330 CROP GROWING AND CROP FEEDING 



that trees treated in this way will make better trees and better roots than if 

 planted in a big hole with all the roots. Climate has a good deal to do with 

 these things, and experiments in a more northern latitude have not been as 

 favorable as those made in the South, where trees planted in this way certain- 

 ly do grow and thrive remarkably. The planting should be done in the South 

 as soon as the leaves are off in the fall and up to Christmas, and in the North 

 probably April would be the better time. For most of the Japan plums a dis- 

 tance of 16x20 feet will be about the proper space for the planting. As with 

 the peach, the plums should, during the early stages of their growth at least, 

 receive careful culture during the early part of the summer, and after July 

 should have a crop of crimson clover sown among them. After the trees 

 have gotten well to fruiting, they can safely be put into grass 

 and used as a chicken yard. The pruning is about the same 

 we give the peach, and the manuring we have already men- 

 tioned. If the clover or other nitrogen collecting legume is grown 

 among the trees, with a good application of phosphoric acid and 

 potash, there will be no need for any nitrogenous manures, but the application 

 of the phosphoric and potassic fertilizers should be faithfully kept up annual- 

 ly if the production of maximum crops is desired. All the Japan plums are 

 inclined to overbear, and there is no fruit grown that can be so improved by 

 systematic thinning of the young fruit. Thinning not only improves the size 

 and quality of the fruit and takes off the strain from the vitality of the tree, 

 but it also lessens the tendency to rot where the fruit grows touching each 

 other. But pick the fruit by hand and do not merely shake the trees or thresh 

 off the fruit with a pole and thereby bruise many that are left. With the 

 domestica (or European) sorts it is essential that daily jarring of the trees 

 be practiced so as to catch the curculio which lays eggs in the fruit and makes 

 them wormy. If the chickens, as I have said, are allowed access to the trees 

 and the jarring is done daily, they will gather up the bitten fruit and insects, 

 and keep the trees comparatively free. A large machine like an inverted 

 umbrella is used in large orchards for the collecting of the insects. It is 

 made on a stout frame with cotton cloth and a slit on one side so that it can 

 be slipped around the body of the tree. If the machine has an opening at 

 the bottom under which a pan of kerosene is attached, the insects and bitten 

 fruit roll into this and are at once destroyed. 



Plums prefer rather a heavier soil than the peach, and thrive well in sod. 

 We have here an old plum tree, growing in a hollow in the woods, where it 

 has never received any cultivation whatever. It stands in the shade of large 

 oaks and other trees of the original forest, and yet, year after year it bears 

 crops of the finest plums. How old it is we do not know for it was there many 



