BIENNIAL REMOVAL OF FRUIT TREES. 99 



or fertile for a series of years. A wall covered with 

 healthy peach or nectarine trees of a good ripe age is 

 rarely to be seen ; failing crops and blighted trees are 

 the rule, healthy and fertile trees the exception. The 

 following mode of treating peaches, nectarines, apri- 

 cots, and plums on the removal system I have found 

 simple and efficacious. 



Supposing a trained tree, of the usual size, to have 

 been planted in a border well prepared i. e., stirred 

 to a depth of twenty inches ; it may be trained to the 

 wall as usual, and suffered to grow two seasons. To- 

 ward the end of October, or, indeed, any time in No- 

 vember in the second season, it should be carefully 

 taken up, with all its roots intact. If there be two or 

 three stragglers i. e., roots of two or three feet in 

 length for roots are remarkably eccentric, and often, 

 without any apparent cause, run away in search of 

 something they take a fancy to cut off one foot or so, 

 so as to make the roots of the tree more snug. Then 

 make the hole from whence you took your tree a 

 little deeper, and fit to receive its roots without bend- 

 ing or twisting. Place in it any light compost. If 

 the soil be heavy, leaf-mould, rotten manure, and 

 loam, equal parts : if it be light, two-thirds tender 

 loam, not sandy, and one-third rotten manure. Two 

 inches deep of this compost will be enough for the 

 roots of the tree to rest on ; and mind they are care- 

 fully arranged, so as to diverge regularly : then add 

 enough of the compost to cover all the roots, and fill 

 in with the common soil, so as not to cover the sur- 

 face roots more than two inches deep. If the soil be 

 light, the surface should be trodden down very firmly, 



