1874.] 
223 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
The point of Col. Wilkins’s article is that to 
get peaches true to their kind they should be 
budded on stocks obtained from healthy trees 
of the same variety. To restrict the budding 
to the same variety seems to us an unnecessary 
refinement, but we would bud clingstones on 
clingstone and freestones on free stocks, and 
late sorts we would not bud upon stocks from 
early varieties, nor vice versa. To the amateur 
cultivator this matter presents but little im¬ 
portance.' He sets trees, and is only too glad 
if he gets any fruit at all; but to the peach- 
grower who numbers his trees of each variety 
by the thousand, the ripening of a sort only 
three days out of its proper season is a great 
inconvenience and loss. Another point this 
gentleman insists upon is that the buds for in¬ 
serting upon the stocks should be from select 
bearing trees. It is the custom in nurseries to 
take buds from trees that were budded the year 
before, and the growth of thes# buds will be 
taken to furnish buds the next year; and so on, 
always budding from young stock that has 
never fruited. We are not prepared to give an 
opinion upon this point, but it is a legitimate 
subject of inquiry if constantly budding year 
after year, from trees that have produced wood 
and leaves only, may not ultimately have an 
effect upon the bearing qualities of the trees. 
We regret that we are unable to give Colonel 
Wilkins’s article entire, but we believe we have 
presented the main points of it. It is a good 
sign for our horticultural progress that one 
so largely engaged in fruit-culture gives his 
personal experience for the benefit of others. 
A Trap for Cut-Worms. 
There is no trustworthy remedy against cut¬ 
worms except actual catching and killing them. 
Any application to the soil sufficiently strong 
to injure or discommode them would certainly 
destroy the crop, and all the recommendations 
to use salt, carbolic acid, and other similar 
substances may be set aside as use¬ 
less in practice. We have trapped 
them in various ways, beneath chips, 
stones, and in holes punched in the 
ground with a smooth round stick, 
such as an old broom handle. But 
unfortunately in these cases they 
are caught only after they have 
spent the night in destroying the 
young cabbages or corn. Finally we 
hit upon the expedient of surround¬ 
ing the hill or plant with a ring of 
holes close together, and in this 
way caught a great many of the 
pests every night. Making so 
many holes with a single stick is a slow 
process, but with the contrivance shown 
in the annexed engraving, the whole ring of 
holes is made at one stroke. An old shovel 
handle is split for about a foot with a fine saw. 
The split portion is soaked in boiling water to 
soften it and the ends are inserted into holes 
made in a hoop or ring of wood two inches 
wide, one inch thick, and eight inches in diam¬ 
eter. In the bottom of the ring there are in¬ 
serted a number of pieces of an old broom- 
handle projecting two inches and placed not 
more than a quarter of an inch apart. When 
this is pressed into the earth around a hill of 
corn or a cabbage plant, it leaves a circle of 
smooth round holes two inches deep with com¬ 
pact sides and bottoms. The cut-worms fall 
into these holes in their nightly rambles and 
may be found and destroyed in the morning. 
My Garden Mistakes and Successes 
in 1873. 
BY COL. G. S. INNIS, COLUMBUS, O. 
[The following article was intended for 
April, but failed to reach us in time. It was 
crowded out last month, and though it is late 
for some of its suggestions, we give it, as the 
experience of so skilled a cultivator as Colonel 
Innis, if put on record, is sure to be of use to 
some one.—E d.] 
Tomatoes. —We had a very fine lot of plants, 
short, stalky, and branching. We made the 
mistake, however, of putting them on some 
very rich land—land that would have produced 
a fine crop of onions or cabbages, but was too 
highly manured for tomatoes. This I had 
learned by experience a time or two before, 
but somehow we have to learn such things 
over again every five or ten years. We will 
not repeat this folly the coming season, but 
will select good com or wheat land, rather in¬ 
clined to clay than sand or loam, for our 
tomato crop. This moderately rich soil will 
produce more fruit and less vine, will ripen the 
fruit more evenly and earlier, and the product 
will be smooth and of the very best flavor. 
Cabbages.— With our early cabbages we 
made a success last year. This was done by 
sowing the seed quite early in a hot-bed; then 
transplanting into other beds early in March, 
putting the plants about four inches apart each 
way. This made us large, fine, and well-rooted 
plants by the middle of April, when we re¬ 
moved them to the field and then set them 30 
inches apart each way in very highly manured 
land, and had very large solid heads, and early 
too. Before other folks got in our way we had 
sold most of them at good prices. We never 
made much by planting inferior plants of any 
kind, or by using poor seed, to save the price 
or labor of obtaining good ones. 
Melons. —With Skillman’s fine netted green- 
fleshed melon we made a fine success. We 
planted them on the richest land we had. A 
sandy loam, subsoil of yellow clay, underlaid 
with sand and gravel. Plant about May 10th, 
or as soon as the ground gets warm enough for 
corn or beans, in rows seven feet apart both 
ways. The greatest enemy of all improved 
varieties of vines is the yellow striped bug. 
For this mix three table-spoonfuls of good 
Paris green in a three-gallon can of water and 
sprinkle the plant. This is certain death to all 
insect life. By the way, permit me to say right 
here that last fall a green-looking worm ate up 
most of the late cabbage in Central Ohio. It 
was a rare thing that a patch escaped. Visiting 
a friend, 1 noticed they had the finest kind of 
cabbage heads. Upon being asked how it came 
that they had such nice cabbages, while other 
folk’s were all destroyed by the worms, the 
lady replied that she noticed the worms were 
eating theirs, and took common table salt and 
sprinkled them quite freely; that it seemed to 
rust or burn the plants a little at first, but the 
worms quit at once, the cabbages soon recov¬ 
ered, and made the best crop they had had for 
ten years. I determined to learn a little from 
this good housewife. All garden vegetables 
want to be worked while young, and must be 
kept entirely clean of weeds or other vegetable 
growth to insure success. Two crops can not 
be produced on the same ground at the same 
time. A crop of weeds and useful plants can 
not be raised together under any circumstances. 
Potatoes. —With the Early Rose, planted 
very early, we made a success, notwithstanding 
the Colorado bugs. This variety seems to do 
best on light, rich soils, heavy wet clays being 
unsuited to it. The Early Rose, in common 
with all the early varieties, should be planted 
as soon in spring as the ground can be worked 
or made in good order. When this is done 
they make a crop before the extreme hot and 
dry weather sets in, about July or August. 
Peerless .—This variety yields enormously, 
and our greatest mistake of last year was in not 
planting more of them. In 1872 the Peerless 
were nearly worthless for table use, but last 
year they were quite good. The reason of this 
difference seems to me is that the Peerless 
being a medium early variety, and planted 
early, ripened in 1872 in a very dry and very 
hot spell of weather, the latter part of July and 
first of August, the thermometer ranging in the 
nineties most of the time day and night. This 
made the potato deficient in starch, and conse¬ 
quently not good. In 1873 the weather was 
rainy and very much cooler when they were 
ripening, and made them of good quality. 
Were it not for the bugs, I would suggest 
planting late, say about June 20th, so they 
would ripen during the cool weather in 
September. 
Thm'burn's Late Rose. —This, with us, was a 
grand success, though I doubt it being a dis¬ 
tinct variety, probably a selection from the 
Early Rose. Potatoes can be changed very 
considerably by judicious selections. 
Campbell?s Late Rose .—This variety with us 
was not a success. It grew vigorously for a 
time, and promised well, but mildewed badly 
in two or three days’ time, and made a poor 
crop on very good land. 
The Jersey Peachblow was generally a failure 
in Central Ohio the past season. 
Can One be Both Market Gardener and 
Florist ? 
BY PETER HENDERSON. 
A correspondent from Columbus, Ohio, asks 
me if the prosecution of the business of mar¬ 
ket gardening can be profitably combined with 
that of the florist, and as there are doubtless 
many readers situated in places where the pro¬ 
ducts of both are wanted I will occupy a short 
space in reply. On this subject I feel com¬ 
petent to advise, having for many years been 
extensively engaged in both pursuits at the 
same time, and have made them both fairly 
profitable, more so, I believe, than if the two 
had been separate. This was particularly so 
in the beginning. Beginning with some ten 
acres of market garden and three small green¬ 
houses, I employed an average of eight men 
throughout the year. From April to December 
our labor was almost exclusively in the market 
garden, or what little was necessary for the 
flowers planted outside, these then being of but 
secondary importance. Our main energies 
were devoted to the market garden. On the 
approach of winter, instead of discharging a 
portion of our hands, as our neighbors who 
were market gardeners only did, the work tlieu 
necessary in our greenhouses profitably em¬ 
ployed the help no longer required in the 
vegetable department, thus enabling us to re¬ 
tain a full corps of trained men ready for the 
busy work in spring, instead of having the an¬ 
noyance of breaking in unknown and inexpe- 
