Part 13

For some reason, or probably without any reason, the quince has been a neglected fruit with us. True, in some parts of the province, indeed in a very large part, the climate is too severe for the successful cultivation of this tree, but there is yet a very considerable portion where it would flourish and bear fruit, and handsomely repay the cultivator. Our fruit growers are awake to the value of the apple, and many orchards have been planted which are yielding a very handsome return to their owners, and the same may be said of most of our fruits, but the quince seems to have been quite overlooked. Perhaps one reason why attention has not been turned to this fruit is the fact that those who have a few trees never give them any care, but leave them to grow as best they may, in some out of the way corner; and because under such circumstances they yield but little fruit, and that not of the best, it is taken for granted that it does not pay to grow them. Now, on the contrary, we believe that an orchard of quince trees, properly cultivated, will prove to be fully as profitable as an apple orchard of the same size, and that at the present time the demand for good quinces is in excess of the supply.

The quince thrives best on a strong clay loam, that is well drained, has been deeply plowed and is in a good state of cultivation. In preparing the soil for a plantation of quinces, it is very desirable that the sub-soil should be thoroughly broken up and loosened by the sub-soil plow, and the surface well pulverized. In this the trees may be planted ten feet apart each way, which will give four hundred and thirty trees to the acre. It surely is not necessary to tell the readers of the CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST that the planting should be done with care, and after it is completed, each tree should be well mulched with a good thick covering of coarse, strawy manure. The space between the rows may be planted with potatoes, which will perhaps insure the tillage of the ground. In the autumn, fork in the manure that was placed around the trees as a mulch, and replace it with a fresh supply, this will not only protect the roots from severe frosts, but will fill the soil with food for the tree by the time that it starts into growth again. In the spring, plow the ground between the rows, not running so near to the quince trees as to injure the roots, stir the soil lightly around the trees; we say lightly, for the quince roots are comparatively small and fibrous, and might be seriously broken and injured by a too energetic use of the digging fork; and then sow the whole broadcast with salt, at the rate of ten bushels to the acre, which will be sufficient to half conceal the ground under each tree. Do not neglect to apply the salt, it is essential to your fullest success. Not only will the quince tree bear salt, but the tree will be more healthy, and yield more and better fruit than if it be withheld; indeed if any of our readers have quince trees that do not yield fruit, they will bring them at once into bearing if they will give them a dressing of salt and manure.

This treatment should be kept up from year to year, a top-dressing around each tree in the autumn, manure enough on the ground between the rows in spring to make it yield a good crop of potatoes or of some other root, and salt around the quince trees at least, and as they increase in size the salt should be extended over the whole, and it will be found to be beneficial to the root crops as well. When the quince trees have grown to such size that it is no longer profitable to grow roots among them, let not that prevent the quince orchard from receiving an abundant supply of manure and good tillage. A plantation treated in this way will begin to bear in three years, and will continue to yield profitable crops for ten times that length of time.

A word about the pruning. The trees do not require much pruning, but they should have the little they do need regularly every spring. They should not be allowed to grow in bush style, with shoots coming up from the ground, but should be trained as dwarf trees, with a clean stem or trunk. The head will need to be thinned out just sufficiently to give the foliage a good exposure to the sun and air, yet not so much as to leave the branches unshaded by the leaves. The twiggy shoots that have borne fruit the previous summer should be shortened back, so that new fruit-spurs may be produced from them, and thus the fruit be distributed uniformly over the whole tree.

We hope some one of our readers may be induced to undertake the cultivation of an acre of quince trees, and that he will communicate the results, keeping an account of all expenditure for trees, use of ground, fertilizers, cultivation, picking, and marketing the fruit, and of the amount received from sales, so that our readers may see his balance sheet.

As to varieties, we advise that only one be planted, and that the Orange Quince, sometimes called the Apple Quince. It is, when well grown, a large fruit, roundish or apple shaped, with a very short neck, of a beautiful golden yellow color when ripe, and of excellent flavor. If disposed to experiment with any other sort, try a dozen trees of Rea’s Mammoth Quince; it is usually larger than the Orange, but as far as we have tested it, not as productive.

Quinces are easily bruised, and the bruises sadly disfigure the fruit, they should therefore be gathered and handled with care, securely put up in small packages so that they cannot shake about in them, and the packages be easily handled. They are in good demand in all our large cities for culinary purposes, and could they be obtained in sufficient quantities would be much sought after by the large manufacturers of jellies from apples, for flavoring their products.

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RASPBERRY NOTES.

BY ALLEN MOYER, JORDAN STATION.

Mammoth Cluster—for hardiness, size, and productiveness, deserves to be placed at the head of all the black raspberries.

Doolittle—this black variety I fruited for the first time this season, and judging from present prospects think it will be next to Mammoth Cluster, perhaps ahead of it in productiveness; it is some earlier.

Davison’s Thornless—A very good variety, not quite equal to Mammoth Cluster and Doolittle as a cropper, but sufficiently productive to give good satisfaction. If I were to consult my pickers as to which they thought the best variety, they, of course, would say the Thornless. This is also a black variety, ripening earlier than the Mammoth Cluster.

Lunn’s Everbearing—is one of those useless black sorts that I shall plant all I have of it so deep under the ground that they will never come up again.

Philadelphia—comes first among the red varieties for hardiness, productiveness, and profit, where quality is no great object. It is an enormous bearer.

Clarke—for flavor, size and productiveness this is the berry. I would hold on to this to the last.

Highland Hardy—this is the earliest of all raspberries, very hardy and productive, berries not as large as other varieties, quality good.

Read’s Prolific—the largest berry on my grounds. I have not tested it enough to say much about its hardiness and productiveness, although I have seen this variety heavily laden with fruit on the originator’s grounds.

Naomi—is something like the Clarke, no better in my estimation.

Amazon—flavor extra, plants not as hardy as the Clarke, and the berries are more apt to crumble.

Brandywine—this is the latest and best shipping berry, but is not one of my favorites.

Ganargua—fruited with me for the first time this season, it seems to be very productive, the berries were large, color between red and black, and quite firm. If the color and flavor should suit purchasers, it will no doubt be a profitable berry.

Catawissa—an odd berry and plant; this is about all I can say of it.

Golden Thornless—this was the first season of my fruiting it, and I suppose that I will not be much better off by fruiting it again, although it is exceedingly productive. If the flavor and color will suit the market, it may give good satisfaction. I am sure it will ship or dry well.

Were I to grow only four varieties, I would take the Mammoth Cluster and Doolittle for blacks, and the Philadelphia and Clarke for reds.

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CRESCENT SEEDLING AND FOREST ROSE STRAWBERRIES.

In the _American Agriculturist_ for August, E. P. Roe, of Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, reports progress on these two new strawberries. He states that the Crescent Seedling originated with William Parmelee, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1870. Its two marked features as he has seen it in several localities, are a tendency to take entire possession of the ground, crowding out the weeds, and of literally covering the ground it grows on with fruit. Its lack of firmness, he thinks, will prove its chief fault. He saw it growing vigorously, and fruiting enormously on light soils, and in some instances other and leading varieties standing near it had proved utter failures. It has also done remarkably well on damp and heavy soil in his own grounds. In color it is a bright scarlet, and looks well in the basket. Like the Wilson, it is red before it is ripe, and in this immature state the flavor is poor, but greatly improves as the berry ripens. It has the appearance of being a pistillate, though it is claimed that it will bear alone. He noticed, however, that in a field of four acres some Wilson’s were planted at intervals, and advises that some of the perfect flowered varieties be set out near by. He finds it to ripen this season about with the Wilson.

The Forest Rose, he says, is a chance seedling, discovered by J. A. Fetters, of Lancaster, Ohio, in his vineyard, about seven years ago, and that it surpasses the other in flavor, beauty, and particularly in its shipping qualities, but that thus far it has not proved with him to be anything like so productive. In sending some thirty-six varieties to the Queen’s County Fair he found that it suffered the least from transportation of them all. He is growing it on three kinds of soil; the stiffest kind of clay, a light, moist soil, and a gravelly knoll, and it is doing well in each. Thus far with him the foliage has never rusted or burned. He expresses his hopes in regard to it, by saying that he planted it more largely than any other kind last spring. He quotes Dr. J. A. Warder, of Ohio, as saying of it, “here we have elegance of form, brilliancy in color, great size, and firmness to bear transportation, combined with table qualities of a higher order than in Wilson’s Albany, which it surpasses even in field culture.”

Mr. Roe concludes with the following judicious remark, “I may seem an old fogy when I say that while I shall give these plausible strangers plenty of room in which to prove their merits, I shall still stand by my old and tried friends in the strawberry field.”

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EXPERIMENTS IN HYBRIDIZATION.

It is well known to cultivators of the Camellia that the venerable President of the American Pomological Society, the Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, achieved great success in the raising of new varieties, yielding double flowers, from seed hybridized by himself, and that many of the flowers raised by him were exquisite models of perfection of form. This marked success he attributes largely to three things, first, that in the selection of the seed-bearing parent he used hybrids, believing that every change effected by cross-fertilization is a remove from the normal form, and therefore more easily susceptible of continued mutations; second, that in the selection of the flower to be impregnated he had special reference to the strength and prominence of the style, the form of the corolla, and the perfection of its petals; and third, that he used only pollen taken from an anther which was supported by a petaloid stamen, that is, a stamen which had taken on the form, more or less, of a petal. He regarded this petaloid form of the stamen as the incipient stage towards a full petalous form, and that when he fertilized such flowers with this petaloid pollen, he was more likely to secure double seedlings, with petals more or less multiplied, and oftentimes perfectly double, than when the pollen was taken from anthers borne upon perfect stamens. And the larger and better developed the petaloid stamen was, that is, the more nearly the stamen had taken on the form of a petal, the better the chance for obtaining finely formed double flowers. His experiments led him to the conclusion that single or semi-double flowers with perfect corollas are more certain to produce flowers of a regular symmetrical formation, than those whose corollas have been irregular, with considerable variation in the size and form of the different petals; and likewise that when the style was feeble, distorted, or imperfectly developed, the results were likely to be very unsatisfactory.

As some of our readers are making experiments in the production of double flowers, we hope they will give us the results of their labors for publication.

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HORTICULTURAL ECCENTRICITIES.

BY THOMAS HOOD.

Hood looks over the gate and compliments Mrs. Gardiner, a widow, who has but one idea, and that is her garden, about which she had the habit of talking in a singularly figurative style, upon the beauty of her carnations.

‘Yes, I have a stronger blow than any one in the place, and as to sweetness, nobody can come nigh me.’

Accepting the polite invitation I stepped in through the little wicket, and in another moment was rapturously sniffing at her stocks, and the flower with the sanguinary name. From the walls I turned off to a rose-bush, remarking that there was a very fine show of buds.

‘Yes, but I want sun to make me bust. You should have seen me last June, Sir, when I was in my full bloom. None of your wishy-washy pale sorts, (this was a fling at the white roses at the next door,) none of your Provincials, or pale pinks. There’s no maiden blushes about me; I’m the regular old red cabbage.’

And she was right, for after all that hearty, glowing, fragrant rose is the best of the species; the queen of flowers, with a ruddy _em-bon-point_, reminding one of the goddesses of Reubens.

‘And there’s my American Creeper. Miss Sharp pretends to creep, but Lor’ bless ye, afore she ever gets up to her first-floor window I shall be running all over the roof of the willa. You see I’m over the portico already.’

While this conversation was going on, a deaf bachelor neighbor, who has a garden of his own, passes by. Mrs. Gardiner hails him in a loud voice, and addresses him in her customary style.

‘Well, and how are _you_, Mr. Burrel, after them east winds?’

‘Very bad, very bad indeed,’ replied Mr. Burrel, thinking only of his rheumatics.

‘And so am I,’ said Mrs. Gardiner, remembering nothing but her blight; ‘I’m thinking of trying tobacco-water and a squiringe.’

‘Is that good for it?’ asked Mr. B., with a tone of doubt and surprise.

‘So they say; but you must mix it strong, and squirt it as hard as ever you can over your affected parts.’

‘What! my lower limbs?’

‘Yes, and your upper ones too. Wherever you are maggoty.’

‘Oh,’ grunted the old gentleman, ‘you mean vermin.’

‘As for me,’ bawled out Mrs. Gardiner, ‘I’m swarming. And Miss Sharp is wus than I am.’

‘The more’s the pity,’ said the old gentleman, ‘we shall have no apples and pears.’

‘No, not to signify. How’s your peaches?’

‘Why, they set kindly enough ma’am, but they all dropped off in the last frosty nights.’

‘Ah, it ain’t the frost,’ roared Mrs. G., ‘you have got down to the gravel; I know you have, you look so rusty and scrubby.’

‘I wish you good morning, ma’am,’ said the little old bachelor, turning very red in the face, and making rather a precipitate retreat; as who wouldn’t, thus attacked at once in his person and his peach trees?

‘To be sure, he was dreadful unproductive,’ the widow said, ‘but a good sort of body, and ten times pleasanter than the next door neighbor at number ten, who would keep coming over her wall, till she cut off his pumpkin.’

She now led me round the house to ‘her back,’ where she showed me her grass-plot, wishing she was greener, and asking if she ought not to have a roll. She next led me off to her vegetables, halting at last at her peas, some few rows of Blue Prussians, which she had probably obtained from Waterloo, they were so long in coming up.

‘Back’ard, ain’t I?’

‘Yes, rather.’

‘Wery, but Miss Sharp is back’arder than me; she’s hardly out of the ground yet, and please God, in another fortnight I shall want sticking.’

There was something so irresistibly comic in the last equivoque, that I was forced to slur over a laugh as a sneeze, and then continued to ask her if she had no assistance in her labors.

‘What, a gardener? never! I did once have a daily jobber, and he jobbed away all my dahlias; I declare I could have cried. But’s very hard to think you’re a valuable bulb, and when summer comes you’re nothing but a stick and label.’

‘Very provoking, indeed.’

‘Talk of transplanting; they do nothing else but transplant you from one house to another, till you don’t know where you are. There was I, thinking I was safe and sound in my own bed, and all the while I was in Mr. Jones’s. It is scandalous.’

=VOL. I.]= =SEPTEMBER, 1878.= =[NO. 9.=

THE CHERRY CURRANT.

This currant has been widely disseminated, and is doubtless to be found in every collection of currants, not only in this Province, but in the sister Provinces, and throughout the United States. Its large size and deep, rich color combine to give it a very attractive and showy appearance, so that it is a beautiful ornament upon the table, looking exceedingly nice and tempting; and in the market attracts the attention of purchasers, commanding a ready sale, and sometimes a higher price than the smaller sorts. Yet in point of quality it is not equal to the well known old Red Dutch, nor to the Victoria, being admittedly only second rate; and is another instance of a fact well known to dealers in fruit, that size and beauty of appearance are of more importance than flavor.

In the writer’s experience with this variety, grown upon a moist sandy loam, there has been a lack of that productiveness which has generally been accorded to it. Those who have grown it on a stronger and heavier soil have not seemed to find so much deficiency in this respect. At times, too, it has seemed as though it suffered from the severity of our climate, yet we have met with no complaints from others of this nature, hence we are disposed to the belief that it will be found to thrive best and be most productive on a strong clay soil. Those who find it to thrive well and produce abundantly may plant it liberally for market purposes.

The history of this handsome currant is not without interest. Mons. Adrienne Seneclause, a distinguished horticulturist of Bourgargental, Loire, France, received it from Italy among a lot of other currants, who noticed the extraordinary size of the fruit, and gave it in consequence the name it yet bears. In the year 1843 it was fruited in the nursery of the Museum of Natural History, and figured from these samples in the _Annales de Flore et de Pomone_ for February, 1844. Doctor Wm. W. Valk, of Flushing, Long Island, State of New York, introduced it to the notice of American fruit growers in 1846, having imported some of the plants in the spring of that year.

Some years later a currant was introduced and disseminated under the name of Versailles or La Versailles, for which it was claimed that it was as large as the Cherry, longer in the bunch, and not so acid. Some pains was taken to obtain this variety on different occasions, and from the most reliable sources, so that there might be no mistake as to the correctness of the name, but after many years of trial we are unable to perceive any decided variation either in the quality of the fruit, the length of the bunch, or the habit of the plant, from the Cherry Currant.

A great many names have been given to this currant besides that of Versailles, and designing and dishonest men have taken the opportunity to use them to increase their sales and prices. If any of our readers should have offered to them plants of Red Imperial, La Caucase, Irish Grape, Macrocarpa, or Napoleon Red, they may rest assured that they are only the Cherry Currant under a new name.

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THE JAPANESE IRIS. (_Iris Kæmpferi._)

This beautiful Iris is now attracting very considerable attention. The editor of the _American Agriculturist_ says that he saw a bed of these plants in the garden of James Hogg, of New York City, ten years ago, and that after they had stood there long enough to show that they were perfectly hardy, he gave an account of them in the October number for 1870, with an engraving, which though considerably reduced in size, was sufficient to show their great beauty, and how unlike they were to any heretofore known forms of cultivated Iris. He says they come into flower after the ordinary varieties have done blooming; and the flowers are spread out in a flat plate, so that they are best seen when looked down upon; that the flowers are from four to six inches in diameter, and present a great variety in form, color, and marking; there are pure whites, pure blues, and some of the richest imaginable royal purple. Also that in the markings there is the greatest imaginable variety; that nothing can be richer than some of the intense purples and blues, with lines of golden yellow; or more delicate than the whites, with net-work of blue and purple.

We noticed in the same number, _American Agriculturist_ for August, a description of twenty of the finest varieties which Mr. Hogg has selected and named, and learn from it that some are double, some semi-double, and others we infer are single; one is blue, mottled and spotted with white, with a fine yellow eye; another is dark pink, pencilled with white; another white, pencilled with purplish stripes, and purple centre, and so on in great variety. Our enterprising florists will doubtless procure them, and soon advertize them, so that our readers will be able to give them a trial.

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THE GOOSEBERRY.

Are we entering upon a new era of the gooseberry? There seems to be indications that a race is springing up on this continent, proof to that enemy the mildew, and that need not be ashamed even in the presence of the great gooseberries of the father land. The first step in this direction was taken by the Houghton, which originated with Abel Houghton, of Lynn, in the State of Massachusetts. Then came the Downing, a seedling of the Houghton, larger and better than its parent. Some time after, Smith’s Improved, another seedling of the Houghton, was sent out, also an improvement on the parent, but no better than the Downing.

At the last meeting of the Fruit Growers’ Association of Ontario, some fine looking gooseberries were exhibited by Chas. Scott, of Orangeville, larger than Downing or Smith’s Improved. The history of this variety is thus given by Mr. Scott: “A friend of mine received some gooseberry seed from England, and from it grew some plants from which I picked a berry, and from the seed of it raised about eight or nine plants, but destroyed all except the one from which these were gathered, as they did not seem to have any merit. It has never mildewed with me as yet, though I have grown it for about ten years. It is the only large gooseberry that I can grow free from mildew. I have Roaring Lion, Crownbob, Whitesmith, and others, but as yet have never got a berry from them, as they all mildew and rot off the bushes; and not only the berries but the new shoots are all mildewed this year. This variety is a vigorous, open grower, quite hardy and productive; soil, a sandy loam.”