Science in Short Chapters

by W. Mattieu Williams

The multitude of savory kitchen herbs that are so sadly neglected in English cookery (especially in the food of the town artisan and clerk), all, with scarcely an exception, demand an equable climate and protection from our destructive spring frosts. These occupy very little space, less even than salads, and are wanted in such small quantities at a time, and so frequently, that the hard-worked housewife commonly neglects them altogether, rather than fetch them from the greengrocer’s in their exorbitantly small pennyworths. If she could step into the back yard, and gather her parsley, sage, thyme, winter savory, mint, marjoram, bay leaf, rosemary, etc., the dinner would become far more savory, and the demand for the alcoholic substitutes for relishing food proportionably diminished.

My strongest anticipations, however, lie in the direction of common fruits—apples, pears, cherries, plums of all kinds, peaches, nectarines, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, etc.

The most luxuriant growth of cherries, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries I have ever seen in any part of the world that I have visited, is where they might be least expected, viz., Norway; not the South of Norway merely, but more particularly in the valleys that slope from the 500 square miles of the perpetual ice desert of the Justedal down to the Sognefjord, latitude 61° to 61½°, considerably to the north of the northernmost of the Shetland Islands. The cherry and currant trees are marvelous there.

In the garden of one of the farm stations (Sande) I counted 70 fine bunches of red currants growing on six inches of one of the overladen down-hanging stems of a currant bush. Cherries are served for dessert by simply breaking off a small branch of the tree and bringing it to the table—the fruit almost as many as the leaves.

This luxuriance I attribute to two causes. First, that in that part of Norway the winter breaks up suddenly at about the beginning of June, and not until then, when night frosts are no longer possible, do the blossoms appear. It was on the 24th August that I counted the 70 bunches of ripe currants. The second cause is the absence of sparrows and other destructive small birds that devour our currants for the seeds’ sake before they ripen, and our cherries immediately on ripening. These are preceded by the bullfinches that feed on the tender hearts of the buds of most of our fruit trees. Those who believe the newspaper myths which represent such thick-billed birds eating caterpillars, should make observations and experiments for themselves as I have done.

In our canvas conservatories neither sparrows nor caterpillars, nor wasps, or other fruit-stealers will penetrate, nor will the spring frosts nip the blossoms that open out in April. All the conditions for full bearing are there fulfilled, and the ripening season, though not so intense, will be prolonged. We shall have an insular Jersey climate in London, where the mean temperature is higher than in the country around, and, if I am not quite deluded, we shall be able to grow the choicest Jersey pears, those that best ripen by hanging on the tree until the end of December, and fine peaches, which are commonly destroyed by putting forth their blossoms so early. All the hundred and one varieties of plums and damsons, greengages, etc., that can grow in temperate climates will be similarly protected from the frosts that kill their early blossoms, and the birds and the wasps that will not give them time to ripen slowly.

I have little doubt that if my project is carried out, any London householder, whether rich or poor, may indulge in delicious desserts of rich fruit all grown on the sites of their own now dirty and desolate back-yards; that if prizes be given for the most prolific branches of cherry and plum trees, gooseberry and currant bushes, the gardens of the Seven-dials and of classic St. Giles’s may carry off some of the gold medals; and that, by judicious economy of space and proper pruning of the trees, the canvas conservatories may be made not only to serve as orchard houses, but also to grow the salads, kitchen herbs, and green vegetables for cookery, under the fruit trees or close around their stems.

Among the suitable vegetables, I may name a sort of perennial spinach which yields a wonderful amount of produce on a small area. Four years ago I took the house in which I now reside, and found the garden overgrown with a weed that appeared like beet, the leaves being much larger than ordinary spinach. I tried in vain to eradicate it, then gave some leaves to my fowls. They ate them greedily. After this I had some boiled, and found that the supposed weed is an excellent spinach, which may be sown broadcast in thick patches, without any interspaces, and cut down again and again all the year round, fresh leaves springing up from the roots until the autumn, when it throws up tall flowering stems, and yields an abundant crop of seeds. I have some now, self-sown, that have survived the whole of the late severe winter, while turnip-tops, cabbages, and everything else have perished. I have sown the ordinary spinach seed in the usual manner in rows, and comparing it with the self-sown dense patches of this intruder, find the latter produces, square yard against square yard, six or eight times as much of available eatable crop.

None of my friends who are amateur gardeners know this variety; but a few days since, I called on Messrs. James Carter and Co., the wholesale seedsmen of Holborn, and described it. They gave me a packet of what they call “Perpetual spinach beet,” which, as may be seen by comparison with the seeds of those I have here of my own growing, is probably the same. Messrs. Carter and Co. tell me that the plant is very little known, and the seed scarce from want of cultivation and demand. I therefore step so far aside to describe and recommend it as specially suited for obtaining large crops on small areas.[33]

I also recommend a mode of growing cabbages that I have found very profitable, viz., to sow the seed broadcast in richly manured beds or patches and leave the plants crowding together; cut them down while very young, without destroying the centre bud; let them sprout again and again. They thus yield a succession of crops, every leaf of which is eatable. This, instead of transplanting and growing large plants, which, however desirable for sale in the market, are far less profitable for home use. Celery may be grown in like manner, and cut down young and green for boiling.