The boys are operating on the sweet apple trees this season, in hopes of having fruit next year, by changing the bearing year of part of the trees.
| VOL. I.] | MAY, 1878. | [NO. 5. |
HORTICULTURAL GOSSIP. II.
BY LINUS WOLVERTON, GRIMSBY, ONT.
The term horticulture means garden culture, or the art of cultivating gardens, and I notice that English books and Philadelphia magazines seem to confine it to gardens in which flowers and vegetables, or perhaps small fruits are grown. But here, and in Western New York, the word is used in a wider sense, to embrace the culture of fruit in general, as well as of flowers and vegetables; and it seems to me justly, for the successful growth of apples, pears, and peaches implies that careful and rich cultivation, as well as that beauty which belongs to the idea of a garden.
The Northern Spy Apple.—In the month of March of the current year I opened a barrel of this fruit. It was a perfect luxury. So crisp and juicy, so beautiful for dessert, so delicious for cooking, so attractive for market; surely it is destined to hold the first place among our Winter apples. True, the Roxbury Russet keeps longer, but I had rather for a longer interval preserve the remembrance of the superb Spy, than spin out the season a little longer with the dry tough-skinned Roxbury Russet.
Most growers are too eager for the fruit to wait from twelve to fourteen years for the Spy, but I agree with J. J. Thomas, who says “it is worth waiting for;” and when once it begins bearing, it yearly rewards the patient husbandman with loads of beautiful fruit.