70 FRUIT FARMING 



growth, which lays the tree open to damage by frost. 

 When trees are carrying a heavy crop, mulching may 

 be carried out in June, or liquid manure can be used 

 with advantage in the growing time, or Fish Guano, 

 Blood Manure, or Peruvian Guano, at 5 cwt. to the 

 acre, placed round the trees and afterwards hoed in. 

 Such a plantation as described would commence to 

 bring a return from the Dwarf Apples in two years, 

 and the fruit, with a little care in thinning, would 

 command a ready sale, because when grown in this 

 manner it is cleaner in appearance and much larger 

 in size than that from old trees. In three or four 

 years the Standards would commence to fruit, and a 

 larger return would annually be made, and if properly 

 managed, at the end of fourteen years, the crop would 

 buy the fee simple of the land outright. 



In order to make the highest price, all fruits should 

 be " graded," to an even sample throughout, be correctly 

 named, and packed carefully, so that the baskets open 

 clean and bright at the market* In the case of choice 

 dessert kinds it pays well to pack them in light 

 boxes, holding two dozen. In fact, we should take a 

 leaf out of the French books, and put up our produce 

 in an attractive form. The pruning in February or 

 March is of the simplest. No Apples should be pruned 

 the first year of planting ; for the first three years 

 commence to form the Standard trees by taking out 

 all the inner wood to attain a bowl shape, and cut 

 back the young growth to four or six eyes, to a bud 

 pointing outward ; the fourth or fifth year shorten the 

 wood of the current year to six or twelve inches, and 



* " If wo could only ensure a full year of such perfect fruit as I have seen at a few farms 

 in Mid Kent, the Americans might whistle for any good they could get by sending in theirs. 

 It is the scarcity of best stuff that drives buyers to foreign produce." Year's Work, 



