Success with Small Fruits Part 17

The first and best of these is the Downing, originated by Mr. Charles Downing of Newburgh. It is an "upright, vigorous-growing plant, very productive. Fruit somewhat larger than the Houghton, roundish-oval, whitish-green, with the rib veins distinct. Skin smooth. Flesh rather soft, juicy." I consider this the best and most profitable variety that can be generally grown in this country. In flavor, it is excellent. I have had good success with this whenever I have given it fair culture.

It does not propagate readily from cuttings, and therefore I increase it usually by layering.

The second seedling is Smith's Improved, a comparatively new variety that is winning favor. It more closely resembles the Houghton in its habit of growth than the Downing, and yet is more vigorous and upright than its parent. The fruit is considerably larger than the Houghton, oval, light green, with a bloom, moderately firm, sweet and good.

Mountain Seedling, originating with the Shakers at Lebanon, New York, is the largest of the American varieties, but for some reason it does not gain in popularity.

Cl.u.s.ter, or American Red, is a variety of unknown origin. The ancestral bush may have been found in the woods. The fruit is scarcely as large as that of the Houghton, is darker in color when fully ripe, hangs long on the bush, and is sweet and good. Mr. P. Barry says that it never mildews. Therefore, it should be made one of the parents of new varieties, for in this direction lies the future of this fruit in America.

In support of this opinion, I am led to quote the following letter, recently received:

"I write to call your attention to a native variety of gooseberry, of which you make no mention in your 'Scribner Papers,' growing in great abundance in the Sierra Nevada, at an elevation of from 2,000 to 3,000 feet, often in the most exposed places, generally on northern slopes.

Thinking it may not have come to your knowledge, I will describe it.

The bush is of stiff, erect habit, two to three feet high, a stocky grower and an abundant bearer. The berries vary from one-half to one and one-quarter inches in diameter, are covered with innumerable thorns, scarcely less savage in the green state than those on an ordinary wild bush of this country. When cooked, the p.r.i.c.kles soften down to the same consistence as the skin, which is rather thick. When ripe, they are easily peeled, and well repay the trouble, the spines being then much less obdurate than when green. The mature fruit is of a deep, dull, coppery red color, and in flavor is equal, if not superior, to any of the _red_ varieties which I have eaten in England. I have often wondered whether cultivation might not remove the spines from the berries, or, that failing, whether a seedling could not be raised from them which would give us a berry far more reliable than any good gooseberry we now have. The scorching sun of the long, dry season of California seemed to have no effect on the foliage, and is five years'

experience I never found a mildewed berry.

"The berry is _round_, like the red English berries, instead of ellipsoid, like their white or golden ones.

"There is also another variety, hairy instead of spiny, about the size of your picture of the Downing; bush not so free a grower, rarely reaching two feet, and the berry, to my taste, much inferior. Tastes, however, differ, and it may be the more promising fruit.

"Both varieties are common throughout the eastern end of El Dorado, Placer, and Nevada counties."

The first-named, or th.o.r.n.y gooseberry, probably belongs to the _Ribes cynosbati_, and the latter to the _R. rotundifolium_. The writer is correct in thinking that, if such gooseberries are growing wild, cultivation and selection could secure vast improvements. When we remember that English gardeners started with a native species inferior to ours, we are led to believe that effort and skill like theirs will here be rewarded by kinds as superb, and as perfectly adapted to our climate.

CHAPTER XXVIII

DISEASES AND INSECT ENEMIES OF SMALL FRUITS

Nature is very impartial. It is evidently her intention that we shall enjoy all the fruits for which we are willing to pay her price, in work, care, or skill, but she seems equally bent on supplying the hateful white grub with strawberry roots, and currant worms with succulent foliage. Indeed, it might even appear that she had a leaning toward her small children, no matter how pestiferous they are. At any rate, under the present order of things, lordly man is often their servant, and they reap the reward of his labors.

Did not Nature stumble a little when man fell? She manages to keep on the right side of the poets and painters, for it would seem that they see her only when in moods that are smiling, serious, or grand. The scientist, too, she beguiles, by showing under the microscope how exquisitely she has fas.h.i.+oned some little embodiment of evil that may be the terror of a province, or the scourge of a continent. While the learned man is explaining how wonderfully its minute organs are formed, for mastication, a.s.similation, procreation, etc., practical people, who have their bread to earn, are impatiently wis.h.i.+ng that the whole genus was under their heels, confident that the organs would become still more minute.

The horticulturist should be cast in heroic mold, for he not only must bear his part in the fight with moral wrong, like other men, but must also cope with vegetable and insect evil. Weeds, bugs, worms, what hateful little vices many of them seem in nature! I do not wish to be thought indiscriminate. Many insects are harmless and beautiful; and, if harmless, no one can object if they are not pretty. Not a few are very useful, as, for instance, the little parasite of the cabbage worm.

There is need of a general and unremitting crusade against our insect enemies; but it should be a discriminating war, for it is downright cruelty to kill a harmless creature, however small. Still, there are many pests that, like certain forms of evil, will destroy if not destroyed; and they have brought disaster and financial ruin to mult.i.tudes.

Mark Tapley hit upon the true philosophy of life, and it is usually possible to take a cheerful view of everything; such a view I suggest to the reader, in regard to the pests of the garden that often lead us into sympathy with the man who wished that there was "a form of sound words in the Prayer-Book which might be used in cases of great provocation." Under the present order of things, skills, industry, and prompt, vigilant action are rewarded. Humanity's besetting sin is laziness; but weeds and insects for months together make this vice wellnigh impossible, save to those who are so unfortunate as to live on the industry of others. Therefore, though our fruits often suffer, men are developed, and made more patient, energetic, resolute, persevering--in brief, more manly. Put the average man into a garden where there were no vegetable diseases, insects, and weeds to cope with, and he himself would become a weed. Moreover, it would seem that in those regions where Nature hinders men as much as she helps them, they are all the better for their difficulties, and their gardens also.

Such skill and energy are developed that not only are the horticultural enemies vanquished, but they are often made the means of a richer and a fuller success.

In a valuable paper read before the New Jersey State Horticultural Society, and recently published in the "American Entomologist," Mr. A.

S. Fuller makes the following useful suggestions:

"Insects and diseases are frequently so closely united, or so dependent upon each other, that the naturalist often finds it difficult to determine to which the fruit grower should attribute his losses. Some species of insects attack only diseased or dead plants; others only the living and healthy. If a plant shows signs of failing, we are inclined to speak of it as being diseased, whether the failure is caused by a lack of some element in the soil, attacks of parasitic fungi, or noxious insects. The loss is the same in the end, whether from one or all of these enemies combined.

"There are two practical methods of combating insect enemies and diseases of plants; one is to so carefully cultivate and stimulate the growth of the plants that they may possess the power of resisting attack; the other is to make war directly upon them by artificial means. Of course, the first method is most applicable or practicable against the more minute species, such as the plant-lice, rust, s.m.u.t, and mildew. I do not recommend forcing plants to extremes, in order to enable them to resist their enemies, as this might work an irreparable injury; but the condition to be aimed at should be a healthy, vigorous growth; for anything beyond this is more the sign of weakness than strength.

"The half-starved, overworked and uncared-for horse is sure, sooner or later, to become the prey of various kinds of internal and external parasites, which are thrown off, or successfully resisted in their attacks, by the healthy, vigorous, and well-fed animal; and the same principle holds good all through the animal and vegetable kingdoms--whether the subject be a man, horse, st.u.r.dy oak, or delicate strawberry plant. Not that all diseases are due to loss of vigor through starvation and neglect; but that a large number of them are is well known."

STRAWBERRIES

We all have seen these principles verified. In the Great American strawberry, I think, we have an example of feebleness resulting from over-stimulation. The Wilson Seedling, that, in the local vernacular, is sometimes said to be "running out," is, in contrast, the consequence of starvation, neglect, and long-continued propagation from poor, mixed stock. Feebleness can scarcely be called a disease, and yet it is best counteracted by the tonic treatment suggested by Mr. Fuller.

In loose, light soils, the Aphis, or Green Fly, often penetrates to the roots of strawberry plants in immense numbers, and they suck away life or vitality. The tonic of wood-ashes scattered over the rows will usually destroy the pests. Refuse from the tobacco-factory is also recommended.

I think that wood-ashes and bone-dust are excellent preventives of burning or sun-scalding. They give the plants such vigor that they are able to resist sudden or great climatic changes, from heat to cold, or from drought to moisture.

Many varieties are enfeebled by their disposition to run profusely.

Kerr's Prolific, for example, will speedily sod the ground with small, puny plants, whose foliage will burn so badly that the fruit can scarcely mature. Set out these small plants, and give the tonic treatment of cutting off all runners, and large, bushy stools, with vigorous foliage and superb fruit, will result. Indeed, next to fertilizers and moisture, there is nothing that so enhances the vigor and productiveness of a plant as clipping the runners as fast as they appear. The uncurbed habit of running depletes almost like disease; and but few varieties will make large fruit buds and runners at the same time.

In close, wet weather the fruit and leaf stalks will sometimes suffer from mildew; and occasionally a microscopic fungus, known as the strawberry brand, will attack the foliage. I have also seen, in a few instances, a disease that resembled the curl-leaf in raspberries. The plants were dwarfed, foliage wrinkled and rusty, and fruit misshapen, like small, gnarly apples. In all such instances I believe in tonic treatment, of wood-ashes, bone-dust, guano, and fertilizers of like nature, used with care. Plants do not need over-doses or over-feeding any more than we do ourselves. When a few plants are diseased, I believe in rigorously rooting them out and burning them. If a field is affected, as soon as possible turn the plants under, and renovate the land with clover, buckwheat, a light dressing of lime, and thorough exposure to the air, light, and frost. By such methods, and a wise selection of fertilizers, I believe that strawberries can be raised on the same ground for centuries. My plants have always been exceptionally free from all kinds of disease or rust, and I attribute it to the liberal use of wood-ashes.

But there is one enemy that inspires me with fear and unmingled disgust. It is the type of a certain phase of character in society most difficult to deal with, and which the mantle of charity is rarely broad enough to cover--the stupidly and stolidly malignant, who have just sense enough to do a great deal of mischief, and to keep it hidden until too late for remedy. Science has dignified the detestable thing with a sonorous name, as usual--the _Lachnosterna Fusca_, already referred to. It does not deserve even its name in the common vernacular--White Grub; for its white is of a dingy hue, and its head dark, like its deeds. Has it a redeeming trait? "Give the de'il his due," says the proverb. The best I can say of the white grub is that crows, and an odorous animal I forbear to name, are very fond of it, This fact, I think, is its sole virtue, its one entry on the credit side; but there is a long, dark score against it. Of its havoc on the lawn and farm I will not speak, since it is sufficient for our purposes to state that it is the strawberry's worst foe.

The best method of circ.u.mventing the "varmint" is to learn its ways; and therefore I shall outline its history, beginning at a period in its being when stupidity predominates over its evil-that is, when it is the May beetle or June bug, that blunders and b.u.mps around in utter disregard of itself and every one else. In this stage it is like the awkward village loafer, quiet by day, but active and obtrusive in the early evening. It dislikes honest suns.h.i.+ne, but is attracted by artificial light, at which it precipitates itself with the same lack of sense and reason that marks the loafer's gravitation toward a lighted groggery. Moreover, in the beetle phase, it is sure to appear at the most inopportune times and unsuitable places, creating the inevitable commotion which the blunder and tactless are born to make. As it whisks aimlessly around, it may hit the clergyman's nose in the most pathetic sentence of his sermon, or drop into the soprano's mouth at the supreme climax of her trill. Satan himself could scarcely produce a more complete absence of devotion than is often caused by these brainless creatures.

Because quiet by day, they are not out of mischief, as defoliated trees often prove. As midsummer approaches, they die off; but never until each female beetle has put into the ground about two hundred eggs, which never fail to hatch. The first year, the grubs are little, and, while they do all the harm they can, the small roots they destroy are not seriously missed by the plants. The second year, their ability keeps pace with their disposition, and they occasionally destroy strawberries by the acre. More often, certain patches of a field or garden are infested, and sometimes will be kept bare of plants in spite of all one can do. Too often, the presence of the grub is learned only after the mischief is complete. You may have petted a strawberry plant for a year, and after it has developed into n.o.ble proportions, and awakened the best expectations from its load of immature fruit, you will, perhaps, find it wilting some morning. You then learn, for the first time, that this insidious enemy has been at work for days, and that not a root is left. An inch or two beneath the dying plant, the grub lies gorged and quiet in the early morning; but if undisturbed it soon seeks the next-best plant it can find, and it is so voracious that it is hard to compute the number it can destroy throughout the long season in which it works.

Having made its full growth in the spring of the third year, this grub pa.s.ses into the chrysalis state, and in May or June comes out a perfect insect or beetle. It is "one, two, three, and out."

While there are beetles every year, there is, in every locality, a special crop every third year; in other words, if we observe beetles in great numbers during the coming May and June, we may expect them again in like quant.i.ties three years after; and every second year from such super-abundance they will be very destructive in all those fields throughout the locality wherein the eggs were laid.

REMEDIES

When once our soil is full of them, scarcely any remedy is possible that year. Surface applications that would kill the grubs would also kill the plants. Where they are few and scattering, they can be dug out and killed. Sometimes boys are paid so much a pint. When seeing a wilting plant, it would scarcely be human nature not to dig out the pest and grind it under our heel. Prevention of the evil is usually our best hope. Mr. Downing writes to me: "I believe that if you would use refuse salt three or four years in succession, at the rate of five or six bushels to the acre, the grubs would not trouble you much. Salt will not kill the full-grown larvae, but those in a very young state."

The reader will remember a statement in Mr. Hale's letter on commercial fertilizers confirmatory of this view.

Experiments in this direction should be carefully made, since, in one instance that I am aware of, a fruit grower remarked, "I do not know whether the salt killed the grubs, but I know it killed my plants." It is my purpose, however, to try this agent very thoroughly. There is danger of our being misled in our estimate of the value of remedies, from forgetfulness of the habits of the insect. We find our ground full of larvae one year, and apply some cure or preventive. The following spring, the larvae become beetles and fly away, and, even if they fill the same ground with eggs again, the grubs are too small to be noticed that year; and therefore we may claim that our remedy is effectual, when there may have been no effect from it whatever.

One of the best preventives is to keep the soil under cultivation, for this beetle rarely lays its eggs in loose soil, preferring old meadows and moist, loamy, sodded land; the larvae are equally fond of gra.s.s roots. This is one of the reasons why a year or two of cultivation must often precede the planting of strawberries. When this fruit is grown in matted beds, they afford as attractive a place for the deposit of eggs as gra.s.s land; and this is another fact in favor of the narrow-row system and thorough cultivation.

Mr. Caywood, a nurseryman, says that he has prevented the approach of the grub by mixing a teaspoonful of sulphur in the soil just beneath a plant, when setting it out. Mr. Peter B. Mead recommends the pomace of the castor bean spread on the surface around the plants. I have never tried these preventives. One thing certainly might be done; exterminating war might be waged on the beetles. In the morning they are sluggish and easily caught; and in the evening we can treat them as whiskey venders do the loafers--burn them up. "Every female beetle killed heads off 200 grubs." If one could discover a complete remedy for this pest, he would deserve a statue in bronze. Mr. Fuller had a domesticated crow that would eat a hundred of these grubs daily. "When domesticated," he adds, "the crow forgets the tricks of his wild nature, and, not being a timid bird, he is not frightened by hoe or spade, but when the earth is turned over, is generally there to see and do his duty."

A fruit grower writes to Professor C. V. Riley: "I inclose specimens of a terrible pest on my strawberry vines. The leaves are almost entirely destroyed. I must fight them some way, or else give up the fruit entirely," etc. In a letter to the "New York Tribune," Professor Riley replied:

"The insect referred to is the Strawberry Worm (_Emphytus maculatus_), the larva of a saw-fly, which is of quite frequent occurrence in the West. I quote the following account of it from my Ninth Report:

"'Early in the spring numerous flies may be seen hanging to and flying about the vines in fields which have been previously affected. They are dull and inactive in the cool of the morning and evening, and at these hours are seldom noticed. They are of a pitchy black color, with two rows of large, transverse, dull, whitish spots upon the abdomen. The female, with the saw-like instrument peculiar to the insects of this family, deposits her eggs, by a most curious and interesting process, in the stems of the plants, clinging the while to the hairy substance by which these stems are covered.

"'The eggs are white, opaque, and 0.03 of an inch long, and may be readily perceived upon splitting the stalk, though the outside orifice at which they were introduced is scarcely visible. They soon increase somewhat in bulk, causing a swelling of the stalk, and hatch in two weeks--more or less, according to the temperature; and during the early part of May the worms attract attention by the innumerable small holes they make in the leaves. Their colors are dirty yellow and gray-green, and when not feeding, they rest on the under side of the leaf, curled up in a spiral manner, the tail occupying the centre, and fall to the ground at the slightest disturbance. After changing their skin four times they become fully grown, when they measure about three-fourths of an inch.

"'At this season they descend into the ground, and form a weak coc.o.o.n of earth, the inside being made smooth by a sort of gum. In this they soon change to pupae, from which are produced a second breed of flies by the end of June and beginning of July. Under the influence of July weather, the whole process of egg depositing, etc., is rapidly repeated, and the second brood of worms descend into the earth during the fore part of August, and form their coc.o.o.ns; in which they remain in the caterpillar state through the fall, winter, and early spring months, till the middle of April following, when they become pupae and flies again, as related.

"'The remedy is the same as that employed against the currant worm, which belongs to the same family. It consists of white h.e.l.lebore, used either in powder or liquid.'"

I think that tobacco dust or a strong decoction from the stems would prove effective, also.

I have never had any experience with this worm, but have read of instances in which fields had been entirely cleared of the pest by young chickens and turkeys.