Mana/jement of Orchards. 23 



some years. Any manure applied will do more good by being 

 spread on the surface, and washed into the roots, than if placed 

 under the tree, where the rain would carry it still deeper down, 

 and waste its virtues. Neither is it advisable to place farmyard- 

 dung or other rank manure under the roots. 



Before the stock is planted the top should be cut back to 

 within 12 or 18 inches of the fork, as this will induce the tree 

 to throw out fresh roots. The distance to be adopted between 

 the trees is an important but disputed point. It should be our 

 aim that no two trees, when full grown, should touch each other, 

 so that the distance in a great measure depends on sort, soil, &:c. : 

 about 12 yards is the average interval, and it should never be less 

 than 10 yards. This may seem wide to those vS^xo have been in the 

 habit of planting at 6 or 7 yards. The effects of close planting are 

 to be seen in almost every parish : the boughs run into each other, 

 and the trees become like a wood, and covered with moss ; for want 

 of ^lir the herbage is destroyed, and the trees leave off bearing, and 

 have all the symptoms of age, when they would have been most pro- 

 ductive had the distance between them been sufficient. I can men- 

 tion an instance in which the same man who, when young, assisted 

 to plant an orchard, was employed, before he was sixty years of 

 age, to cut down some of the same trees in consequence of their 

 being so thick that they killed the grass under them. I was 

 present myself, and saw that many of the boughs were interlaced 

 one with the other for two or three yards. The fruit grown on 

 these thick trees is only fit for making sour cider, as a great pro- 

 portion of it never properly ripens. 



This thin planting is no new theory. I have in my possession 

 a book 210 years old, called ' Country Contentments,' by Jervase 

 Markham. The author says, after writing upon small, evil- 

 thriving, sour fruit, galls, wounds, diseases, and short life to 

 trees — " To prevent which discommodity, one of the best remedies 

 is the sufficient and fit distance of trees. Therefore at the 

 setting of your plants you must have such respect that the dis- 

 tance of them be such that every tree be not an annoyance but 

 a help to his fellows ; for trees (as all other things of the same 

 kind) should shroud and not hurt one another ; and assure yourself 

 that every touch of trees (as well under as above) is hurtful!. 

 Therefore this must be a general rule in this art, that no tree in 

 an orchard well ordered, nor no bough, nor cyon drop upon or 

 touch his fellows." He afterwards says — " And herein I am of 

 a contrary opinion to all them which practise or teach the plant- 

 ing of trees that ever yet I knew, read, or heard of, for the 

 common space between tree and tree is ten foot ; if twenty foot, 

 it is thought very much. But I suppose 20 yards distance is small 

 enough betwixt tree and tree, or rather too too little. For the dis- 



