English Orchards. 



Another cause of the unproductiveness of orchards is the 

 absence of a proper supply of manurial elements. It has 

 been held, and is even now held by man}-, that it is not 

 necessary to manure grass land on which fruit trees are 

 planted. And with regard to standard fruit trees set on 

 cultivated land, it is supposed that they are able to find 

 ample sustenance from the soil, in which their roots run 

 deeply, and that it is only requisite to give supplies of 

 manure just sufficient for the fruit bushes or vegetables 

 grown beneath them. In the greater part of the grass 

 orchards the grass has been for generations regularly mown, 

 or fed- off by lean stock without corn or cake, and without the 

 application of any compensating fertilising materials, in the 

 mistaken belief that the standard apple and pear trees, whose 

 roots spread underneath the surface of the ground, and 

 whose branches completely overshadow the surface, require 

 nothing to help them to produce continuous crops of fruit 

 beyond that which they obtain from the deeper parts of the 

 earth and the atmosphere. The best orchard-land planted 

 with the most carefully selected, guarded, and pruned fruit 

 trees can no more be expected to yield full successive crops 

 without added manure than land continuously cropped with 

 wheat or barley. It is commonly supposed that grass 

 growing in orchards requires nothing and takes nothing out 

 of the soil, whereas it absorbs all the manurial elements from 

 it as far as its rootlets run, and materially interferes with the 

 proper aeration of the soil. This is a potent factor in the 

 failure of young fruit trees planted in grass orchards to fill 

 up gaps caused by trees destroyed by fungi, insects, mosses, 

 lichens, and starvation. If these do not fail altogether they 

 very rarely make good trees, or make good trees in reason- 

 able time. They are put into starved land and covered with 

 turf within a few inches of their stems. If a larger space is 

 left round them it is quickly overgrown with weeds. In both 

 these cases the supply of moisture to the soil and to the roots 

 of the young trees is much less than if the ground were 

 cultivated. Large spaces should be lefi unturfed round 

 young fruit trees in orchards, and the growth of weeds 

 prevented just as it would be with crops in fields and gardens. 



