HORTICULTURAL GOSSIP. II.
BY LINUS WOLVERTON, GRIMSBY, ONT.
The term horticulture means garden culture, or the art of cultivating gardens, and I notice that English books and Philadelphia magazines seem to confine it to gardens in which flowers and vegetables, or perhaps small fruits are grown. But here, and in Western New York, the word is used in a wider sense, to embrace the culture of fruit in general, as well as of flowers and vegetables; and it seems to me justly, for the successful growth of apples, pears, and peaches implies that careful and rich cultivation, as well as that beauty which belongs to the idea of a garden.
The Northern Spy Apple.—In the month of March of the current year I opened a barrel of this fruit. It was a perfect luxury. So crisp and juicy, so beautiful for dessert, so delicious for cooking, so attractive for market; surely it is destined to hold the first place among our Winter apples. True, the Roxbury Russet keeps longer, but I had rather for a longer interval preserve the remembrance of the superb Spy, than spin out the season a little longer with the dry tough-skinned Roxbury Russet.
Most growers are too eager for the fruit to wait from twelve to fourteen years for the Spy, but I agree with J. J. Thomas, who says “it is worth waiting for;” and when once it begins bearing, it yearly rewards the patient husbandman with loads of beautiful fruit.
There is one class of orchardists, however, whom we would advise not to plant Northern Spy, and that is those who expect abundance of fine fruit with little outlay of cultivation, and still less application of manure. Such persons had better grow some other kind of apple, for the Spy requires the best of cultivation, and abundance of manure, or it will prove a source of vexation and disappointment.
The American Agriculturist for 1862, page 367, has an encomium on the Spy. It is there spoken of as the best and most profitable apple for table and market, as commanding a high price even when other varieties are abundant, and as being hardy because it blossoms late.
I am inclined to think the habit it has of developing its leaves and blossoms late, is useful in more ways than one. The eggs of the Canker worm and of the Tent Caterpillar hatch out almost simultaneously with the leaves and blossoms of other apple trees, but the little worms nearly starve on the Northern Spy, before the leaves are developed.
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