234 Landscape Gardening 



aired. Remove all the earth for several yards about us, 

 baring some of our roots, and perhaps shortening a few. 

 Trench the ground where our new roots will ramble next 

 year twenty inches deep. Mingle the top and bottom soil, 

 rejecting the worst parts of it, and making the void good 

 - very good - - by manure, ashes, and decaying leaves. 

 Then you shall have bushels of fair and fine pears and 

 apples where you now have pecks of spotted and deformed 

 fruit." 



Such is the sermon which the "tongues in trees" preach 

 to those who listen to them at this season of the year. We 

 do not mean to poets or lovers of nature (for to them they 

 have other and more romantic stories to tell), but to the 

 earnest, practical, working owners of the soil, especially to 

 those who grudge a little food and a little labor, in order 

 that the trees may live contented, healthy, beautiful, and 

 fruitful lives. We have written it down here in order that 

 our readers when they walk round their gardens and grounds 

 and think "the work of the season is all done" may not be 

 wholly blind and deaf to the fact that the trees are as capable, 

 in their way, of hunger and thirst as the cattle in the farm- 

 yards; and since, at the oftenest, they only need feeding 

 once a year, now is the cheapest and the best time for doing 

 it. The very frosts of winter creep into the soil, loosened 

 by stirring at this season, and fertilize, while they crumble 

 and decompose it. Walk about, then, and listen to the 

 sermon which your hungry trees preach.* 



The use of commercial fertilizers has developed greatly in more 

 recent years. The best modern practice with elderly fruit trees consists 

 in cultivating the soil, giving a fair allowance of fertilizer or barnyard 

 manure, pruning out dead or diseased wood and giving three or four 

 timely sprayings each year. -- F. A. W. 



