214 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



or six thousand feet. I then brought in from the meadows and 

 from a clay bed in the neighborhood, I should think three times 

 the amount I had carted off of clay, meadow mud, and leaf 

 mould. Those three articles I very thoroughly worked with 

 the sand. I trenched fipm one side of the garden to the other, 

 throwing back the sand, and mixing the other materials in. 

 That I did in the fall of the year, and in the spring, I set out 

 about twenty-four pear trees, eight feet apart, of the kinds 

 known about here as the most valuable. I took no particular 

 pains, except to set them out regularly, and there I let them 

 stay, and they took care of themselves. If I found a branch 

 sticking out, I trimmed it off, desiring to have pyramidal shaped 

 trees ; and from 1852 down to 1866, those trees (with the 

 exception of two or three which from some cause, I don't know 

 what, died,) have borne successive crops of pears, and in most 

 years, the crop has been exceedingly abundant. Now, whether 

 the mixture of soil which I made is peculiarly adapted to the 

 pear or not, persons more familiar with such details can answer, 

 but these are the facts in relation to the growth of fruit in my 

 garden at Lawrence, on the banks of the Merrimack. My trees 

 were all dwarfs. 



Then there is another point which I have not heard mentioned 

 here at all, which I should like to have gentlemen with small 

 gardens think of a little, and that is, the cultivation of double 

 dwarf trees in pots or tubs of the capacity of about a pail. A 

 painter's tub about twelve or fifteen inches across, and the 

 same number of inches deep, or a large sized flower-pot, fifteen 

 inches across and fifteen deep, should be filled with carefully 

 prepared soil, and the tree planted. I begin with trees about 

 two years old ; better in the fall of the year than any other 

 time. The pot must have a much larger orifice at the bottom 

 than ordinary flower-pots — at least three inches in diameter. 

 When the soil is put in, it must be pressed down with the hand 

 or rammed in ; it must be rich soil, and room must be left at 

 the top, where liquid manure can be poured in as the tree shall 

 need it. The third year, whether the tree be peach, pear, apple, 

 or cherry, you will begin to have fruit, and a great deal of it, 

 for so small a tree. From a peach tree raised in that way, three 

 years old, I took this year fifteen well grown peaches, and I 

 have known from thirty-six to forty and even fifty taken from a 



