High-bush Blackberry.
Varieties of wild ones, usually found growing in the borders of fields and woods, are the low-bush and the high-bush. Downing gives the first place to the low. Our experience is, that the high is the best bearer of the best fruit. We have often gathered them one and one fourth inches in length, very black, and of delicious sweetness. The low ones that have come under our observation have been smaller and nearer round, and not nearly so sweet.
The best cultivated varieties are—
The Dorchester—Introduced from Massachusetts, and a vigorous, large, regular bearer.
Lawton, or New Rochelle.—This is the great blackberry of this country, by the side of which, no other, yet known, need be cultivated. It is a very hardy, great grower. It is an enormous bearer of such fruit that it commands thirty cents per quart, when other blackberries sell for ten. On a rather moist, heavy loam, and especially in the shade, its productions are truly wonderful. Continues to ripen daily for six weeks.
Propagation is by offshoots from the old roots, or by seeds. When by seeds, they should be planted in mellow soil, and where the sun will not shine on them between eight and five o'clock in hot weather. In transplanting, much care is requisite. The bark of the roots is like evergreens, very tender and easily broken, or injured by exposure to the atmosphere; hence, take up carefully, and keep covered from sun and air until transplanted. This is destined to become one of the universally-cultivated small fruits—as much so as the strawberry. The best manures are, wood-ashes, leaves, decayed wood, and all kinds of coarse litter, with stable manure well incorporated with the soil, before transplanting. Animal manure should not be very plentifully applied.
We have seen in Illinois a vigorous bush, and apparently good bearer, of perfect fruit—a variety called white blackberry. The fruit was greenish and pleasant to the taste.
BLACK RASPBERRY.
The common wild, found by fences, especially in the margin of forests, in most parts of the United Sates, is very valuable for cultivation in gardens. Coming in after the red raspberry, and ripening in succession until the blackberry commences, it is highly esteemed. Cultivated with little animal manure, but plenty of sawdust, tan-bark, old leaves, wood, chips, and coarse litter, it improves very much from its wild state. Fruit is all borne on bushes of the previous year's growth; hence, after they have done bearing, cut away the old bushes. To secure the greatest yield on rich land, cut off the tops of the shoots rising for next year's fruit, when they are four or five feet high. The result will be, strong shoots from behind all the leaves on the upper part of the stalk, each of which will bear nearly as much fruit as would the whole have done without clipping. A dozen of these would occupy but a small place in a border, or by a wall. Not an American garden should be found without them.