Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and HappinessBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper: Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Cooking; Home economics
By a little attention to this matter, a lady with the help of her
children can obtain a rich abundance of all kinds of fruit. The writer
has resided in families where little boys of eight, ten, and twelve
years old amused themselves, under the direction of their mother, in
planting walnuts, chestnuts, and hazelnuts, for future time; as well
as in planting and inoculating young fruit-trees of all descriptions.
A mother who will take pains to inspire a love for such pursuits in
her children, and who will aid and superintend them, will save them
from many temptations, and at a trifling expense secure to them and
herself a rich reward in the choicest fruits. The information given in
this work on this subject may be relied on as sanctioned by the most
experienced nurserymen.
The soil for a nursery should be rich, well dug, dressed with
well-decayed manure, free from weeds, and protected from cold winds.
Fruit-seeds should be planted in the autumn, an inch and a half or two
inches deep, in ridges four or five feet apart, pressing the earth
firmly over the seeds. While growing, they should be thinned out,
leaving the best ones a foot and a half apart. The soil should be
kept loose, soft, and free from weeds. They should be inoculated or
ingrafted when of the size of a pipe-stem; and in a year after this may
be transplanted to their permanent stand. Peach-trees sometimes bear
in two years from budding, and in four years from planting if well kept.
In a year after transplanting, take pains to train the head aright.
Straight upright branches produce _gourmands_, or twigs bearing only
leaves. The side branches, which are angular or curved, yield the most
fruit. For this reason, the limbs should be trained in curves, and
perpendicular twigs should be cut off if there be need of pruning.
The last of June is the time for this. Grass should never be allowed
to grow within four feet of a large tree, and the soil should be
kept loose to admit air to the roots. Trees in orchards should be
twenty-five feet apart. The soil _under_ the top soil has much to do
with the health of the trees. If it be what is called _hard-pan_, the
trees will deteriorate. Trees need to be manured and to have the soil
kept open and free from weeds.
_Filberts_ can be raised in any part of this country.
_Figs_ can be raised in the Middle, Western, and Southern States. For
this purpose, in the autumn loosen the roots on one side, and bend the
tree down to the earth on the other; then cover it with a mound of
straw, earth, and boards, and early in the spring raise it up and cover
the roots.
_Currants_ grow well in any but a wet soil. They are propagated by
cuttings. The old wood should be thinned in the fall and manure be put
on. They can be trained into small trees.
_Gooseberries_ are propagated by layers and cuttings. They are best
when kept from suckers and trained like trees. One-third of the old
wood should be removed every autumn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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