62 ORCHARDS. 



West, is of opinion that ''an elevated situation, with light, 

 porous soil, is the most proper location for an apple orchard, 

 although it is found that fruit trees will thrive in newly cleared 

 land, if set among the stumps; they have been planted on 

 prairie sod, and there are many fine orchards on rocky tracts, 

 where the preparation must be done exclusively with the pick, 

 the spade, and the shovel. It may be the best economy for 

 the owner of such land to appropriate it to the orchard, be- 

 cause it is unfitted for tillage crops." Decidedly best, for the 

 product of such rough land may be made to vie with and even 

 surpass in value the richest and most highly cultivated acres 

 of the farm. 



A gentleman who owns a farm in a rough, mountainous, 

 red-land section of Virginia, has an orchard, which in the ag- 

 gregate is a large one, planted entirely on such spots — no 

 order or regularity is observed or attempted, but the trees are 

 set in fence corners, abrupt declivities, beside heaps of stone, 

 along lanes and places impracticable for tillage with the plough, 

 where only the pick and mattock can be used to loosen the 

 soil — and these places produce thrifty trees, and fruit of 

 the very best quality — the rich, light, friable soil requiring but 

 little cultivation. These spots, which otherwise would be 

 valueless, are thus made, with little labor and expense, the 

 most productive parts of the farm. 



As farther proof of the adaptability of certain soils to large 

 growth and successful apple culture, the author will here de- 

 scribe a large tree, in his own neighborhood, which description 

 he gave the Southern Planter and Farmer some months ago : 



Probably the largest apple tree in the Southern States is 

 now standing in a dilapidated condition on a farm at present 

 owned by the heirs of the late Professor George Blaetterman, 

 of the University of Virginia, in Albemarle county, three 

 miles south of the southwest mountains. The soil that pro- 

 duced this noble old patriarch is friable and loamy, of dark 

 mulatto color, and a little mixed with small yellow gravel; 

 clay subsoil, and immediately over the only bed or vein of 

 limestone between the ocean and the mountains. This tree is 

 upwards of three feet in diameter three feet above the ground, 



