84 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



April, 191 1 



Starting an Orchard 



Fr. M. Leopold, O.C.R., La Trappe, Que. 



(Continued from last issue) 



HIvRE we have to get the trees to 

 protect' each other ; so in consider- 

 ing all this, it is safe to say we can 

 plant apple trees at twenty-five to thirty 

 feet each way; cherries, fifteen to twenty 

 feet each way ; pears, twenty to twenty- 

 five feet each way, and plums, fifteen to 

 twenty feet each way. In Ontario, I 

 would say, plant apple trees at forty feet 

 each way. 



CARE OF NTJE8ERY STOCK 



Unpack stock immediately upon arrival 

 and dip the roots in liquid mud. In case 

 stock cannot be immediately set out, pre- 

 pare a place where it can be temporarily 

 planted, taking care to cover roots thor- 

 oughly, working the soil in among the 

 fibres. Dig generous holes and provide 

 good soil to fill them. Do not bend the 

 roots ; cleanly cut off bruised or broken 

 roots, and never let them dry. Dip them 

 in mud, place them in hole, throw good 

 soil in hole, tightly ramming it around 

 roots after each shovelful. Leave no air 

 pockets. After hole is filled, cover top of 

 ground thickly with good, well-rotted 

 stable manure as far as roots extend. Do 

 not let manure come in contact with the 

 roots of young trees ; apply manure as a 

 mulch. An assistant is very helpful when 

 setting trees. Two men, or a man and 

 a boy, can work together to good advan- 

 tage. 



Trees s'lould be set in the ground a lit- 

 tle deeper than they were set when grow- 

 ing in the nursery : Deep enough so that 

 the joint between stock and scion is cov- 

 ered. As the tree setting progresses, it 

 is a good plan often to "sight" the rows 

 across from side to side, both ways, to 

 make sure that everything is exactly 

 straight. The eye is an excellent detec- 

 tor of unsuspected crooks in rows. In 

 exposed situations or in windy localities, 

 it is a good plan to incline the newly-set 

 tree slightly toward the point where the 

 strong winds come from. The trees will 

 straighten as they grow. 



PBUNING 



The newly-set tree must be pruned. As 

 it stood in the nursery there was approx- 

 imately a balance between the top and 

 the roots, the latter being just about 

 enough, under the condition of that soil, 

 to supply what moisture and nourishmenl 

 the leaves and branches needed. Evi- 

 dently, if half of the roots were suddenly 

 removed, this equilibrium would be de- 

 stroyed, and each leaf would show its 

 distress at the decreased sap pressure, by 

 wilting, and the weaker ones would pro- 

 bably die. 



Now, this is essentially the condition 

 of the nursery tree. No matter how 

 carefully it was dug, many of its fine 

 feeding roots are sure to have broken off, 

 or have dried up ; and until it can re- 



establish its relations with the soil, and 

 put out new roots to take the place of 

 those destroyed, it is totally unable to 

 support and nourish the original amount 

 of top. The fine root hairs, which appear 

 like fuzz near the tips of the smaller roots 

 and do most of the ab.sorbing for the 

 roots, dry out almost instantly on expos- 

 ure to the air, and are parctically all de- 

 stroyed in transplanting. It takes some 

 time to form these anew, and if the whole 

 top is left to "leaf out" during the pro- 

 cess, evaporation from so many points 

 will result in disastrous drying of the 

 whole tree. This can be avoided by cut- 



ting back the lop to correspond with the 

 roots, thus diminishing the evaporation 

 to the point where they can supply the 

 loss. 



Choose three, four or five limbs to form 

 the future frame work of the tree. These 

 should come out from the trunk in differ- 

 ent directions, distributed as evenly as 

 possible ; and if feasible no two branches 

 should come out exactly opposite each 

 other. Cut the chosen limbs back to six 

 or eight inches, remove all others. Cut 

 to a bud, making a sloping cut. 



If the ground around your fruit trees is 

 not kept constantly cultivated, the trees 

 should be heavily mulched all summer. 

 Straw or strawy manure is a good mulch. 

 Newly-set trees have no depth of root and 

 dry out very rapidly. 



Aa Old Tree Showiag the Retnlt •( Ne(I(ct. 



The lower limbs should have been left on. Wounds from prunine and other canaes should have 

 been painted over and all cavities filled with cement. 



Neglected Trees 



A. McNeil, Ottawa 



I have visited many hundreds of or-, 

 chards, old and young, and do not recall 

 ever having seen a dozen dead or dying 

 trees that were in this condition as the 

 result of old age. .Occidents, neglect, 

 mistakes in pruning and injuries of vari- 

 ous sorts, in nearly all cases preventable, 

 have been the cause. The above illus- 

 tration is an example. The tree was formetf 

 with a very sharp crotch near the ground, 

 the lower limbs having been destroyed. 

 The bark was injured on the left hand 

 limb ; the result of this was that the 

 wood was left naked. The tree evident- 

 ly struggled to repair the wound, but the 

 injury was so exposed that the bark never 

 formed over it. The pickers, no doubt, 

 travelled up and down on the tender 

 growth that was being made about this 



wound ; the pruners found it a convenient 

 way into the tree ; canker spores found 

 a congenial lodging place here, and, in 

 the meantime, the naked wood was ex- 

 posed to the vicissitudes of sunshine and 

 rain, frost and snow. It soon began, to 

 decay, and the decay developed up and 

 down, and has rapidly overtaken the 

 newer growth on the outside, weakening 

 the limb so that in a year or two it will 

 fall entirely away. , 



Higher up on the right hand limb is a 

 wound caused by sawing off a large limb. 

 Nothing was done to protect the exposed 

 wood, and, as a consequence, decay set 

 in. This extended up and down the tree, 

 so that the right hand limb is only a 

 mere shell now, and a heavy wind will 

 likely break it near the ground. 



Both these injuries could have been 

 readil}' prevented. If the wound on the 



