OUR NATIVE GRAPE.
There has recently been issued a treatise by this title, on grapes and grape culture by Charles Mitzky, of this city. Its main feature is the very full list of hardy grapes cultivated in this country with their description, origin and history as far as known, and numerous illustrations and colored plates. Over eight hundred varieties are described, thus bringing together nearly all that have so far been produced or made public. The work also contains chapters on planting, pruning, cultivating, training, fertilizers, diseases and noxious insects and their remedies, harvesting, storing, marketing and a brief account of wine making, in fact almost everything of interest to the grape-grower is here treated, some of the chapters being contributed by prominent scientists and horticulturists.
THE PLANT BED.
The enterprise in getting out the artistic and truly beautiful Floral Guide, and sending it into our homes during the inclement weather of these winter days, when we have time to sit by the fireside and study its pages, enables us, against the time to plant seeds, to know exactly what we would like to have among vegetables and flowers. This beautiful compendium of vegetables and flowers came as a herald of the new year, and as the new year seems always to bring the spring season near, so it naturally fills the mind with the pleasurable anticipations of the task of seed planting.
The plant beds are little squares made of very rich soil, black and friable, with sand intermixed, on the sunny side of the garden palings that have a solid base board, or a wall or house, to afford protection. The rich soil makes a good bottom heat for forcing gentle growth. My old colored mammy, who always saved the garden seeds and gave them out as needed and directed the gardening operations on the plantation, had the plant beds made on each side of the garden gate, one set of little beds for early vegetable plants, the other for flowers. The soil thoroughly pulverized, and the seeds planted thickly, it is surprising how they would spring into life, and the rapidity with which they would grow. Thick planting of seeds is only to be advised when they are intended for transplanting. I have seen the cabbage bed so full of plants that it seemed as if two plants or more had sprung from every seed. Early and late cabbage, the rows labeled, can be planted in the same bed; lettuce, pepper grass, parsley and radishes in another, taking care to sow the radish seed thinly as the plants will not transplant well, and the radishes must be used for the table taken from the place where the seeds are sown. Cabbages grow better when the small plants are transplanted to the large bed where they are to stand for their season’s growth.
After these early vegetable plants have been set out, later on tomato and egg plant seeds can be sown in the same beds. Nothing is gained by forcing these latter, for in my experience certain vegetable and flower seeds do better planted late, as the heat of summer is needed for their development.
The plant bed can be made and planted early in the season. Here in the South many persons plant in “old Christmas,” the first twelve days after New Year, but February or March is better, I believe.
The flowers that do so well in company with these vegetables are sweet alyssum, nemophila, mignonette, snapdragon, candytuft, verbena, sanvitalia and petunias. Japanese pinks and Marguerite carnations, Phlox Drummondii and poppies are better planted where they are to bloom as they do not transplant well. Sweet alyssum and nemophila begin to bloom when about an inch high, and can be transplanted at any stage of growth, even in bloom; they are sweet little flowers that make lovely borders, cute little jars, beautiful hanging baskets, and when planted in the sides of jars that contain large plants, hang over the sides in masses of bloom. The speckled pretty little blue nemophila always makes me think of birds’ nests full of speckled eggs in the cool green grass. Sweet alyssum I love too well to write about; it would sound like exaggeration.