6 



• English Orchards. 



The record of experiments in this direction made at the 

 Woburn Experimental Fruit Farm is interesting and instruc- 

 tive. In these experiments the bad effects of grass upon 

 newly planted fruit trees were shown by a reduction of 41 per 

 cent, in the size of the leaf in standard apple trees in the 

 second year after planting, while the reduction in growth of 

 wood amounted to no less than 74 per cent. The reduction 

 from the growth of weeds round the young trees was not so 

 great as from grass, but it equalled 62 per cent, in wood 

 growth. Sorauer says turf under trees should be avoided, as 

 the roots ot the grass absorb, and in times of drought may 

 even divert, water from the deeper regions which should be 

 reserved for the roots of the tree.* In America and Canada 

 apples are usually grown upon cultivated land, and in almost 

 all cases until the trees have attained considerable age ; so 

 that the soil around them is duly aerated by ploughings and 

 hoeings, and it is held by orchardists in those countries 

 that this is fully as important as a supply of fertilizers. 



Fruit trees in orchards and plantations receive, as a rule, 

 little or no pruning, although the trees in adjoining gardens 

 and small plots are systematically pruned year by year, and 

 each bough, and almost each twig, duly arranged. It may 

 be the idea that it will not pay to carry out on a large scale 

 that which is known to be essential en petite culture^ or there 

 may be a notion that when once a fruit-tree gets into the 

 paradise of a grass orchard it requires nothing more from 

 human intervention. So the branches have become hope- 

 lessly interlaced, with the result that the possibilities of fruit- 

 bearing have been greatly reduced, while the size and 

 quality of the produce have been gradually depreciated by 

 want of light, air, and actual room to swell and grow 

 properly. Occasionally, when firewood runs short, a raid 

 has been made upon the most densely-branched trees, and 

 many faggots cut out of them by means of axe and bill- 

 hook, occasioning serious loss of sap, which is not calculated 

 to increase their vigour or add to their productiveness. 

 Moreover, the wounds caused by this hacking afford the 

 opportunities necessar}- for the woolly aphis to form its 



* PopuUire Pflanzetiphysiolo^ie. Von Dr. Paul Sorauer. 



