204 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



because their trees die for lack of these precautions in the outset. Three 

 years ago I signed an order from an agent travelling for a certain firm for thir- 

 teen four-year-old apple trees and loo yearlings from the graft. I made the 

 agent promise to make good any failures of the four-year-olds. When they 

 came to hand I knew three of them would fail as soon as I saw them. They 

 each had two or three bare tap roots, nothing on them to take up food for 

 the tops. I cut them back well, set them in a moist rich soil, and they put 

 out a few leaves on each, but died before the summer was half past. The 

 yearlings all did well but two. The balance of the four-year-olds had 

 passably good roots and are all doing well, and I have given them no special 

 protection except the long manure mound, to keep back too early flow of 

 sap in the Spring. The agent made good the failures, and I mention this to 

 present the value of stipulating with agents to make up for failures, which 

 they ought to do, providing you act well your part in caring for the tree. 

 I am giving experience from an unfavorable locality for fruit-growing, on a 

 piece of flat elm and cedar land, within three miles from the city of Ottawa, 

 where the fruit-growing has a long winter to contend with and special diffi- 

 culties to meet. I am testing in a small way, and without great outlay, 

 apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricots, grapes and all the other small fruits, 

 hence, if I succeed, it will be from the application of such care and know- 

 ledge as any one can acquire who really has a taste and determination to 

 grow fruit. 



Many think that none but gentlemen with means abundant should 

 engage in fruit-growing. This is a great mistake. If you possess a quarter 

 of an acre of tillable land or more, you will be surprised how much delightful 

 and profitable pastime and experience you can enjoy upon it. And as we 

 are speaking about the means. by which trees and plants are fed, we may 

 say a word about the kind of food they ought to have. They ought to have 

 rich nourishing food, but not too rich. That is, don't throw raw manure 

 into the roots when you are setting out your trees. Give them rich friable 

 loam, if you can get it, especially if your land is on the poor order. While 

 setting your trees, shrubs or plants in the ground, have the thought upper- 

 most in your mind how they are to feed, and this will prompt you to do 

 many little things that nobody has ever told you to do. The interest you 

 take will be an incentive to invention, just as a caterer to the public taste 

 does many things peculiar to himself. 



In setting out strawberries, don't set them in with a plunge of the spade 

 or trowel, leaving the roots pressed together in a mass, as some do, but take 

 the crown of the plant between the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, 

 and after stirring up the ground well with your trowel, spread the roots well 

 with the three fingers of the left hand, make a narrow opening with the right 

 hand in the loose dirt near your line, place the roots of your plant well 

 spread into the opening, and press the dirt firmly down to the bottom of the 



