6 One Thousand Questions in Agriculture 



What Will the Sucker Be? 



/ have a Japanese plum tree which bears choice plums. Three years 

 ago a strong young shoot came up from the root of it, which I dug out 

 and planted. Will it make a bearing tree in time and be of like quality 

 with the parent? 



It will certainly bear something when it gets ready. Whether it will 

 be like the parent tree depends upon the wood from which the sucker 

 broke out. If the young tree was budded very low, or if it was planted 

 low, or if the ground has been shifted so as to bring the wood above 

 the bud in a place to root a sucker, the fruit will be that of the parent 

 tree. If the shoot came from the root below the bud, you will get a 

 duplication of whatever stock the plum was budded on in the nursery. 

 It might be a peach or an alm.ond or a cherry plum. Of course you can 

 study the foliage and wood growth of the sucker, and thus get an idea 

 of what you may expect. 



Tree Planting on Coast Sands. 



/ wish to plant fruit trees on a sandy mesa well protected from ivinds 

 about a mile front the coast. The soil is a light sandy loam. I intend to 

 dig the holes for the trees this fall, each hole the shape of an inverted 

 cone, about 4 feet deep and 5 feet across, and put a half-load of rotten 

 stable manure in each hole this fall. The imntcr's rains would zvasli a 

 large amount of plant food from this manure into the ground. In March 

 I propose to plant the trees, shoveling the surrounding soil on top of 

 the manure and giving a copious watering to ensure the compact settling 

 of the soil about and below the roots. The roots would be about a foot 

 above the manure. 



On such a light sandy soil you can use stable manure more safely 

 than you could elsewhere, providing you have water handy to use if you 

 should happen to get too much coarse matter under the tree, which would 

 cause drying out of the soil. If you do get plenty of water to guard 

 against this danger, you are likely to use too much and cause the trees 

 to grow too fast. Be very sure the manure is well rotted and use one 

 load to ten holes instead of two. Whether you kill the trees or cause 

 them to grow aright depends upon how you use water after planting. 



A Wrong Idea of Inter-Planting. 



What forage plant can I grow in a newly planted orchard? The soil 

 is on a gently inclined hillside — red, decomposed rock, very deep, mellow, 

 fluffy, and light, and deep down is clayish in character. It cannot be ir- 

 rigated, therefore I zvish to put out a drought-resisting plant which could 

 be harvested, say, in June or July, or even later. I find the follonnng 

 plants, but I cannot decide zvhich one is the best: Yelloxv soja bean, speltz, 

 Egyptian corn, Jerusalem corn, yellow Milo maize, or one of the millets. 

 What do you think? 



Do not think for a moment about planting any such plant between 

 orchard trees which are to subsist on rainfall without irrigation. Your 



