What if the tree is shallow set? What if the roots trail along 

 close to the dry surface? What if the tree is on a dry ridge or hill- 

 side baked by the summer sun? What if on thin land, starved for 

 both fertility and moisture? The answer may be total failure <x 

 partial failure and short lived trees, or a partial crop, or a crop only 

 every other year, or a large per cent, of drops, or defoliated trees. 

 READER! Observe and mark well. Your orchard dividend and its 

 future success is in balance when you set your orchard. Remember 

 you can never set it over the second time. No amount of regrets 

 can retrieve a mistake made in the setting. You will spend much 

 money bringing your orchard to a high standard by the allotted time 

 for it to begin to bear, but no amount of money expended in after years 

 can correct a mistake at planting time. You may have in mind plow- 

 ing out a deep furrow for your row, but remember that that furrow 

 can never be plowed again, and the root system will be influenced 

 to confine its growth to the small amount of pulverized soil. Holes 

 may be dug, broad and deep, but like a large plant in a small pot, 

 the hard walls of the hole when filled with roots will cramp or turn 

 back or callous. Either of these methods will be found wanting. 



The new and eminently successful mode of land preparation for 

 all fruit or ornamental trees and for many field or garden crops, 

 especially in tight, dry soils, is by blasting holes with half _ cartridge 

 of Red Cross Extra Dynamite or blasting the furrow with a like 

 amount at intervals of 15 to 20 feet. If in a large orchard or a 

 large field, a blasting machine may be used to detonate the charges. 

 If only a few trees are to be set, the blasting should be done with 

 fuse and blasting caps. Let the depth of the holes for setting your 

 cartridges be governed by the state of the soil. Make a hole with 

 auger, sharpened wood dibber, or crowbar well down into the sub- 

 soil. Tamp well with moist clay. For the best results, throw out a 

 bushel or more of the clay that has been broken by the shot and fill 

 with some organic matter that will slowly decompose as the years go 

 by, mixing and cutting in well with a sharp shovel or spade. Leaf 

 mold, woods topsoil, fence corner settlings, old bones, scrapings from 

 under an old house or outhouse or any such matter is good. Now 

 the roots can go down and out in an area broken and pulverized 

 for many feet on all sides. The tree will make a rapid and healthy 

 growth and come to bearing earlier and live many years longer. 

 It will produce fruit annually, more fruit, larger fruit and fruit 

 of better color because of the conserved moisture. It will resist 

 drouth. The much talked of "insect resisting tree" is a tree healthy and 

 vigorous enough to overcome their baneful attack. 



. The writer set an apple orchard last winter, using Red Cross 

 Dynamite, in an area where woolly aphis is known to abound; but 

 not a single evidence of their presence has been noted. 



The winter, spring and summer just past is one of the dryest 

 on record for Georgia. Many trees, in fact a large per cent, of 

 trees, set by the ordinary method have died. But in three orchards 

 set by the writer with dynamite, 100% are living and doing well. 

 As a neighboring nursery man expressed it, "These trees didn't know 

 it had not rained." 



66 



