Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

The white or silver skin, and the yellow Portugal have been favorite kinds with us to raise from seed. They are tender, mild flavored, but do not keep as well as the Red. Strong onions always keep better than mild ones.

If you prefer top-onion sets, or sets of any other kind, plant them out at the same distances, viz. eight inches between the row and five or six between the sets. Inexperienced gardeners are afraid that little sets no bigger than a pea, will not do well. It is a mistake—they will make large onions; put them all in, if they are sound. Plant the sets so that the top shall just appear above the surface.

If you plant out old onions for seed, let them be at least a foot apart and stake them when they begin to blossom. If you plant the top-onion for sets you need not stake them, for they cannot shed out their seed if they fall over. It is not generally known that the same onions may be kept for seed for many years.

Transplanting.—All fruit-trees, most kinds of shade trees, shrubs, hardy roses, honeysuckles, pinks, lilacs, peonies, etc., may be raised, divided, and transplanted in April unless your soil is very wet. All hardy plants may be safely transplanted just as soon as the ground is dry enough to crumble freely—and not till then. In planting out shrubs, remember that they will grow; if you put them near together, for the sake of present effect, in a year or two they will be crowded. We set at ample distances and fill up the spaces with lilies, peonies, phlox, gladiolus, and herbaceous plants which are easily removed.

Flower Garden.—Remove the covering from your bulb beds; as soon as the earth is dry enough to crumble, with a small hoe carefully mellow the earth between the rows of bulbs, and work it loose with your hands, in the row itself. Leave the surface convex, that superfluous rain may flow off. Transplant roses that are to be moved. Divide the roots of such lilies, peonies, irises, etc., as are propagated by division, and replant.

As fast as the soil allows, spade up your borders, and flower compartments, giving first a good coating of very fine, old, pulverized manure.

If you have hot-beds you may bring forward most of your annuals, so as to turn them out into the open beds as soon as frosts cease.

But defer sowing in the open air until the first of April; and then, sparingly; sow again the middle of April, and on the first of May. Only thus, will you be sure of a supply. If you gain more than you need by three sowings, should all succeed, you have friends and neighbors enough, if you are a reasonably decent man, who will be glad to receive the surplus.

Manure.—Corn and potatoes will bear green and unfermented manure. But all ordinary garden vegetables require thoroughly rotted manure. If the soil is sandy, leached ashes may be applied with great profit at the rate of seventy or eighty bushels the acre. The soil is made more retentive of moisture, and valuable ingredients are secured to it. Salt may be used with great advantage on all garden soils, but especially upon light and sandy ones. Thus treated, soils will resist summer droughts and be moist when otherwise they would suffer. Salt has also a good effect in destroying vermin, and it adds very valuable chemical ingredients to the soil. Soapsuds should be carefully saved and poured about currants, gooseberries and fruit-trees. Charcoal, pulverized, is excellent, as it absorbs ammonia from the atmosphere, or from any body containing it, and

yields it to the plants. Let a barrel be set near the house filled with powdered charcoal. Empty into it all the chamber-ley. The ammonia will be taken up by the charcoal, and the barrel will be without any offensive smell. But as soon as the charcoal is saturated, it will begin to give out the peculiar odor of urine. Let the charcoal then be mixed with about five times its bulk of fresh earth and well worked together, and it will afford a very powerful manure for vegetables and flowers. In Europe, where manure is precious, it is estimated that the excrementitious matter, slops, suds, scraps, etc., of a family, will supply one acre, for each member, with manure.[3] There are few families whose offal would not afford abundant material for enriching the garden, and with substances peculiarly fitted for flowers, fruits, and esculent roots.