CHAPTER XII.. Fruits Upon the Terrace.

FRUITS UPON THE TERRACE.

Fruits that we can have on the Terrace.--Alpine Strawberry.--Buisson de Gaillon.--Virginia Scarlet Strawberry.--Strawberry of Chili.--Superb Wilmot.--Goliah.--Bicton White.--Queen of Great Britain.--The Vine.--Pruning.--Thinning out the Grapes.--Thinning out the Leaves.--Cherry Trees.--Plum Trees.--Currants.--Raspberries.--Forced Fruit on Dwarfs.--Cutting the Dwarf Fruit Trees on the Terrace.--Management of Cherry Trees, Plum Trees, Strawberries, Raspberries.--Form that suits the Raspberry in a Pot on the Terrace.

Fruits that it is practicable to have on a Terrace.

Who is not a little of an epicure? Epicurism and idleness--the love of those pastimes often called idle--are the least of the seven mortal sins; as to the others I will say nothing, being averse to dealing in scandal. A little gluttony as regards fruits is so natural! As to myself, I cannot honestly deny, and therefore frankly confess, that I sympathize with our mother Eve.

The fruits, however, of which I am about to speak, have the merit of not being forbidden; they are, on the contrary, among the most admissible of things.

Now, you are going to ask me if I pretend to make you engage in planting fruit trees on your terrace, such as there--perhaps--were in those famous “Hanging Gardens” of Queen Semiramis; which gardens, by the by,--supposing them to have ever existed,--were nothing more nor less than terrace gardens, such as your own; only, in a degree,--never mind what precise degree,--more spacious. I have no such grand enterprise to propose to you, ladies; no scheme of the sort is in my mind. I desire merely to call your attention to a small number of excellent fruits, of which you can easily have a harvest,--I do not promise that it shall be large enough to load a ship,--upon your terrace.

In the first place, then, an assumption on my part. I assume that your terrace is sufficiently spacious to admit of your border boxes being large enough to afford room for the worship of Pomona, as well as for that already appropriated to Flora; and this without the least encroachment upon the rights of the lady last named. This pretty little figure of speech--a perfect statuette, is it not?--is not original with me: I beg you to understand, ladies, that I lay no claim to its authorship; it belongs to the late Rousselon, and first appeared in his Annals of Flora and Pomona.

Now,--to descend from the airy heights of fancy, and engage in our work upon material realities,--you will find that a few strawberry plants will not be at all in the way of your ornamental ones. And this being the case, will it not be pleasant to you, while engaged in your horticultural labors, to find, now and then, under your hand, a fine, ripe strawberry or two? And these of your own production!

Strawberries.

If you open the catalogue of a horticulturist by profession, you will be frightened at the innumerable varieties of the strawberry; each variety asserted by the venders to be perfect; whilst, in point of fact, the fruit produced by the greater part of them will prove to be either flavorless or sour; or--in fine, with some defect or other, rendering it not worth cultivating. I--who am very cautious on this score, and who, as the result of long experience, generally eschew all such--can safely recommend to you, as among the most desirable, the old-fashioned alpine, which is a monthly bearer, the Virginia scarlet, the Chili, and those English varieties called, respectively, Wilmot superb, Goliah, Bicton white, and queen of Great Britain. This last is noted for its extraordinary fecundity. It is of the strawberry--mind you--that I state this. You will recollect that plants--plants exclusively--constitute the subject of our present discourse; and you must not let your thoughts stray off into other fields.

By adopting these varieties, and planting here and there among your flowers a couple of plants of each of the eight above named, you will have in all sixteen; each one of which will give you on an average six fruits. This will be ninety-six strawberries--in round numbers, a hundred--that you will enjoy the flavor of, one by one, as they successively ripen, and as the climax to the pleasure you will have been experiencing all the while in watching their growth and ripening. As respects the latter point, great self-control on your part is indispensable. I warn you of this beforehand; for if, through impatience, you gather them too soon, even so much as a single day too soon, you will lose by it, I assure you. Their flavor cannot do justice to its own merits at any point short of the most perfect maturity. Your strawberry plants will require no other attention than that of taking off the runners by which they propagate themselves. As to water, they will take care of themselves, drinking their fill from the supplies placed within their reach in watering the other plants. You must remember to renew them every two years, by means of runners that you will reserve for the purpose.

Grape Vine.

Of all your fruit-bearers, the one that will yield the most bounteously is the grape. For some years past the vine has been a good deal cultivated in pots, in order that it may be forced; that is, be compelled to produce fruit long before the time when it will be produced in the open air. This forcing consists simply in cultivating the vine in a hothouse, or tempered greenhouse. Buy vines, if you can, all trimmed and ready for bearing, and place the pots containing them at the foot of the posts supporting the arches of your terrace arbor. They will there find a suitable support in the situation the most favorable to the ripening of the fruit. Train them so as to make them grow in festoons. In due time grapes will be there, within reach of your hand, hanging in golden bunches, all the way from the base of the pillars up to where the vases are suspended at the centre of the arches.

Will not this be charming?

Trimming and Thinning.

Two things are indispensable to make your grapes as good as they ought to be--to cut off the top of the vine, which must be done as soon as its young grapes are formed, and as large as a pea, and to thin out the grapes when too thick in the bunch.

This last operation is as follows: When the vine grows in good earth, in a good exposure, and has been skilfully pruned, and when too much fruit--too many bunches--has not been left upon it, each blossom will produce its fruit. As they expand the young grapes crowd each other; they get squeezed together, and pressed out of shape; the air and light can get only to those on the outside of the bunch. The consequence is, that the bunch has not half the value at market that it would have, had the matter been differently managed. Do you know, ladies, what, in order to avoid this misfortune, is done by the wives and daughters of the gardeners of Thomery? Thomery is a little village where those unrivalled grapes are produced, which are sold at Paris under the name of “grapes of Fontainebleau.” These women, each armed with a pair of pointed scissors, patiently cut out, from each of those little bunches of which every distinct bunch is composed, one young grape in every three. And this is the way I now advise you to treat all bunches produced, by the vines on your terrace.

You will, I acknowledge, have but four vines growing in so many pots, and you may perhaps fancy that the produce, however good in quality, must needs be insignificant in quantity. Let us, then, make a little calculation. Arithmetic, you see, will thrust itself into all human affairs, horticulture not excepted. Well, then, each one of your four distinct vines will have four main branches, (that are cut down short, say to about six inches in length;) from each one of these branches there will be two running vines, and each one of these running vines will bear two bunches of grapes. If all turns out well, as you have reason to hope, you will then have to gather in September or October--how many bunches? Why, if arithmetic be a reliable prophet, you will have no less than sixty-four bunches of grapes. Is not this number large enough to warrant your inviting, if not all your acquaintances, yet at least the whole circle of your most intimate friends, to aid you in the joyous labors of your vintage?

Thinning out the Leaves.

About a month before vintage time you will have to perform upon your vines a chirurgical operation which requires considerable judgment in the execution. By the French it is called épamprer, which signifies to unleaf; consisting, as it does, in taking off such leaves as prevent the sun from striking directly on the grapes, which solar action is indispensable to their being gilded with their proper rich yellowish hue, and to their possessing that richness of flavor of which this hue is the only guarantee. If the bestowing of all these attentions upon your vines be not an amusement for you, then,--permit me to say it,--you do not deserve to enjoy the eating of a good bunch of chasselas.

Cherry Trees, Plum Trees, Currant Bushes, Raspberries.

Are strawberries and grapes all the fruits that you can have on your terrace? No, certainly. There are beautiful dwarf trees, about the culture of which I am going to give you some hints, which, if you profit by them, will enable you to have, in addition, cherries and Mirabelle plums; and your variety of terrace garden fruits may be further increased by adding to these dwarf trees a couple of currant bushes,--a white and a red,--and three or four raspberry plants. The dwarf cherries and plums, cultivated in large pots or in boxes, like the pomegranates and Persian lilacs, will bloom perfectly on the terrace. You can purchase them all prepared. They will “load heavily,” as the French gardeners say, and it will be a lively satisfaction to you to gather their ripe fruits, some time before the usual time of their ripening; for, placed on the terrace, they are in the best of situations for enabling them to work energetically, and force their fruits forward to early maturity.

Forced Dwarf Fruit Trees.

Is it your desire to have ripe cherries and plums to eat so early as April or May?--a time when, if you have to buy these fruits, you must pay very extravagant prices for them. If this be your wish, it is very easily gratified. About a fortnight after their leaves have fallen, in autumn, remove your dwarf fruit trees (which I suppose to be in pots) from the terrace into the house. They will soon begin again to vegetate, and by January or February they will be in bloom, which, of itself, will be very agreeable to you; and they will ripen their fruits a month or two before those in the open air. To enable them to do this, the only assistance they require from you is to be placed near the windows, and to be turned every day, so that each side may receive its share of light, and to have the air they breathe kept up at a constant temperature of from sixty-two to sixty-three degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer. This will be about the temperature of your room; the one at which it would be kept as being the most pleasant to yourself, and the best for your health, as well as comfort; so that you will not be put to any additional expense, nor have to derange your habits in any way for the sake of these dwarf fruit-bearing pets of yours.

You see now that fruits, no less than flowers, have their part to play on your terrace, although the principal part appertains to the flowers. When you receive your friends, will it not be very pleasant to have cherries, and currants, and raspberries to offer them, at a season when they are great rarities in the market, and to be had there only at prices which the Crœsuses of the stock exchange can alone afford to pay? Will not your guests be delighted to assist you in gathering these nice fruits from the tree with their own hands? And, when placed upon your table, as its central ornament, will they not look far more beautiful than if they had been bought with money?

Pruning Fruit Trees on the Terrace.

Don’t trouble yourselves about pruning your dwarf cherries and plums. The gardeners have a saying, that these trees--whose wood always contains a great deal of gum--do not “love the knife;” they ought, therefore, to have it applied to them as seldom as possible. As seldom as possible is still too often; in a word, so far as they are concerned, keep your pruning-knife in your little gardener’s tool-chest; they will thrive all the better for its being left there--be all the more productive.

The raspberries, which are simple shrubs, have their own way of vegetating; they are perennial in their roots only. The annual stalk, after having borne its fruit, dies in autumn; and it ought then to be cut down level with the earth in the pots. The root puts forth every year, in great superfluity, young shoots which are destined to bear fruit the following year; and, of these shoots, but three only must be allowed to remain on each plant--that is to say, if you wish to have a good crop of really fine raspberries. In the spring, cut off about a quarter from the length of these reserved shoots; the buds at the middle of the stalk will now develop better than if it had been left entire; and it is from these buds always that the finest of the fruit comes.

Currants require only to be freed from the old wood--that is to say, the exhausted branches, which will no longer bloom, and which, with their tops supported on a single stalk, encumber the inside of the bush. By their being trimmed in this manner, the fruit will come out at a good height, far enough from the earth not to be soiled by the spattering of earthy particles during heavy showers and waterings; this, therefore, is the best way of trimming currants on the terrace.

Now, ladies, I hope you will agree that the culture of fruits on your terrace, if you keep them in their proper place, has its merit as well as that of the flowers.