H 



IRISH GARDENING. 



February 



"IRISH GARDENING. 



an illustrated monthly. 

 Offices— 53 Upper Sackville Street. Dublin. 



Publishing Date.— First da> of each month. 



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 " The Mamger." 



New Ideas in Planting. 



THE conclusions arrived at by a considera- 

 tion of the results obtained from the 

 extensive experiments carried out at 

 the experimental fruit farm at Woburn will 

 come as a surprise to the majority of fruit 

 culturalists. These experiments are fully de- 

 scribed in the recently published report,* which 

 deals with several hundreds of trials on methods 

 of planting, in which 2,000 trees were planted 

 " by some ten different hands in seventeen 

 different localities and in eight different 

 counties." 



The experiments were originally planned to 

 afford an object-lesson in the superiority of the 

 orthodox methods of " good practice " over the 

 bad methods followed by ignorant or careless 

 planters. The experiments, however — as ex- 

 periments sometimes will — proved the exact 

 opposite to what was expected of them. The 

 trials were continued for ten seasons in succes- 

 sion, and always with the same result — the 

 unorthodox methods beat the "good practice" 

 every time. In the " careless " method the trees 

 were taken just as received from the nursery, 

 and " huddled " untrimmed into holes too small 

 for them, the rough earth shovelled over them, 

 and "rammed with a heavy rammer till the 

 whole was thoroughly puddled and shook like 

 a jelly at every stroke," finishing up with a 

 shovelful of loose earth scattered over the top. 

 Furthermore, some of the planting was done at 

 a time when the soil was so sodden with water 

 that the " orthodox " control planting had to 

 be delayed until the physical condition of the 

 soil improved. In comparing the results the ex- 

 perimenters report that the " careless " method 

 of planting resulted, over the "orthodox," in a 



' Ninth Report of the Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm. By the 

 Duke of Bedford and Spencer U. Pickering. The Amalgamated 

 Press, Ltd. Price 2s. 6d. 



more vigorous root and stem growth (on an 

 average about 40 per cent.) and a greater pro- 

 ductiveness in fruit — the average success in the 

 case of bush fruit being as much as 76 per cent. 

 The report, therefore, recommends thorough 

 ramming during planting, especially if the soil 

 be a clay and in a sufficiently wet condition to 

 secure intimate contact between root and soil. 

 The ramming operations were, of course, con- 

 fined to the small area of disturbed soil immedi- 

 ately over the root system. 



In orthodox planting great care is taken of 

 the roots in tr.tnsplanted trees and bushes so as 

 not to injure them, preserving the fibrous root 

 system, and spreading out and so arranging the 

 stout roots that the)' lie as near as possible in 

 their natural position. All this care is apparently 

 not only unnecessary, but, according to these 

 experiments, actually detrimental to the success 

 of the tree. It is even better to remove the 

 fibrous roots, as they will die in any case, while 

 bending the stouter roots, at least in young 

 trees, will result in the more rapid development 

 of a new and vigorous sj'stem of fibrous feeding 

 roots, and so increase the water and food supply, 

 and therefore the growing power of the entire 

 tree. 



The explanation given is this — put as briefly 

 as possible. The fibrous roots, having lost their 

 growing points, lose their power of elongating, 

 and then more or less rapidly die off. New roots 

 arise from the sides of the older roots as well as 

 from the base of the stem in contact with the 

 soil. The closer the contact with the moist soil 

 the more readily do new roots arise. Further- 

 more, a bend in one of the thicker roots, if the 

 root is not too old, encourages the formation of 

 new feeding roots at that spot. Once formed, 

 the new roots soon emerge Irom the restricted 

 area, where the soil is tightly rammed, to the 

 looser and better aerated soil-region immedi- 

 ately surrounding it. 



The outcome of these trials is certainly very 

 striking. We have ourselves seen the experi- 

 mental trees at Woburn, and so far as these are 

 concerned the results are undoubtedly con- 

 vincing; and as similar results have been 

 obtained on other soils and under different con- 

 ditions, fruit growers might well carry out 

 similar trials on their own grounds, and so 

 convince themselves whether the system advo- 

 cated in this Report is advantageous in general 

 practice, 



