12 FRUIT FARMING 



where there is brick earth below or even a loamy 

 gravel, Red Currants will thrive, but will require 

 manuring frequently. Most of the land around Maid- 

 stone is on the lower greensand, and suitable for all 

 kinds of fruit ; Plums do well ; Apples are good, but 

 the fruit is not so firm as from trees on heavier lands ; 

 all small fruits flourish ; while where the rock is very 

 near to the surface, Cob Nuts succeed admirably. The 

 flinty lauds of East Kent, where the soil is rather 

 heavy, grow fine Cherries and Apples, but for general 

 fruit nothing can be better than the very deep brick 

 earth that is found in the valley from Chatham to 

 Canterbury, where Pears grow clear in the skin, and 

 take on a good colour, many kinds succeeding there 

 on open trees, which require a wall in colder soils. 

 All bush fruit is perhaps better grown in that district 

 than any other; while the Cherries of Xewington, 

 Sittingbourne, and Teynham are the finest in the 

 market, the trees attaining enormous dimensions 

 Leaving this fruitful part for the heavy lands in the 

 Weald of Kent, where there is a more or less loamy 

 soil resting on the clay, we find some of our finest 

 Apple orchards, the weight and colour of the fruit 

 being remarkable, while here and there Cherries 

 succeed admirably, and on the higher land Plums and 

 Damsons are well grown. Even where the soil is so 

 heavy, and the moisture so abundant that the trees 

 are mossy and unhealthy, the land being in grass, 

 regularly grazed with pigs or sheep, winch are fed on 

 cake or fodder, very fine fruit is i^iown, and much 

 more might be done by thinning the boughs, and 

 clearing the trees irom moss. I he stone shattery 

 land in the neighbourhood of Orpington, and the 



