A HINT TO PLANT GROWERS. 



167 



followed after the common plough, and had 

 two yoke of cattle to draw it. By this 

 means I loosened and stirred up the gra- 

 velly substratum to the depth of sixteen 

 inches ; it became, also, considerably min- 

 gled with the top soil. The land was in 

 tolerably good order, but I had it dressed 

 with a strong lime compost, (lime and peat,) 

 just before the subsoiling was begun. 



The remaining strips of the field were 

 simply plowed in the common way, and the 

 whole harrowed together. 



I then planted the rows of trees, as near- 

 ly as I could, in lines running through the 

 middle of the subsoiled strips. This gave 

 them a prepared surface four feet wide on 

 each side, and sixteen feet in the row from 

 tree to tree. 



The trees grew more vigorously the first 

 season after transplanting, than I ever saw 

 any do before. Here and there as I saw a 

 sickly looking one, during this and the next 

 two years, I immediately took it out, and 

 filled its place with another of healthy 

 growth. 



The result of my experiment has been 

 most satisfactory. The orchard is in excel- 

 lent health and a good bearing state, though 

 it has been in bearing now to the sixth 



year. The flavor of the peaches raised in 

 it, is much finer than I have er,er raised other- 

 wise in the same soil. And a small orchard 

 set a year since on a joining farm, in a soil 

 quite like my own, but planted in the or- 

 dinary way — that is on thin light soil, un- 

 prepared, bore its two crops of fruit, then 

 failed, and had to be rooted out. 



There is no doubt but my success would 

 have been more complete if I had subsoiled 

 the whole of the land. This I could not 

 afford to do at the time, but those having 

 capital would of course do so. I remarked 

 during the first three years, when I raised 

 root crops in my orchard, that the growth of 

 the crops was a great deal finer, and the 

 yield nearly a third more on the strips that 

 were prepared or subsoiled, than on those 

 that were only surface ploughed. 



Your readers may draw their own con- 

 clusions. I will add, before finishing my 

 letter, that after some little practice, I am 

 strongly in favor of the mode of shortening 

 in the Peach, which you have so strongly- 

 urged upon all cultivators of this fruit. It 

 appears to me to be a great improvement 

 upon all other modes of pruning the peach 

 tree. Your friend. S. 



Bucks Co., Pa., Sept., 1847. 



A HINT TO PLANT GRO"WERS. 



BY A CONSTANT READER. 



Dear Sir — I wish to send you a few lines 

 concerning a mode of growing plants in 

 pots, that I am induced to think of the very 

 first importance. It may be known and 

 practised by some of your readers in other 

 parts of the country • but as those to whom 

 I have mentioned it here are entirely un- 

 acquainted with it, and as, with me, they 

 agree that it is a great thing in green-house 

 cultivation, I leave it to your own judgment 



to make it known to those of your readers 

 interested in exotics. 



What I allude to is the use of roasted 

 turf in the soil used for all green-house 

 plants. It is, you know, the custom of 

 many plant-growers to screen or sift all 

 their compost for pots, thereby making it 

 all of one uniform size ; and no little 

 pains is taken to mix the different kinds of 

 soils so as to obtain just what is deemed es- 



