Part 45

Every one may save seed for himself, as it will not, if well cultivated, degenerate. It is a biennial, and roots may either be set out, or left standing where they were planted. When the seed begins to feather out it must be immediately gathered, or like the dandelion or thistle, it will be blown away by the wind. This vegetable should be much more extensively cultivated than it is.

BEANS.—There are three kinds—English dwarf; kidney dwarf or string, and the pole beans. The first kind, so far as our experience has gone, are coarser than the others, and, in our hot and dry summers, are very difficult to raise.

Of kidney or bush beans, there is a long catalogue of sorts. The Mohawk is good for its hardiness, enduring spring frosts with comparative impunity. The red-speckled valentine is highly commended. But after a trial of some twenty kinds, we are entirely contented with one—the China red-eye. It is early, hardy, very prolific, and well flavored.

Of the pole beans, one sort, the Lima, might supersede all others were it a little earlier. It is immensely prolific, its flavor unrivalled, and nearly the same in the dry bean as when cooked in its green state, a quality which has never, we believe, been found in any other variety. To supply the deficiency of this variety in earliness, we know of none equal to the Horticultural. With these two kinds one has no need of any other. Pole beans will not bear frost, and are among the last seeds to be planted, seldom before the last of April. The bush-bean may precede them a fortnight.

The English dwarf (Vicia faba) is a native of Egypt; but has been cultivated in England from time immemorial, and, it is supposed, was introduced by the Romans.

The kidney dwarf (Phaseolus vulgaris) is a native of India, and was introduced into England about the year 1597.

The pole bean (Phaseolus multifloris) is a native of South America, and was introduced to England in 1633.

Pole beans are not strictly annuals. In a climate where the winter does not destroy them they bear again the second year, and we believe yet longer. Gov. Pinney, of Liberia, on the African coast, stated in a lecture, speaking of the vegetable productions of that region, that the bean was a permanent vine like the grape, bearing its crops from year to year without replanting. The bush bean is strictly an annual. If the pole bean were protected in the ground, or raised and put away like sweet potatoes, dahlias, etc., in the cellar and replanted in the spring it would bear again the second season. Perhaps an earlier crop of beans might thus be secured.

The bean crop, by field culture, is not to be overlooked. Great quantities of dried beans are consumed by families, by the army and in the navy, and they always bear a good price, when they are well grown and well cured. They are excellent for sheep, not from their fattening properties, but for improving their fleece. Analysis has shown them to be rich in those properties which are “wool-gathering.”

A new variety called the Bassano has been recently introduced into France, and extensively cultivated; and it is said to be found in all the markets from Venice to Genoa, in the month of June. It is remarkable for the form of the root, which is flattened like a turnip. The skin is red, the flesh white, veined with rose. It is very tender, very delicate, preserving its rose colored rings after cooking, and from two to two and a half inches in diameter. This description is from the Bon Jardinier for 1841. The edition for 1842 states that this variety is highly esteemed in the north of Italy, and that it is, in fact, one of the best kinds for the table.—Hovey’s Magazine.

FIELD ROOT CROPS.

From mid-winter, and especially just before spring opens, beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, ruta baga, and mangel wurtzel are of the highest utility. After months of dry fodder, and of slops thickened with corn-meal, cattle need—their stomach, their blood need—a change of diet; and none can be better than roots. At the East it is no longer a debatable question—root crops are as regularly laid in as grain or grass crops. The chief difficulty at the East, in introducing “new-fangled notions,” arises from the regular routine habits of farmers and their settled aversion to change from old ways. Very little of this spirit exists at the West. There the very essence of life is change. The population have broken up from old homesteads, moved off from old States, abandoned the comforts and settled life of long tilled agricultural districts—to come into a new country, where they have to practise new ways, live differently, and labor by new methods; and, by consequence, the farming community of the West are remarkably free to meet and adopt agricultural improvements. But the difficulty lies in a different direction. The farmers have large farms—are ambitious of large crops, large herds of cattle, large droves of hogs, and of a style of husbandry which brings in a large pile, and all at once; so that the idea of good farming is large farming. Many a sturdy Kentuckian will very patiently plow, two or three times, his fifty or hundred acres of corn, and think nothing of it; but to put in half an acre of carrots, or beets, to weed and work, to harvest and store the vexatious little crop, this seems a piddling business. Our big prairie farmers, our heavy bottom-land farmers, our stock farmers who “hog” one or two hundred acres of corn, of their own planting or of their neighbor’s, they do not love little work. We know a man who lives on thirty acres of land of about a middling quality. He winters seven cows, two horses, and two pigs. He raises corn and grass enough for his own use, and sells none. Every year he puts in about a quarter of an acre of parsnips, or ruta baga, for winter and spring fodder. His garden in summer, and his dairy all the year round, are represented in market. He probably does not receive five dollars at once, on any one sale, through the year. We never looked into that old chest under his bed; but we will venture much, that if the shrewd housewife would keep her eagle eyes off long enough to give us a chance, it would be found that this man has made, and laid up, more money in the last five years from his thirty acres, than any farmer about here from six times the amount. Our farmers have not grown rich on large and careless farming; but many are growing rich on small farms and careful husbandry.

When the dairy shall be more thought of—when wintering stock, and fattening it, shall be more carefully studied—we predict that our farmers will annually raise thousands of bushels of roots, and have capacious cellars under their barns to store them in.

CULTIVATION OF FRUIT-TREES.

We must give up thinking of remedies for blights and diseases of fruit-trees and seek after preventives. Amputation may limit its ravages; but surgery is not a remedy, but a resource after remedies fail. We must, it seems to us, look for a preventive in a wiser system of fruit cultivation. To this subject we shall now speak.

The effect of cultivation in changing the habits of plants is familiar to all. Incident to this artificial condition of the plant, there will be new diseases, vegetable vices, which, as they result from cultivation, must be regarded in every perfect system of cultivation.

Where trees are grown for timber, or shade, or ornament, everything can be sacrificed to the production of wood and foliage. But in fruit-trees wood is nothing and fruit is everything. We push for quantity and quality of fruit; and would not regard the wood or foliage at all, if it were not indispensable as a means of procuring fruit. That is the most skillful treatment of fruit-trees which involves a just compromise between the wants of the tree, and the abundance and excellence of fruit. There is a way of gaining fruit by a rapid consumption of the tree; and there is a method of gaining fruit by invigorating and prolonging the tree. Two systems of cultivation grow out of these different methods—a natural system and an artificial system. All cultivation is artificial, even the rudest. By natural system, then, is only meant a treatment which interferes but little with nature; and by artificial, a system in which skill is applied to every part of the vegetable economy. For conservatories, gardens, and experimental grounds, there is no reason why an artificial system should not exist. Moral considerations restrain us from stimulating a man or a beast to procure a quick or a large return at the expense of life and limb; but in vegetable matters our preference or interest is the only restraint. If any reason exists for forcing a tree to bear young, and enormously, and after ten years’ service for throwing it away, it is proper to do it. For larger show-fruit we ring a limb expecting to sacrifice the branch; we diminish the life of the pear by putting it to a dwarf habit by violent means. If we have any sufficiently desirable object to accomplish, there is no reason why we should not do it. There may be as good reasons for limiting a tree to ten years as a strawberry bed to three.

There is another form of the artificial system in which there is much to censure. When fruit-trees are set in gardens, yards, etc., to be permanent, and long-lived, it is folly to apply to them that high-toned treatment which belongs to an artificial system as I have spoken of it above. Impatient of delay, the cultivator presses his trees forward by stimulating applications, or retards them by violent interference—by prunings at the root or branch, by bending or binding; everything is sacrificed for early and abundant bearing. Fine fruit yards, designed to last a hundred years, are served with a treatment proper only to a conservatory or experimental garden. This high-toned system is still more vicious when applied to orchards and especially to pear orchards; and it seems to us that much is to be learned and much unlearned before we shall have attained a true science of pear culture. Let us consider some facts. It is well known that seedling apple-trees are generally longer lived than grafted varieties, and obnoxious to fewer diseases. The same is true of the pear-tree. It has frequently been said that seedling and wilding pears were not subject to the blight. This is not true if such trees are undergoing the same cultivation as grafted sorts; it is not always true when they exist in an untutored state; but when they are left to themselves, they certainly are less obnoxious to the blight and to disease of any kind, than are grafted and cultivated varieties. A comparison between wild and tame, between cultivated and natural, between seedling and grafted fruit, is certainly to the advantage of seedling uncultivated fruit, in respect to the HEALTH of the tree—of course it is not in respect to quality of fruit. In connection with these facts, consider another, that seedling and wilding fruit is nearly twice as long in coming into bearing as are cultivated varieties. The seedling apple bears at from ten to fourteen years. The pear bears at from fifteen to eighteen years. But upon cultivation the grafted pear and apple bear in from five to eight years. It is noticeable that, although the pear as a wilding is four or five years longer in coming to a bearing state than the apple, yet, upon cultivation, they both bear at about the same age from the bud or graft. In a private letter from Robert Manning (we prize it as among the last he ever wrote; another, received not long after, was dictated; but signed by his tremulous hand in letters which speak of death), he says, “Pears bear as soon as apples of the same age; on the quince much sooner,” etc.

It appears, then, that while cultivation accelerates the period of fruit-bearing and perfects the fruit, it is also accompanied with premature age and liability to diseases. We do not wish to be understood as opposing the habit of cultivating fruit, or as prejudiced against grafted varieties—we are neither opposed to the one nor to the other. But we would deduce from facts, some conclusions which will enable us to perfect our fruits by a more discriminating treatment.

The question will arise, Is it only by accident that liability to disease increases, with increase of cultivation? Is there an inherent objection in all artificial treatment? or is there objection only to particular methods of artificial cultivation?

Although there may be too many exceptions, to allow of our saying, that quickly-growing timber is not durable, it may be said in respect to trees of the same species, that the durability of the timber depends (among other things) on the slowness of its growth. Mountain timber is usually tougher and more lasting than champaign wood; timber growing in the great alluvial valleys of the West, is notoriously more perishable than that grown in the parsimonious soils of the North and East.

The reason does not seem obscure. In a rich soil, and under an ardent sun, not only is the growth of trees greater in any given season, than in a poor soil, but the growth is coarser and the grain coarser. But what is a coarse growth, and what is fine-grained, or coarse-grained timber?—timber in which the vascular system has been greatly distended, in which sap-vessels and air-cells are large and coarse. Where wood is formed with great rapidity and with a super abundance of sap, not only will there be large ducts and vessels, but the sap itself will be but imperfectly elaborated by the leaves. We may suppose that overfeeding in vegetables is, in its effects, analogous to overfeeding in animals. The sap is but imperfectly decomposed in the leaf—it passes into the channels for elaborated sap in a partially undigested state—it deposits imperfect secretions, and the whole tissue resulting from it will partake of the defects of the proper juice.

Thus a too rapid growth not only enlarges the sap passages, but forms their sides and the whole vegetable tissue of imperfect matter. This accounts, not only for the perishableness of quickly-grown timber, but, doubtless, for the short-lived tendency of cultivated fruit in comparison with wildings. For where the tissue is imperfectly formed, general weakness must ensue.

These reasonings do not include plants which, in their original nature, have a system of large sap-vessels, etc., and which naturally are rapid growers, but respects only plants which have been forced to this condition by circumstances.

Has this condition of the vegetable substance nothing to do with the health of a tree? Does it not very much determine its liability to disease?—its excitability? Where are trees liable to diseases of the circulation? In England, in New England, where, by climate and soil, growth is slow?—or in the Western and Middle States, where, by climate, by soil, and by vicious treatment, the growth is excessive? This leads me to review the methods employed in rearing fruit-trees.

The nursery business is a commercial business, and aims at profit. It is the interest of nurserymen to sell largely, and to bring their trees into market in the shortest possible time from the planting of the seed and the setting of the bud, to the sale of the tree. But independently of this, few nurserymen know, accurately, the nature of the plants which they cultivate, and still less the habits of each variety. Why should they, when learned pomologists are content to know as little as they? The trees are highly cultivated and closely side-pruned. The vigor of a tree, i. e. the rapidity with which it will grow, determines its favor. Sorts which take time, and require a longer treatment, are regarded with disfavor. Everything is sacrificed to rapid growth and early maturity.

Next, and proceeding in the same evil direction, comes the orchard cultivation. From what quarter have we, mostly, derived our opinions and practices in fruit cultivation? From French, English, and New England writers. But is the system which they pursue fit for us? There is an opposite extreme to high cultivation; there are evils besetting low-cultivation. In cold, wet, stiff, barren soils, and in a cool, or humid, or cloudy atmosphere, trees require stimulants. The soil needs drying, warming, manuring; and the tree requires pruning. But such a system is ruinous, where the soil is full of fiery activity, bursting out with an irrepressible fertility and a superabundant vegetation; where the long summer days are intensely brilliant, and the air warm enough to ripen fruit even in the densest shade of an unpruned tree.

A traveller in Lapland would require the most bracing and stimulating food; but in New Orleans it would produce fever and death. A region, subject to all the diseases and evils of vegetable plethora, has adopted the practice of regions subject to the opposite evils. While receiving with gratitude, at the hands of eminent foreign physiologists and cultivators, the principles, we must establish the ART of horticulture, by a practice conformable to our own circumstances. A treatment which in England would only produce healthful growth, in this country would pamper a tree to a luxurious fullness. Let us not be deluded by the fallacious appearance of our orchards. The evils which we have to fear are not shown forth in the early history of a tree or an orchard. On the contrary, the appearance will be flattering. The apple is a more hardy tree than the pear, and will endure greater mismanagement; but in the long run we shall have to pay for our greedy cultivation, even in the apple family. Our pear-trees are already evincing the evils of a too luxuriant habit; and if the West is ever to become the pear-region of America, the culture of this tree must be adapted to the peculiarities of western soil and climate.