Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Families -- Juvenile fiction; Farm life -- Juvenile fiction; New York (State) -- Juvenile fiction
"I raise these berries myself for home use," he said; "and I can tell
you they go nice with milk for a July supper. You see, after taking off
so much from these long branches the canes stand straight up, and will
be self-supporting, no matter how many berries they bear; but here and
there's a bush that has grown slant-wise, or is broken off. Now, if I
was you, I'd take a crow-bar 'n' make a hole 'longside these weakly and
slantin' fellers, put in a stake, and tie 'em up strong. Then, soon as
the frost yields, if you'll get out the grass and weeds that's started
among 'em, you'll have a dozen bushel or more of marketable berries
from this 'ere wilderness, as you call it. Give Merton a pair of old
gloves, and he can do most of the job. Every tip that's fast in the
ground is a new plant. If you want to set out another patch, I'll show
you how later on."
"I think I know pretty nearly how to do that."
"Yes, yes, I know. Books are a help, I s'pose, but after you've seen
one plant set out right, you'll know more than if you'd 'a' read a
month."
"Well, now that you're here, Mr. Jones, I'm going to make the most of
you. How about those other raspberries off to the southeast of the
house?"
"Those are red ones. Let's take a look at 'em."
Having reached the patch, we found almost as bad a tangle as in the
blackcap patch, except that the canes were more upright in their growth
and less full of spines or briers.
"It's plain enough," continued Mr. Jones, "that old man Jamison was too
poorly to take much care of things last year. You see, these red
raspberries grow different from those black ones yonder. Those increase
by the tips of the branches takin' root; these by suckers. All these
young shoots comin' up between the rows are suckers, and they ought to
be dug out. As I said before, you can set them out somewhere else if
you want to. Dig 'em up, you know; make a trench in some out-of-the-way
place, and bury the roots till you want 'em. Like enough the neighbors
will buy some if they know you have 'em to spare. Only be sure to cut
these long canes back to within six inches of the ground."
"Yes," I said, "that's all just as I have read in the books."
"So much the better for the books, then. I haven't lived in this
fruit-growin' region all my life without gettin' some ideas as to
what's what. I give my mind to farmin'; but Jamison and I were great
cronies, and I used to be over here every day or two, and so it's
natural to keep comin'."
"That's my good luck."
"Well, p'raps it'll turn out so. Now Merton's just the right age to
help you in all this work. Jamison, you see, grew these raspberries in
a continuous bushy row; that is, say, three good strong canes every
eighteen inches apart in the row, and the rows five feet apart, so he
could run a horse-cultivator between. Are you catchin' on, Merton?"
"Yes, sir," said the boy, with much interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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