Cultivation of the Soil. 73 



mes beneficial." " Well," answered he, " I have found it so my 

 fifty trees all lived, it is true, but I have lost one year of their growth 

 by my want of knowledge." On examination, they were found in 

 excellent soil, and had been well set out. All the rows were in a 

 field of wheat, except one, which was hoed with a crop of potatoes 

 The result was striking. Of the trees that stood among the wheat, 

 some had made shoots the same year an inch long, some two inches, 

 and a very few, five or six inches. While on nearly every one that 

 gre w with the potatoes, new shoots a foot and a half long could be 

 found, and on some the growth had been two feet, two and a half, 

 and even three feet. Other cases have furnished nearly as deci- 

 sive contrasts. An eminent cultivator of fine fruit, whose trees 

 have borne for many years, remarks : " My garden would be worth 

 twice as much as it is, if the trees had been planted in thick rows 

 two rods apart, so that I could have cultivated them with the plough. 

 Unless fruit grows on thrifty trees, we can form no proper judgment 

 of it. Some that we have cultivated this season, after a long neglect, 

 seem like new kinds, and the flavor is in proportion to the size." 



The thick rows here alluded to, may be composed of trees from 

 six to twelve feet apart in the rows. This mode admits of deep and 

 thorough cultivation, and the team can pass freely in one direction, 

 until close to the row, where the soil need not be turned up so 

 deeply, or so as to injure the roots. Fig. 89 exhibits this mode of 

 planting, and Fig. 90 another mode, where the trees are in hexa- 



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* * # # 



Fig. 89. Fig. 90. 



gons, or in the corners of equilateral triangles, and are thus more 

 equally distributed over the ground than by any other arrangement. 

 They may thus be cultivated in three directions. For landscape 

 effect, this is undoubtedly better than any other regular order. 



Trees are frequently mutilated in cultivating the ground with a 

 team ; to obviate this difficulty, arrange the horses when they work 

 near the line of trees, one before the other, or tandem. Let a boy 

 ride the forward one, use long traces and a short ivhipple-tree, and 

 place the whole in the charge of a careful man who knows that one 



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