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on your fight with weeds, for every good vegetable that

is left over can be put to some use. Here and there in the garden will

be a strip that has gone by, and as it is now too late to plant, we

just let it go. Yet now is the time we should be preparing all such

spots for withstanding next summer’s drouth! You may remember how

strongly was emphasized the necessity for having abundant humus

(decayed vegetable matter) in the soil—how it acts like a sponge to

retain moisture and keep things growing through the long, dry spells

which we seem to be sure of getting every summer. So take thought for

next year. Buy a bushel of rye, and as fast as a spot in your garden

can be cleaned up, harrow, dig or rake it over, and sow the rye on

broadcast. Just enough loose surface dirt to cover it and let it

sprout, is all it asks. If the weather is dry, and you can get a small

roller, roll it in to ensure better germination. It will come up

quickly; it will keep out the weeds which otherwise would be taking

possession of the ground; it will grow until the ground is frozen solid

and begin again with the first warm spring day; it will keep your

garden from washing out in heavy rains, and capture and save from being

washed away and wasted a good deal of left-over plant food; it will

serve as just so much real manure for your garden; it will improve the

mechanical condition of the soil, and it will add the important element

of humus to it.

 

In addition to these things, you will have an attractive and luxuriant

garden spot, instead of an unsightly bare one. And in clearing off

these patches for rye, beware of waste. If you have hens, or by chance

a pig, they will relish old heads of lettuce, old pea-vines, still

green after the last picking, and the stumps and outer leaves of

cabbage. Even if you have not this means of utilizing your garden’s by-products, do not let them go to waste. Put everything into a square

pile—old sods, weeds, vegetable tops, refuse, dirt, leaves, lawn

sweepings—anything that will rot. Tread this pile down thoroughly;

give it a soaking once in a while if within reach of the hose, and two

or three turnings with a fork. Next spring when you are looking for

every available pound of manure with which to enrich your garden, this

compost heap will stand you in good stead.

 

Burn now your old pea-brush, tomato poles and everything that is

not worth keeping over for next year. Do not leave these things lying

around to harbor and protect eggs and insects and weed seeds. If any

bean-poles, stakes, trellises or supports seem in good enough condition

to serve another year, put them under cover now; and see that all your

tools are picked up and put in one place, where you can find them and

overhaul them next February. As soon as your surplus pole beans have

dried in their pods, take up poles and all and store in a dry place.

The beans may be taken off later at your leisure.

 

Be careful to cut down and burn (or put in the compost heap) all weeds

around your fences, and the edges of your garden, before they

ripen seed.

 

If the suggestions given are followed, the vegetable garden may be

stretched far into the winter. But do not rest at that. Begin to plan

now for your next year’s garden. Put a pile of dirt where it

will not be frozen, or dried out, when you want to use it next February

for your early seeds. If you have no hotbed, fix the frames and get the

sashes for one now, so it will be ready to hand when the ground is

frozen solid and covered with snow next spring. If you have made garden

mistakes this year, be planning now to rectify them next—without

progress there is no fun in the game. Let next spring find you with

your plans all made, your materials all on hand and a fixed resolution

to have the best garden you have ever had.

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

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