THE CANADIAN HOETICULTURIST. 125 



plunderer, man, and furnish some nourishment." This was said after care- 

 fully collecting numerous orchard statistics, and observations made since 

 fully confirm it. 



Not three days ago the writer's attention was called to a tree sixty-five 

 years old, fresh and vigorous, which bore last fall fourteen barrels of apples. 

 It stood close to the kitchen door, where slops were thrown and where 

 neither ])lough nor grass were allowed to trouble it. Mr. Heath took a 

 thousand barrels of very tine apples this year from 350 trees (specimens 

 may be seen on your tables) ; the frost destroyed his apples on the flats ; 

 five Spys and fifteen Baldwins gave 180 barrels. The ground has not been 

 plowed since the year they were set. 



Properly stated, the question in controversy is this : Which will kill 

 the quickest, a sharp plow or a tough sod 1 'We confess we can't tell. 

 We have thought the thing over a great desl, and we can't decide. Some- 

 times one, sometimes the other is to be preferred, but they are both 

 nuisances to be abated. The sod should be broken by mulch, manure, the 

 rooting of hogs, the stamping of sheep, or the spade fork— the plow is 

 always and invariably a choice of evils. Theoretically, nothing on earth is 

 more absurd than to plant an orchard and then go to work systematically 

 to exterminate every root that ventures within eight or ten inches of the 

 surface. That is exactly what we do, as all who are familiar with th© 

 process will admit, when we keep orchards under the plow. The assumption 

 IS, that rich, warm, genial soil must be devoted to beans barley and buck- 

 wheat, and the tree, from which the chief profits are expected, must <ro 

 down, down, and struggle for a living among the cold, barren clods of the 

 subsoil. The doctrine is absurd on the face of it, and experience confirms 

 what reason suggests. If we plow when the trees are young, we should 

 plow lighter and further off' as the roots extend, and always remember the 

 roots know where to go as well as any member of the New York Horti- 

 cultural Society can tell them. 



TRIMMING APPLE ORCHARDS. 



Perhaps nothing in the whole range of our discussions more requires-, 

 investigation than the trimming of trees. We need to know how the tree' 

 is aff"ected by trimming at different seasons of the year, and at the various 

 stages of its growth. Trimming in winter promotes gi'owth and in summer- 

 checks it— the one makes wood, the other fruit. Nice discrimination is 

 required to know what is needed, and how to secure it. A tr.ee starts more 

 shoots than it can develop and support— left to itself some branches die 

 and all stagnate. A good deal of fruit may set, but much will fall ; much 

 will be imperfect, and all will be small and flavoriess. Properiy trimmed 

 trees will seldom set more fruit than they can mature, and so the labor of 

 thinning will be lightened. 



We have time to call attention to only two or three points. We think 

 the common method of cutting out the centre of the young tree a very 

 pernicious one. Several limbs are started, say five feet from the ground^ 

 but if the central leading one is removed the others shoot upwards, all 

 striving for the mastery, and are not knit and joined as lateral branches 



