MISCELLANEOUS PAPESS. 329 



■verized soil, starting out and filling in between all fibroas rootlets, and 

 giving them a downward slant. After I have covered all the roots in 

 this way, I shovel in first the remainder of top-soil, and then finish fill- 

 ing the hole with sub-soil. 



I never water or tramp earth around roots when transplanting; I 

 simply firm earth immediately around stem or body of tree with my 

 foot. I planted my young orchard in this way last spring with this 

 exception : I did not get all of my tree holes dug two feet deep, from 

 the simple fact that in many places I struck solid rock at a depth of 

 18 inches. Trees were planted 16 feet apart each way. I cultivated 

 the entire orchard twice, running cultivator as near to trees as possi- 

 ble without injuring them, and using a steel-tooth garden rake to stir 

 soil where I could not get with cultivator ; after cultivating the newly 

 set trees twice, I concluded to try the virtue of mulching on one row 

 of my trees. I placed mulching along entire row from east to west, to 

 the depth of about eight inches, and a width of about six feet, leaving 

 a space of about one foot square around tree which I kept plowed ; the 

 balance of orchard, in fact all the ground in orchard except the six- 

 foot strip where the mulching lay, I cultivated about five times each 

 month from April to August, and three times after August ; the culti- 

 vation was shallow, not exceeding two inches in depth. The trees that 

 I mulched did not grow or do as well as those that I cultivated ; the 

 ground under the mulching became perfectly dry, while the ground 

 that I cultivated retained moisture the entire summer within two inches 

 of the surface, thus proving to my mind, at least for our county and 

 fioil, that oft-repeated shallow or surface cultivation is the best mulch 

 one can possibly give young trees. I washed my trees every Monday 

 from April to June, and afterward twice a month up to and including 

 October, with a weak solution of alkali, and kept earth pressed firmly 

 around base of tree ; have not been able to find a single round-headed 

 borer in any of my trees, and only about one dozen of flat-heads 

 where the beetles had deposited their eggs where the trees had been 

 injured. In starting the head of a young tree, I give apple from two 

 to three feet of body ; peach from one foot to eighteen inches ; this 

 gives one a better chance to get at the borer, which requires eternal 

 vigilance and continual warfare upon them to save your trees from 

 destruction. 



