166 



MULCHING AND PLANTING FRUIT TREES. 



Among the trees received last spring from 

 New- York, were several hundred young 

 French seedling pears — all dry, shrivelled, 

 and apparently dead, having been out of the 

 ground several weeks in crossing the Atlan- 

 tic, together with the cullings of the Ameri- 

 can trees of larger growth, intended for im- 

 mediate orchard planting, but which I rejected 

 for that purpose from their bad condition. 

 These I planted altogether in nursery rows, 

 to grow for future use, and placed a thorough 

 mulching of last year's buckwheat straw, three 

 or four inches thick, over them. The larger 

 trees I cut off and grafted when they were 

 set out ; the smaller ones I topped when 

 planted. The result has been that I have 

 lost very few of them, although the early 

 part of the season was cold and drj^, and 

 many of them have made good growth. 



EprECTs OF Mulching in the Or- 

 chard. — Having planted about six hundred 

 apple trees four or five years ago, upon a 

 good piece of clayey loam, based on a clay 

 subsoil, then under the plough, I soon after 

 seeded it into grass, laying the land into 

 ridges two rods apart when seeded, as with 

 my pears, just described, and have since kept 

 it for mowing. I kept the earth forked up 

 well every year around the roots, and pre- 

 vented the growth of grass about the trunks. 

 In the spring of 1849, I dug round them, 

 outside of the previous forking, a spade wide 

 and a full spade deep, and filled that circular 

 trench, so made, with barn-yard manure — say 

 a wheelbarrow load to a tree, and threw the 

 inverted sod of the trench upon it, while the 

 under soil was thrown on the forked surface 

 round the stem. The summer afterwards was 

 extremely dry and hot, and the trees made 

 little growth; indeed, they seemed injured 

 from the treatment. Determined, however, 

 to try the virtues of mulching, early last 

 spring I took a quantity of old fresh marsh 

 (not salt) hay, and buckwheat straw, and put 



around each tree a heavy pitchfork full, spread- 

 ing it out for three or four feet each way from 

 the stem, averaging perhaps four inches thick; 

 all the remaining soil lying in heavy timothy 

 and clover for meadow. 



Now for the result. The summer's growth 

 has been surprising. Shoots one, two, and 

 three feet long have been made from almost 

 every tree. The full bloom of the trees has 

 been followed by an enormous crop of apples, 

 which, unlike trees of feeble growth, have 

 held on their fruit with wonderful tenacity, 

 induced, no doubt, by the strong and vigorous 

 stems which their enlarged growth has given 

 them. During the dryest time of the sum- 

 mer — and until July commenced it was very 

 dry — on lifting the straw, the ground was 

 moist and cool about the roots, while outside 

 the mulching it was dry and cracked. Moss, 

 which had in some instances become set upon 

 the trunks, peeled off and dropped ; and the 

 whole orchard has assumed an entirely dif- 

 ferent complexion. This mulch, for fear of 

 mice next winter, I shall remove early in the 

 fall, to be replaced, together with a fresh sup- 

 ply, next spring, when I purpose to mulch all 

 my orchard trees of every description in the 

 same manner ; satisfied that I can do nothing 

 so serviceable to their growth and health. 



Planting Orchard Trees. — Having 

 on hand in my nursery about twelve hundred 

 apple trees, which were ready for planting, 

 on about thirty acres of ground, which was 

 then mostly in old meadow, I last fall put in 

 a heavy team and turned the whole of it — ex- 

 cepting about four acres — over with the 

 plough, nine inches deep, in " lands" two rods 

 in width, on the ridges of which I intended 

 to plant the trees. In the latter part of April 

 last, I went to work in good earnest, — the 

 frosts of winter having beautifully pulverised 

 the soil, and made it friable as an ash-heap. 

 The weather was cold and tempestuous, and 

 sometimes frosty ; but as the season was ad- 



