Horticulture

“ Horticulture.—Horticulture is that branch of agriculture which includes the raising of flowers, garden vegetables, and fruit. The growing of vegetables and other garden produce for market is usually called truck farming, and this branch of horticulture is very common near large [Pg 215] cities and in those localities where soil and climate admit of raising two or more crops a year. The raising of fruit is probably the most extensive branch of horticulture, particularly in those regions which depend upon irrigation for their supply of water. ”

“ The slightest peculiarity which, for unknown reasons, appears in a plant grown from the seed, and which sometimes is found only on a single branch, as the indented outline of the leaves or the variegation of the blossoms, is reproduced with minute accuracy if the graft, slip, or layer is taken from the branch having this modification. By this means horticulture is daily enriching itself with double flowers or a new shade, or with fruit remarkable for its size, its early or late ripening, its juicy flesh, its more pronounced aroma. ”

“ Horticulture, apart from the mechanical details connected with the maintenance of a garden and its appurtenances, may be considered as the application of the principles of plant physiology to the cultivation of plants from all parts of the globe, and from various altitudes, soils and situations. The lessons derived from the abstract principles enunciated by the physiologist, the chemist and the physicist require, however, to be modified to suit the special circumstances of plants under cultivation. ”

“ They are the only records of the progress in horticulture. Exhaustive lists of all the plants introduced in 1892, with descriptions, directories, full accounts of all new discoveries, new tools, and a wealth of practical matter for Gardeners, Fruit-Growers, Florists, Vegetable-Gardeners and Landscape-Gardeners, comprise its contents. ”

“ In the progress of civilization the beginnings are usually feeble, obscure, and limited. There are reasons why this should be the case with the first attempts at agriculture or horticulture. Between the custom of gathering wild fruits, grain, and roots, and that of the regular cultivation of the plants which produce them, there are several steps. A family may scatter seeds around its dwelling, and provide itself the next year with the same product in the forest. ”

“ The growing of early vegetables under glass is also a business of considerable importance in the vicinity of cities. Horticulture gradually merges into several of the various phases of agriculture.
Floriculture is the third main branch of horticulture. This includes landscape-gardening, which is the art of so growing and disposing of flowers and plants as to create a beautiful landscape effect. Examples of the product of the art are to be seen in our well-kept city parks and in the private grounds of some persons of means throughout the country. ”

“ We are so blessed, in most parts of this country, with soil and climate that are well adapted to the production [150] of fruit in the open field, upon sturdy orchard trees, that there is less necessity for introducing these elegant methods of pursuing the fine art of horticulture; and yet there are reasons in the uncertain climate of our winters, why these plans of training and dwarfing should be pursued by those who have the talent and the means for doing it. ”

“ In our Southern states, the rich assign one of their slaves to the garden.
16. In the United States, almost every family in the country, and in the villages, has its garden for the production of vegetables, in which are also usually reared, a few flowers, ornamental shrubs, and fruit-trees: but horticulture, as a science, is studied and practised here by very few, especially that branch of it called picturesque, or landscape. To produce a pleasing effect, in a garden of this kind, from twenty to one hundred acres are necessary, according to the manner in which the ground may be situated. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII PRUNING, SPRAYING, HARVESTING The day has gone, probably forever, when setting out fruit trees and giving them occasional cultivation, "plowing up the orchard" once in several years, would produce fruit. Apples and pears and peaches have occupied no preferred position against the general invasion of the realm of horticulture by insect and fungous enemies. The fruits have, indeed, suffered more than most plants. ”

“ The increasing interest in fruit-growing all over the South makes it easy to interest the young women in horticulture. The school orchard of 5000 trees makes it possible to lay great stress on the practical side of fruit growing. ”

“ It is the only book accessible to American horticulture which gives the reasons, discouragements, possibilities and limitations of Cross-Breeding. Every man who owns a plant should have it, if for no other reason than to post himself upon one of the leading practices of the day. ”

“ They depended for subsistence partly upon such vegetable products, partly upon hunting and fishing, the women generally attending to the horticulture, the men to the chase. Horticulture is an appropriate designation for this stage in which the ground is merely scratched with stone spades and hoes. ”

“ European horticulturists desired finer and larger fruit. American orchards show how well [222] they have succeeded. For over a century American horticulture has made marked progress. Many valuable kinds of fruit have originated in this country. Our own wild apples are now studied with the aim of bringing them into cultivation, just as the Asiatic species were improved centuries ago. ”

“ The broken roots should be cut back to fresh wood, and the tops should be headed back in proportion.
Vegetable Garden.—Attention should be given to new sowings and plantings for succession. Crops sown last month will have to be thinned out if large enough. Hoe deeply all transplanted crops, such as cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, &c. Tender vegetables, such as tomatoes, egg and pepper plants, sweet potatoes, &c., can be planted out. Seeds of Lima beans, sweet corn, melon, okra, cucumbers, &c., should be sown; and sow for succession peas, spinach, lettuce, beans, radishes, &c., every ten days. ”

“ When it is designed always to cultivate the ground, and land is plenty, set them fifty or sixty feet apart. You will be likely always to have fine fruit, and a crop on the land beside. Our recommendation to every one is to set out all orchards, of whatever fruit, so as to have them cover the whole ground when in maturity. Among apple-trees, dwarf pears, peaches, or quinces, may be set, which will be profitable before the apples need all the ground.
Bearing years.—A cultivator may have a part of his orchard bear one year, and the remainder the next, or he may have them all bear every year. ”

“ The farmer, for want of distinguishing and selecting the best kinds, fills his pastures either with weeds or improper plants, when by making a right choice he would not only procure a more abundant crop from his land, but have a produce more nourishing for his flock. One would therefore naturally wonder, after this truth has been so long published, and that in an age when agriculture and the arts have so much improved, that Select Seeds of this tribe of plants are scarcely to be produced. ”

“ In order that there may be a good harvest, the land must be manured and carefully prepared, the seed must be sown in due season, the weeds which spring up must be rooted out, and the soil must be diligently cultivated throughout. ”

“ In garden cultivation, with deep digging, and in the absence of weeds, birds, or insects, where you can choose your time for every operation, dibble in a seed in a place, the minimum quantity may suffice, as good crops have been got from a very small quantity of seed; but garden experimenters rather too positively lay down the law, when they tell the farmer that this thin seeding will do equally well on broad acres, where every operation is circumscribed [209] by circumstances. ”

“ Men had long known that the seeds of some of the wild grasses and plants were good to eat. Now some one noticed that if these seeds were sown they sprang up and brought forth many more seeds. Then it was discovered that the seeds grew better and yielded a more abundant crop if the ground were broken up and made soft before the seed was sown. Because of these discoveries some men began to be farmers. By cultivation, the wild grasses which grew in the fields or beside the rivers were developed [Pg 127] into wheat, oats, barley, and rice, the great cereals of the world. ”

“ In winter one should plough and in severe frosts cleave timber, make an orchard, and do many affairs indoors, thresh, cleave wood, put the cattle in stalls and the swine in pigstyes, and provide a hen roost. In spring one should plough and graft, sow beans, set a vineyard, make ditches, hew wood for a wild deer fence; and soon after that, if the weather permit, set madder, sow flax seed and woad seed, plant a garden and do many things which I cannot fully enumerate that a good steward ought to provide.' [48]
The methods of cultivation were simple. ”

“ Roll the land in spring on which you have sown grass-seed in the last of winter; it will benefit the grain, and cause the grass-seed to catch well, and get an earlier and more rapid growth. Let all who would not lose their seed and labor, remember that grass-seed not sown so as to form good roots, before the frosts of winter or the drought of summer, will be lost; the plants will be killed. Timothy-seed sown in the fall, one peck to the acre, will produce a good crop the next season. ”

“ The reason for this difference in reaction between native and culture formations seems evident. In harvesting, not merely the grain, but the stems and leaves, and in gardening often the root also, are removed, so that the plant makes little or no return to the soil. In nature, annual plants return to the ground every year all the solid matter of roots, stems, leaves, and fruits, with the exception of the relatively small number of seeds that germinate. ”

“ I don't believe it is a good thing to seed down where there are young trees growing and while the orchard is young. If you will plant your potatoes in that orchard between the rows and cultivate it, you will do the cultivating. I haven't got very much faith in the average farmer—I don't mean you horticulturists—but the average farmer. If he will plant trees and you advise him to cultivate them while they are young, they will be neglected after the first year or so. ”

“ The variety is early, and, though classed by seedsmen as a garden turnip, is well adapted for field culture; as it not only yields abundantly, but succeeds well when sown late in the season on land from which early crops have been harvested. ”

“ Arrangements have been made to figure and describe new and little-known plants (especially North American) of horticultural promise. A department will be devoted to the history and description of ornamental trees and shrubs. New florists’ flowers, fruits and vegetables will be made known, and experienced gardeners will describe practical methods of cultivation.
GARDEN AND FOREST will report the proceedings of the principal Horticultural Societies of the United States and the condition of the horticultural trade in the chief commercial centres of the country. ”

“ Seedlings are said to begin to bear remunerative crops in their tenth year, but by superior cultivation this long unproductive period my be somewhat lessened, while trees from three to five years old may be purchased from the nurserymen, so that the newcomer who sets out an orchard may begin to gather fruit by the fifth or sixth year. When first set out, and for some years afterward, the trees are irrigated by making rings of earth around them, which are connected with small ditches, through which the water is distributed to each tree. ”

“ When the seed is sown with a drill, the line of the row may be plainly seen even before the plants come up, thus making it easy to commence cultivating it in advance of the weeds. In case of such crops as carrots, onions, parsnips and beets, which are quite delicate when young, cultivation should begin with some hand garden cultivator, even if it is intended later on to cultivate with a horse, and the crop is planted with this purpose in view. ”

“ Each group of crops may then be planted and tended as one crop, and the garden operations thus greatly simplified. When more than one planting of a given crop is desired for the sake of securing a succession, the second planting may be put in at the same time that other crops are being planted, so that even in this case, the number of plantings need not be multiplied. The use of two or more varieties of the same vegetable, differing in their time of maturity, will also aid in keeping down the number of different plantings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every cultivator of fruit must be a private nurseryman; he needs the same information, the same directions as if were a commercial gardener. He that designs planting an orchard ought to know the disposition of each variety of fruit-tree, that he may suit the circumstances of his soil, or provide for the peculiarities of a tree, as a farmer needs to know the peculiarities of the different breeds of hogs and cattle. ”