48 JPIGTORIAL PBAGTIOAL PRtllT OUOWINQ. 



Apples usually do best in a light to medium loam. They are not suited 

 to heavy land. (See " Selections " in a future chapter.) 



Pears will thrive better in strong than in sandy loams. 



Plums will succeed in strong land, if it is drained ; if it is not, they are 

 apt to push a good deal of young wood which is often badly cut by frost. 



Cherries do not like clay, a medium loam overlying chalk being best. 

 They loathe stagnant soil. 



Gooseberries, Eed and White Currants, and Strawberries all thrive in a 

 sound loam, but rarely in clay. 



Black Currants and Raspberries will thrive in clay if it be drained. 



Generally speaking, soil that will make good bricks will grow good fruit. 



Kemember that it does not follow that a plantation made on high ground 

 is naturally well drained. Ground on a hilltop may need draining almost 

 as badly as soil in a valley. I could quote an instance where forgetfulness 

 of this led to disaster. 



A great deal of the foregoing may tend to alarm small growers, for it is 

 quite likely that circumstances will debar them from giving each fruit its 

 particular soil. They have only one small plot, and they have to make the 

 best of it. Here, however, culture comes in and sweeps difficulties away. 

 While it is true that natural surroundings exercise considerable sway, 

 experience teaches me that by thorough cultivation almost any soil may be 

 made suitable for fruit. In this connection the private grower has an 

 advantage over the market cultivator, for the man with a small piece of 

 ground can, to a great extent, adapt it to his fruits by thoroughly cultivating 

 it ; whereas the man with a large quantity may, from want of capital, have 

 to adapt the fruits to the soil. 



The subject of soil and feeding is only half exhausted when the forma- 

 tion of new plantations is disposed of. There still remains the equally 

 pressing matter of improving unsatisfactory trees already established. 

 - There i^ a tremendous field for expert knowledge and enterprise here. A 

 tree bears small, malformed, specked fruit instead of large, fleshy, juicy 

 specimens. Very well. Let us abuse the variety, let us abuse the soil, let 

 us abuse the niu'seryman who supplied the tree, but do not let us, under 

 any circumstances whatever, try to improve " it. If there were a tacit 

 agreement among fruit growers to follow this line of conduct things could 

 not be more hopeless than they are now. Scarcely any grower takes into 

 account the bearing strain on a fruit tree, or the drain upon the resources of 

 the soil. If the tree is heavily cropped he treats it just the same as if it 

 were lightly burdened. If the soil is poor he leaves it as severely alone as if 

 it were richly stored with nutriment. And he does not want any lecturer to 

 show him, or any writer to tell him, that he is wrong. 



There are few trees so old but that they may be improved, and the 

 simplest of all ways of doing it is to spread a coat of good stable manure 

 over the soil beneath them, not merely round the bole, but right out to the 

 spread of the branches. Magical results often follow this practice. I think 

 perhaps the most remarkable example of continuous culture of fruit on an 

 allotment was that provided at Ejnsford, in Kent, on some land belonging 

 to Sir William Hart-Dyke. A cottager named Howard had a Winter 

 Queening Apple for fifty years, and at the end of the half-century was able 

 to exhibit a tine basket of fruit from it. The good old fellow attributed the 

 continued productiveness of his tree to the fact that every other year he 

 had taken off a little soil and spread on a coat of manure. He was right, o£ 

 course. 



