98 BRIGHT ON GRAPE CULTURE. 



under or over them. You may, if you please, place a 

 little compost in the open cavity, as you are filling it up, 

 six inches from them, but even this is not necessary. 

 You can feed them soon enough and amply enough by 

 top-dressing at the proper time, and the manure will be 

 all the better for going down in a state of solution, in- 

 stead of being placed around the roots in the form of 

 gross and powerful composts. 



The haste to manure transplanted fruit trees is not 

 only a great injury, but an unnecessary and useless ex- 

 pense; and the cost of it, as advised by ^'the experts,'^ 

 prevents a great many persons from engaging in fruit 

 culture. The very excellent and elegant treatise on 

 Pear Culture by Mr. Thomas W. Field, the intelligent 

 Secretary of the American Pomological Society, recom- 

 mends a plan of trenching and manuring as a necessary 

 preparation for the pear orchard, which, I think, will 

 not only have a tendency to deter many persons from 

 engaging in pear culture, but, if followed, will cause 

 many who adopt it to form a very ill opinion of the 

 dwarf pear. Mr. Field says, to attain the highest suc- 

 cess, you must trench the whole ground three feet deep 

 with the spade, mixing in the process the entire top soil 

 and subsoil to that depth, and incorporating with the 

 whole fifty two-horse loads of stable-manure per acre. 

 Not only so, but he advises well-rotted stable-manure to 

 be placed in the holes when the trees are planted, and 

 more manure to be sprinkled in as the holes are filled 



