138 ORCHARDS. 



round; and as our space is limited, we will make the apple a 

 specialty in this article: In order to grow an orchard of fine 

 thrifty apple trees, which will produce an abundance of fine 

 fruit, after obtaining the necessary kinus to ripen in succes- 

 sion — of which we will speak more fully hereafter — we must 

 commence with the starting of the young plants, and inquire 

 what kind of material has been used by the propagator, what 

 mode has been practiced in the propagation, and whether or 

 not this material has been collected in a favorable or an unfa- 

 vorable fruit fvrowino; locality. The stock and the craft are 

 the material, and the mode is to insert the graft into the stock 

 either above or below the surface where the union is to take 

 place. Now, if the material to start these plants has been 

 collected and cultivated in an unfavorable locality for the 

 apple, we cannot hope for high perfection, but feeble trees, 

 imperfect fruit, and even death itself at no distant day, must 

 inevitably be the result. If the grafts have been cut from 

 water-sprouts, or the lower branches of the parent tree, that 

 is also objectionable, even in favorable localities; because the 

 water-sprouts are too long in fruiting, though fine growers. 

 The lower branches make poor, crooked-growing trees, although 

 the first to fruit. The mode of grafting, in common seedling 

 stocks, above the surface is a bad one, because some kinds 

 of apples are much more vigorous than other kinds are, and 

 when it happens to be the case (which occurs as often as other- 

 wise) that a graft of rapid growth is inserted above the surface 

 into a stock of small and uncertain growth, the stock is not 

 vigorous enough for the head, it is an ill-assorted union, and 

 will never do well. But if we wish to grow fine trees that 

 will produce the best fruits, we must choose for the parent 

 tree a fine, thrifty, young-bearing tree, in a favorable locality, 

 and cut from it the main leaders, only for the scions, and in- 

 sert them into healthy seedling stocks about four inches below 

 the surface, where the soil is deep and loamy, and new roots 

 will spring out of the scion itself above the union of the stock. 

 Graft in this way, and if there be great inequality in the 

 growth of the stock and graft, the graft will maintain itself 

 from its own roots. When the plants have been nicely culti- 



