STARTING AN ORCHARD — SIX YEARS EXPERIENCE, 1,100 TREES. 293 



In places where water is not handy a water tank and pump 

 might perhaps be secured from some one that had a thresher and 

 a more liberal supply of water be used with advantage. I gave 

 the trees, I think, two or three waterings after the setting and 

 leveled off the ground with team and drag and cultivator. The 

 heap of bottom earth left on the ground I spread around with the 

 shovel. 



The first season I aimed to go round once in about ten days and 

 stir up the ground around each tree for a distance of about six 

 feet in diameter with a four-tined hoe or a garden rake, thus giving 

 the trees a dust mulch. The first year I planted corn and beans 

 for a crop and cultivated freely. The second year I planted corn, 

 and after this I let the trees have the ground. I neglected to put 

 on tree protectors the first year, and this prepared the way for 

 numerous sun scalds. 



Late in the fall I gave the ground a good deep cultivation and 

 mounded up the earth with a spade around each tree a foot high 

 or more for protection against mice. That winter we had deep 

 snows, and it drifted badly in the apple orchard. The mice and rab- 

 bits girdled about sixty trees so that they died. Since then I have 

 made it a point after every snow storm that left the snow deep 

 around the trees to stamp the snow down hard around the trunk 

 of the tree. I have had very little trouble from the mice since. 



The cost of setting out the first seven hundred trees was about 

 five cents each. Later settings have cost more; labor was higher, 

 and I did not run so large a force. It is economy to have men 

 enough to fill all the stations so none will have to do double duty. 



I have not sprayed much. I think if I had used the spraying 

 calendar faithfully for the last three years I would have done much 

 better. 



So far I have not done much manuring. I have used ashes 

 freely on the apples with good results. The trees made a good 

 start the first year. The second and third years many of them made 

 a growth of from three to four feet and were so tender the winds 

 switched them badly. Since coming into bearing the growth has 

 been slower, and from now on I intend to manure freely, also do 

 more mulching. 



So far I have depended on dust mulch mostly; where the 

 ground has been steep and washed badly, as it has in several places, 

 I have put in raspberry brush and coarse hay, then thrown on 

 earth and cultivated same as before. These places have not washed 

 to do any damage the second time. 



