FRUIT-TREES THE APPLE. 143 



improved by the Lime or (perhaps better still) a 

 smaller quantity of refuse Salt from a packing-house 

 or meat retailing grocery. There are not many 

 farms that would not repay the application of five 

 bushels per acre of refuse Salt at twenty-five cents 

 per bushel. 



Your trees once set (and he who sets twenty trees 

 per day as they should be set, with each root in its 

 natural position, and the earth pressed firmly around 

 its trunk, but no higher than as it originally grew, is 

 a faithful, efficient worker), I would cultivate the 

 land, (for the trees' sake), growing crops successively 

 of Ruta Bagas, Carrots, Beets, and early Potatoes, 

 but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, dis- 

 turbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and 

 guarding their trunks from tug, or trace, or whiffle- 

 tree, by three stakes set firmly in the ground about 

 each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant culti- 

 vation with the hoe inside as well as outside of the 

 stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Ap- 

 ply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field 

 in quantity sufficient fully to counterbalance the an- 

 nual abstraction by your crops. Make it a law in- 

 flexible and relentless that no animal s'lall be let 

 into this orchard to forage, or for any purpose what- 

 ever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to 

 draw away the crops. Thus until the first blossoms 

 begin to appear on the trees ; then lay down to grass 

 witJiout grain, unless it be a crop of Hye or Oats to be 

 cut and carried off for feed when not more than half 



