Part 41

The fact that a seed is a variety different from all others is no good reason for retaining or cultivating it; it must, in SOME respects, surpass others now in use, or it only encumbers the garden. What is the use of ten varieties of peas ripening at the same time of one size, and differing from each other in not one assignable particular? When a catalogue enumerates fifty varieties of cabbage, or pea, or bean, are we to believe that each of the fifty has a virtue peculiar to itself? If not, if two-thirds of them have no merit which is not found, and found in a higher degree, in the one-third they have no business to be retained. Let the one-third, stand and the rest be erased. We regard a very fat catalogue as we do a very fat man—all the worse for its obesity. In comparing catalogues, we are not left as much without an authoritative standard of judgment, in respect to a proper extension of the number of varieties, as might at first appear. English gardening has been carried to such a degree of excellence, both as an art and as a science, that we may regard the deliberate judgment of the best gardeners as law on this subject. When Loudon published his invaluable “Encyclopedia of Gardening,” he was permitted by the London Horticultural Society to avail himself of the services of the distinguished Monro in the department of culinary vegetables.

Let us compare the catalogues of three first rate seedsmen as it respects a multiplication of varieties, with Mr. Monro’s selections:

+--------+--------+-----+------+----+------+-------+----+-----+-------+ | |Cucumber|Melon|Celery|Beet|Turnip|Cabbage|Peas|Beans|Lettuce| +--------+--------+-----+------+----+------+-------+----+-----+-------+ |Landreth| 2 | 15 | 2 | 5 | 9 | 10 | 7 | 15 | 8 | | +--------+-----+------+----+------+-------+----+-----+-------+ |Breck | 9 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 22 | 18 | 20 | 24 | 12 | | +--------+-----+------+----+------+-------+----+-----+-------+ |Prince | 17 | 25 | 8 | 9 | 30 | 49 | 47 | 61 | 56 | +--------+--------+-----+------+----+------+-------+----+-----+-------+

Mr. Monro names nineteen kinds of peas only, instead of forty-seven: twenty-two kinds of beans instead of sixty-one; seven varieties of turnip instead of twenty-two, or, worse yet, thirty; fourteen sorts of lettuce, instead of fifty-two.

To the uninitiated a catalogue may look meagre with only eight kinds of lettuce instead of fifty; fifteen beans instead of sixty-one, etc., but these corpulent catalogues make meagre pockets, except in the case of the seedsman. A much greater latitude of varieties is allowable in a nursery catalogue than in a seedsman’s list. But in even these there is a disposition to extravagance which needs to be corrected. Where the disproportion of knowledge between the buyers and seller is so great as it is, and for some time, must be, in horticultural matters, it becomes nurserymen and seedsmen who are honest (and we have many such, and they are increasing)—those who regard their business as an honorable branch of science, as well as a proper means of livelihood, and who hope to gain a high reputation, even more than they do wealth, it becomes such to render the lists SELECT; and while the monstrously bloated catalogues of boasting and avaricious men continue to perplex and deceive the unwary, let all intelligent cultivators sustain those who rely on the quality rather than quantity of their articles.

GARDEN SEEDS.

Good seeds are the very first requisite for a good garden; soil and culture cannot make good crops out of bad seed.

1. As a general rule, buy your seeds. The reasons for it are so many and so good, that you will certainly do it, unless economy prevent; but it is better to economize elsewhere.

In the first place, seed-raising is a delicate business; and, for many reasons, will be better done by those who make it their business, than by those who do not. A reputable seedsman never dreams of raising, himself, all the seeds which he sells. For example, one sort of seed is let out to a farmer who contracts to raise it in a given soil and manner, and at a distance from all other seeds. One man raises the beet seed—another man, very often hundreds of miles distant, another sort. Peas are sent to Vermont and to Canada, where the pea-bug does not infest them. Some seeds, for which this climate is not favorable, are imported from Italy, from Guernsey—just as flowering bulbs are from Holland. We suppose this to be true of Landreth, Thornburn, Prince, Bliss, Risley, etc. In cases where seeds are raised upon the premises of the seedsman, they are put on different parts of the farm, as far apart as possible.

Those precautions are indispensable to the procuration of the best seeds of esculent vegetables. Species of the same genus, with open flowers, are so easily crossed, that, if grown contiguously, they cannot be kept pure. All cucurbitaceous plants, such as squashes, pumpkins, melons, cucumbers, gourds, etc., will mix and degenerate if planted even in the same garden. Let any one who wishes to see how it is done, watch the bee covering itself with golden pollen as it searches for honey in the cells of the flower, and darting off to another, mingling the fertilizing powder of the two. In a single morning, cucumbers will be mixed with each other, and with canteloupes; squashes will be crossed, and in the next generation will show it. Where the organs of flowers are protected, as in the pea, bean, etc., by a floral envelope, insects do not mix their pollen. I have never known pure beet seed raised in a private garden which had more than the single kind in it—or when another garden was near which had other sorts.

We prefer, generally, northern seeds to those raised elsewhere. A mere change of soil and climate is often advantageous to seeds. But besides this, greater care and skill are usually employed at the north in producing sound and safe seeds.

We can recommend, from repeated trials, the seeds of Risley, Chatauque county, N. Y., and of Mr. Breck of Boston. Landreth of Philadelphia has a high reputation; so have the veteran Thorburn of John Street, and the enterprising house of B. K. Bliss & Sons of Park Place, New York.

2. Some seeds retain their power of germination to an astonishing length of time, as will appear from facts stated by Prof. Lindley:

“Not to speak of the doubtful instances of seeds taken from the Pyramids having germinated, melons have been known to grow at the age of 40 years, kidney beans at 100, sensitive-plant at 60, rye at 40; and there are now growing, in the garden of the Horticultural Society, raspberry plants raised from seeds 1600 or 1700 years old.” (See “Introduction to Botany,” ed. 3, p. 358.)

But in selecting seeds, fresh ones should be had if possible. Where, however, the vegetable is cultivated for the sake of its flower, or its fruit, it is sometimes better to select old seed. Thus balsamines (the touch-me-not) and the cucumber, squash and melon tribe do better on seeds three or four years old; for fresh seeds produce plants whose growth will be too luxuriant for producing fruit; whereas from old seed, the plants have less vigor of growth but a greater tendency to fruit well.

We insert a table, exhibiting the years which different seeds will retain their vitality.

TIME THAT SEEDS WILL KEEP.

YEARS. Asparagus 4 or 13 Balm 2 Basil 1 or 3 Beans 1 or 2 Beets 8 or 10 Borage 2 Cabbage 6 or 8 Carrot 1 or 7 Celery 6 or 8 Corn 2 or 3 Cress 2 Cucumber 8 or 10 Caraway 4 Fennel 6 Garlic 3 Leek 3 or 4 Lettuce 3 or 4 Mangel Wurtzel 8 or 10 Marjoram 4 Melon 8 or 10 Mustard 3 or 4 Nasturtium 2 or 3 Onion 3 Parsley 5 or 6 Parsnip 1 Pea 2 or 3 Pumpkin 8 or 10 Pepper 5 or 6 Radish 6 or 8 Rue 3 Ruta Baga 4 Salsify 2 Savory 3 or 4 Spinage 3 or 4 Squash 8 or 10 Turnip 3 or 4

FARMERS’ GARDENS.

Farmers are apt to have very inferior gardens. The idea is, that in the spring they have no time; the farm crops are of more importance. In consequence of such a decision, no garden will be had unless the housewife is willing to be gardenwife too. At her importunity at length one horse is put to the plow and the garden is broken up—say four inches deep. Possibly the boy is allowed to throw up the beds, but very often even this is left to woman’s hand. She has to hunt up seed; peppers are pulled off from the ceiling and eviscerated; drawers are ransacked for the bag of radish seed or the paper of lettuce seed; the old broken pitcher is taken from its long seclusion on the top of the cupboard and emptied of its beans and peas; withal a few flower seeds are added to grace the stock—four o’clocks; poppies, marigolds, and touch-me-nots. Our gardenwife is not so admirable for lily hands or fair face, or fairy form. She cannot walk over dewy flowers without crushing them, as can a true heroine; for her specific gravity gives evidence of a good constitution, health and habits.

Her praise is, that in a new country where woman unquestionably suffers the most of hardships, she is cheerful, contented, industrious, enterprising, and, like women the world over, seeks to draw around herself objects of taste and beauty to decorate and cheer her husband’s and her children’s home; and, if necessary, to do it by the field-labor of her own hands. We could not forbear saying so much of the meritorious gardener of more than half the rural gardens in the West.

The seeds all mustered, she may be seen, after the breakfast things are all done up, busy with spade and hoe, hiding her treasures. And thus she does it. First a liberal suit of onion beds—savory vegetables to the tongue and most unsavory to the nose—making it almost impossible for these respectable neighbors to live together in peace, one or other of them being in bad odor with the other. Next, a seed-bed full of cabbages—significant to the imagination of cold-slaw, sourcrout, etc. A good row of peas, and a few hills of running beans are added. The alleys are ruffled with bush beans; a few early potatoes, some corn for roasting-ears, with a slender bed for beets, complete the stock of esculents. But sage, and summer savory, and thyme, and rue, and sweet marjoram, tansy, boneset and wormwood are attended to; a part for stuffing ducks and chickens—and the others for curing those who have been too much stuffed with them. The garden yields in due time its first fruits; the potatoes come and go, the corn is early plucked, lettuce shoots up its seed-stalk, peas render their tribute and grow sere, beans rattle in the pod, and before August her work is done and her garden forsaken except a small retinue of flowers, which are nursed to the last. Weeds now make up for lost time, and in a few weeks a weedy forest hides every trace of cultivation. This is not a fancy sketch; we have been far from drawing a picture from the worst specimens; it is a fair average case.

Our business is, not to quarrel with the farmer, but to suggest a better plan for his garden. We saw the plan stated some years ago; where, we have forgotten, but think well of it. It is simply this: let the garden be an oblong—say three times as long as it is broad—and cultivate it with the plow. Instead of having beds, let all seeds be planted in rows running the whole length of the garden. For example, begin with one row of beets—or more if wanted; next a row or rows of carrots, parsnips, cabbages, potatoes, corn, and all about three feet apart. The same system should be followed for small fruits—currants, gooseberries, strawberries, raspberries, etc.—and it will have this advantage over common gardens, that the bushes will have sun and air on all sides, and be more fruitful and more healthy for it. The whole garden, thus arranged, can be kept in order with very little labor. A single-horse plow will dress between the rows of the whole garden in a very little time and save all hand-hoeing. The hand-weeding in the row may be performed by women or children.

In large towns ground is scarce and labor abundant. Gardens, therefore, are properly laid out for economy of space. In the country the reverse is true; land is abundant but labor scarce and dear; of course gardens should be laid out not to save room, but to economize labor. The plan suggested will save labor, improve the garden, and take from the wife the drudgery of the spade and hoe.

EARLY DAYS OF SPRING.

If the soil be thrown up during the open weather into ridges, an immense number of insects will be unburrowed and destroyed; stiff clayey soils will be rendered more crumbling and mellow by exposure to frost. If advantage is taken of the weather to haul manure, let it be stacked up, and a little earth thrown over it, else the volatile and most valuable portions will escape. Ashes may be spread over the garden; a small portion of refuse salt will benefit the ground, and may be sown now. Clear the ground of all vines, stalks, haulm. If you have flowering bulbs, cover slightly with coarse manure—they will not be so much tried by the changes of temperature and moisture, and will flower stronger for it. Bright, dry days afford a fine time for going to the woods and cutting poles for your beans, stakes for your trees and dahlias, brush for peas, etc. While you are about it, collect moss from old logs, and put away in the barn or shed to cover the ground in summer where roses and shrubs have been newly set out, and require to be kept moist. If not done before, put two or three forks full of coarse green manure about tender shrubs—Noisette and China roses. Freezing and thawing at the crown of the roots, destroys them oftener than anything else.

On mild days when the earth is open, sow lettuce seed in a warm corner, beat it gently with the back of the shovel, and cover it slightly with fine earth or old crumbling manure. You will have lettuce ten days earlier for your trouble. Pepper-grass and radishes may be sowed in like manner.

☞ Let alone the knife and saw. Your vines and trees will not be benefited by any pruning at this season.