ifB Advantageous Planting, 



supplies a large family all the strawberry season, which saves 

 much garden ground for that crop. The spaces betwixt the 

 borders I cultivated at my leisure ; some were appropriated for 

 nursery ground, some for potatoes, peas, cabbages, &c. ; some 

 for experimental agricultux'e, lucerne, mangold-wurtzel, &c. 

 The orchard has succeeded beyond my utmost expectation. I 

 had 48 apples from two Keswick Codlins, the first year, but 

 Jiave never had patience to count them since ; last year I had 

 at least seven bushels off the same two trees ! Six dwarf 

 Hawthorndens produced above fifteen bushels ; and I have this 

 moment two bushels of Wyker Pippins from one graft of my 

 own putting in, only ten years ago. Two Dumelow's Seed- 

 lings, planted twelve years ago, produced at least eight bushels 

 of beautiful fruit, scarcely one of them less than ten inches 

 round, and many of them twelve inches. The Nonpareils are 

 a very similar crop ; as for the Manks apple, &c., there are 

 generally as many apples as leaves ; and, when in blossom, 

 they seem an entire bunch of flowers. 



JkZy Method of Pruning is particularly simple. It will remind 

 you of the old way of pruning, or rather cropping, the vines at 

 ■the third eye. I do not stand counting eyes ; but from every 

 shoot that is three feet long, I cut off two, and, of course, 

 leave one; from such as are three inches long, I cut off two, 

 and so on. The wood left forms buds for the following year ; 

 and, as the tree gets crowded or out of shape, I take off a 

 whole bough or branch with a saw. Any boy will learn to 

 prune in a few minutes. 1 cut out the large boughs myself. 

 A few of my trees took to cankering, the Ribston Pippin par- 

 ticularly. My only cure is, to dig them carefully up, examine 

 and prune both root and branch carefully, and plant them 

 again in similar fresh soil ; they never miss to recover and do 

 well. My extraordinary success has induced me to write this, 

 jpro bono publico^ as it has been the custom, in this country 

 and many others, to prepare a foundation for fruit trees, at vast 

 expense, by flagging, paving, or gravelling in Mr. Harrison's 

 manner, lest the roots get into the bad soil, and canker, as the 

 saying goes; but trees will never go into bad soil, if they have 

 plenty of good to go into, any more than cattle will go into bad 

 pasture if they have plenty of a better quality. The roots of 

 fruit trees do not, and should not, run deep in the soil ; the 

 borders should occasionallj^ be top-dressed with good manure, 

 and the alleys sometimes dug deep, and fresh manure put into 

 them. My borders are now fully six feet broad, and the 

 spaces betwixt, of course, a little curtailed. I used to grow 

 five rows of celery in the intervals, and now I can grow but 

 four; but the fruit trees pay well for the ground they occupy. 



