34 THE KANSAS CHERRY. 



SO as to leave the upper bad in a position to start the new branch off 

 in the right direction. 



After planting comes cultivation, and this should begin immedi- 

 ately, and should be thorough, going over with a smoothing harrow 

 or some other shallow working tool so as to loosen the ground which 

 has become more or less packed by tramping while the planting was 

 being done ; again pulverizing two or three inches of the top soil, 

 thus making a dust mulch to retain the moisture ; this cultivation 

 should continue during the summer to keep a dust mulch and keep 

 down the weeds. The number of times it will be needed depends 

 somewhat on the season and the perseverance of the weeds. The 

 cultivation the second and following seasons should be the same as 

 the first, except that the first cultivation should be with a tool going 

 deeper than a smoothing harrow, such as a cultivator or spring-tooth 

 harrow ; about the fourth year the orchard should be sown to clover 

 and left to grow during the fifth year, mowing it two or three times 

 and leaving the clover on the ground to keep up the humus; and this 

 will also have a tendency to check growth and bring the trees into 

 bearing. About the last of May (or perhaps earlier) of the sixth year 

 the clover should be turned under by a shallow plowing, after wliich 

 the cultivation should he kept up with tlie harrow. 



Included with the cultivation and pruning of the cherry orchard 

 should also be considered its care, and whether you class it with the 

 cultivation or with the care makes little difference : but the careful 

 spraying of the cherry is one of the requisites that cannot and must 

 not be overlooked to secure success and keep healthy trees. The leaf 

 spot and powdery mildew are the great enemies of the cherry in this 

 country, and without being in some way prevented are likely to wake 

 up the orchardist some fine spring morning to a knowledge that his 

 cherry trees are all dead. The great loss of cherry trees throughout the 

 l^^orthwest last winter, I am satisfied, was more from these diseases 

 than from the extreme cold of February, 1899. By the middle of 

 August, 1898, many of the bearing cherry trees had lost all their leaves 

 from these diseases. The warm, damp weather of September started 

 a new growth ; many trees put out new leaves and some were in bloom, 

 the sap was up ; they were in full growth when the snow and hard freeze 

 came, on October 17 and 18, and were killed then. If these trees had 

 been thoroughly sprayed with the fifty-gallon formula Bordeaux mix- 

 ture when the blossoms fell off, and again as soon as the fruit was 

 gathered, the leaves would have held on until killed by frost, the trees 

 would not have been growing in October, and would not have been 

 injured by the cold. I did not lose a single sour cherry tree last 

 winter. 



