Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming

by Henry Ward Beecher

The effect of cultivation in changing the habits of plants is familiar to all. Incident to this artificial condition of the plant, there will be new diseases, vegetable vices, which, as they result from cultivation, must be regarded in every perfect system of cultivation.

Where trees are grown for timber, or shade, or ornament,

everything can be sacrificed to the production of wood and foliage. But in fruit-trees wood is nothing and fruit is everything. We push for quantity and quality of fruit; and would not regard the wood or foliage at all, if it were not indispensable as a means of procuring fruit. That is the most skillful treatment of fruit-trees which involves a just compromise between the wants of the tree, and the abundance and excellence of fruit. There is a way of gaining fruit by a rapid consumption of the tree; and there is a method of gaining fruit by invigorating and prolonging the tree. Two systems of cultivation grow out of these different methods—a natural system and an artificial system. All cultivation is artificial, even the rudest. By natural system, then, is only meant a treatment which interferes but little with nature; and by artificial, a system in which skill is applied to every part of the vegetable economy. For conservatories, gardens, and experimental grounds, there is no reason why an artificial system should not exist. Moral considerations restrain us from stimulating a man or a beast to procure a quick or a large return at the expense of life and limb; but in vegetable matters our preference or interest is the only restraint. If any reason exists for forcing a tree to bear young, and enormously, and after ten years’ service for throwing it away, it is proper to do it. For larger show-fruit we ring a limb expecting to sacrifice the branch; we diminish the life of the pear by putting it to a dwarf habit by violent means. If we have any sufficiently desirable object to accomplish, there is no reason why we should not do it. There may be as good reasons for limiting a tree to ten years as a strawberry bed to three.

There is another form of the artificial system in which there is much to censure. When fruit-trees are set in gardens, yards, etc., to be permanent, and long-lived, it is folly to apply to them that high-toned treatment which belongs to an artificial system as I have spoken of it above.

Impatient of delay, the cultivator presses his trees forward by stimulating applications, or retards them by violent interference—by prunings at the root or branch, by bending or binding; everything is sacrificed for early and abundant bearing. Fine fruit yards, designed to last a hundred years, are served with a treatment proper only to a conservatory or experimental garden. This high-toned system is still more vicious when applied to orchards and especially to pear orchards; and it seems to us that much is to be learned and much unlearned before we shall have attained a true science of pear culture. Let us consider some facts. It is well known that seedling apple-trees are generally longer lived than grafted varieties, and obnoxious to fewer diseases. The same is true of the pear-tree. It has frequently been said that seedling and wilding pears were not subject to the blight. This is not true if such trees are undergoing the same cultivation as grafted sorts; it is not always true when they exist in an untutored state; but when they are left to themselves, they certainly are less obnoxious to the blight and to disease of any kind, than are grafted and cultivated varieties. A comparison between wild and tame, between cultivated and natural, between seedling and grafted fruit, is certainly to the advantage of seedling uncultivated fruit, in respect to the HEALTH of the tree—of course it is not in respect to quality of fruit. In connection with these facts, consider another, that seedling and wilding fruit is nearly twice as long in coming into bearing as are cultivated varieties. The seedling apple bears at from ten to fourteen years. The pear bears at from fifteen to eighteen years. But upon cultivation the grafted pear and apple bear in from five to eight years. It is noticeable that, although the pear as a wilding is four or five years longer in coming to a bearing state than the apple, yet, upon cultivation, they both bear at about the same age from the bud or graft. In a private letter from Robert Manning (we prize it as among the last he ever wrote; another, received

not long after, was dictated; but signed by his tremulous hand in letters which speak of death), he says, “Pears bear as soon as apples of the same age; on the quince much sooner,” etc.

It appears, then, that while cultivation accelerates the period of fruit-bearing and perfects the fruit, it is also accompanied with premature age and liability to diseases. We do not wish to be understood as opposing the habit of cultivating fruit, or as prejudiced against grafted varieties—we are neither opposed to the one nor to the other. But we would deduce from facts, some conclusions which will enable us to perfect our fruits by a more discriminating treatment.

The question will arise, Is it only by accident that liability to disease increases, with increase of cultivation? Is there an inherent objection in all artificial treatment? or is there objection only to particular methods of artificial cultivation?

Although there may be too many exceptions, to allow of our saying, that quickly-growing timber is not durable, it may be said in respect to trees of the same species, that the durability of the timber depends (among other things) on the slowness of its growth. Mountain timber is usually tougher and more lasting than champaign wood; timber growing in the great alluvial valleys of the West, is notoriously more perishable than that grown in the parsimonious soils of the North and East.

The reason does not seem obscure. In a rich soil, and under an ardent sun, not only is the growth of trees greater in any given season, than in a poor soil, but the growth is coarser and the grain coarser. But what is a coarse growth, and what is fine-grained, or coarse-grained timber?—timber in which the vascular system has been greatly distended, in which sap-vessels and air-cells are large and coarse. Where wood is formed with great rapidity and with a super abundance of sap, not only will there be large ducts and