This is a hardy plant from Southern Europe. The root in substance, or the extracted dried juice, is much used. Needs a deep, rich soil. It is propagated by cuttings of roots set out in deeply-trenched land, in rows three feet apart, and one foot in the row. Small vegetables may be grown among the plants the first year; afterward keep clear of weeds, and manure every autumn. At the end of the third year, after the leaves are dead, take up the roots and dry them thoroughly. This does well at the South. A few roots are sufficient for a family, and the demand will not be sufficient to require its culture very extensively as an article of commerce. The low price of labor in Southern Europe enables them to supply the demand cheaper than can be afforded in this country.
LIME.
This is a valuable application to the soil. For wheat it is very important, except on soil containing a large proportion of calcareous matter. Usually air-slaked, and applied as a top-dressing, or plowed or harrowed in, its effects are important. On moist, sour land, producing wild grass, it corrects the acidity, introduces other grass, and prepares the soil for cultivation. On hard, stiff lands, it has a tendency to make them friable, and keep them in a mellow condition, thus saving more than its cost, in the labor of cultivation. Very valuable in a compost heap. So much may be applied as to burn the soil and prove injurious. It will not do as a substitute for everything else. See further on "Manures."
LIME.
A fruit resembling the lemon, growing in the same climate, but of smaller size. It is used for the same purposes as the lemon, but is not so valuable. Preserved green, it is highly esteemed. It is cultivated as the orange and lemon, needing the same protection in cold climates. To preserve all these from destruction by insects, wash them in a strong decoction of bitter or offensive herbs, or with whale-oil soap-suds; tobacco is very effectual. These remedies are useful on all fruit-trees.
LOCATION.
This is important to everything we cultivate. But, as everything can not have the best location, we should study it with reference to those things most affected by it, especially fruits. Fruits escape late frosts when growing near rills or small brooks. Orchards near the shores of bodies of water—as on Lake Erie about Cleveland, Ohio—bear luxuriantly when all fruit a few miles back is cut off by late frosts. On the summits of hills, fruits escape late frosts, when they are all cut off in the valleys below. On the Ohio river above Cincinnati, peaches are very liable to destruction by late frosts. We have seen them all frozen through in one night, and turned black the next day, in the month of May, after they had grown to the size of marrowfat-peas. One season, when there were no peaches in any other locality within a hundred miles, we knew an orchard, on a Kentucky hill, so high and steep, that it took miles of winding around the hill, to ascend it with a team. Those trees were perfectly loaded with peaches, that sold on the tree at four dollars per bushel, and in Cincinnati market at seven to eight dollars. In Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia, there are such hills, that may be turned to more valuable account than any of the rest of their land, that are not now considered good for anything—even for sheep-pastures. The same is true in the hilly parts of all the states. Good fruit of some kind will grow on them all, every year.
LOCUST-TREES.
It will soon be a great object with American farmers to cultivate locust-trees, in all locations to which they are adapted. Even in this new world, we shall soon be dependent on cultivated timber for fence-posts, railroad-ties, and building purposes. Our native forests are rapidly disappearing, while demand for timber is as rapidly increasing. Probably no other tree is so profitable for cultivation in this country as the locust. It is of rapid growth, and hard and durable, and adapted to many uses. The second-growth locust is not so durable as the native forest-tree, as found in parts of Ohio; but, cut at a suitable age and at the right season of the year, it is as durable as white cedar, and much more valuable. The profits of the culture would be great. An acre of locust-trees fifteen or twenty years old would be worth fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. The expense of growing it, aside from the use of the land, would be trifling. The grove would afford a good place for fowls, while the blossoms would be nearly equal to white clover for honey. The limbs would make excellent wood, and the ground would need no planting for a second growth. Fortunate will be the men on the prairies of the West, and along the railroads and rivers of the land, who shall early plant fields of locust. The profits of it will greatly exceed the increase in the value of the land.