324 



English Orchards. 



taken out when they encroach upon the permanent trees. A 

 well-known successful grower puts half- standard apple trees 

 or plum trees 1 5 feet apart, set triangularly, and strawberry 

 plants at a distance of one and a half feet from plant to 

 plant in the row, and two and a half feet from row to row. 

 He varies this by planting currant or gooseberry bushes 

 between the rows of half-standards, and strawberry plants 

 between the spaces of the rows of half-standards. Some- . 

 times raspberry canes are substituted for the gooseberries and 

 currant bushes for the strawberries. Raspberry canes are 

 set in two rows between the rows of half-standards, five feet 

 apa.rt from row to row, and two and a half feet apart from 

 plant to plant in each row, with plants between the half- 

 standards in their rows. 



There are other arrangements of standards, half-standards, 

 bush-trees or dwarfs, and bush and other fruits which have 

 been adopted in late years with the object of getting as much 

 fruit as possible from the land, and of providing that 

 if one kind of fruit fails another may have a chance of 

 succeeding. 



It need hardly be said that this intensive system of 

 cultivation requires that the land should be heavily 

 manured. The growers who work after this new and improved 

 fashion are, however, fully alive to the necessity of the 

 most liberal treatment of the land and of the most up-to- 

 date methods of cultivation and management. The example 

 oT these enlightened growers, who are scattered here and 

 there in all parts of the fruit-producing districts, is begin- 

 ing to react upon those who have hitherto been content 

 to remaiin in the old grooves, and whose inaction and want 

 of knowledge have occasioned the lamentable condition of 

 much of the orchard land of this country. 



Not only have great improvements in cultivation and 

 management of fruit land been made by what may be termed 

 the new school of growers, but they have also to some extent 

 amended the subsequent treatment of fruit in respect of 

 picking, grading, storing and packing, and especially as to 

 the proper time for sending it to market. It is too frequently 

 : the practice to literally tear off fruit from apple trees and to 



