Читать книгу The Canadian Settler's Guide - Catharine Parr Traill - Страница 45

This useful invention saves much time and labour: it is an American invention, and can be bought in the hardware stores for 7s. 6d.

Note.—I strongly recommend to the attention of any one who takes an interest in orchard culture, a small volume called The American Fruit Book: it contains the best practical advice for the management of all the common fruits of Canada and the States. It is to be found in most of the district libraries. A small book and a cheap one, but a treasure to the inexperienced fruit grower.

Apple trees are subject to a disease of the bark, which is produced by the small scaly insect called bark-louse (or cocus): it resembles a brown shell, or a seed of flax, though hardly so large; young seed-apple trees are rendered sickly and stinted by this affection: to remedy the disease and destroy its cause, use—one part soft soap, four of water, and a little fresh slacked lime: apply in the month of June, or indeed at any season; it may be used without injury to the tree. For removing the webs of caterpillars situated on high branches, tie some woollen rags to a tall staff; wet this mop in water or suds, and apply it to the branch, and by giving a twirl to the stick, you will remove the nest and its contents.

Apples for making cider should be well ripened and picked, free from decay, wood and leaves; if left in a heap to sweat for a week, they are the better, as they mellow and ripen; but they must not lie long enough to decay.

I copy a few directions for preserving and gathering apples, from the "American Fruit Book," which may be useful:

"The fruit" (says the author) "is of a finer quality for remaining on the tree till well ripened, though it will often keep better by gathering before quite or over ripe. Some in the warm parts of the country gather in the last week in September, others in October.—

"Gather your apples in dry weather, and pick winter or keeping fruit and dessert fruit by hand carefully. Some persons are so careful as to line the fruit baskets with cloth, or cotton, to prevent bruising. Do not let your fruit lie out in heaps, exposed to the weather, nor yet stand in barrels in the sun.

"In packing in barrels, settle the fruit gently, and head up full, pressing the head in carefully, so as not to injure the fruit.

"After barrelling, apples are generally left in an open shed on their sides, till the frost is beginning to set in, when they may be removed to a cool dry cellar. Apples will bear any degree of cold above freezing point; and headed up in barrels, even ten or twelve degrees below freezing point."

Some pack apples in bran, sawdust, dry sand, moss, fern, and many other substances. I have generally preferred laying very light layers of dry straw, and layers of apples, alternately.

I have not tried it, but I think fresh wood-ashes would preserve apples from frost. Heat and moisture, united, are destructive to apples, inducing bitter rot. I lost several barrels of lovely apples, by allowing them to remain in a warm kitchen for a month after gathering.