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its nitrogen is much better added by means of stable manure 

 or chemicals. Besides, one of the greatest improvements 

 of modern times in relation to orcharding is the custom of 

 keeping the whole of the orchard area free from any growth 

 whatever from weeds of course, and from snatch-crops 

 also. It has to be a well kept, pulverized, bare surf ace acting 

 as a mulch and air-absorber for the underlying root-stratum. 

 Will it ever be so at the Cape ? Perhaps not, just yet. Old 

 habits will be too much for us, and we shall for some years 

 yet go on growing our small stuff in among the trees in 

 the orchard. Be it so, since we as yet know no better. 

 But the great thing to be remembered in all these snatch 

 cultures (allowed to exist because of the hardness of our 

 hearts, and perhaps we may say of our heads), is that 

 nothing whatever can be permitted except such things 

 as salads, onions, pumpkins, melons, all annual crops, 

 which deal only with the very superficial layer of soil at 

 the surface. It would be truly suicidal policy for a man 

 to lay down a crop of lucerne for instance, among his 

 trees. Its roots would soon get down a full yard deep and 

 try conclusions with the apple and peach roots to their very 

 great disadvantage. Yet such things are done in this year 

 of grace, 1896. Besides, there is a fatal temptation in 

 the matter of green manuring. It is so easy to deceive 

 yourself into fancying that you are letting the weeds run 

 riot all over your orchard of set purpose and as an act of 

 wisdom, because you mean some day, not fixed, to turn 

 them in as green manure. Depend upon it, the man who 

 lets weeds grow to avoid the labour of keeping his land 

 clean all through, will find plenty of excuses for avoiding 

 the labour of turning them in. And then what are we to 

 call his orchard ? A plot with a great many trees and a 

 few weeds, or a mass of weeds with a few trees among 

 them ? If there were no other argument against green- 

 manuring than this, there would be enough to leave it 

 prudentially out of the canon of fruit-growing. 



