SEEDLING TREES. 21 



young trees in some out of the way corner, well protected and well 

 looked after. Young Crab stocks are reared from the kernels 

 left uncrushed in the cake from Crab Apples, after the verjuice 

 has been made. The young plants spring up, and after a few 

 careful transplantings, in five or six years become strong enough to 

 graft with varieties of fruit, whose merits are established. 



The most approved method is to separate the pips from the 

 cake by washing, so as to obtain clean seed. Mix this with moist 

 sand, or light mould, and set it aside until February. Then sow 

 thinly in drills, an inch deep, on a firm well manured soil, made as 

 for an onion bed. A few vegetate immediately, but most of the 

 kernels will remain a year in the ground before the young plants 

 appear. The seedlings will grow unequally, but at the end of the 

 second year will generally be ready to transplant into rows a foot 

 apart, and three or four inches from each other. Here they must 

 remain for two years, when the best plants will be strong enough to 

 plant out in the nursery in " quarters," as it is termed, that is on 

 ground well trenched, two spades deep, and heavily manured. The 

 rows must now be two feet and a half apart, and the young trees 

 one foot from each other, when they will be ready for budding the 

 following August. Seedlings should always be transplanted early 

 in Autumn, as soon as the leaf falls, and never later than the 

 beginning of November. 



Young seedlings are very commonly grown from the Apple 

 kernels in the cake thrown aside from the cider mill. These young 

 Apple seedlings spring up often unsown. They are planted out, and 

 beyond question often escape grafting altogether. They are left 

 where they grow, and if they are found to bear a good looking 

 " eyeable " fruit they get planted out to supply the vacancies that 

 are so constantly occurring in the Orchard from one cause or other. 

 It is owing to this careless practice that worthless varieties are now 

 found to prevail so extensively. 



Those who plant Apple pips or kernels with the view of 

 producing new varieties of fruit will find the process tedious. 



