Care of Sugar Orchards.—It is grievous to witness the waste committed upon valuable groves of sugar-trees. If the special object was to destroy them, it could hardly be better reached than by the methods now employed. The holes are carelessly made, and often the abominable practice is seen of cutting channels in the tree with an axe. The man who will murder his trees in this tomahawk and scalping-knife manner, is just the man that Æsop meant when he made the fable of a fellow who killed his goose to get at once all the golden eggs. With good care, and allowing them occasionally a year of rest, a sugar-grove may last for centuries.
As soon as possible get your sugar-tree grove laid down to grass, clear out underbrush, thin out timber and useless trees. Trees in open land make about six pounds of sugar, and forest trees only about four pounds to the season. As the maple is peculiarly rich in potash (four-fifths of potash exported is made from sugar-maple), it is evident that it requires that substance in the soil. Upon this account we should advise a liberal use of wood-ashes upon the soil of sugar-groves.
Tapping Trees.—Two taps are usually enough—never more than three. For though as many as twenty-four have been inserted at once without killing the tree, regard ought to be had to the use of the tree through a long series of years. At first bore about two inches; after ten or twelve days remove the tap and go one or two inches deeper. By this method more sap will be obtained than by going down to the colored wood at first. We state upon the authority of William Tripure, a Shaker of Canterbury, N. H., that about seven pounds of sugar may be made from a barrel of twenty gallons, or four pounds the tree for forest trees; and two men and one boy will tend a thousand trees, making 4,000 pounds of sugar.
We would recommend the setting of pasture-lands, and road-sides of the farm with sugar-maple trees. Their
growth is rapid, and no tree combines more valuable properties. It is a beautiful shade-tree, it is excellent for fuel, it is much used for manufacturing purposes, its ashes are valuable for potash, and its sap is rich in sugar. There are twenty-seven species of the maple known, twelve of them are indigenous to this continent. All of these have a sacharine sap, but only two, to a degree sufficient for practical purposes, viz., Acer saccharinum or the common sugar-maple, and Acer nigrum or the black sugar-maple. The sap of these contains about half as much sugar as the juice of the sugar-cane. One gallon of pasture maple sap contains, on an average, 3,451 grains of sugar; and one gallon of cane juice (in Jamaica), averages 7,000 grains of sugar.
But the cane is subject to the necessity of annual and careful cultivation, and its manufacture is comparatively expensive and difficult. Whereas the maple is a permanent tree, requires no cultivation, may be raised on the borders of farms without taking up ground, and its sap is easily convertible into sugar, and if carefully made, into sugar as good as cane-sugar can be. Add to the above considerations that the sugar-making period is a time of comparative leisure with the farmer, and the motives for attention to this subject of domestic sugar-making seem to be complete.
Lettuce.—Those who wish fine head lettuce should prepare a rich, mellow bed of light soil; tough and compact soil will not give them any growth. In transplanting, let there be at least one foot between each plant. Stir the ground often. If it is very dry weather, water at evening copiously, if you water at all; but the hoe is the only watering-pot for a garden, if thereby the soil is kept loose and fine. We have raised heads nearly as large as a drum-head cabbage by this method, very brittle, sweet and tender withal.
[7] Dr. J. C. Jackson puts Vermont at 6,000,000 lbs. per annum, while the census only gives about 4,000,000.
[8] The data of these calculations, it must be confessed, are very uncertain, and conclusions drawn from them as to the relative amounts of sugar produced in different States, are to be regarded, at the very best, as problematical. We extract the following remarks from an article in the Western Literary Journal, from the pen of Charles Cist, an able statistical writer: