Home Vegetable Gardening, F. F. Rockwell [popular novels .txt] 📗

Part Three—Fruits and Berries

CHAPTER XV.

 

THE VARIETIES OF POME AND STONE FRUITS

 

Many a home gardener who has succeeded well with vegetables is, for

some reason or other, still fearsome about trying his hand at growing

his own fruit.

 

This is all a mistake; the initial expense is very slight (fruit trees

will cost but twenty-five to forty cents each, and the berry bushes

only about four cents each), and the same amount of care that is

demanded by vegetables, if given to fruit, will produce apples,

peaches, pears and berries far superior to any that can be bought,

especially in flavor.

 

I know a doctor in New York, a specialist, who has attained prominence

in his profession, and who makes a large income; he tells me that there

is nothing in the city that hurts him so much as to have to pay out a

nickel whenever he wants an apple. His boyhood home was on a

Pennsylvania farm, where apples were as free as water, and he cannot

get over the idea of their being one of Nature’s gracious gifts, any

more than he can overcome his hankering for that crisp, juicy,

uncloying flavor of a good apple, which is not quite equaled by the

taste of any other fruit.

 

And yet it is not the saving in expense, although that is considerable,

that makes the strongest argument for growing one’s own fruit. There

are three other reasons, each of more importance. First is quality. The

commercial grower cannot afford to grow the very finest fruit. Many of

the best varieties are not large enough yielders to be available for

his use, and he cannot, on a large scale, so prune and care for his

trees that the individual fruits receive the greatest possible amount

of sunshine and thinning out—the personal care that is required for

the very best quality. Second, there is the beauty and the value that

well kept fruit trees add to a place, no matter how small it is. An

apple tree in full bloom is one of the most beautiful pictures that

Nature ever paints; and if, through any train of circumstances, it ever

becomes advisable to sell or rent the home, its desirability is greatly

enhanced by the few trees necessary to furnish the loveliness of

showering blossoms in spring, welcome shade in summer and an abundance

of delicious fruits through autumn and winter. Then there is the fun of

doing it—of planting and caring for a few young trees, which will

reward your labors, in a cumulative way, for many years to come.

 

But enough of reasons. If the call of the soil is in your veins, if

your fingers (and your brain) in the springtime itch to have a part in

earth’s ever-wonderful renascence, if your lips part at the thought of

the white, firm, toothsome flesh of a ripened-on-the-tree red apple—

then you must have a home orchard without delay.

 

And it is not a difficult task. Apples, pears and the stone fruits,

fortunately, are not very particular about their soils. They take

kindly to anything between a sandy soil so loose as to be almost

shifting, and heavy clay. Even these soils can be made available, but

of course not without more work. And you need little room to grow all

the fruit your family can possibly eat.

 

Time was, when to speak of an apple tree brought to mind one of those

old, moss-barked giants that served as a carriage shed and a summer

dining-room, decorated with scythes and rope swings, requiring the

services of a forty-foot ladder and a long-handled picker to gather the

fruit. That day is gone. In its stead have come the low-headed standard

and the dwarf forms. The new types came as new institutions usually do,

under protest. The wise said they would never be practical—the trees

would not get large enough and teams could not be driven under them.

But the facts remained that the low trees are more easily and

thoroughly cared for; that they do not take up so much room; that they

are less exposed to high winds, and such fruit as does fall is not

injured; that the low limbs shelter the roots and conserve moisture;

and, above all, that picking can be accomplished much more easily and

with less injury to fine, well ripened fruit. The low-headed tree has

come to stay.

 

If your space will allow, the low-headed standards will give you better

satisfaction than the dwarfs. They are longer-lived, they are

healthier, and they do not require nearly so much intensive culture. On

the other hand, the dwarfs may be used where there is little or no room

for the standards. If there is no other space available, they may be

put in the vegetable or flower garden, and incidentally they are then

sure of receiving some of that special care which they need in the way

of fertilization and cultivation.

 

As I have said, any average soil will grow good fruit. A gravelly loam,

with a gravel subsoil, is the ideal. Do not think from this, however,

that all you have to do is buy a few trees from a nursery agent, stick

them in the ground and from your negligence reap the rewards that

follow only intelligent industry. The soil is but the raw material

which work and care alone can transform, through the medium of the

growing tree, into the desired result of a cellar well stored each

autumn with fruit.

 

Fruit trees have one big advantage over vegetables—the ground can be

prepared for them while they are growing. If the soil will grow a crop

of clover it is already in good shape to furnish the trees with food at

once. If not, manure or fertilizers may be applied, and clover or other

green crops turned under during the first two or three years of the

trees’ growth, as will be described later.

 

The first thing to consider, when you have decided to plant, is the

location you will give your trees. Plan to have pears, plums, cherries

and peaches, as well as apples. For any of these the soil, of whatever

nature, must be well drained. If not naturally, then tile or other

artificial drainage must be provided. For only a few trees it would

probably answer the purpose to dig out large holes and fill in a foot

or eighteen inches at the bottom with small stone, covered with gravel

or screened coal-cinders. My own land has a gravelly subsoil and I have

not had to drain. Then with the apples, and especially with the

peaches, a too-sheltered slope to the south is likely to start the

flower buds prematurely in spring, only to result in total crop loss

from late frosts. The diagram on the next page suggests an arrangement

which may be adapted to individual needs. One may see from it that the

apples are placed to the north, where they will to some extent shelter

the rest of the grounds; the peaches where they will not be coddled;

the pears, which may be had upon quince stock, where they will not

shade the vegetable garden; the cherries, which are the most

ornamental, where they may lend a decorative effect.

 

And now, having decided that we can—and will—grow good fruit, and

having in mind suggestions that will enable us to go out tomorrow

morning and, with an armful of stakes, mark out the locations, the next

consideration should be the all-important question of what varieties

are