122 THE FRUIT GROWER'S GUIDE. 



orchards is not practised in all districts. The principal counties in which cherries are 

 produced in large quantities are Kent, Hertfordshire, and Buckinghamshire, where the 

 ground is undulating. Perhaps the best possible site is a gentle southern slope, above 

 the fog-line of the valleys and hollows of the neighbourhood, for cherry blossom rarely 

 suffers from frost, except in low and level tracts. Dampness of soil or site is the cause 

 of more gummed and wrecked cherry trees than unfitness of our climate for cherry 

 production ; it may be observed that cherries, however, succeed in favourable sites 

 and on every aspect from Cornwall to Morayshire. 



Cherries in gardens require the most open situations. They never succeed in low, 

 damp parts, and detest still air. They thrive in borders at the sides of walks in bush, 

 pyramid, or espalier forms, and trained to walls. The earliest varieties should be planted 

 against south walls ; all varieties succeed on east aspects, also against west walls, but we 

 do not advise west aspects when the fruit requires to be preserved some time on the 

 trees after ripening, for there is there the greatest loss in cracked cherries than on any 

 other aspect. North walls suit all the varieties of the Duke and Morello races. May 

 Duke and others succeed there, and afford supplies of fruit until September, but the 

 quality is not so good as that from sunnier aspects. The Gean, Heart, and Bigarreau 

 varieties do not produce well on north walls. 



Soil. The Kent cherry- orchards, especially those noted for producing the finest 

 cherries seen in the world's greatest market ever since the time of Henry VIII., namely, 

 those in the Sittingbourne, Newington, and Teynham districts, are on a deep loam, over- 

 lying a calcareous sandstone (Kentish Rag). West Hertfordshire and Buckingham 

 cherry- orchards are on deep loams, resting on silicious or calcareous strata. Cherries 

 thrive on the soft sandy soil of Middlesex and Surrey, between Esher and Hampton 

 Court ; they luxuriate on the dry, high, Epping plain, and the May Duke, which 

 does not fruit well everywhere, bears abundant crops on the Woburn Sands, near 

 Bedford. Fine cherries are also produced on the rather heavy soils of the flinty 

 (calcareo-silicious) lands of East Kent ; and splendid trees, bearing abundant crops 

 of Heart and Bigarreau cherries, are occasionally seen on the silicio-calcareous 

 soil, overlying chalk, in some parts of Hertfordshire, many trees having a spread 

 of over 60 feet, and being nearly as much in height. In these orchards on chalk, 

 the Duke race are gummed wrecks, profitless skeletons. The cherry fails completely 

 on a clay subsoil ; and only flourishes for a time on shallow loam overlying gravel, 

 eventually gumming to death before attaining a great size or age, and it will not 



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