Page:The family kitchen gardener - containing plain and accurate descriptions of all the different species and varieties of culinary vegetables (IA familykitchengar56buis).pdf/179

 .—Thin out the shoots to allow all to stand free and clear of each other, then shorten back the young wood from about three to six inches of the preceding year’s growth. This makes the bushes spur, as gardeners term it, and on these spurs the fruit is produced. The plant must be yearly supplied with manure among their roots, digging the ground carefully every Spring or Fall. By this treatment the fruit will be like bunches of Grapes, and form a great contrast to the meagre affairs so generally seen in our markets. Even in our best gardens their culture is very imperfectly attended to, producing fruit all skin and seeds, and giving a very faint idea of the richness and perfection to which it can attain. Plant them eight feet apart, and if well treated they will last twenty years.

Fig is one of the fruits first mentioned in history. Its cultivation appears to have been coeval with that of the Apple and the Grape. It has been admitted through all ages as an article of food, and some nations have been so exceedingly fond of the fruit that its exportation was forbidden. If history is to be relied on, we are retrograding in the culture and improvement of the Fig. Pliny, the Roman naturalist, is said to have accurately described about thirty sorts. It was extensively used in all ceremonies, and was presented to appease anger. Asia is its native country, and we read of specimens of the fruit having been brought from the “Land of Canaan.” It is cultivated to an immense extent in the south of Europe, and dried and exported. Many thousand tons reach this country that might be grown with great facility along our fences, from North Carolina to Florida. It is not hardy