24 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



in a constant state of cultivation, mostly to vegetables, such as 

 onions, cabbages, carrots, beets, turnips and parsnips — the 

 larger part for market, and the balance for stock. The original 

 cost of preparing these six acres and setting the trees was 

 about one thousand dollars. Manure has been liberally used 

 on these grounds, and remunerating crops have been produced 

 in return, all of which have been charged and credited to the 

 land, without reference to the growth of between four and five 

 hundred of these fruit trees, now nearly in a bearing state, 

 which promise to pay well for the care, patient labor and cost 

 bestowed upon them for the last five years. No pains were 

 spared in the selection of these trees, either in quality of fruit 

 or character of the tree. They were set in the spring, and in 

 no instance until the land was in a suitable state for plant- 

 ing. Holes were made two feet and a half deep and four in 

 diameter, and filled with rich surface soil, mixed with chips, 

 dung, or rotton wood, and about fifty pounds of waste bone to 

 each tree, evenly distributed beneath the roots. Care was 

 taken to set the tree no higher or lower in the ground than it 

 was in the nursery. All the pruning has been done from the 

 first of June to the first of August, and when the limb or twig 

 was so small that it would mostly heal over the first year. 

 Gum shellac, dissolved in alcohol, has been used to cover the 

 fresh wound as soon as the limb was taken off. 



I will mention one fact in connection with my apple trees. 

 I do not wash my trees with any kind of akalics or any thing 

 else, believing as I do that it will be the death of the tree. 

 Deep and thorough cultivation of the land on which they stand 

 insures a healthy and vigorous trunk, branch and root. The 

 roots of my trees have been trained to find their subsistence 

 far below the surface — the surface roots having been cut off to 

 the depth of at least six inches. In this way they have not 

 suffered by drought, and it keeps them back until later in the 

 spring. My pear trees have all been set in the same way, ex- 

 cept six inches deeper in the ground, putting the graft or splice 

 six inches below the surface, and always using a richer compost 

 than for any other fruit. Trees on quince stocks I set ten feet 

 apart, and standards fifteen ; apple trees thirty-three feet apart. 



Within five years past 1 have dug a cellar of ninety feet in 



