DUCKS.
There are a number of varieties, the wild Black Spanish, the Canvass-Back, and the ordinary little duck of the farmyard, are all good. The common duck is the only one we recommend for the American poultry-yard. A close pasture, including a rivulet, or a small stream of water, affords facilities for raising ducks at a cheap rate. From one hundred to one thousand ducks may be raised in such an enclosure of an acre or two, quite profitably. If there is plenty of grass, they will still need a little grain. In the winter the cheapest feed is beets or potatoes cut fine, with a very little grain. Each duck, well kept, will lay from fifty to one hundred eggs, larger than hen's eggs, and about as good for cooking purposes. They may be picked as geese, for live feathers, though not quite so frequently. The feathers will nearly pay for keeping, leaving the eggs and increase as profit.
DWARFING.
This has some advantages in its application to fruit-trees. It will enable the cultivator to raise more fruit on a small plat of ground, to get fruit much earlier than from standard trees, and sometimes, with high cultivation, the fruit will be larger. Dwarfing is done by grafting into small slow-growing stocks. Almost all fruits have such kinds. Grafting into other stocks, as the pear into the foreign quince, is a very effectual method. The Paradise stock for the apple, the Canada and other slow-growing stocks for the plum, the dwarf wild cherry of Europe and the Mahaleb for cherries. Dwarfs produced by grafting upon other stocks are short-lived, compared with standards of the same varieties. They should only be used to economize room, to test varieties, and produce fruit while standards are coming into bearing.
Better and much longer-lived dwarfs may be produced by frequent transplanting, thorough trimming of the roots, and repeated heading-in. The fruit on such dwarfs must be well thinned out when young, or it will be smaller than is natural. The effect of heading in is to cause the sap to mature an abundance of fruit-buds. This will tax the tree too much, unless they be well thinned out. Root-pruning is an effectual method of dwarfing (see Pruning). Dwarfing by root-pruning, repeated transplanting, and thorough heading-in, will not render the trees very short-lived, and in many situations it is profitable. The same is true of the dwarf pear on the quince. All other dwarfing is more for the amateur than the utilitarian.
EARLY FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
Are often considered a great luxury, and always command a high price. Early vegetables are secured by hotbeds and the various methods of forcing, as given under the different species. Early fruits are obtained by dwarfing, as given on that subject. Location, soil, and mode of cultivation, also, have much to do with it. Warm location, finely-pulverized soil, often stirred and kept moist, will materially shorten the time of the maturity of fruits and vegetables. Seeds imported from the North, where seasons are shorter, will mature earlier. Another means of hastening maturity is to plant successively, from year to year, the very first that ripens; this tends to dwarf in proportion as the time of maturity is hastened. In this way such dwarfs as the little Canada corn, that will mature at the South in six weeks, have been produced. Various early plants, as tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, and egg-plants, may be started in boxes or flower-pots in the house. Planted in February here, or in January in the South, they will grow as well as house-plants, and acquire considerable size before it is time to place them in the open ground. This is convenient for those who have no hotbeds. They must be kept from frost, and occasionally set out in a warm day to harden, and they will do well.
EGG PLANT.
The white is merely ornamental. The large purple is one of the greatest luxuries of the vegetable garden. Plant seeds in hotbed at the time of planting tomatoes or peppers. Set out in land made very rich with stable-manure and decayed forest-leaves, two feet and a half apart each way. Kept clean, and earthed up a little, and the bugs kept off while the plants are small, they will produce an abundance of fruit. There are two varieties of the purple—large prickly-stem purple, growing sometimes eight inches in diameter; and the long purple, bearing smaller, long fruit, but a large quantity, and considerably earlier than the large. Many do not like them at first; but after tasting a few times, almost all persons become very fond of them. If not properly cooked, they are not at all palatable. Although it belongs to the cook-book, yet, to save this excellent plant from condemnation, we give a recipe for cooking it. It is fit for use from one third grown, until the seeds begin to turn. Without paring, cut the fruit into slices one third of an inch thick; put it in a little water with plenty of salt, and let it stand over night, or six hours at least; take it out, and fry very soft and brown in butter or fresh lard—if not fried soft and brown, it is disagreeable. Salt, ashes, and bonedust, or superphosphate of lime, are the best manures, as more than two thirds of the fruit is made up of potash, soda, and phosphates, as shown by chemical analysis.