So CULTIVATION' OF THE SOIL. 



set them out well, and kept them well hoed with potatoes. He 

 lost but one tree ; and continuing to cultivate them with low- 

 hoed crops, they now afford yearly loads of rich peaches. 



Another neighbor procured fifty good trees. Passing his 

 house the same year late in summer, he remarked : " I thought 

 a crop of wheat one of the best for young peach-trees !" " Just 

 the reverse ; it is one of the worst — all sown crops are inju- 

 rious; all low-hoed ones beneficial." " Well," answered he, " I 

 have found it so— my fifty trees all lived, it is true, but I have 

 lost one year of their growth by my want of knowledge." On 

 examination, they were found in excellent soil, and had been 

 well set out. All the rows were in a field of wheat, except 

 one, which was hoed with a crop of potatoes. The result was 

 striking. Of the trees that stood among the wheat, some had 

 made shoots the same year an inch long, some two inches, and 

 a very few, five or six inches. While on nearly every one that 

 grew with the potatoes, new shoots a foot and a half long could 

 be found, and on some the growth had been two feet, two and 

 a half, and even three feet. Other cases have furnished nearly 

 as decisive contrasts. An eminent cultivator of fine fruit, 

 whose trees have borne for many years, remarks : " My garden 

 would be worth twice as much as it is if the trees had been 

 planted in thick rows two rods apart, so that I could have cul- 

 tivated them with the plough. Unless fruit grows on thrifty 

 trees, we can form no proper judgment of it. Some that we 

 have cultivated this season, after a long neglect, seem like new 

 kinds, and the flavor is in proportion to the size." 



The thick rows here alluded to may be composed of trees 

 from six to twelve feet apart in the rows. This mode admits 

 of deep and thorough cultivation, and the team can pass freely 

 in one direction, until close to the row, where the soil need not 

 be turned up so deeply so as to injure the roots. Fig. 115 ex- 

 hibits this mode of planting, and Fig. 116 another mode, where 

 the trees are in hexagons, or in the corners of equilateral tri- 

 angles, and are thus more equally distributed over the ground 

 than by any other arrangement. They may thus be cultivated 

 in three directions. For landscape effect, this is undoubtedly 

 better than any other regular order. 



Trees are frequently mutilated in cultivating the ground 

 with a team; to obviate this difficulty, arrange the horses 



