FARMING NOTES.

Ashburton Guardian, 25 October 1879, Page 4

FARMING NOTES.

Trees have no business in a fanner’s vegetable garden; that is to say, a tree there is a weed and a nuisance, however valuable in its proper place. The fruit garden is itself no less important or valuable than the vegetable garden, but the two do not go well together. A strawberry, to give the best satisfaction, should be left on the vines until fully ripe, and picked but an hour or two before eaten, and always picked so as to leave the hulls on the vines, as a strawberry of the tender-fleshed varieties, when fully ripe, cannot be hulled after being taken from the vines without injuring the berries. It was not until the beginning of the present century [that stalks of rhubarb became an article of commercial importance in the London and other vegetable markets in the kingdom. About 1810, Mr Myatt, of Deptford, we are told, sent two of his sons to the Borough Market with five bunches of rhubarb stalks, of which they sold only three, people not liking what they called “physic pies.” Notwithstanding, Myatt continued its cultivation. As he predicted, tt soon became a favorite, and now hundreds of tons’ weight of rhubarb are sold in Covent Garden in the course of the year, and what amount in other markets all over the country it is impossible to calculate.