Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 June 1873 — Small Fruits on the Farm. [ARTICLE]

Small Fruits on the Farm.

Thorough preparation of the soil anti clean culture always pay in any locality with the commonest farm crops. In the orchard, a proper preparation of the soil before planting is especially needed, and in the garden, not only thorough preparation of the soil but subsequent good cul ture are absolutely necessary to success. Take small fruits, the berries for instance; one man, by care and constant working, will produce large and uniform crops of strawberries, raspberries and blackberries, while others, by the let-alone process, never get enough fruit to pay ground rent, to say nothing of Qultiyation. Strawberries are usually planted out, hap-hazard, and allowed to take care of themselves. This, if the soil be toleraable, they are pretty apt to do, and usually cover tlie ground so thickly with runners as to give small returns in fruit, while, if a little care and attention had been paid to keeping the runners down, and the plants confined to hills, large stools would have been formed,, and a full crop of extra berries would have been realized. So with the other small fruits, as raspberries and blackberries. They should have plenty of room. The old wood of tlie preceding year, already dead, should have been eut out and the now wood topped to three or four feet. This being done, we should have stocky, branching canes, loaded with fruit. Again, take currants and gooseberries. Too often they are allowed to ramble at will, and overgrow the whole surface of the gromd together with the weeds, when by a little judieious pruning they would have been kept in shape and furnished plenty of new wood upon which to have borne fruit. Grapes, on the .other hand, are allowed either to grow at will or else they are pruned so severely that" nothing is left upon which to bear fruit, when one or two canes, according to the strength of the vine, pruned as to the laterals to three or four buds, would give a full crop of superior, fruit. In the spring all small fruits should be gone over, the ground thoroughly cleaned, and the plants brought into shape, and if thereafter they are properly attended to according to their special wants, which any common-sense man may soon find, we should cease to hear the stereotyped cry that small fruits don’t pay. Thero is nothing about the farm garden you do that will pay better, so far at least as the wants of the family are concerned, than fruit, and especially the so-called small fruits, All that is necessary is to give, them proper attention, at the proper time, and it will be found that the added comfort to the family will pay a hundred per cent, on the cost, to say nothing of the improved general health of the family and the consequent saving on doctors’ bills.— West mi Rural. Editorial Notices are so common that it is almost impossible for an editor to express his honest opinion of the merits of any article without being suspected of interested motives. This fact, (however, shall not deter us from saying what we think of a new addition to the Materia Medica to which our attention has been recently directed. We refer to Da J. Walker’s California Vinegar Bitters, a remedy which is making its way into more families just now than all the other advertised medicines put together. Its popularity, so far as we eau judge, is not based on empty preten sion. There seems to be no question about the potency of its tonic and alterative properties, while It possesses the great negative recommendations of containing _ neither alcohol nor mineral poison. That it is a specific for Indigestion, Biliousness, Constipation, and many complaints of nervous origin, we have reason to know; and we are assured on good authority that as a., general invigorant, regulating and purifying medicine, it has no equal. It is stated that its ingredients (obtained from the wilds of California) are new to the medical world; and its extraordinary effects certainly warrant the conclusion that it is a compound of agentfe hitherto unknown. If popularity is anv criterion, there can be no doubt of the efficiency of the Vinegar Bitters, for the sale of the article is immense and coptinually increasing. Our Readers should be careful to notice that Procter & Gamble’s Stamp is upon the bars of the Mottled German Soap, as all good articles are imitated, and this Soap being so popular, other manufacturers have copied their stamp.

Ask for Pruasing’a Cider Vinegar and take ,no other. Warranted to preserve Pickles. Consumption.— For tlie cure of this distressing disease there has been no medicine yet discovered that can show more evidence of real merit than Allen’s Lung Balsam. This unequaled expectorant for curing consumption, and all diseases leading to it, such as affections of the throat, lungs, and all diseases of the pulmonary organs, is introduced to the suffering public after its merits for the cure of Buch diseases have been fully tested by the medical faculty. The Balsam is, consequently, recommended by physicians who have become acquainted with its great success. See, in another column, the advertisement headed “/ will help any man."