NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



3h', 



from the land three years ajro. It was never 

 burnt over, and white birch and other bushes had 

 sprung up, so that it had a mouth ago as little the 

 appearance of an orchard, as any tract in the State. 

 Having cut the bushes, I staked the liuid out for 

 the rows of trees, twenty-eight feet apart. Three 

 men with hand tools, without cattle, in one week 

 dug out nearly all the stumps and visible roots 

 within four and a-halffeet of the rows slaked out. 

 Tiien with three yoke of oxen, in three days the 

 strips nine feet wide were plowed by back-furrow- 

 ing more than a foot deep. Two men were re- 

 quired besides the driver and plowman to do this 

 work, one with a sharp axe to cut off the roots 

 which were found by the plows, and another to 

 follow with a bog-hoe to mend the broken furrows. 



The land, being free from stone, is thus thor- 

 oughly worked in strips of nine feet wide one way, 

 through the tract, leaving about two-thirds of it in 

 possession of the pine stumps, to be dealt with at 

 some future day. 



I am now having holes dug for the trees, six feet 

 across, and eighteen inches deep. The soil thrown 

 outjis to be mixed with about three bushels of com- 

 post manure from my barn cellar, and half a peck 

 of ashes to each tree, to lie in heaps until the time 

 for setting the trees in the spring. 



I mention the manure particularly, because an 

 article has been recently published by high author- 

 ity, objecting to the use of any manure in planting 

 fruit trees. 



Green manure should never be used about any 

 trees ; but compost, which will not ferment, may 

 be applied in the manure I have inentioned, witli 

 manifest advantage, as my own trees bear abund- 

 ant testimony. 



By planting the plowed strips of my new orch- 

 ard with potatoes and corn, I think the trees will 

 flourish as well for five years, as if the whole 

 ground were worked. Then the whole should be 

 cleared up and suhsoiled, and the fruit will abun- 

 dantly piy after that time for any reasonable ex- 

 pense of cultivation. 



To show by facts, and not theories merely, the 

 advantage of raising fruit, I will state what has 

 been the value of the crop of a single orchard to 

 which reference has before been made in the Far- 

 mer. Mr. Joseph Robinson, of Chester, N. H., 

 has an orchard of less than two acres, which pro- 

 duced a crop of fruit in 1847, for which he was 

 oTered six hundred dollars, on the trees; in 1849, 

 a crop which sold for six hundred and eighty dol- 

 lars; and this year he was offered $425 for the 

 fruit on tlie trees, and declined the offer. His or- 

 chard has been long in full bearing, and bids fair 

 to last for a generation to come. His fruit has 

 been sold in the neighboring iriarkets from one to 

 three dollars per barrel. From his own account I 

 am satisfied that the average nett income of that 

 orchard for ten years past has been more than three 

 hundred dollars a year — the interest of _^i'e //iow- 

 sand iJollars ! 



A gentleman in Hampton, in this State, sold the 

 frnit of about four acres of land, this season, for 

 $800, and last year he received $1400 for the 

 fruit of the same orchard. 



Now if we were credibly informed that so pro- 

 fitable a business as this could be done in Califor- 

 nia, flocks of our young men would peril health 

 and life even, to find the golden soil; but it is too 

 matter-of-fact a business to remain and labor at 



home. It requires six years for trees which we 

 get from the nurseries to come into bearing, and 

 many of our young men are too old to wait so 

 long. 



I recently met a gentleman, who has one of the 

 finest orchards in this vicinity. Said he, "I aim 

 more than seventy years old, but I have set over a 

 hundred apple trees this fall." Mr. McClintock, 

 of Portsmouth, who is now ninety-four years of 

 age, this year ate of the fruit of trees planted with 

 his own hand when he was eighty-six ! 



And by-the-way, there is no doubt that a man 

 vvhfi plants trees in his old age, lives the longer 

 for doing it. An interest in the works of nature — 

 which calls him to active exercise, and keeps up 

 his sympathy with the pursuits of other men, pre- 

 vents him from breaking down at once like the re- 

 tired merchant or professional man, who dies pre- 

 maturely for want of anything else to do ! 



As a profitable investment of capital, there is 

 nothing that now pioinises better for a half cen- 

 tury in New England, than fruit raising. The 

 cry of an over-supply has been kept up for fifty 

 years already, and still the price of fruit has reg- 

 ularly increased. Mr. Robinson says that when 

 he planted his orchard with seedling trees more 

 than fifty years ago, his friends told him there 

 could never be a demand for so much fruit. 



Nobody doubts that just at this time, an orchard 

 is of more value than land in any other use. The 

 most obtuse intellect yields to a mathematical 

 demonstration by simple addition; but still the 

 doubt is, whether there can be a demand for all 

 that can be raised. This question was ably con- 

 sidered in a recent number of the Farmer, by one 

 ol the editors, and need not be here pursued. 



Let the subject of fruit be kept steadily before 

 the public, in our Agricultural journals. 



Many will read, and profit by what they read, 

 and many more will doubt and hesitate, and in 

 future years, regret, as so many are now daily 

 heard to do, that they had not begun in their 

 younger days to plant trees. H. F. French. 



Exeter, N. H., Nov. 15, 1851. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 CRANBERRY CULTURE ON UPLAND. 



Gents: — I perceive that doubts remain (see 

 Ploughman and Farmer of this date, Nov. 15) of 

 the practicability of successfully growing the cran- 

 berry, on upland, or high-land, as distinguished 

 from meadow, in Yankee phraseology. As this is 

 one of those fruits found on the soil of New P]ng- 

 land, by our fathers, at a period of earliest memo- 

 ry, it seems to me too late to doubt the positions 

 in which it can be grown. That the cranberry 

 does grow, and in great abundance too, on many 

 meadows without the aid of culture, there can be 

 no doubt. That it can be grown above the mea- 

 dows, on soil sufficiently elevated for the purpose 

 of growth of corn or garden vegetables, is to my 

 mind equally certain. 



This fact has been demonstrated, by tlie con-_ 

 tinned cultivation by the Messrs. Needham, of 

 Danvers, of about half an acre of land, near where 

 the toll-house used to stand on the Newburyport 

 turnpike. This spot is in a valley near the 

 height of land between the sea and Ipswich River, 

 and I should judge it to be sixty feet above tide 

 water. In the spring of the year, there would 



