Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient things, it is homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (I am talking to the ladies now.) There...

But there is a limit put to this treatment by the amount of clay contained in the subsoil. It has been experimentally ascertained in England, that when the soil contains as high...

“The two last years’ corn has been raised in the following manner, on the Mohawk Flats near this city. If in grass, the land is plowed and well harrowed, lengthwise of the furro...

Long live the aspen and the birch! Only the young have just grounds for prejudice; but even boys soon outgrow the birch, and watch its sinewy motion without a thought of moving...

We say these things, not to discourage farming, but to dissuade the annual host from going out to make their fortunes on a farm, who, in five years, will come back stripped bare...

Plant the seeds as soon as the frost is finally out of the ground. Let there be pales, or strings, or trellis, arranged for them to climb upon, and you will have all summer long...

While one is fairly engaged in a campaign of experiments, we heartily hope that war will be carried to the very territory of ignorance, and we will propound several other import...

It is the 2d of July, and my grass is all cut, and the last load is rolling into the barn while I write. How sweet it smells! How jolly the children are that have been mounted o...

As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished! Sq...

SUGAR GINGER-BREAD.—To three-quarters of a pound of butter and not quite a pint of finely rolled brown sugar, add a great spoonful of ginger, and a little cinnamon and nutmeg; b...

The least trouble, not the best stock, seems to be the question with most. The discouragement of debt, the low prices of all farm products, the habits of arrant carelessness whi...

3. INSTEAD OF PRUNING AT THIS EARLY PERIOD, LET TREES BE THOROUGHLY SCRAPED AND SCOURED.—A three-sided scraper, such as butchers use to clean their blocks with, or any convenien...

1. Bauman’s May or Bigarreau de Mai. 2. Black Eagle. 3. Knight’s Early Black. 4. May Duke. 5. Elton. 6. Bigarreau, or Spanish Yellow 7. Belle de Choisy. 8. Black Tartarian. 9. D...

_Variety 9._ CHEESY BUTTER.—Cream comes quicker by being heated. If sour cream be heated, it is very apt to separate and deposit a _whey_: if this is strained into the churn wit...

BOILING POTATOES.—Not one housekeeper out of ten knows how to boil potatoes properly. Here is an Irish method, one of the best we know. Clean wash the potatoes and leave the ski...

These are experiments upon very small plants. The vast amount of surface presented by a large tree must give off immense quantities of moisture. The practical bearings of this f...

There is a great fashion, now-a-days, in all papers, to set forth useful recipes for every imaginable purpose. Every newspaper has its weekly budget of recipes. Our magazines ha...

SPADING VEGETABLE BEDS.—Asparagus, pie-plant, strawberries, etc., require enriching every year, and to have the manure forked or spaded in. It is easy to perform this upon straw...

Select a free-working and rich piece of ground—a sandy loam is best, and a stiff clay the worst—let it be spaded deeply, incorporating very thoroughly-rotted manure, _i. e._ man...

That the fire-blight is, to any considerable extent anywhere, but especially at the West, occasioned by an insect, is an idea, we believe, totally unsupported by facts. That som...

Among the most vexatious weeds may be mentioned the purslain (_Portulacca oleracea_), commonly called pussly. It comes in May and lasts through the summer. One plant bears seed...

There is another form of the artificial system in which there _is_ much to censure. When fruit-trees are set in gardens, yards, etc., to be permanent, and _long-lived_, it is fo...

There are many who suppose it necessary to leave the second growth of grass undisturbed, to rot on the ground, in order to preserve the fertility of old meadows in grass where t...

A perfect system of agriculture should have in itself, a balancing power. There should be such a distribution of crops that a farmer may have four or five chances instead of one...

4. But the best method of watering by the root, is that which is technically denominated _mulching_. Cover the surface of the ground beneath the tree or shrub with three or four...

We would advise a more sparing use of it. Let _every other_ tree be a Locust, and the alternate maple or elm, oak, tulip, etc. By this method the Locust will afford immediate sh...

Clean out your orchards. Let no branches lie scattered around. If in crops, let the tillage be thorough and clean. In plowing near the tree be careful not to strike deep enough...

We have practised sowing salt under fruit-trees with decided advantage. If one pound of saltpetre be added to every six pounds of salt, it will be yet better. We sow enough to m...

Many are unwilling to buy a treatise upon the disease of the horse, although there are several which will _prevent_ most of the evils which affect this noble animal. In the West...

I speak to those who have cellars. If not already done, thoroughly purge this subterranean story of your house. Every decayed onion, cabbage stump, potato vine or tuber, turnip,...

“But if a tree be sluggish, and bound, will it not help it?” Whatever excites a more vigorous circulation will be of advantage. Whether any supposed advantage from the knife ari...

21. VANDERVEER PIPPIN.—Tree large, one of the most vigorous, spreading, but not drooping; ripens its wood late, occasionally touched with frost-blight and liable to burst at the...

GARDEN.—Transplant flowers; destroy all weeds; get out cabbages; more lettuce; get ready celery trenches; layer favorite roses, vines, etc.; examine and remove from the peach-tr...

When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks thought...

But we suppose the truth to be this. The sap is prepared in the leaf and enters the distributing vessels of the plant. It is conveyed to every organ; each part, receiving its po...

We look upon this as a very grave matter, not because the strawberry question is of such paramount, although it is of no inconsiderable importance; but it is of importance wheth...

Massachusetts, a few years ago, was not a wheat-growing State. Cautious farmers had given up the crop, because neither soil nor climate was supposed to favor it. How then have b...

When the season is advanced sufficiently to excite the tree to action, the sap will, as usual, ascend by the alburnum, which has probably been but little injured; the leaf puts...

Produced by MFR, Carol Brown, Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The...

The extraordinary cheapness of trees favors their general cultivation. Apple-trees, not under ten feet high, and finely grown, sell at _ten_, and pears at _twenty_ cents; and in...