April 1990

About this Issue

Note from the Editors

This issue is about gardens. Vegetable gardening, a pleasant, relaxing, fulfilling avocation, produces food to enjoy for its flavor and quality and even economy. Home-scale gardening can be a way for many families to reduce their quantity of packaging refuse and also make use of organic materials by composting and mulching. Raising vegetables at home is an individual means of lessening the burden of trash disposal. Then, too, lawn space that is planted into garden doesn't have to be mowed.

The issue begins with Yesterday's Gardens—Especially Italian Style by John Rezelman, who is himself a long-time gardener and admirer of vegetable gardens. John is always searching for and exchanging seeds of unusual vegetables. Or he is finding scions from special apple varieties to graft onto his trellised trees. On the back page with the article there is a picture of John inspecting one of his espalliers. John is a poet as well as a storyteller, and his article concludes with a poetic tribute to Italian Gardens.

John Caprarulo tells the story of a real Italian gardener, his father James Caprarulo, and how he raised his beloved vegetables and family in Hornell. This article first appeared in the March-April 1987 issue of Steuben Roots and Branches.

The Use of Feet For Planting and Sowing is a reprint of a small pamphlet written by Peter Henderson the famous and successful gardener and seedsman who was born in Scotland and apprenticed at Melville Castle before he came to this country and started out on his own as a market gardener to become finally the founder of the great seed house that carried his name. Henderson was an amazingly sensible man and his writing is full of practical advice. We have reprinted a number of selections from Henderson's classic book on gardening, Gardening For Profit, that went through many editions. Henderson always said that this pamphlet was his favorite of all his own writings.

An announcement of the April 21 Steuben County Hall of Fame presentation ceremony along with short biographies of the new members joining this year.

The second part of Fran Dumas' report on the Crooked Lake Canal

Ed Harris starts on a new phase in his book, Harpending's Corners by recounting his youthful days following the creeks and trails around his family's farm close to Dundee.

another chapter from A New Home gives Caroline Kirkland's account of a month-of-April forest fire at their settlement in the new Michigan territory.

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