392 noAiMt oi' Aci.'K ^l,■n■l;l•■.. 



that it WMS a mistake for me to talve the trees Just as I hey caine from the 

 iMirsery. I simply flip ell' tlie ends of tlie roots and di^i; a hole and put 

 in the tree carefully and danee it up and down, and stand with a etip of 

 sand in one hand and a eiij) of watti' in tlie other, and have a boy with a 

 shovel to till in llie hole and tamp Ww umund down. It seems to me that 

 my experience has demonstrated to me that it is useless to have a larfte 

 hole in which to plant a fruit tree; I say it seems to me unnecessary. I 

 talvc a tree two or three years old, that A\ill stand probably a little higher 

 than my shoulders, and with i-oots as lonj; as is usually found on this 

 sized tree, and cut the roots back until there is really no root at all 

 except the tap root, and I also cut the top off until the tree stands only 

 about three feet high. I cut the top away back, for the buds will come 

 out again. Why do I do this? What is there in it? It is opposed to the 

 theory of most of the nurserymen, who like to sell large trees to j'ou— 

 trees Avith large roots— and like to tell you the tree with the tiucst tiber 

 roots is the one to plant, and that you must be very careful not to cut 

 these fiber roots off. Tliere is not one of lliese roots that lives twenty- 

 four hours after it comes cut of its native soil. Why do we want to 

 plant dead roots? I used to believe the story that all these roots must go 

 into the ground, but I think I know better now. My idea of- cutting off 

 the roots is about this. Suppose we cut it down so that the roots are very 

 short, in the first place, then there is no necessity of digging a large hole 

 in which to plant this tree. I planted fifteen hundred peach trees in crow- 

 bar holes: I took the June Bud peach trees. The trees came to me a 

 little large: 1 bought these trees in the South, and I cut them down to an 

 average of eighteen inches above the ground. I cut the roots off clear, 

 and there wasn't any more sign of a root on those trees than there is on 

 this lead pencil. We took these trees into a space of ground that had 

 not been plowed for over thirty years, and took the crow-bar and punched 

 holes into the ground and pushed the little June Bud into the hole, and 

 took a cup of sand in one hand and a cup of water iu the other, and 

 poured them in and made a cement around the tree, and pounded and 

 jammed the dirt in with a tamper. Out of this fifteen hundred trees 

 fourteen hundred seventy-five lived, and most of them are alive today. 

 It is a curious fact to see how they are growing. I wish I couid have 

 one of them here. The first thing they do when 'planted this Avay is to 

 start out roots and they run away down deep. When w^e tried to dig some 

 of these trees up we found that the roots had run three, four and five, 

 and sometimes six feet into the ground and then we lost them. I took one 

 of the long-rooted trees and planted it l)y the side of these trees just as 

 it came from the nursery. In every case the trees with the roots running 

 out from the side were the first to die. Most of the long-rooted trees have 

 their water roots near the surface of the ground, and when Ave do not 

 have enough rain they suffer greatly, while the trees without roots run 

 deeper and have moisture all the time, and the dry weather does not seem 



