236 ANNUAL REPORT 



have been transplanted and stood two years. They should not be 

 dug before the twentieth of October, with the exception oi a few 

 varieties, and as much later as the nature of the season will admit. 

 They must not be wrenched and torn from the oround by main 

 strength. Let sharp spades do the work. If the trees are received 

 in the fall, they should be buried root and branch. This is done 

 by selecting a piece of dry ground, not subject to overflow, and at 

 a place where the trees will not be molested by the pocket gophers. 

 Open a ditch sufficiently long to receive the trees two feet deep, 

 with one side and both ends perpendicular, and the other side 

 sloping from the bottom of the ditch as wide as the trees are long, 

 so that the tops of the trees will be even with the top surface 

 of the ground. Untie the bundle or bundles of trees and place 

 them in the ditch side by side, with the tops of the trees even with 

 the top of the ground. Cover them up with clean, moist earth, 

 two feet deep over the roots and two or three inches over the tops. 

 Let them remain in this condition until the fifteenth or twentieth 

 of May, or until the ground is sufficiently warm to plant corn. In 

 all cases, before the trees are buried, the roots should be shortened 

 in to five or six inches, and they will granulate at the points they 

 were cut during ihe time they are buried, and will commence 

 growth much earlier in the spring. Trees delivered in the spring 

 from a distance, and received in a dried up condition, should be 

 root and top pruned and buried a few days in moist earth, even 

 if it is late in the season before they are planted out. 



SOILS AND LOCATIONS, PREPARING THE GROUND, ETC., ETC. 



Reject all low, frosty lands subject to late and early frosts, such as 

 is to be found about small lakes and low valleys, marshy and damp, 

 sour, sticky soil with no chance for drainage, as not good for fruit 

 trees. In every instance aiter throwing out the above soils and 

 locations, plant your fruit trees on the highest tillable land avoid- 

 ing as much as possible a southern slope. To prepare ground for 

 fruit trees as it should be done, does not mean to plough and crop 

 for a few years and plant to fruit trees in the usual way. If the 

 soil is dry, subsoil porous so that all surface water will soak through 

 in a few hours, it will do to plough as deep as you can with two 

 horses, follow with a subsoiler with two horses attached, one 

 ahead of the other in the furrow, and loosen up the subsoil as deep 

 as possible. Trenching is much better where a few trees are to be 

 planted, but if the ground is naturally wet, sour and sticky, as is 

 often the case in large portions of the country on all elevations, on 



