Part 2

BROOKLYN, June 1, 1859.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Political Economy of the Apple 1 A few Flowers easily raised 16 Flower-Farming 21 A Letter from the Farm 25 The Cost of Flowers 28 Haying 31 The Value of Robins 34 Sounds of Trees 39 Unveiled Nonsense 43 Natural Order of Flowers 46 Roses 49 Chestnuts 51 Green Peas 55 Hens 58 Farming 60 Gardening under Difficulties 63 Corn 66 Dandelions 69 How to beautify Homes 72 Birch and Aspen 75 Autumn 78 Plant Trees! 81 Farewell to “Summer Rest” 84 Preliminary 87 Our Creed 88 Almanac for the Year 89 Educated Farmers 98 An Acre of Words about Aker 101 Farmer’s Library 105 Nine Mistakes 107 Agricultural Societies 108 Shiftless Tricks 111 Electro Culture 114 Single-Crop Farming 117 Improved Breeds of Hogs and Cattle 119 Absorbent Qualities of Flour 122 Portrait of an Anti-Book Farmer 124 Good Breeds of Cows 128 Cutting and curing Grass 131 Country and City 133 Lime upon Wheat 134 Culture of Hops 136 White Clover 138 Plowing Corn 139 Clean out your Cellars 142 When is Haying over? 144 Laying down Land to Grass 145 Theory of Manure 149 Fodder for Cattle 151 The Science of Bad Butter 153 Cincinnati, the Queen City 157 Care of Animals in Winter 161, 243 Winter Nights for Reading 163 Feathers 163 Nail up your Bugs 165 Ashes and their Use 168 Hard Times 170 Gypsum 171 Acclimating a Plow 171 Scour your Plows bright 173 Plow till it is Dry and plow till it is Wet 174 Stirring the Soil 175 Subsoil Plowing 176 Fire-Blight and Winter Killing 177 Winter Talk 179 “Shut your Mouth” 181 Spring Work on the Farm 182 Spring Work in the Garden 185, 292 Fall Work in the Garden 190 Guarding Cherry-trees from Cold 191 Shade Trees 192, 252 A Plea for Health and Floriculture 195 Keeping Young Pigs in Winter 198 Sweet Potatoes 199 Management of Bottom Lands 199 Cultivation of Wheat 202 Pleasures of Horticulture 214 Practical Use of Leaves 215 Spring Work for Public-spirited Men 218 Farmers and Farm Scenes in the West 220 Ornamental Shrubs 224 Gooseberries 227 Pulling off Potato Blossoms 229 Blading and topping Corn 230 Maple-Sugar 231 Lettuce 237 Geological Definitions 238 Draining Wet Lands 240 O dear! shall we ever be done Lying? 242 Deep Planting 245 Corn and Millet for Fodder 245 Seed Saving 246 Rhubarb 248, 286 Peas 250 Hot-beds 253 Original Recipes 254 Cooking Vegetables 256 Farmers, take a Hint 260 Mixing Paint and laying it on 262 Garden Weeds 267 Lucerne 269 Family Government 270 List of Flowers, Seeds, and Fruits 271 Garden Seeds 274 Farmers’ Gardens 277 Early Days of Spring 279 Parlor Flowers 280 A Salt Recipe 281 Culture of Celery 282 Sun-flower Seed 290 Rich and Poor Land 294 Getting ready for Winter 295 Esculent Vegetables 297 Field Root Crops 303 Cultivation of Fruit-trees 304 A List of Choice Fruits 316 The Nursery Business 319 The Breeding of Fruits 322 Pruning Orchards 327 Slitting the Bark of Trees 330 Downing’s Fruits of America 332 Letter from A. J. Downing 339 Attention to Orchards 344 Wine and Horticulture 346 Do Varieties of Fruit run out? 349 Strawberries 353, 359, 364 Raspberries, Gooseberries, Currants 364 Spring Work in the Orchard 367 Grapes and Grape Vines 372, 373 Autumnal Management of Fruit-trees 374 Pears grafted upon the Apple Stock 376 Seedlings from Budded Peaches 378 Care of Peach-trees 381 Renovating Peach-trees 382 An Apologue or Apple-logue 384 Select List of Apples 385 Origin of some Varieties of Fruit 401 The Quince 403 Cutting and keeping Grafts 404 Frost Blight 405 Seedling Fruits 407 Time for Pruning 410 Plums and their Enemies 413 Root Grafting 417 Blight and Insects 419 Apples for Hogs 424 The Flower Garden 425 Preparation of Seed for Sowing 429 Sowing Flower Seeds—Transplanting 431 Parlor Plants and Flowers in Winter 432 Protecting Plants in Winter 439 To preserve Dahlia Roots 440 Hedges 441 Watering Trees, etc. 443 Labels for Trees 444 Transplanting Evergreens 445 Flowers, Ladies, and Angels 446 Horticultural Curiosities 447 The Corn Crop 451 Potato Crop 460 Potting Garden Plants for Winter Use 468 Mary Howitt’s Use of Flowers 469 What are Flowers good for? 470 The Blight in the Pear-tree 471 Progress of Horticulture in Indiana 489 Browne’s Poultry Yard 495 Close of the Year 497

LATE PAPERS.

POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE APPLE.

But who ever would have thought of such a place for vineyards? Yet, Iona became the very Jerusalem of grape-vines. Dr. C. W. Grant, formerly of Newburgh, purchased the island, and, adopting the then new grape,—the Delaware,—commenced propagating it for commercial purposes. It may be fairly said that no man in America ever gave to grape culture a greater impulse than Dr. Grant. Abundant sales at length brought in abundant revenues. But his ideas expanded with his means, and outran them.

The island was to become another Paradise. Here the magnolia was to be propagated in such numbers that every man in America could have it in his yard, holding white cups filled with perfume to his windows. The rhododendron was to be sent forth to every farm. New grapes were originated. Every year developed its own marvel. But whether it was pear, Downing’s mulberry, grape, or ornamental tree, the good democratic heart of Dr. Grant intended no narrower field than the continent. Men were to be raised to a higher level by familiarity with better and better grapes. The taste was to be refined. Every creature under the western heavens was to sit under his own grape-vine, and not under one alone, but a whole vineyard of them.

Health failed. Business got tangled. The kind doctor sold out. He is gone from his vineyards. The island remains. One of these days, in the hands of some one who unites taste and thrift with abundant means, it will become a marvel of beauty.

But it will hardly have a pleasanter day than when, in 1864, were gathered there two score or more of ladies and gentlemen,—not a few of them famous in art, in literature, in music, in pomology, and in sanguine plans of fruit culture,—for a good time. Among the contributions to the general amusement, I was appointed Orator to discourse upon The Apple, and the address was to have been published, together with minutes of the proceedings, other speeches, and various interesting matter. But years passed on without progress toward publication. What has become of other things I know not, but this apple-talk has been fished up and saved. I fear it will never again be as fresh or as powerful as in its first estate. For there now hangs upon my cellar wall a huge pan, lacking but a few inches of three feet in diameter, upon which the ladies who had heard the address established and perfected an apple-pie,—sent to me for New Year’s Day of 1865,—of so rare a spirit that every one of the hundreds who tasted it declared it to be as good as it was large. Alas! the pan remains, and the poetry which came singing its merits; but the pie,—where is it? So, too, the island of the Hudson stands secure; but where are the joyous people that thronged it on that autumn day?]

THE ADDRESS.

I am to discourse of the apple to an audience, many of whom know much more about it than I do, and all of them full as much. It does not, on that account, follow that I should not speak. What a terrible blow would fall upon all professions if a teacher should be forbidden to speak upon things of which he knew nothing, and to an audience who knew more about them than he! One large part of the duty of a teacher is to remind his hearers of how much they know, and tempt them to a better use of their knowledge. Instruction is one thing, and important in its place; but the inspiration of men to a good use of the things that they already know is far more needed.

While the character of the ladies and gentlemen present makes it proper for me to hide, with due modesty, my knowledge of the apple in the department of culture, there is what may be called the Political Economy of the Apple, by which I mean the apple in its relation to domestic comfort and commerce; and on that subject I think I can speak, if not to edification, at least without fear of being tracked and cornered.

The apple is, beyond all question, the American fruit. It stands absolutely alone and unapproachable, grapes notwithstanding. Originating in another hemisphere, neither in its own country, nor in any other to which it has been introduced, has it flourished as in America. It is conceded in Europe that, for size, soundness, flavor, and brilliancy of coloring, the American apple stands first,—a long way first.

But it is American in another sense. This is a land in which diffusion is the great law. This arises from our institutions, and from the character which they have imprinted upon our people. In Europe, certain classes, having by their intelligence and wealth and influence the power to attract all things to themselves, set the current from the center toward the surface. In America, the simple doctrines that the common people are the true source of political power, that the government is directly responsible to them, and therefore that moral culture, intelligence, and training in politics are indispensable to the common people, on whom every state is to rest safely, have wrought out such results that in all departments of justice and truth, as much as in politics, there is a tendency toward the popularizing of everything, and learning, or art, or any department of culture, is made to feel the need of popularity; a word which is very much despised by classicists, but which may be used in a sense so large as to make it respectable again. Things that reach after the universal, that include in them all men in their better and nobler nature, are in a proper sense popular; and in this country, amusement and refinement and wealth itself, first or last, are obliged to do homage to the common people, and so to be popular. Nor is it otherwise in respect to horticulture. Of fruits, I think this, above all others, may be called the true democratic fruit. There is some democracy that I think must have sprung from the first apple. Of all fruits, no other can pretend to vie with the apple as the fruit of the common people. This arises from the nature of the tree and from the nature of the fruit.

First, as to the tree. It is so easy of propagation, that any man who is capable of learning how to raise a crop of corn can learn how to plant, graft or bud, transplant, and prune an apple-tree,—and then eat the apples. It is a thoroughly healthy and hardy tree; and that under more conditions and under greater varieties of stress than perhaps any other tree. It is neither dainty nor dyspeptic. It can bear high feeding and put up with low feeding. It is not subject to gout and scrofula, as plums are; to eruptions and ruptures, as the cherry is; or to apoplexy, as the pear is. The apple-tree may be pampered, and may be rendered effeminate in a degree; but this is by artificial perversion. It is naturally tough as an Indian, patient as an ox, and fruitful as the Jewish Rachel. The apple-tree is among trees what the cow is among domestic animals in northern zones, or what the camel of the Bedouin is.

And, like all thoroughly good-natured, obliging, patient things, it is homely. For beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. (I am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be some dissent; but this is the orthodox view. It seems as if the evil incident to human nature had struck in, with handsome people, leaving the surface fair; while the homely are so because the virtue within has purged and expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. Have you never seen a maiden that lovers avoided because she was not comely, who became, nevertheless, and perhaps on that account, the good angel of the house, the natural intercessor for afflicted children, the one to stay with the lonely when all the gay had gone a-gadding after pleasure, the soft-handed nurse, the story-teller and the book-reader to the whole brood of eager eyes and hungry ears in the nursery; in short, the child’s ideal of endless good-nature, self-sacrifice, and intercessorship, the Virgin Mary of the household,—mother of God to their love, in that she brings down to them the brightest conceptions of what God may peradventure be? And yet, such are stigmatized old maids, though more fruitful of everything that is good (except children) than all others. One fault only do we find with them,—that they are in danger of perverting our taste, and leading us to call homeliness beautiful. All this digression, ladies and gentlemen, is on account of my dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up,—a woman so good and modest that she will spend ages in heaven wondering how it happened that she ever got there, and that the angels will always be wondering why she was not there from all eternity.

I have said, with some digressions, that the apple-tree is homely; but it is also hardy, and not only in respect to climate. It is almost indifferent to soil and exposure. We should as soon think of coddling an oak-tree or a chestnut; we should as soon think of shielding from the winter white pine or hemlock, as an apple-tree. If there is a lot too steep for the plow or two rocky for tools, the farmer dedicates it to an apple orchard. Nor do the trees betray his trust. Yet, the apple loves the meadows. It will thrive in sandy loams, and adapt itself to the toughest clay. It will bear as much dryness as a mullein stalk, and as much wet, almost, as a willow. In short, it is a genuine democrat. It can be poor, while it loves to be rich; it can be plain, although it prefers to be ornate; it can be neglected, notwithstanding it welcomes attention. But, whether neglected, abused, or abandoned, it is able to take care of itself, and to be fruitful of excellences. That is what I call being democratic.

The apple-tree is the common people’s tree, moreover, because it is the child of every latitude and every longitude on this continent. It will grow in Canada and Maine. It will thrive in Florida and Mexico. It does well on the Atlantic slope; and on the Pacific the apple is portentous. Newton sat in an orchard, and an apple, plumping down on his head, started a train of thought which opened the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size of the apples there would have saved him the trouble of much thinking thereafter, perhaps, opening the heavens to him, and not to us. Wherever Indian corn will grow, the apple will thrive; and wherever timothy-grass will ripen its seed, the apple will exist fruitfully.

Nor is the tree unworthy of special mention on account of health and longevity. It is subject to fewer diseases than almost any tree of our country. The worms that infest it are more easily destroyed than those upon the currant or the rose. The leaf is subject to blight in so small a degree, that not one farmer in a hundred ever thinks of it. The trunk is seldom winter-killed. It never cracks. It has no trouble, as the cherry does, in unbuckling the old bark and getting rid of it. The borer is the only important enemy; and even this is a trifle, if you compare the labor required to destroy it with the pains which men willingly take to secure a crop of potatoes. Acre for acre, an apple orchard will, on an average of years, produce more than half as many bushels of fruit as a potato-field,—will it not? And yet, in plowing and planting and after-plowing and hoeing and digging, the potato requires at least five times the annual labor which is needed by the apple. An acre of apple-trees can be kept clean of all enemies and diseases with half the labor of once hoeing a crop of potatoes. And if you have borers it is your own fault, and you ought to be bored!

The health of the apple-tree is so great that farmers never think of examining their orchards for disease, any more than they do cedar posts or chestnut rails. And the great longevity of the apple-tree attests its good constitution. Two hundred years it sometimes reaches. I have a tree on my own place in Peekskill that cannot be less than that. Two ladies, one about eighty years of age, called upon us about three years ago, saying that they were brought up on that farm, and inquiring if the old apple-tree yet lived. They said that in their childhood it was called the old apple-tree, and was then a patriarch. It must now be a Methuselah. And, not to recur to it again, I may say that it is probably the largest recorded apple-tree of the world. I read in no work of any tree whose circumference is greater than twelve or thirteen feet. This morning I measured the Peekskill apple-tree, and found that six inches above the ground it was fourteen feet and six inches, and, at about four feet, or the spring of the limbs, fourteen feet and ten inches. I am sorry to add that the long-suffering old tree gives unmistakable signs of yielding to the infirmities of age. The fruit is sweet, but not especially valuable, except for stock. I do not expect to live to see any of my other trees attain to the size and age of this solitary lingerer of other centuries! I cannot help reverencing a tree whose leaves have trembled to the cannonading of the guns of our Revolution, which yielded fruit to Putnam’s soldiers when that hill was a military post, and under whose shadow Washington himself—without any stretch of probability—may have walked.

I ought not to omit the good properties of the apple-tree for fuel and cabinet-work. I have for five autumns kept up the bright fire required by the weather in an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace, using apple-wood, procured from old trees pruned or cut up wholly; and, when it is seasoned, I esteem it nearly as good as hickory, fully as good as maple, and far better than seasoned beech. I have also for my best bureau one of apple-wood. It might be mistaken for cherry. It is fine-grained, very hard, solid as mahogany, and grows richer with every year of age.

In Europe, the streets and roads are often shaded by fruit trees, the mulberry and the cherry being preferred. In some parts, the public are allowed to help themselves freely. When the fruit of any tree is to be reserved, a wisp of straw is placed around it, which suffices. Upright-growing apple-trees might be employed, with pears and cherries, in our streets and roads, and by their very number, and their abundance of fruit, might be taken away one motive of pilfering from juvenile hands. He must be a preordained thief who will go miles to steal that which he can get in broad daylight, without reproach, by his door. One way to stop stealing is to give folks enough without it.

I have thus far spoken of the apple tree. I now pass to the fruit,—to the apple itself. The question whether it sprang from the wild crab I do not regard as yet settled. It is not known from any historical evidence to have had that origin. You cannot prove that this, that, or the other man, of any age or nation, planted the seed and brought forward the fruit. Nor am I aware that any man has conducted experiments on it like those of Van Mons on the pear, or those which Dr. Grant has made on the grape that is cultivated in this country, to show that it sprang from the wild grape of Europe. Until that is done, it will be only a theory, a probable fact, but not a fact proved. And, by the way, it might be worth some man’s while, at his leisure, to take the seeds of the American wild grape, and see if, by any horticultural Sunday school, he can work them up into good Christian vines.

The apple comes nearer to universal uses than any other fruit of the world. Is there another that has such a range of season? It begins in July, and a good cellar brings the apple round into July again, yet unshrunk, and in good flavor. It belts the year. What other fruit, except in the tropics, where there is no winter, and where there are successive growths, can do that?

It is a luxury, too. Kinds may be had so tender, so delicate, and, as Dr. Grant—the General Grant of the vineyards—would say, so refreshing, that not the pear, even, would dare to vie with it, or hope to surpass it. The Vanderveer of the Hudson River, the American Golden Russet, need not, in good seasons, well ripened, fear a regiment of pears in pomological convention, even in the city of Boston. It may not rival the melting qualities of the peach, eating which one knows not whether he is eating or drinking. But the peach is the fruit of a day,—ephemeral; and it is doubtful whether one would carry through the year any such relish as is experienced for a few weeks. It is the peculiarity of the apple that it never wearies the taste. It is to fruit what wheaten bread is to grains. It is a life-long relish. You may be satisfied with apples, but never cloyed. Do you remember your boyhood feats? I was brought up in a great old-fashioned house, with a cellar under every inch of it, through which an ox-cart might have been wheeled after all the bins were full. In this cellar, besides potatoes, beets, and turnips, were stored every year some hundred bushels of apples,—the Rhode Island Greening, the Roxbury Russet, the Russet round the Stem, as it was called, and the Spitzenberg; not daintily picked, but shaken down; not in aristocratic barrels set up in rows, but ox-carts full; not handled softly, but poured from baskets into great bins, as we poured potatoes into their resting-place. If they bruised and rotted, let them. We had enough and to spare. Two seasons of picking over apples—a sort of grand assizes—put the matter all right. In all my boyhood I never dreamed of apples as things possible to be stolen. So abundant were they, so absolutely open to all comers,—who went down into the cellar by the inside stairs instead of the outside steps,—that we should as soon have thought of being cautioned against taking turnips, or asking leave to take a potato. Apples were as common as air. And that was early in December and January; for I noticed that the sun was no more fond than I was of staying out a great while on those Litchfield hills, but ran in early to warm his fingers, as I did mine. When the day was done, and the candles were lighted, and the supper was out of the way, we all gathered about the great kitchen fire; and soon after George or Henry had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A boy’s hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack butterflies with, a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring up apples in. And a big-headed boy’s old felt hat was not stingy in its quantities; and when its store ended, the errand could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing young lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of dyspepsia than the neighborhood mill, through whose body passed thousands of bushels of corn, leaving it no fatter at the end of the year than at the beginning. Cloyed with apples? To eat an apple is to want to eat another. We tire of cherries, of peaches, of strawberries, of figs, of grapes, (I say it with reverence in this presence!) but never of apples. Nay, when creature comforts fail, and the heart—hopeless voyager on the troubled sea of life—is sick, apples are comforters; or, wherefore is it written:—

“As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons,”—undoubtedly of cider!—“comfort me with apples; for I am sick of love.”

If this is the cure of love, we may the better understand why the popular instinct should have resorted to the apple-tree as a cure for ambition, singing,