ORCHARD CULTURE. 61 



will not only facilitate culture and gathering the fruit, but will 

 add to the neatness and orderly appearance of the orchard. 



It is an indispensable requisite, in all young orchards, to keep 

 the ground mellow and loose by cultivation ; at least for the first 

 few years, until the trees are well established. Indeed, of two 

 adjoining orchards, one planted and kept in grass, and the other 

 ploughed for the first five years, there will be an incredible dif- 

 ference in favour of the latter. Not only will these trees show 

 rich dark luxuriant foliage, and clean smooth stems, while those 

 neglected will have a starved and sickly look, but the size of the 

 trees in the cultivated orchard will be treble that of the others at 

 the end of this time, and a tree in one will be ready to bear an 

 abundant crop, before the other has commenced yielding a peck 

 of good fruit. Fallow crops are the best for orchards, potatoes, 

 vines, buckwheat, roots, Indian corn, and the like. An occa- 

 sional crop of grass or grain may be taken ; but clover is rather 

 too coarse-rooted and exhausting for a young orchard. When 

 this, or grass, is necessarily grown among young trees for a year 

 or two, a circle of three feet diameter should be kept loose by 

 digging every season about the stem of each tree. 



When the least symptom of failure or decay in a bearing 

 orchard is perceived, the ground should have a good top dressing 

 of manure, and of marl, or mild lime, in alternate years. It is 

 folly to suppose that so strong growing a tree as the apple, when 

 planted thickly in an orchard, will not, after a few heavy crops 

 of fruit, exhaust the soil of much of its proper food. If we de- 

 sire our trees to continue in a healthy bearing state, we should, 

 therefore, manure them as regularly as any other crop, and they 

 will amply repay the expense. There is scarcely a farm where 

 the waste of barn-yard manure, the urine, etc., if properly 

 economized by mixing this animal excrement with the muck- 

 heap would not be amply sufficient to keep the orchards in the 

 highest condition. And how many moss-covered, barren or- 

 chards, formerly very productive, do we not everyday see, which 

 only require a plentiful new supply of food in a substantial top- 

 dressing, thorough scraping of the stems, and washing with 

 diluted soft soap, to bring them again into the finest state of 

 vigour and productiveness.! 



The bearing year of the Apple, in common culture, only takes 

 place every alternate year, owing to the excessive crops which 

 it usually produces, by which they exhaust most of the organ- 

 izable matter laid up by the tree, which then requires another 

 season to recover, and collect a sufficient supply again to form 

 fruit buds. When half the fruit is thinned out in a young state, 

 leaving only a moderate crop, the apple, like other fruit trees, 

 will bear every year, as it will also, if the soil is kept in high 

 condition. The bearing year of an apple tree, or a whole or- 

 chard may be changed by picking off the fruit when the trees 



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