The Growing of Vegetables for Canning.
M. H. HEGERLE, PRES. CANNING FACTORY, ST. BONIFACIUS.
The state authorities, through the Agricultural Farm and other sources, are doing good work promoting and encouraging the growing of vegetables, but it seems more could be done towards the marketing and conservation of these vegetables after they are grown.
The growing season for vegetables in this state is comparatively short, and although during that short period everybody eats vegetables, every grocer's show windows, and even the sidewalks, are used to display them, and a tremendous business is done, yet there are tons and tons of nice fresh vegetables go to waste, not only for the market or truck farmer but in every family garden—be the same ever so small, there is a steady waste going on, all of which could easily be conserved by canning.
Canning is simply putting the fresh vegetables in tin cans or glass jars (the latter are much more expensive, but no better), steaming and sealing them and setting aside until wanted. By doing this every truck farmer, and any one having ever so small a garden, could conserve enough which otherwise would go to waste to keep them in real fresh vegetables all winter.
Of course the thousands living in the cities having no garden can not do this and are therefore dependent on the canning factory for their fresh vegetables, and here is where my topic comes in, the growing of vegetables for canning.
It is no trick to grow vegetables for home canning, any variety will do. You need not select a big lot of one kind, and you need not sort for size or color. Just take the surplus as you find it in your garden from day to day. All it needs is, it must be fresh and it must be thoroughly clean—but growing for the canning factory is different. To line up fifty to 200 growers to sow the same seed, to plant, harvest and bring to the factory just when in right condition, requires time and hard work. This really is the hardest problem the canning factory has to solve, and that is the reason why all successful canners grow at least part of their product.
You must remember vegetables put in cans will come out just as you put them in. If you put in stale, tough, stringy beans you will be sure to find them there when you open the can, but if you put in fresh, tender beans, peas, corn or whatever else, you will find these exactly as you put them in, and it's immaterial whether you open this can the first, second or tenth year. We must not forget that vegetables properly sterilized and sealed will keep indefinitely, and they require no preservative of any kind. No canning factory uses any preservative, and no home cannery should use them.
Upland Farm, St. Bonifacius, Minn.
There was a time when canning was considered an art or a secret. I remember receiving circulars offering for sale the secrets of canning, and while in the grocery business some twelve years ago I sold thousands of packages of canning compound. These canning compounds, after a thorough examination by our State Food Department, were found not only worthless but harmful if put in canned foods.
Remember, to can vegetables successfully, it requires no canning compound or preservative of any kind, simply fresh and thoroughly clean vegetables.
Fresh vegetables are a good, healthy food, we all know this; and besides they are cheaper than meat; therefore should be on our tables two or three times a day. But mind you, they must be fresh, and while for some of us during the growing season it is comparatively easy to get them fresh, yet during the rest of the year, say eight to ten months, real fresh vegetables in bulk are hard to find and high in price. A lot of so-called fresh vegetables shipped in from a distance at best require several days to make the rounds through the grower, the shipper, the jobber, the retailer—to our tables and are really not fresh. They have become stale, and by coming in contact with different kinds of material have lost their delicate flavor. Therefore to insure real fresh vegetables for our tables, at least during the winter months, we must take the canned article.
All of us remember how most everything in the grocery line was handled in bulk, dried fruits, cereals of all kinds, coffee, tea, etc., was displayed on the counters, along the aisles and even outside along the sidewalk, handled and examined by any one and exposed to dust and flies. Just about the same way are vegetables in bulk handled today. Where is the grocer who would go back to those days, and where is the public that would patronize him?
Mrs. Glenzke: What vegetables do you can?
Mr. Hegerle: We can corn; beans, string and wax; apples, tomatoes, etc.
Mrs. Glenzke: How do you manage to get the farmers to bring them in? In Wisconsin it was a failure. As you say, they came when they got their work done, and the whole bunch came there at one time.
Mr. Hegerle: That is the hardest work, to get the growers to bring the vegetables when they are in the right condition and when they should be canned.
Mrs. Glenzke: There are five canning factories in that neighborhood now, and there isn't a one of them that allows the farmers to bring their stuff. They rent the farmers' land for themselves. For miles and miles you can't find a farmer that hasn't rented his farm.
Mr. Hegerle: You have to have the vegetables at the right time.
Mrs. Glenzke: They use the farmer's team and give him all the assistance they can. It does away with having them all at one time. I have seen twenty-five farmers come at one time. I don't see how you manage it.
Mr. Hegerle: We have had a lot of trouble, and we are growing some of our vegetables.
Mrs. Glenzke: You can raise four successive crops of peas on the same ground, and you can make that work all right. They used to can squash, corn, tomatoes, and they have got down to peas entirely.
A Member: Doesn't most of that trouble arise from the low prices?
Mr. Hegerle: No, not entirely. The price when contracted is satisfactory, and we find in our experience in growing our own vegetables we can grow them cheaper than what we pay to the growers. But we wouldn't grow any if we could get the growers to bring them in when they are in the right shape. When corn is at a certain stage to make a good canned article it has got to be brought in that day, and if the farmer don't bring it, if he has a state fair on or a wedding or a funeral or something and delays it a day or two, then it is all off; that corn is lost.
Mr. Sauter: I would like to know which is the best beans for canning, the yellow or the green?
Mr. Hegerle: Well, we prefer the Refugee, both in wax and green. We prefer them because they are the best in flavor we have.
Mr. Sauter: Which is the best, the flat or the round of the wax?
Mr. Hegerle: Round is preferred by the trade, by the grocers or jobbers. I have kept the flat wax beans for my own use of those that we can.
Mr. Sauter: Don't the flat ones bring a little more than the round ones?
Mr. Hegerle: Well, probably the first or second picking, but you can't pick them as often as the other variety. The Refugee you can pick four or five or six times, and the flat beans can only be picked two times.
Mr. Anderson: I would like to ask what you pay for beans for canning purposes?
Mr. Hegerle: We pay from 3/4 of a cent up to 4 cents a pound. Sometimes a man brings in some that are almost too good to throw away, they are big and stringy, and rather than send them home we think we have got to take them and pay him something for them. We would rather not have them, and we usually dump them. Starting from that we pay up to three and four cents. Four cents for well sorted and mostly small beans. They have got to be graded, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Number 1 is the smallest, and they bring the best price. We pay in proportion to the number 1's and 2's in the load.
Mr. Sauter: What tomato do you find the best for canning?
Mr. Hegerle: Well, the Earliana.
Mr. Sauter: Do you have any trouble with those bursting the cans?
Mr. Hegerle: No, sir.
Mr. Sauter: We had that trouble in canning for our own use. They burst the can, they expanded.
Mr. Hegerle: That is the fault of the man, not of the tomato.
Mr. Sauter: They were picked and canned the same day.
Mr. Hegerle: Probably not sterilized enough. Sterilizing fruit is the main thing. A tomato is really one of the easiest things to can.
Mr. Sauter: In other tomatoes we don't have that trouble. It seems to hurt the sale of them to the women folks.
Mr. Hegerle: Sterilize them a little more.
Mr. Sauter: About how long would you cook them?
Mr. Hegerle: I am not the man at the wheel on that part. I don't know. We have a superintendent that handles that part of it.
Top-Grafting.
AN EXERCISE LED BY A. J. PHILIPS, WEST SALEM, WIS., AT 1915 ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY.
Mr. Philips: When I first talked top-working in Minnesota, Professor Green and some of the knowing ones felt a little leary about it, but I kept right on just the same. The most I have got out of top-working is the pleasure I have had, doing the work and seeing the fruit grow. I inherited a love for top-working from my father. He used to top-work some, and after I began planting trees my old friend Wilcox used to come and visit me, and he was strong on top-working on hardy roots. I used to make a little sport of the old man, but no more I guess than people have made of me for doing the same thing. He made me a proposition about forty years ago. He says, "You plant ten trees of a good variety to top-work on—I will pick them out for you—and then you top-work them with Wealthy, and then plant ten Wealthy trees right beside them on the same land and in the same rows, right together, and see which will do the best." At the end of ten years the Wealthy on their own roots had borne good crops but they began to fail, while the top-worked ones (on Virginia crab) were just at their best bearing at that time. Professor Green came and looked them over at the end of fifteen years. The first ten on their own roots were dead, and the others grafted on Virginia bore apples until they were twenty-five years old. That convinced me that top-working in certain cases would pay if done on a hardy stock.
I have seen a Northwestern Greening tree that was crotched, split apart and lay down when it was loaded with apples, in Waupacca County, but when grafted onto a stock whose limbs grew out horizontal it will carry a load of fruit until it ripens without injury.
I won a first prize at the Omaha exposition. My apples were not much better, but they were top-worked and were a little larger. I have some specimens here that show the practical difference. These grew on my own land. I found in showing apples in Milwaukee at their fairs that I could always get the best specimens from the top-worked trees. That convinced me that you could grow better fruit that way.
Mr. Brackett: What age do you commence the grafting?
Mr. Philips: I like to commence at two years old. I like to set a Virginia crab and let it grow one year and then commence top-working, and top-work about half the first year and the balance the second.
Mr. Brackett: Is that in the nursery row?
Mr. Philips: No, where I am going to have it grow. I have found the Virginia—and the Hibernal, too, either of them, very vigorous trees. The Virginia is very vigorous. You dig up a Virginia tree, and you find a great mass of roots; it has strength, and it grows fast. I have top-worked about forty varieties on the Virginia and some on Hibernal. Mr. Cady was there and looked it over, Prof. Green was there and Mr. Kellogg has been there a number of times—and I always ask them this question: If they found any trees where the top had outgrown the stock? I have never seen an instance where the top of the tree put onto a Virginia crab outgrew the Virginia. I have some in my garden now where the union is so perfect it takes a man with good eyesight to see where it is.
A. J. Philips, West Salem, Wis. Photo taken in his eighty-second year.
Mr. Brackett: If you had Virginia trees twelve years old would you top-work them?
Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, out towards the end of the limbs.
Mr. Brackett: Suppose the limbs were too big on the stock you are going to top-work, how would you do then?
Mr. Philips: I practice cutting off those larger limbs and letting young shoots grow. Mr. Dartt did a good deal of top-working, and he top-worked large limbs. I told him he was making an old fool of himself, but he wouldn't believe it. He would cut off limbs as large as three inches and put in four scions and at the end of two years they had only grown eight inches each. I have put in one scion in a Virginia limb that was about 3/4-inch in diameter, and had it that season grow eight feet and one inch. That is the best growth I ever had.
The reason that my attention was called to the Virginia as being vigorous was, when I attended the meeting of this society about thirty years ago—I think it was at Rochester—Mr. A. W. Sias, who was an active nurseryman and one of the pioneers of this society, offered a premium of $5.00 for the best growth of a crab apple tree, and then, in order to win the money himself (which he did), he brought in some limbs of a Virginia that were six feet long that grew in one season; and I figured then that a tree that could make that growth in one season was a vigorous tree, which it is. Nothing can outgrow it, and that was one reason why I commenced using it.
Mr. Brackett: I have one trouble in grafting the Wealthy to the Hibernal on account of its making that heavy growth. I lost some of them by blight on that account.
Mr. Philips: Which was blighted, the Hibernal?
Mr. Brackett: No, the Wealthy made such a big growth that it blighted. I cut the top back and put grafts in, and they made a good growth, but they blighted. Did you have any trouble like that?
Mr. Philips: No, sir, I think my soil is different from yours. My soil is of a poor order, a heavy clay, and it don't make the growth.
Mr. Brackett: How many of those large limbs could you cut off in one year and graft?
Mr. Philips: Cut about half of the growth of the tree if not too large, don't cut enough to weaken the tree too much. Next year cut the balance off.
Mr. Crosby: In grafting, suppose you get scions from an Eastern state, what time would you get those scions, say, from Maine; Maine is on a parallel with Minnesota?
Mr. Philips: I prefer cutting scions in the fall before they freeze.
Mr. Crosby: How would you keep those scions?
Mr. Philips: I have tried a great many ways, in dirt and burying them in the ground, but the best way to keep them is to put them in boxes and put some leaves among them. Leaves will preserve them all winter if you keep them moist enough, wet them a little once in ten days just to keep them damp. Leaves are a more natural protection than anything else. Don't you think so, Mr. Brackett?
Mr. Brackett: Yes, sir.
Mr. Crosby: What kind of a graft do you usually make?
Mr. Philips: I have put in some few whip-grafts but use the cleft-graft with the larger limbs.
Mr. Wallace: Is the Patten Greening a good tree to graft onto?
Mr. Philips: It is better for that than most anything else where I live. It is hardy and makes a good growth. If I had Patten Greenings, many of them, I would top-work them. The apple is not a good seller where I live.
Mr. Kellogg: What was the condition of that tree where Dartt put in four scions?
Mr. Philips: They grew eight inches each in two years, then died. Those scions were too weak to take possession of the big limb. It is like putting an ox yoke onto a calf. They can't adapt themselves. They hadn't strength to take hold of that limb and grow. That was a good illustration. Put a graft on a small limb, and it will assimilate and grow better than if you take a large one.
Mr. Brackett: Where you put in more than one scion in a limb, is it feasible to leave more than one to grow?
Mr. Philips: No, not if they grow crotchy. I let them grow one year to get firmly established and then I take off the lower one. I have trees in my garden I have done that with, and you couldn't see the crotch. It grows right over.
Mr. Brackett: I have seen a great many of them where both of them were growing.
Mr. Philips: It makes a bad tree, as bad as a crotchy tree.
Mr. Kellogg: Isn't it better to dehorn it and get some new shoots to graft?
Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, and if they are very old the best way is to set out new trees.
Mr. Crosby: In getting scions are there any distinguishing marks between a vigorous scion and one not vigorous?
Mr. Philips: Nothing, only the general appearance. If I see a scion that looks deficient I pass it by.
Mr. Erkel: Would it be practical to use water shoots for scions?
Mr. Philips: I should rather not. I have always had scions enough to avoid using water shoots. They are an unnatural growth; I wouldn't use them. Take a good healthy scion.
Mr. Kellogg: Would scions from bearing trees with the blossom buds on do you any good?
Mr. Philips: Well, not with a blossom bud on; I wouldn't use such a scion. Some people say if you cut your scions from a bearing tree they will bear quicker, but I never saw any difference.
Inasmuch as this question has been asked a great many times by people, what age to plant a tree, whether it is best to plant young trees or trees four or five years old, I will say I am in favor of young trees, and I am in favor of grafting a tree when it is young.
Mr. Brackett: Isn't that a general opinion in the West where they make a business of planting large orchards?
Mr. Philips: I think so. I think that is the case.
Mrs. Cadoo: Can you graft onto a Martha crab and have success with that?
Mr. Philips: I never had very good success with the Martha crab; it isn't vigorous enough.
Mrs. Cadoo: We had a tree twelve years and got seven apples.
Mr. Philips: Well, I think I got eight. (Laughter.) I believe with the Martha crab if you will plant it where there are other crab trees around it you get a pretty good crop, but not if you isolate it. I have an idea it is not self-fertilizing. I think that is the trouble with the Martha. It is a nice crab.
Mr. Brackett: You showed the difference in size there, those top-worked and those not—don't you think that is because of cutting the top back? You throw a heavy growth in there, which makes the fruit that much larger?
Mr. Philips: Well, it might be.
Mr. Street: Have you had any experience in budding in August or first of September on those trees?
Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, I do a little budding every year. Budding is a hard thing to do, that is, it is a particular thing to get the bud matured enough and still have sufficient sap to slip.
Mr. Street: Would you put it on the top or bottom side of the limb?
Mr. Philips: I would put it on the upper side of the limb every time, but I would put it a little further from the trunk of the tree than I would to graft for the reason, if the bud fails you have two chances, and you have that same limb to cut off and graft next year.
Winesap apples top-worked on Peerless, grown at Northfield, Minn.
Mr. Johnson: I want to ask if it has a tendency to make the apple any earlier? Virginia crab is an early bloomer, and would grafting it with Wealthy make it bloom earlier?
Mr. Philips: I hardly think so. I think it is a great deal as it was with the man that had the boots. Some told him his boots would wear longer if he greased them, and some one else told him they would wear longer if he did not. So he greased one and not the other, and the one that he greased wore fifteen minutes longer than the other. (Laughter.) I don't think it makes much difference. I tell you what it does do. You graft a McMahon onto a Virginia and instead of having the McMahon its usual color, you will get a very nice blush on it.
Mr. Erkel: Is the Duchess a good stock to graft onto?
Mr. Philips: I haven't found it very good. It is hardly vigorous enough for a stock.
Mr. Erkel: You mentioned Patten's Greening a few minutes ago. Isn't that considered a rather short-lived tree?
Mr. Philips: Not with me it hasn't been. I set some thirty years ago. I never had a Patten's Greening injured with the cold. It is very hardy.
Mr. Street: How about the Brier's Sweet crab? I grafted some last year and had a larger percentage of the scions live on those than on the Hibernal.
Mr. Philips: You wouldn't get as good a growth afterwards. The scions on the Virginia would grow better and have a better top. I don't think the Brier's Sweet is as vigorous as Virginia.
Mr. M'Clelland: I grafted on 120 Hibernals this spring and got hardly one failure.
Mr. Philips: You did good work.
Mr. M'Clelland: Made a growth of three to four feet, some of them.
Mr. Philips: That is good.
Mr. M'Clelland: Have you anything as good?
Mr. Philips: If I had Hibernals I would graft them, but if I had to set something on purpose for grafting I would set Virginias. I have had better success with that variety for stocks.
Mr. Kellogg: Too big a growth on the graft is liable to be injured in the winter, is it not?
Mr. Philips: Too vigorous a growth on the tree is liable to get injured in the winter anyway. I like to see a good growth. I like to see it grow and then pinch it back in the fall. You can pinch it back a good deal easier when it has made a good growth than to make it grow big enough.
Mr. Street: I would like to know whether we should force all of the growth into the scion the first year where we graft on trees that have been set two years.
Mr. Philips: One of the pleasures of doing top-working is to watch the growth of the grafts. I did a good deal of that on Sunday. You might do worse than communing with nature. You watch them same as you watch the growth of anything else, and if you think the graft is growing too fast let some of the shoots on the stock grow to take part of the sap, but if you think it is growing too slow and these shoots are robbing it, cut them off. I like a good growth on grafts; it looks more like doing business.
Mr. Street: But the second year would you keep all of the growth in the graft?
Mr. Philips: Yes, sir, the second year I would, and if it makes too large a growth pinch off the end. I put in some for a neighbor this season, and I go down and see to them every two weeks. If I thought they made too much growth in August I pinched them back so as to make them ripen up quicker. I don't like to have them grow too late; as Mr. Kellogg said, frost will get them. (Applause.)