THERE ARE MANY WAYS OF PRODUCING SPECIES
There were a good many rains in May. The weeds grew and grew, and it was hard to keep them down when it was wet and warm, and the plants were still so small. Prue and Davy had to get down close and pull them out carefully with their fingers, and this left the little green rows so straight and trim, and the earth smelled so nice when the sun came out warm, after a shower, that the children grew happy in the work, and wanted to plant new things almost every day.
Around the house Prue had planted a border of nasturtiums on one side, and a border of marigolds on the other, and they were all coming up and looked as if they would grow into strong, fine plants. Davy had planted some hills of castor beans in the garden, because the Chief Gardener had said that they were good for the three Ms—moles, malaria, and mosquitoes. He was also attending very faithfully to a row of strawberries which the Chief Gardener had told him he might have for his own. The little boy was quite skillful with a hoe, and could take care of his vegetables almost as well as the Chief Gardener, so the Chief Gardener thought.
"You must not hoe your beans when the dew is on them, Davy," he said one morning. "The vines are tender and it causes them to rust or blight, but you may hoe most of the other things, and you may hoe around most of your vegetables as often as you want to. Loosening up the soil about young plants makes them grow. It gives the roots a chance to spread, and lets sun and air into the soil. You must be a little more careful with flowers, Prue, for they are usually more tender, and it is better to dig with an old knife or a small, weeding rake. You must thin out your plants, too. Keep pulling from between, as they grow larger, so that they stand farther and farther apart. Where plants grow too thickly they are small, and the flowers and vegetables poor. People sometimes try to raise more on a small piece of ground by having more plants on it, but it does not pay, for the plants do not produce as much as if there were only half as many on the same soil. Give everything plenty of room and air, and they will grow and thrive like children who have a good playground and plenty of wholesome food."
"Papa," said Prue, "you were talking the other day of the different kinds of one thing: what makes them?—the different kinds of roses, I mean, and pansies, and—"
"And peaches and apples," interrupted Davy, "I want to know that, too."
The Chief Gardener did not answer just at first. Then he said, "I am afraid that is a pretty big subject for little people. There are a good many ways of producing species of flowers, and some of them are not easy to understand. But I can tell you, perhaps, about the fruits now, and we will try to understand about some of the flowers another time.
"To begin with, the upper part and the lower parts of our fruit-trees are different. The root and a little of the lower stalk is from a seed, and upon this has been grafted or spliced with soft bands and wax, a bud from some choice kind of peach or apple or plum, or whatever the tree is to be, and this new bud grows and forms the tree. Sometimes a bud of the choice kind is merely inserted beneath the bark of another tree and grows and forms a new limb. By and by, when it bears fruit, the fruit will be of the kind that was on the choice tree, but the seed, though it looks just the same, may be altogether different. If a seed like that is planted, it may make a tree like the root part of the one from which it came, or it may make a tree like the upper part, or it may make something different from either one. No one can tell what that seed will bring. So fruit growers plant a great many such seeds each year, and once in a great while some new peach, or apple, or plum, or cherry, finer than anything ever grown before, comes from one of those seeds. Then every little limb of that tree is saved and grafted or spliced to a lot of sturdy little roots that have come from other seeds, and this new kind of fruit goes out all over the world and is grafted, and re-grafted, until there are trees everywhere of the new kind."
The bark is slit to
receive the bud
The bud is inserted
in the opening
The limb is then
closely bound
BUDDING
"And wouldn't I get those same fine peaches we had last year if I planted the seeds?" asked Davy.
"You might, Davy, but there are a hundred chances to one that you would get a very poor, small peach, which you would not care to eat."
Davy looked disappointed.
"Well," he said, "I might as well pull it up, then."
"Why, did you plant one, Davy?" asked the Chief Gardener.
"Yes, last summer. I didn't know then, and after I ate my peach I planted the seed over there in the corner, and now it's just coming up, and I was going to keep it for a surprise for you."
"That's too bad, Davy, but let it grow, anyway. Perhaps it will make some new and wonderful kind. Even if it doesn't, we can have the limbs grafted when it is larger."
"Oh, and can you have more than one kind on a tree?"
"Why, yes, I have seen as many as three or four kinds of apples on one tree."
"And peaches, and apples, and plums, and pears, all on one tree, too?" said Prue. "Why that would be a regular fairy tree!"
"We could hardly have that," laughed the Chief Gardener, "though I have heard of peaches, and nectarines, and plums being all on one tree, though I have never seen it. I don't think such things do very well."
They went over to look at Davy's little peach-tree, which was fresh and green and tender, and seemed to be growing nicely.
"It should have fruit on it in three years," said the Chief Gardener.
Davy and Prue did not look very happy at this. It seemed such a long time to wait.
"It will pass before you know it," the Chief Gardener smiled.
"I shall be as old as Nellie Taber," said little Prue, who had been counting on her fingers, "but Nellie will be older, too," she added with a sigh. "So I'm afraid I can't catch up with her."
The Chief Gardener led them over to another part of the garden, where there was a bunch of green leaves, like the leaves of a violet, but when they got down to look, they found that the flowers, instead of being all blue, were speckled and spotted with white.
"Oh, Papa, where did you get those funny violets?" asked Prue. "What makes them all speckly?"
"I think," said the Chief Gardener, "that this is one of Nature's mixtures. I found it in the Crescent Lake woods last spring, and brought it home. There may be others like it, but I have never seen them. So you see, Nature makes new kinds herself, sometimes. You know, don't you, that the pansies you love so much, Prue, are one kind of violet, cultivated until they are large and fine?"
"Why, no, are they violets? Are my pansies violets?"
"Yes, they are what is called the heartsease violets. They were a very small flower at first, and not so brightly colored. They will become small again if you let them run wild a year or two."
Prue was looking at the variegated violet in her hand.
"I should think there's a story about this," she said, nodding her busy, imaginative little head.
"Suppose you tell it to us, Prue," said the Chief Gardener.
"Well, I think it's this way," said Prue. "Once upon a time there was a little girl named Bessie. And she lived way off—way over by Crescent Lake—with an old witch-woman who was poor. And Bessie had to carry milk to sell, every day, because they had a cow, and Bessie couldn't drink the milk, because they had to sell it.
"And one day when Bessie was going with the milk through the woods, she stopped to pick some flowers, because she liked flowers, all kinds, and specially violets. And when she stooped over to pick the violets, a little of her milk spilled out of her pail, and it went on the violets, right on the blue flowers. And when Bessie saw them all spattered with the milk she says, 'Oh, how funny you look! I wish you'd stay that way all the time.' And there was a fairy heard her say that, and she liked Bessie because she was so good, so she made the violets stay just that way with the white spots on them, and Bessie went home, and one day when the old witch-woman died the fairy brought a prince on a white horse, and Bessie went away with him to be a princess, in a palace covered with gold and silver, and lived happy ever after."
The Chief Gardener looked down at the little girl beside him.
"Why, what an exciting story! Did you make it all just now?"
"Yes, just now. It just came of itself," said little Prue.
"And didn't Bessie want her violets?" asked Davy.
"She took some of them along with her in a basket, and planted them around her new palace."
"And the rest she left for us," said the Chief Gardener. "I know now what to call them. We shall call them Bessie's Violets."
JUNE