STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 255 



deep guUeys. If the soil is too poor to bring a fair crop of corn 

 or potatoes, it should receive a good dressing of barnyard manure 

 and have a hoed crop taken off; or better yet, summer fallowing 

 the season before planting the trees. The orchard ground should 

 be securely enclosed with a hedge or fence to keep out cattle and 

 other stock, and that it may securely hold young pigs for purposes 

 that will be noticed hereafter. A five-board fence serves in addi- 

 tion as a partial protection and wind-break, but two boards at bot- 

 tom and three barbed wires above suit my views the best. This 

 fencing is best done before the trees are planted. If a hedge is 

 used it is best of evergreen trees, and not too close to outside rows 

 of fruit trees. 



WHERE TO PROCURE TREES. 



Before we get too far along it is well to look around among the 

 nurserymen and see where we can secure the best trees, (unless 

 happily we have grown our own). The worst policy a man can 

 pursue is to order them from some traveling vender of whom he 

 knows nothing, and it is not always safe to trust an honest agent's 

 judgment, for he would naturally be a little warped in favor of his 

 employer. If you kuov/ a nurseryman who grows his own seed- 

 ling stocks, and uses for the purpose Wisconsin or Minnesota grown 

 seeds, selected from the hardiest and best varieties ; who gives his 

 trees clean and careful culture, and plenty of room to grow in ; is 

 careful in pruning to form well balanced heads and no crotches 

 that will split down and ruin the trees in after years ; who keeps 

 every variety correctly labeled, and who digs and handles the trees 

 so that they retain a fair proportion of their roots, and consigns 

 to the brush heap all unsound and worthless stock, by all means 

 encourage him with your patronage. Trees without sufficient 

 roots, with scarred and deformed trunks and lopsided and forked 

 tops would be dear as a free gift. 



While I am an advocate of spring planting I shall insist that the 

 trees are much the best dug and top and root pruned, if necessary, 

 in the falh They should then be heeled-in or buried with the roots 

 entirely out of the reach of frost. Trees should not be dug too 

 early in the fall, not before the season's growth is completed and 

 the wood is ripened up, and the leaves have fallen or have per- 

 formed all their functions. This is liable to be done where large 

 fall deliveries are made. Digging trees in spring is a practice that 

 ought to be condemned, and some of our best nurserymen are obvi- 

 ating the necessity of it by erecting large cellars for storing their 



