Success with Small Fruits

by Edward Payson Roe

In most instances I think more difficulty would be found in making a blackberry die than live. A plant set out in fall or early spring will thrive if given the ghost of a chance. Late spring planting, however, often fails if subjected to heat and drought while in the green, succulent condition of early growth. Like the raspberry, the blackberry should be set, if possible, while in a dormant condition. If planted late, shade should be given and moisture maintained until danger of wilting and shrivelling is past. I advise decidedly against late spring plantings on a large scale, but in early spring planting I have rarely lost a plant. Almost all that has been said concerning the planting and propagation of raspberries applies to this fruit. Set the plants two or three inches deeper than they were before. With the exception of the early Wilson, all speedily propagate themselves by suckers, and this variety can be increased readily by root cuttings. Indeed, better plants are usually obtained from all varieties by sowing slips of the root, as has already been explained in the paper on raspberries.

The treatment of the blackberry can best be indicated by merely noting wherein its requirements differ from the last-named and kindred fruit. For instance, it does best on light soils and in sunny exposures. The partial shade, and moist, heavy land in which the raspberry luxuriates would produce a rank growth of canes that winter would generally find unripened, and unable to endure the frost. Warm, well-drained, but not dry land, therefore, is the best. On hard, dry ground, the fruit often never matures, but becomes mere collections of seeds. Therefore the need in the preparation of the soil of deep plowing, and the thorough loosening, if possible, of the subsoil with the lifting plow. Any one who has traced blackberry roots in light soils will seek to give them foraging-room. Neither does this fruit require the fertility needed in most instances by the raspberry. It inclines to grow too rankly at best, and demands mellowness rather than richness of soil.

More room should also be given to the blackberry than to the raspberry. The rows should be six feet apart in the garden and eight feet in field culture, and the plants set three feet apart in the rows. At this distance, 1,815 are required for an acre, if one plant only is placed in a hill. Since these plants are usually cheap, if one is small or unprovided with good roots, it is well to plant two. If the ground is not very fertile, it is well to give the young plants a good start by scattering a liberal quantity of muck compost down the furrow in which they are planted. This ensures the most vigorous growth of young canes in the rows rather than in the intervening spaces. As generally grown, they require support, and may be staked as raspberries. Very often, cheap post-and-wire trellises are employed, and answer excellently. Under this system they can be grown in a continuous and bushy row, with care against over-crowding.

The ideal treatment of the blackberry is management rather than culture. More can be done with the thumb and finger at the right time than with the most savage pruning-shears after a year of neglect. In May and June the perennial roots send up vigorous shoots that grow with amazing rapidity, until from five to ten feet high. Very often, this summer growth is so brittle and heavy with foliage, that thunder-gusts break them off from the parent stem just beneath the ground, and the bearing cane of the coming year is lost. These and the following considerations show the need of summer pruning. Tall, overgrown canes are much more liable to be injured by frost. They need high and expensive supports. Such branchless canes are by no means so productive as those which are made to throw out low and lateral shoots. They can always be made to do this by a timely pinch that takes off the terminal bud of the cane. This stops its upward growth, and the buds beneath it, which otherwise might remain dormant, are immediately forced to become side branches near the ground, where the snow may cover them, and over which, in the garden, straw or other light litter may be thrown, on the approach of winter. It thus is seen that by early summer pinching the blackberry may be compelled to become as low and bushy a shrub as we desire, and is made stocky and self-supporting at the same time. Usually it is not well to let the bushes grow over four feet high; and in regions where they winter-kill badly, I would keep them under three feet, so that the snow might be a protection. It should be remembered that the Kittatinny is so nearly hardy that in almost all instances a very slight covering saves it. The suckers that come up thickly between the rows can be cut away while small with the least possible trouble; but leave the patch or field to its own wild impulses for a year or so, and you may find a "slip of wilderness" in the midst of your garden that will require not a little strength and patience to subdue. By far the best weapon for such a battle, and the best implement also for cutting out the old wood, is a pair of long-handled shears.

CHAPTER XXV

CURRANTS—CHOICE OF SOIL, CULTIVATION, PRUNING, ETC.

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 them with the raisins of the small Zante grape, once imported so exclusively from Corinth as to acquire the name of that city.

Under the tribe Grossulariae of the Saxifrage family we find the Ribes containing many species of currants and gooseberries; but, in accordance with the scope of this book, we shall quote from Professor Gray (whose arrangement we follow) only those that furnish the currants of cultivation.

"Ribes rubrum, red currant, cultivated from Europe, also wild on our northern border, with straggling or reclining stems, somewhat heart-shaped, moderately three to five lobed leaves, the lobes roundish and drooping racemes from lateral buds distinct from the leaf buds; edible berries red, or a white variety."

This is the parent of our cultivated red and white varieties. Currants are comparatively new-comers in the garden. When the Greek and Roman writers were carefully noting and naming the fruits of their time, the Ribes tribe was as wild as any of the hordes of the far North, in whose dim, cold, damp woods and bogs it then flourished, but, like other Northern tribes, it is making great improvement under the genial influences of civilization and culture.