TniC CAKADTAN nORriCULTDRTST. 



loo 



would tliey please tell us with what re- 

 sult in this journal. T. A. H. 

 Medora, Muskoka. 



MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS. 



BY A. HOOD, BARniE. 



WHAT SOILS DO APPLES PREFER] 



It has often occui'red to me that in 

 planting fruit trees one very essential 

 condition to success has received less 

 attention than it deserves — I mean the 

 kind of soil in which the different 

 varieties are planted ; and I don't think 

 it is as well known as it ought to be 

 that most varieties have sonie special 

 choice, some particular kind of soil to 

 which they are best adapted ; and cer- 

 tain conditions of such soil as to wet 

 or dry subsoils that are best suited to 

 their requirements. Wet subsoils ! 

 Surely there is no fruit tree that de- 

 lights in a wet subsoil ! ! To which I 

 would say I am not quite sure about 

 that ; but there is one thing I am sure 

 about, and that is, that if a man found 

 himself so situated that he had no con- 

 ^■enient place for his orchard that had 

 a dry subsoil, he would give something 

 to know what trees were best suited to 

 a wet one. We live and learn, or at 

 least we ought to do so, and he that 

 lives and does not learn had better 

 keep out of the fruit growing business. 

 I formerly thought that all garden 

 vegetables would do best in a liglit fri- 

 able soil ; but now if I wanted to grow 

 2)arsnips I would select the stillest clay 

 1 coiihl find. I was once told by a late 

 President of the F. (Jr. A. that he thought 

 a soil could scarcely be too light for 

 apples, and he may have been i-ight ; 

 but I think now that sucli a rule would 

 not apply to all apples. I have been 

 led into these remarks by a little ex- 

 perience I have had with the Graven- 

 stein, which is, I think, the best apple 

 we have of its own particular season, 

 either for eating or cooking. I have a 

 few t ;s ill my orchard, a rather light 



but good garden soil with porous sub- 

 soil, that are not making much pro- 

 gress — not, in fact, doing quite as well 

 as other kinds amongst which they are 

 growing ; while at the same time my 

 brother has a young orchard about a 

 mile away on such a stiff wet clay that 

 his plum trees, of which there were 

 about 80, are all dead or dying, and 

 most of the apple trees following their 

 example, and yet a few Gravensteins 

 under sod are doing well and bearing 

 crops every year. Has any other mem- 

 ber had any experience of this kind 

 with any variety 1 If so it Avould be 

 useful to have those experiences je- 

 corded, and I hope the next man who 

 writes a book on fruit growing will 

 collect such records and use them. 



CARBOLIC ACID FOR ROOT-DESTROYIXG 

 INSECTS. 



In the early part of last summer I 

 was passing by the house of a gentle- 

 man in this town, and he called ni<e in 

 to see his young wallflowers which to 

 his great annoyance were dying off 

 rapidly, without his being able to 

 arrest the destruction. He pulled up 

 sickly looking plants in my pi-esence 

 one after another, and at the I'ate they 

 were going it seemed certain that it 

 would not be long till the last of them 

 was gone ; and every one of them had 

 lost all its fine fibrous roots. This con- 

 vinced me that the trouble was not 

 what is called damping ofiT, because in 

 that case the stalk or stem appears as 

 if eaten partly through just at the sur- 

 face of the soil. It must then, I 

 thought, be insects possibly so minute 

 as to escape observation, and I recom- 

 mended my friend to try a weak solu- 

 tion of carbolic acid, scarcely expecting 

 when I did so that he would follow my 

 advice, knowing as a genei'al thing that 

 men would rather " advise ten others 

 what should be done than be one of the 

 ten to follow their own advising ; " but 



