The Planting of the Fruit-Farm 79 



a cover made of cement and cast in a wooden frame. 

 The well may be covered so that the plow cannot 

 strike this arch or cement. Of course the careful 

 fruit-grower keeps a plot of his land and locates on 

 it all ditches and drains. 



Better than the ditch and the drainage well is it 

 to spend a few days, before setting out the orchard, 

 with team, plow, and shovel, and a crew of men in 

 leveling the proposed orchard field. Fill up the 

 hollows; cut down the hillocks; you will save 

 greater cost in drainage wells and ditches and dead 

 trees. It takes a dozen years to produce a tree 

 in full bearing, and well-drained land need know 

 slight if any loss of trees because of either water- 

 soaked or parched land. 



Once the subsoil is drained, the tree knows no 

 serious hindrance to rooting. Extremes of flood 

 and drouth are prevented. And if the tree thence- 

 forth is adequately cared for, — ^by trimming, spray- 

 ing, cultivating, soil-fertility, and wind and weather, 

 the fruit-grower may reasonably expect his reward. 

 Drainage at bottom and cultivating at surface 

 are only parts of the care of an orchard. The 

 simple but inexorable rule, not to set a tree after 

 it starts to grow, — in the spring, or before it ceases 

 to grow, in the fall, — and a second and like rule, 

 never to plant an orchard on undrained land, may 

 be accepted as the orchardist's chief guide. There- 

 fore it is well, if trees are to be set in the spring, to 

 get the land ready the fall before; or, if to be set 

 in the fall — an admirable time for most trees, — to 



