14 PROFITS OF FRUIT CULTURE. 



ceeding year ? Happily, the number of cultivators is rapidly 

 increasing, who may place upon their tables many delicious 

 sorts, on almost any day of the entire year. 



The cultivation of fruit has been retarded by a mistaken 

 estimate of the time required for young trees to come into 

 bearing. But this error is fast disappearing before skilful 

 culture. It is become well known, that he who plants trees, 

 plants for himself, as well as for his children. Bad treat- 

 ment may long retard the growth and bearing of a tree. 

 Enveloped in weeds and grass, what young plant could 

 flourish ? What farmer would think a moment of raising 

 good corn in the thick and tall grass of a meadow ? No 

 wonder, then, that a young tree, similarly treated, lingers 

 in feebleness and disease. But give it for a few years a 

 mellow, clean, and fertile soil, and vigorous shoots, and ex- 

 panding branches, will soon bend under copious loads of 

 fruit. To adduce instances, in a single garden, apple 

 trees, the fifth year from setting out, yielded a bushel each ; 

 peach trees, the third summer, bore three pecks ; and a 

 Bartlett pear, two years from transplanting, gave a peck of 

 superb fruit ; none of them were an inch in diameter when 

 transplanted, nor was their treatment better than that which 

 every good farmer gives his carrots and potatoes. 

 PROFITS. 



It can be hardly necessary, with our present rapidly in- 

 creasing commerce in fruit, to point out the pecuniary pro- 

 fits resulting from its culture. But those who have only 

 raised the more common, or second-rate sorts, can hardly 

 appreciate the heavy returns from the finest, under the best 

 culture. To such, a few examples may be interesting.* 



C. A. Cable,. of Cleveland, Ohio, obtained in 1S45, from 

 an orchard of one hundred cherry trees, twenty years old, 

 more than one thousand dollars. The trees were twenty- 

 five feet apart, and no other crop occupied the ground, which 

 was enriched and kept well cultivated. 



Hill Pennell, of Darby, Pa., sold in 1846, two hundred 

 and twenty-five dollars worth of early apples, from half an 

 acre. 



A farmer near Fishkill, N. Y. sold fifteen hundred dol- 

 lars worth of plums in a single season. Richard I. Hand, 

 * Taken chiefly from the " Horticulturist." 



