CHAPTER VI 



MAIDEN TREES 



TOWARD the end of April both the buds of the preceding August 

 and the grafts of March will be growing unless the season proves 

 to be unusually backward, and from the time of their start, right 

 on throughout the growing season, they will be maiden trees in the 

 making. Those whose knowledge of young trees and care for 

 them is enlightened, and something more than superficial, will know 

 that though a tree may live a hundred years the most important 

 year of its existence is its first year. It would not be easy to exagger- 

 ate all that its first growing season means for the future tree, for 

 during that short period of four or five months its constitution 

 is formed and its character largely determined, these being influenced 

 for good or ill by the conditions in which it finds itself. If the 

 ground was prepared and the stocks planted as suggested in Chapter 

 III, then those conditions are likely to be of the best, and everything 

 else depends upon the treatment, intelligent or otherwise. Ordinary 

 field treatment of the " rough and ready " kind may very well 

 demonstrate the doctrine of " the survival of the fittest," but careful 

 cultivators will concern themselves in making them all fit, and this 

 is a far wiser economy. The infant trees are literally " in the nursery " 

 and need careful nursing, and are not to be abandoned to that 

 savage natural law. To the nurseryman they are all of equal value, 

 and his interests are bound up in his efforts to keep that value as 

 high as possible. 



Are we quite clear as to that ? It is useless to pass on till we are. 

 We repeat : those young nurslings, just starting on their career, must 

 have every attention and every assistance in building up a healthy 

 constitution, so that by the end of the season they may become 

 fully developed maidens out of which satisfactory trees may be made. 

 The experienced cultivator quite appreciates this and makes it 

 his special care to see that the conditions are distinctly good so far 

 as it lies in his power to make them so. In February, while all is 

 dormant, he begins his work by " pointing over " the soil between 

 the stocks, that is, practically digging it lightly to destroy and bury 



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