FRUIT CULTURE. 797 



up, and then drag and pick up again, and I find that about all 

 of them are saved. 



FRUIT CULTURE. 



Fruit culture has been a part of the business on my farm, 

 though my orchard has just commenced to bear. I have small 

 fruits only for family use, but have in cultivation a large 

 variety of the gooseberry and currant, and the red and black 

 raspberry and blackberry and black currants. Grapes I also have, 

 and some strawberries. My tree fruits consist of one thousand 

 one hundred apple trees of the best sorts in proportionate 

 varieties for season, market, and table uses. 



PEARS. 



My pears consist of some fifteen of the best varieties for 

 the table, the season, and for market. They number five hun- 

 dred trees, and are nearly all standards. I have about one 

 hundred plum trees of the best varieties for use and market, 

 and one hundred and twenty-five quince trees, of the orange 

 variety, several crab apples, and a few cherry trees. The 

 seasons, or soil, or some other cause renders the growing of 

 the peach very risky, and I have abandoned its cultivation. 



TREATMENT OF FRUIT TREES. 



I plant my fruit trees on the best and dryest land I have, 

 and make the land as rich and pliable as possible before plant- 

 ing. Then I measure off the ground I design co plant to trees, 

 say for the apple, thirty feet apart each way. To save time 

 and expense I plow late in the Fall, so that the dead furrow 

 will come exactly where I want my row of trees. I tlien draw 

 my old, rotten, barnyard manure, and place a pile just where 

 my tree is to stand (after making the place for the tree). I 

 now throw the top dirt in one pile, and the subsoil in another, 

 so I can use the rich top soil around the tree in the Spring. 

 I then scatter the dead furrow full of the same kind of manure, 

 and let this matter stand till Spring, when the weather is 

 warm and dry, and my time has come to plant the trees. I 

 purchase direct from responsible nurserymen, ordering my 

 trees in February or March. They will be on hand in time to 



