“‘My soil is a strong, deep, sandy loam on a gravelly subsoil. I cultivate my orchard grounds as if there were no trees on them, and raise grain of every kind except rye, which grain is so very injurious that I believe three successive crops of it would destroy any orchard younger than twenty years. I raised last year in an orchard containing
twenty acres, trees eighteen years old, a crop of Indian corn which averaged 140 bushels of ears to the acre.’”
29. Rawle’s Janet, or Jennetting.—Tree round topped, a little spreading and handsome. Wood strong, slow growth, short jointed, and the healthiest, perhaps, of all orchard trees. Does not bear young; but when established, a great bearer every year, unless overloaded, when it rests a year. It is the finest of all apples to graft on the root, and should be always so propagated in the nursery; if budded, it being a late starter in spring, the stock will put out its branches before the bud, and make great trouble. Fruit medium sized; color green striped with red; roundish but inclined to sharpen toward the eye; flesh white, melting, very juicy; flavor mild and delicate. Ripens from February to May. This is, and deserves to be, an exceedingly popular apple in all the West. The tree is remarkably healthy; it blooms ten days later than other varieties, and therefore seldom loses a crop by spring frost; but the bloom is very sensitive to frost if overtaken; the fruit is very relishful; keeps as well as the Newtown Pippin, and by many, and by this writer among the number, is much preferred to that noted variety. It has the peculiar excellence of enduring frost without material injury; a property which has enabled cultivators to save thousands of bushels of fruit which by sudden and early cold had been severely frosted.
The reason that the Cockle-bur, that great pest on farms, cannot be destroyed by being cut off once a year, is that nature has provided for its propagation by bestowing on it seed vessels which ripen at two different times of the year. This will be found to be the case on careful examination.—Western Farmer and Gardener.
ORIGIN OF SOME VARIETIES OF FRUIT.
The history of our fine fruits has many curious points of interest to the zealous pomologist. It is made up of skill, felicitous blunders, discoveries, and profitable accidents.
The Flemish pears, with which so large a portion of the calendar of new pears is filled, were the products of scientific efforts. In like manner, many of the finest fruits originated by Knight, were by a scientific, although a different, process. On the other hand it would be difficult to find fruits superior to those in the making of which only Nature had a hand.