Success with Small Fruits

Having treated of the planting of strawberries, their cultivation, and kindred topics, in that great northern belt, of which a line drawn through New York city may be regarded a...

To attempt to describe all the strawberries that have been named would be a task almost as interminable as useless. This whole question of varieties presents a different phase e...

Nature is very impartial. It is evidently her intention that we shall enjoy all the fruits for which we are willing to pay her price, in work, care, or skill, but she seems equa...

It is often said that there is no teaching like experience, and in view of this sound principle I am led to quote from a few of the letters that I have received. These statement...

Excessive moisture will often prevent the immediate cultivation of our ideal strawberry land. Its absence is fatal, its excess equally so. Let me suggest some of the evil effect...

There are three well-known systems of cultivation, each of which has its advantages and disadvantages. The first is termed the "matted bed system." Under this plan the ground be...

I have in my library an admirable little treatise written by the late R. G. Pardee, and printed twenty-five years ago. While the greater part of what he says, relating to the re...

The conscientious Diedrich Knickerbocker, that venerated historian from whom all good citizens of New York obtain the first impressions of their ancestry, felt that he had no ri...

This chapter introduces us to great diversities of opinion, and to still greater differences in experience; and I fear that I shall leave the subject as indefinite as I find it....

I have given the greater part of this volume to the subject of strawberries, not only because it is the most popular fruit, but also for the reason that the principles of thorou...

Having from choice or necessity decided on the ground on which our future strawberries are to grow, the next step is to prepare the soil. The first and most natural question wil...

I shall speak of those only that are now in general cultivation, naming a few, also, whose popularity in the past has been so great as to entitle them to mention.

In preparing and enriching the soil, and especially in subsequent cultivation, concentrated fertilizers are very useful and often essential. In dealing with this subject, howeve...

Our ramble among the small fruits is over. To such readers as have not grown weary and left my company long since, I will say but few words in parting.

In the proceedings of the New Jersey State Horticultural Society, I find the following interesting paper from the pen of Mr. C. W. Idell, a commission merchant, whose intelligen...

Small fruits, to people who live in the country, are like heaven--objects of universal desire and very general neglect. Indeed, in a land so peculiarly adapted to their cultivat...

A farm without a fruit garden may justly be regarded as proof of a low state of civilization in the farmer. No country home should be without such simple means of health and hap...

The small-fruit branch of the rose family is assuredly entitled to respect when it is remembered that the blackberry is the blackest sheep in it. Unlike the raspberry, the drupe...

Pruning naturally leads to the subject of propagation, for much of that which is cut away, so far from being useless, is often of great value to the nurseryman; and there are fe...

They wore "curns" in our early boyhood, and "curns" they are still in the rural vernacular of many regions. In old English they were "corrans," because the people associated the...

We now come to a class that are destined, I think, to be the raspberries of the future, or, at least, a type of them. I refer to the seedlings of the three original species that...

This is a topic on which a book might be written. The reader will draw a sigh of relief, however, on learning that I shall content myself with giving a few facts and suggestions...

We have now reached a point at which we must consider land which in its essential character is unfavorable to strawberries, and yet which may be the best to be had. The difficul...

Suggestive experiences and the methods of successful men are usually far more helpful than a system of rules. Nevertheless, I have thought that some concise maxims and formulas...

Usually, there is no pruning either in the field or the garden beyond the cutting out of the old canes and the shortening in of the new growth. There is a difference of opinion...

A book should be judged somewhat in view of what it attempts. One of the chief objects of this little volume is to lure men and women back to their original calling, that of gar...

In the ages that were somewhat shadowed, to say the least, when Nature indulged her own wild moods in man and the world he trampled on rather than cultivated, there was a class...

I have treated the currant very fully, not only because it is the more popular fruit in this country, but also because the greater part of my suggestions under that heading appl...

We now turn to the other great American species--_Rubus Occidentalis_--the well-known black-cap, or thimble berry, that is found along almost every roadside and fence in the lan...

Nature has endowed the strawberry-plant with the power of taking root and growing readily at almost any season when young plants can be obtained. My best success, however, has b...

Trained gardeners need no instruction from me on this topic. There may be those, however, who have never given the subject attention, and who would be glad to learn some of the...

Having prepared and enriched our ground, we are ready for the plants. They can often be obtained from a good neighbor whose beds we have watched across the fence, and whose vari...

There are certain strong, coarse-feeding vegetables, like corn and potatoes, that can be grown on the half-subdued and comparatively poor soil of the field; but no gardener woul...

We may secure good plants of the best varieties, but if we do not set them out properly the chances are against our success, unless the weather is very favorable. So much depend...

I have already written so fully of the leading and profitable varieties of raspberries, blackberries, currants, and gooseberries, that little more remains to be said; since, for...

The choice that Tobias Hobson imposed on his patrons when he compelled them to take "the horse nearest to the stable-door" or none at all, is one that, in principle, we often ha...