Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/176

 of August. Tree of medium growth, round and pendulous form. The Common Morello is a smaller and inferior variety.

White Bigarreau, White Heart, and Oxheart of some.—It is not our purpose to decide what fruits belong to these names, whereof so many writers disagree. Our object is to call attention to the variety that ripens about the 15th of June, just between the May Duke and the Elton. We cultivate it under the former name. Fruit heart-shaped, of a pale yellowish-white color, with a marbled-red on the side towards the sun. Flesh, when fully ripe, tender and luscious; stone large. Tree regularly formed, and a great bearer when fully established.

These constitute the best of the Cherries, and such as produce their fruit throughout the season. I am aware of the very high character borne by some of the new sorts, which we have not tested, nor have they been fully tried by others. To enter into a detail of such, would frustrate our object, in directing attention only to the best known for family use or the market.

.—A light, sandy loam, in an open exposure, is the best soil for the Cherry. Though we have them bearing fruit in both wet and dry soils, yet the finest orchards are known to be on a rich, sandy loam, over a gravelly bottom. We prefer planting this tree early in Spring; they will require to be twenty-five feet apart. The pruning is of the simplest form, many of the kind rarely requiring the knife, while others, as the Bigarreau, need to have the long, rampant shoots that stretch beyond the boundary of the tree shortened every September, till they are formed.

—This is done both by budding and grafting. The former is the most general practice of nurserymen, who sow yearly, in August, large quantities of the Common Black Cherry, about one inch deep, which vegetate freely in Spring, and after two years growth are fit to be budded. This is done in August or even the first of September, according to the