VEGETABLES AND DUTCH VINE MANAGEMENT.
THERE is no country from which its neighbour may not derive some useful know- ledge in many very trivial things apparently, but such as are often of very general utility. A visit to seine gardens in the province of Holland, made me acquainted with the management of certain vegetables, which it is perhaps worth recording. I had remarked that young carrots and turnips were constantly at the markets during the whole summer and autumn. The Dutch gardener informed me, that these vegetables, when quite young, are favourite dishes in Holland : both, therefore, are regularly sown every fortnight till the frost sets in, as we sow pease; and the last sowings arc stored in houses with sand, for winter consumption. A large carrot, said my intelligent friend, is fit only for cows. Ile next directed limy attention to the management of his wall-trees. "You in England nail your fruit-trees to a brick wall, by means of selvages of chats; and you in% t patent composition nails as the acme of perfection. Now, mark the conse- quence your., fruit must swell all round alike, but its fruit-spur is kept close to the wall ; the fruit pressed against the wall acquires a hard scurfy rah, that never softens, nor gains any eatable quality. This you call wall- burnt, or some such term. Again, in two or three years your nicely-jointed brick wall becomes a riddle of nail-holes, most admirably adapted to be the nest of eggs of every insect that by instinct places them near the food fit for the young progeny. Then again, the driving the nails, and replacing the cloth-bands in a long wall, occupies the assistant for two months in spring. Mark our simple method. I plant into the ground within a few inches of the foot of the wall, willow, or hazle rods peeled, at the distance of eight inches from one another, and each reaching to the top of the wall. Thin long laths of deal are laid across, and the rods are nailed to them, the lath being between the rods and the wall. A similar line of laths is placed along the foot of the willow rods. A few loops of iron are nailed into the wall, to prevent the framework, if it may he so called, from shifting. Then the branches of the fruit-trees are hound to each upright rod, by simply a string of Russian bass matting. Now this is performed more rapidly than can he done by your man of nails and cloth and hammer. The fruit has room to swell all round ; no vermin harbours in the wall ; and the gardener can preserve his trees more eflectually, and keep the main stock in a more healthy state, than when compressed with all its boughs against the wall. The willow or hazle rods need not be thicker than a man's thumb."
I thanked my friend, and asked him how the gardeners of Wassenaar (a village three miles from the Hague,) contrived to produce in the open air grapes, both black and white, which were the admiration of Covent Garden, for their large size and perfect ripening of every berry, with good favour; bunches which no hot- house in England could rival ? He laughed, and said, " Go to Wassenaar in the grape season, and see if these ingenious fellows will let you into their mysteries —for each has something of his own ; but I will give you sonic hints. Cover up front frosts and cold nights and dews; and front the time that the berry is as large as mustard-seed, keep the scissors constantly going in the fingers of some seat-handed girls: thin out unsparingly, and when the fruit is as large as pease, allow no two berries to jam or squeeze one another. Your gardeners of high out iu England dare not thin boldly those bunches, lest they should not be able to boast of their great bulk ; but it is not numbers of the berries, but large size, that forms a great bunch. Go to Wassenaar, and tell me your luck." I did not go,—which I now regret. He added, "Do not allow the young shoots to ran yards in length, and exhaust that strength that should be in the main .;:em. Keep it, too, short ; no well-flavoured fruit will ever he found on the tips of long extended fruitless boughs. Never let your vines exceed six or seven feet in length. This is my nostrum ; but our masters are at Wassenaar, go and judge
Previous page
