STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 51 



Having made our selection of the farm, the next consideration 

 is, where shall we place our trees? We are going to build up an 

 orchard, and it will require the best field. If you can turn over 

 the sod, and keep it so for the first few years, using the cultivator 

 often, giving the young trees as good care as your neighbor does 

 his corn, you may at least expect as good returns. If you find it 

 best not to do this, stake your field off two rods each way, thus 

 securing a straight row. Dig around each stake a hole from two 

 to four feet across, down through the soil, leaving the bottom well 

 stirred up with the spade. Two persons can do the work at much 

 better advantage than one. The turf is cut in a circle around the 

 stake, quartered and removed to one side ; the soil is always placed 

 upon the upper side, as it can be worked into the hole easier. 

 Take home-grown trees and remove them to their new quarters at 

 once. Two-year-old trees, and even older, should be taken. "We 

 cut all i-oots from the size of a pencil up ; all damaged ones are 

 removed, and if any have been wrenched off, we make a clean-cut 

 wound of it. The rootlets take up the plant food, and with a good 

 clean cut the fine roots start out very quickly, and begin their 

 labors. The long or large roots are of but little worth. Do not 

 be afraid of using the knife in pruning the top. 



In transplanting a tree, one should hold it in place while the 

 other works in the first few hoes' full of the fine soil. Place the 

 tree an inch or two deeper than it stood in the row, and lean it 

 towards the south, so as to prevent sun scald. In filling in the soil, 

 place the roots much the same as they were when the tree was in 

 the nursery row ; tread the earth down solid, for roots do not grow 

 or thrive on air. Fertilizers should be in the shape of fine ground 

 bone and muriate of potash — 300 lbs. of the former, to 100 lbs. of 

 the latter, well mixed. Never use any form of barn manure ; just 

 so sure as you do, it will burn the roots, and your tree will receive 

 a bad check. The last few shovels of the soil should remain ; the 

 turfs turned upside down and well tramped down, then the remain- 

 ing dirt cleaned up without tramping. Place mulching around the 

 tree ; it keeps the soil damp, loose and fresh, free from weeds and 

 grass, unlocking the plant food through its action much the same 

 as we do with the cultivator. Where the trees are exposed to high 

 winds, stake them up. Trees near fences where the snow may 

 drift, should be well protected by stakes the first few years, and 

 should be carefully looked after in the early spring, when the crust 

 is forming and the snow settling down. 



