No. 4.] SOIL IN FRUIT CULTURE. 83 



probably it is all right in some places, but I have my 

 doubts about the low-headed trees in Massachusetts. I was 

 brought up in the belief that you could let trees alone, and 

 have them raise good fruit. I travel about the State consid- 

 erably, and know one orchard where a gentleman used to 

 raise the best fruit shown in Boston. I had the good for- 

 tune to be there, but his fruit began to be poor, and he 

 complained how he allowed his trees to get low, and that 

 the sun hardly shone on the trees ; they were not thick, 

 only the branches came low down and shaded the ground. 

 In my own experience in this section I don't know a single 

 apple tree that grows fine fruit year after year where the 

 branches grow low down. My own method would be to 

 allow the sun to shine on every bit of the ground every day. 

 I think that low heading is wrong in every sense of the 

 word. I am not saying that letting the limbs go down is 

 not good. If you start those heads at, say 2 feet or .3 feet, 

 where will your limbs be ? I never have seen an apple tree 

 that it was possible to keep the limbs up ; as the fruit l)e- 

 gan to grow, the limbs would go down, and down, and 

 down, making it necessary to prop them up. On the other 

 hand, with all such varieties as Greenings and all low- 

 growing trees, it is impossible to keep them up. They 

 may be started at 6 feet high, and in two years the limbs 

 will lie on the ground. Take the Northern Spy, and such 

 trees as those ; you start them in the ground, and they will 

 keep up all right. But advocating starting trees low", which 

 will necessitate in a few years cutting off the large limbs, 

 I think is wrong. The King is another that it is almost 

 impossible to keep up. I don't care how low or how high 

 you start it, it will go down. 



Mr. E. Moore (of Worcester). There is one other 

 point ; that is, in selecting the Baldwin apple or any other 

 apple, or the peach or the plum, you Avill almost invariably 

 find the best specimens in the highest branches. If I go to 

 select fruit for exhibition, I go right into the centre of the 

 tree, if I can reach them with my picker, and I always find 

 the best fruit away up to the top of the tree. I tried one 

 year fruiting some of the lower limbs, picking the fruit. 



