News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-11-04
HOW CRANBERRIES GROW
THE CLEVER ONE-LEGGED YANKEE
WHO FIRST CULTIVATED THEM.
A Machine Wanted TO Pick Cranberries-
Three Enemies of the Cranberry Plant
American Cranberries Popular In Eng.



down as profit, as the grower calculates
to net not less than 20 per cent. on his
investment in marsh.
1t is probably known to but compare
lively few lovers of cranberry sauce that
the .ltivation of the popular little red
berry from which it is made was begun
less than thirty years ago, and in this
very village of Forker River. Pre- ious
to that time the supply of cranberries
came from the wild vines in the swamps
of this State, Massachusetts and few
other States, just as the huckleberry
supply is obtained. Not more than
one-tenth of the quantity that are now
sent to market were put on sale when
John Webb begin his experiments in
1857, and the price was SO high that
only people with long pocketbooks
could enjoy cranberry sauce with their
turkey John Webb, a one-legged
down-Easter, came to Ocean county, N.
j., many years ago, and for years man
aged to make a living picking cram
was so poor that he knew better than to
ask for any credit in the neighborhood,
as he could not have obtained it. He
finally managed to get possession of a
small piece of low swamp land where
the wild cranberry grew, and it was
while gathering the berries from the
struggling vines in the fall of 1857 that
Webb made the discovery that in places
where sand had been washed from the
high ground and carried down upon the
peet bottom of the cranberry marsh the
vines grew more luxuriantly, and the
berries on them were larger, of better
flavor and more plentiful.
One. legged John Webb could see no
reason why the treatment of an entire
bog in that way would not be followed
with great results, and the next season
be made the pioneer cultivated cram
berry bog. He pulled the stumps and
other foreign substances out of his small
swamp, levelled it's peaty bottom, and
over it spread covering of sand three
inches deep. He dug bitches in the
marsh, which divided 1t into q number
of oblong beds. His neighbors thought
he was crazy. Webb was working with
out precedent, but he was an observing
man, and the result of his work was
that in three years h had such crop
of cranberries ON his marsh as had never
been seen or heard of before. The fame
of John Webb's experiment spread to
the remotest cranberry marsh from Mas
sachusetts to Wisconsin, and his name
is now a household word wherever cram
berries are grown. 1his pioneer cult
vator of cranberries is now one of the
wealthiest men in southern New Jersey,
if not in the State, and all his money
was made through his discovery of the
efficacy of sand in soil where cranberries
grow.
A cranberry marsh of the present day
is as handsome a plot of "green
things growing" as the eye could well
rest upon, but the rearing of vines on
new bog to the age OF bearing IS atten-
ded with no end of care and toll. Since
the cultivating of cranberries began
Jersey three enemies of the plant that
never bothered it in its wild state.
These are sharp-edged, stif-leaved
grass, called the three-square grass, a
persistent and ha;dy bullrush, and
destructive little insect called the web
worm. After a marsh or swamp has
been cleared and sanded, it is planted
by taking cuttings or slips from old
vines and inserting one end of them in
the sand on the peat. The soil is pushed
tightly about the slips. Cranberry vines
soon takeroot in the generous peat and
begin growing almost at once. They
spread rapidly over the ground, but
they have not been reaching out many
days DerOre the planter hnds Them sur
rounded and crowded by the hardy and
rapid three cornered grass and its lend
and coad jutor, the bullrush. The grass
and the Iushes have to be removed root
and branch, by means of gouges and
peculiar looking hoes and other imple-
ments. These pestlferous weeds have
to be constantly watched and uprooted
every week or SO for two seasons, so
full does the soil seem to be impregna-
ted with their germs, and so rapidly do
they grow. At the end OF the second
year the cranberry vines have obtained
such Roadway that they cover the
ground all over the bog like an i'm
mense velvety mat of emerald, and have
checked the enterprising grass and
rushes out of existence. 1t is the COM
mon estimate that to foster a cranberry
bog to this stage costs the property
owner 800 and acre, and then the value
of the property will be 5000 an acre.
At the beginning of the third year tho
cranberry vines blossom, which is a
signal for the appearance of the web
worm. His appearance Is entirely I'M
heralded, and the owner of cranberry
marsh may 60 to bed at night without
having been able to see q sign of web
worm on his vines, and get up next
to see the marsh look as if it
were covered with miniature banks of
fog, and the tops of the vines drawn
together so tightly that Irvine tied
around them could hardly make them
any closer The little banks of fog are
the webs of the dreaded worm that have
been constructed during the night, and
they are what pull the tops of the vines
together. The vine begins to turn vel.
low i'm day or so, and the blossoms
drop off. The worm often ruins bog
after bog, but sometimes will confne
his ravages to one or two particular
in a neighborhood. When a
man discovers the web worm in his
bog he does not make any
very large calculations on profits that
year.
In the early days of cranberry culture
the growers were puzzled to find some
way to protect the vines from the frost |
and severe weather from November un.
til May, and the only entirely success
full plan was the one now in universal |
submerging of the vines under
i've or six feet of water from the first of |
November The water is drawn off |
about the middle of May, and the vines
come to view as green and fresh as a
pasture in June.
There are about five thousand two |
hundred ACRES of marsh under cultiva- |
ton with cranberries in New Jersey
State this year. 1.-THE other principal
growing States are Wisconsin,
and Connecticut. Within |
he past few years the increase IN the
crop has been five hundred per cent.
It's thought that there will be six hun
lred thousand bushels picked in the
different States this fall, a large percent
Gge of which will be exported to Eng
and, where the American cranberry has
become exceedingly popular.