The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-06-01
GARDEN
AND HOUSEHOLD
By S. A. COOK.

, it can be avoided. A little thinning
| and two or three cultivatings make the
| crop. A small crop is cut with the
| sickle and bound into good-sized bun
dies.
Up to the last of May the season has
been almost everything that could be
| desired for all the crops of the garden.
| The Irish potato crop planted much
later than usual, is very fine. and made
| with very little work The asparagus
crop was excellent, seemingly not af-
| fected by the rust which attacked the
plants for two years in succession.
Two or three weeks ago it seemed as
If the potato bug would appear in
reduced numbers this year. but it was
only a matter of appearance. They
were merely in keeping with the sea-
son, a little late. but there are plenty
of them now. but the crop Is made and
they are readily circumvented.
So far as size and numbers of fruit
was concerned, trawberries We're new
er a finer crop. but as to quality about
as poor as could be imagined. Most
of them were either sour or had no
flavor at all. We suppose it must al
ways be so. Size and quality at the
expense of quality. 1t is so with nearly
everything, from the plain old turnip
up. A big. overgrown onion, larger
than a coffee cup, is not near so deli
cate and palatable as one not larger
round that a silver dollar.
But speaking of Strawberries, it
seems that in the efforts to secure size
and quality of berries the delicious
quality of the old-time berry has been
bred away The finely favored ber-
ries of the olden time have disappear
ed entirely, it seems, and in their place
we have a monstrous tasteless thing,
or if not tasteless, more like vinegar
than anything else that one does not
care to partake of more than two or
three times during the season before
he has had enough. 1t is so with other
fruits than strawberries. 1t is the
same pretty much with plums, peaches
and apples. At times the market is
crowded with monstrous plums, big as
billiard balls, with little more flavor
than cork stopper; "Snead" peaches
that almost put US out of sympathy
with all fruit; Ben Davis apples, more
corky than a modern plum-all in
stances of the reckless sacrifice of
quality to size, earliness and prolific
ness of fruit.
In some respects we have made de-
sirable progress in the past twenty
five years in the matter of vegetables
and fruits, but certainly not quite as
much as some few have claimed.
There are two things we believe
ago than we now have and these are
sweet potatoes and peaches. They
were not quite so early then as now,
but both were of a better quality. The
old Georgia yam and the smooth,
pink Spanish potato of ante-bellum
days, are no longer to be found in our
markets. or but rarely. and we have
no fair substitute for them though we
may feel more or less satisfaction in
the possession of the Bunch" and the
Pumpkin" yam. And as to peaches,
we have no doubt the majority of COM
petent witnesses would agree that we
had a greater variety of fruit-lavored,
perfectly formed peaches forty or fifty
years ago than we have now. OF
course, there were not so many trees
and so many peaches then. but what
there We're bore profusely a richly
favored fruit much superior to the
nearly tasteless things we have nova
days.