106 FRUIT GARDEN COMPANION. 



ning, and like operations, to be perused under their 

 proper heads, 1 shall confine this subject entirely to 

 the management of the ground of a fruit garden or 

 orchard after being planted the first year. 



It is most generally the custom to crop the ground 

 between fruit trees for three or four years with po- 

 tatoes or different kinds of vegetables ; to this sys- 

 tem there can be no objection if it is not over done ; 

 but where young orchards or fruit plantations are 

 overcropped so that the ground cannot be well 

 cultivated between the rows, and the produce 

 is taken off in such quantities as to exhaust the 

 soil, the growth of the trees is very much retard- 

 ed and impoverished. The under crop of orchards 

 or fruit gardens should always be considered as 

 a secondary consideration; and if the produce will 

 merely pay for the labor, the cultivator ought to be 

 contented. 



In the first spring of a new planted orchard or 

 fruit garden, I recommend, if the ground has not 

 been manured before planting, that it have a good 

 manuring and be well ploughed or dug deep ; and 

 cropped with potatoes in rows two or three feet 

 apart, leaving a breadth of four feet by the rows of 

 trees uncropped. Every care should be taken to cul- 

 tivate the ground in the very best manner during the 

 summer between the crops, and the part left by the 

 trees should be kept clear of weeds and worked deep 

 with a fork Aoror some tool, in order to prepare the 

 ground so that the roots of the trees strike freely 

 into it. 



In the fall when the crop is taken off, the ground 

 should be ploughed towards the tree, beginning close 

 to the stems with a shallow furrow so as not to disturb 



