The Home Acre

by Edward Payson Roe

The Victoria is an excellent late variety, which, if planted in a sheltered place, prolongs the currant-season well into the autumn. Spurious kinds are sold under this name. The true Victoria produces a pale-red fruit with tapering clusters or racemes of berries. This variety, with the three others recommended, gives the family two red and two white kinds—all that are needed. Those who are fond of black currants can, at almost any nursery, procure the Black Naples and Lee's Prolific. Either variety will answer all practical purposes. I confess they are not at all to my taste.

From the currant we pass on naturally to the gooseberry, for in origin and requirements it is very similar. Both belong to the Ribes family of plants, and they are to be cultivated on the same general principles. What I have written in regard to partial shade, cool, sheltered localities, rich, heavy soils, good culture, and especially rigorous pruning, applies with even greater force to this fruit, especially if we endeavor to raise the foreign varieties, in cultivating this fruit it is even more important than was true of raspberries that the reader should distinguish between the native and foreign species. The latter are so inclined to mildew in almost every locality that there is rarely any certainty of satisfactory fruit. The same evil pursues the seedling children of the foreign sorts, and I have never seen a hybrid or cross between the English and native species that was with any certainty free from a brown disfiguring rust wholly or partially enveloping the berries. Here and there the fruit in some gardens will escape year after year; again, on places not far away, the blighting mildew is sure to appear before the berries are fully grown. Nevertheless, the foreign varieties are so fine that it is well to give them a fair trial. The three kinds which appear best adapted to our climate are Crown Bob, Roaring Lion, and Whitesmith. A new large variety, named Industry, is now being introduced, and if half of what is claimed for it is true, it is worth a place in all gardens.

In order to be certain of clean, fair gooseberries every year, we must turn to our native species, which has already given us several good varieties. The Downing is the largest and best, and the Houghton the hardiest, most productive and easily raised. When we remember the superb fruit which English gardeners have developed from wild kinds inferior to ours, we can well understand that the true American gooseberries are yet to be developed. In my work "Success with Small Fruits" those who are interested in this fruit will find much fuller treatment than is warranted in the present essay.

Not only do currants and gooseberries require similar treatment and cultivation, but they also have a common enemy that must be vigilantly guarded against, or the bushes will be defoliated in many localities almost before its existence is known. After an absence of a few days I have found some of my bushes stripped of every leaf. When this happens, the fruit is comparatively worthless. Foliage is as necessary to a plant as are lungs to a man. It is not essential that I should go into the natural history of the currant worm and moth. Having once seen the yellowish-green caterpillars at their destructive work, the reader's thoughts will not revert to the science of entomology, but will at once become bloody and implacable. I hasten to suggest the means of rescue and vengeance. The moment these worms appear, be on your guard, for they usually spread like fire in stubble. Procure of your druggist white hellebore, scald and mix a tablespoonful in a bowl of hot water, and then pour it in a full watering-can. This gives you an infusion of about a tablespoonful to an ordinary pail of water at its ordinary summer temperature. Sprinkle the infected bushes with this as often as there is a worm to be seen. I have never failed in destroying the pests by this course. It should be remembered, however, that new eggs are often hatched out daily. You may kill every worm to-day, yet find plenty on the morrow. Vigilance, however, will soon so check the evil that your currants are safe; and if every one would fight the pests, they would eventually be almost exterminated. The trouble is that, while you do your duty, your next-door neighbor may grow nothing on his bushes but currant-worms. Thus the evil is continued, and even increased, in spite of all that you can do; but by a little vigilance and the use of hellebore you can always save YOUR currants. I have kept my bushes green, luxuriant, and loaded with fruit when, at a short distance, the patches of careless neighbors were rendered utterly worthless. Our laws but half protect the birds, the best insecticides, and there is no law to prevent a man from allowing his acres to be the breeding-place of every pest prevailing.

There are three species of the currant-borer, and their presence is indicated by yellow foliage and shrivelling fruit. The only remedy is to cut out and burn the affected stems. These pests are not often sufficiently numerous to do much harm.

I earnestly urge that virulent poisons like Paris green, London purple, etc., never be used on fruit or edible vegetables. There cannot be safety in this course. I never heard of any one that was injured by white hellebore, used as I have directed; and I have found that if the worms were kept off until the fruit began to ripen, the danger was practically over. If I had to use hellebore after the fruit was fit to use, I should first kill the worms, and then cleanse the bushes thoroughly by spraying them with clean water.

In treating the two remaining small fruits, blackberries and strawberries, we pass wholly out of the shade and away from trees. Sunshine and open ground are now required. Another important difference can also be mentioned, reversing former experience. America is the home of these fruits. The wild species of the blackberry abroad has never, as far as I can learn, been developed into varieties worthy of cultivation; and before importations from North and South America began, the only strawberry of Europe was the Alpine, with its slight variations, and the musky Hautbois.

I do not know whether any of our fine varieties of blackberries are cultivated abroad, but I am perfectly certain that they are worthy of the slight attention required to raise them in perfection here.

Like the blackcaps, all our best varieties are the spontaneous products of Nature, first discovered growing wild, and transferred to the garden. The blackberry is a fruit that takes kindly to cultivation, and improves under it.

The proper treatment is management rather than cultivation and stimulation. It requires a sunny exposure and a light, warm soil, yet not so dry as to prevent the fruit from maturing into juicy berries. If possible, set the blackberries off by themselves, for it is hard to prevent the strong roots from travelling all over the garden. The blackberry likes a rich, moist, mellow soil, and, finding it, some varieties will give you canes sixteen feet high. You do not want rank, thorny brambles, however, but berries. Therefore the blackberry should be put where it can do no harm, and, by a little judicious repression, a great deal of good. A gravelly or sandy knoll, with a chance to mow all round the patch, is the best place. The blackberry needs a deep, loose soil rather than a rich one. Then the roots will luxuriate to unknown depths, the wood ripen thoroughly, and the fruit be correspondingly abundant.