302 Fruits and Fruit Trees of America. 



The chapter on training contains many useful hints, but 

 the author justly observes that " our fine dry summers, with 

 the great abundance of strong light and sun, are sufficient to 

 ripen fully the fruits of temperate climates, so that the whole 

 art of training, at once the triumph and skill with English 

 fruit gardeners, is quite dispensed with." 



To us successful transplanting has always appeared one 

 of the most difficult of the young practitioner's attainments. 

 A tree may be placed in the ground, but to do the work thor- 

 oughly, and have the trees grow nearly as well as if they had 

 not been moved, is a prominent mark of a good gardener. 

 Nearly one half of all the trees set out in this country fail 

 from the want of a proper knowledge of transplanting. 



The following remarks on the season for performing the 

 work, are worthy of attention: — 



" The season best adapted for transplanting fruit trees is a matter open to 

 much difference of opinion "among horticulturists ; a difference founded 

 mainly on experience, but without taking into account variation of climate 

 and soils, two very important circumstances in all operations of this kind. 



All physiologists, however, agree that the best season for transplanting 

 deciduous trees is in autumn, directly after the fall of the leaf. The tree 

 is then in a completely dormant state. Transplanted at this early season, 

 whatever wounds may have been made in the roots commence healing at 

 once, as a deposit directly takes place of granulous matter from the wound, 

 and when the spring arrives the tree is already somewhat established, and 

 ready to commence its growth. Autumn planting is for this reason greatly 

 to be preferred in all mild climates, and dry soils ; and even for very hardy 

 trees as the apple, in colder latitudes ; as the fixed position in the ground, 

 which trees planted then get by the autumnal and early spring rains, gives 

 them an advantage, at the next season of growth, over newly moved trees. 



On the other hand, in northern portions of the Union, where the winters 

 commence early, and are severe, spring planting is greatly preferred. 

 There, autumn and winter are not mild enough to allow this gradual pro- 

 cess of healing and establishing the roots to go on ; for when the ground is 

 frozen to the depth of the roots of a tree, all that slow growth and collec- 

 tion of nutriment by the roots is necessarily at an end. And the more ten- 

 der sorts of fruit trees, the peach and apricot, which are less hardy when 

 newly planted than when their roots are entire, and well fixed in the soil, 

 are liable to injury in their branches by the cold. The proper time, in such 

 a climate, is as early as the ground is in a lit condition in the spring. 



Early in autumn, and in spring before the buds expand, may as a general 

 rule be considered the best seasons for transplanting. It is true that there 

 are instances of excellent success in planting at all seasons, except midsum- 

 mer ; and there are many who, from having been once or twice successlTul 



