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Habits of Growth in Apple Trees. [June, 



form themselves in symmetrical shape almost without atten- 

 tion. Lastly, there are the varieties of apples which fruit 

 mainly upon the ends of branches and laterals. These need 

 shortening until well furnished with natural fruit spurs, but 

 do not lend themselves to artificial spurring. 



Manuring. — As to manuring, while the robust kinds are 

 best without any dressing, except on very poor soil, until 

 they have begun to fruit to a considerable extent, feeble 

 growers, and particularly premature fruiters, can hardly be 

 too liberally manured from the first. 



Stocks. — Another point is that of the stocks on which trees 

 of differing habits of growth are raised. First-class nursery- 

 men usually supply the varieties of apple trees on stocks suit- 

 able to them. For trees of bush shape, and to some extent 

 for half-standards, they graft or bud varieties of free habit 

 on the paradise stock, and those of feeble growth on the crab 

 or the free stock. Unfortunately, however, they often have 

 to meet orders by purchasing trees raised by outsiders, in- 

 cluding foreigners, and then there is not the same security 

 that the trees have been raised on the stocks best suited to 

 the different varieties. Buyers should either study the 

 subject for themselves, or acquire information from ex- 

 perienced growers, and then stipulate for the supply of each 

 variety on the stock best suited to it. 



Characteristics of Varieties. — To illustrate in detail the pre- 

 ceding general remarks, the results of careful observations 

 made every season in a plantation of apple trees of bush shape, 

 planted in the autumn of 1900, are particularly suitable, 

 because the soil is a light loam over sand, which affords a 

 good test of the vigour of different varieties. Moreover, the 

 varieties are more numerous than they would be in a market 

 plantation under ordinary circumstances, in consequence of 

 several having been planted in single trial rows to afford 

 guidance as to subsequent selections for more extensive 

 planting. 



Taking the varieties in the order in which they stand, and 

 beginning with culinary apples, there is a striking contrast 

 to be noticed between Early Julyan and Stirling Castle. The 

 former is a robust grower of widely spreading habit and good 

 shape, while the latter is the most dwarfed of all my varieties. 



