
tural fairs held in—Octobcr. Below is a list of 
n*L 
ditic 
such kinds, in addition to the Amaranth already 
referred to, as can be easily raised from seeds, 
and would be suitable for this purpose: 
Browallia alata, blue. 
Globe Amaranthus , purple, 
yellow, or white. 
Sensitive Plant. 
Petunia, striped and blotched. 
Cypress Vine, scarlet or 
white. 
Lophospermum scan dens. 
Thunbergias of sorts. 
Amaranthus, bicolor, ruber. 
Amaranthus, tricolw ( Jo¬ 
seph's Coat). 
Amaranthus, tricolor, gigan- 
teas. 
Amaranthus sanguineus. 
Coxcombs, yellow and crim¬ 
son. 
Egg-plant, white and scarlet ., 
fruited. 
The first four in the above list] have'brilliant 
and highly ornamental foliage, and well-grown 
specimens of them are very attractive. A fine 
specimen of the Sensitive Plant is to most per¬ 
sons a great curiosity. The last three plants 
named above are climbers, and must be fur¬ 
nished with trellises, or some kind of supports, 
four to eight feet high. The Globe Amaranth 
and Cypress-vine germinate more readily if 
scalded before sowing. 
Dwarf Fruits and Small Fruits in Ken¬ 
tucky. 
BY HENRY T. HARRIS, LINCOLN CO., KY. 
Horticulturists of the South are beginning to 
“ wake up ” from a long supineness on the pro¬ 
per culture of dwarf and small fruits in their 
respective localities. With rare exceptions, they 
have neglected their culture, and hence but few 
families, comparatively, have a supply of either, 
notwithstanding the great adaptability of the 
climate and soil to their production. 
I know of but two or three dwarf fruit 
orchards in this county; and but few small-fruit 
gardens. A half-dozen knotty, ill-cared-for 
pear-trees, and a rod square of strawberry 
plants overrun with filth and weeds, a hedge¬ 
row of unpruned wild-raspberry bushes, make 
up the sum total of their fruits. Here and there 
an old standard pear-tree, loaded with luscious 
fruit, the result of some more thoughtful indi¬ 
vidual’s labor half a century ago, rises up from 
beside the garden-gate, as if to upbraid the rising 
generation for their want of forethought, and 
to convince them that fruit-raising would be a 
success if they would only plant and tend the 
trees. Here and there a few time-worn apple- 
trees and worm-eaten peach-trees dot the land¬ 
scape in the rear of the tumble-down barns, 
with weeds and “ water-sprouts ” contending 
for the mastery of the situation. 
Now and then you will find a beautiful young 
orchard laden with its wealth of fruits—the 
Golden Pippin and blushing Ben Davis, the 
luscious Crawford’s Early and Oldmixon Free 
peaches, the Bartlett and Louise Bonne of Jer¬ 
sey pears, the Green Gage and Jefferson plums, 
the Black Tartarian and American Amber 
cherries, and a host of others adapted to our 
climate and soil. Enter the garden, here we 
find the Wilson, Triomphe de Garni, Downer, 
Charles Downing, Green Prolific, and French 
strawberries, with perhaps a few choice plants 
of newer kinds on trial, including “ President 
Wilder,” in a clean, neat propagating bed. The 
fence rows are not filled with bushes, but these 
are planted in a square by themselves. The 
Doolittle, Thornless, Clarke, Seneca, Philadel¬ 
phia, and Orange raspberries arc neatly 
trimmed and tied to stakes. 
We inquire for the owner, and find almost in¬ 
variably that he is some “ irrepressible Yankee,” 
who, with an eye to business and profit, came 
amongst us during the unhappy war, and 
found that our climate and soil were the home 
of fruits. Let more of them come: we'need 
their aid in rendering our lands fruitful. 
But I have somewhat digressed, yet not with¬ 
out reason or aim. We find by our partial ex¬ 
perience, that the dwarf fruits, especially the 
pear, do exceedingly well here. I know one 
orchard of three hundred trees, now ten years 
from the nursery, which have yielded splendid 
crops for six years, having failed only partially 
one year, and that from an unprecedented 
drouth, which continued from June first to the 
last of August. This orchard has leu varieties, 
amongst the best and most prolific of which are 
Bartlett, Winter Nelis, Louise Bonne of Jersey, 
Yicar of Winkfield, Duchesse d’Angouleme, 
Bloodgood, and Seckel. Would not other dwarf 
fruits do as well ? 
The small fruits of all kinds, strawberries, 
raspberries, currants, cherries, gooseberries, 
blackberries, grapes, etc., flourish here with sur¬ 
passing productiveness, and many of our best 
varieties of strawberries have had their origin 
in Kentucky soil. I refer to the Downer, 
Charles Downing, and Kentucky, the latter 
kind having, onrny grounds this spring, produced 
a choice crop of superior fruit, after all other 
varieties had yielded the bulk of their crops. 
- — i i » --- 
The White and Crimson Mignonettes. 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
Mr. W. C. Strong, of Brighton, Mass., talce3 
me to task in last month’s Agriculturist for de¬ 
nouncing these Mignonettes as frauds, and 
thinks I could not possibly have had the vari¬ 
eties genuine, or I would not have done so. 
That I had the true varieties there is no doubt, 
and that I did see a different.e from the old 
variety I also acknowledged in my article in 
December, and a distinction also that I am will¬ 
ing to accept as a variety, and perhaps an im¬ 
provement; but what I complained of as a 
fraud was the names “Crimson” and “White,” 
given “ the same with intent to deceive." 
Mignonette is one of the best known of all 
cultivated annuals, and valued for its fragrance 
rather than the color of its flowers, but when it 
was ' heralded by hundreds of catalogues 
throughout the land that we had been blessed 
with a “ Crimson ” and a “ White,” every one 
interested in the old flower wished to possess 
the new. Surely Mr. Strong knows that not 
one in a dozen of those who purchased would 
be satisfied that they got the value of their 
money by the difference, and certainly none had 
credulity enough to believe that they had got 
either crimson or white. Mr. Strong says pos¬ 
sibly the name White was an unfortunate one. 
It is not a “ name,” it is a “ description,” and 
it is worse than unfortunate—it is false. 
We know that there are dozens of itinerant 
scoundrels peddling “blue” and “black” roses 
in the rural districts every spring and fall, and 
almost every spring one or more has the impu¬ 
dence to pitch his camp right in the business 
part of New York City, and uublushingly as¬ 
sure his gullible patrons that he has made them 
the possessors of these floral wonders. 
. Now, I claim that it is just as much a fraud to 
call Parsons’s new Mignonette “ White,” as it 
would be for Mr. Strong or me to call the famous 
Tea-rose Bon Silene “ blue,” and that we would 
no more deservedly bring down censure on our 
heads by issuing the one so described than in 
issuing the other. 
I am rather sensitive and suspicious, perhaps, 
in this matter of startling novelties in color, 
having once palmed off on my customers a cer¬ 
tain yellow Verbena, which I had received in 
good faith—and with entire faith—from a Lon¬ 
don house. It was described as the great plant 
of the season, a bright, yellow-colored Verbena, 
which they named “Welcome.” After many 
failures, I succeeded in getting a dozen plants 
alive, which we propagated rapidly, and sold 
just as rapidly, but without taking the precau¬ 
tion to prove it. One April morning developed 
the flower of the new Verbena, but to me the 
sight was far from “ welcome,” for instead of 
