Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 
99 
well to consign brilliant-coloured and, indeed, all the finer 
fruit, especially that grown on bushes, in small, well-made, 
bright-looking baskets or boxes, set off with pink or white 
paper; and for this kind of fruit, as well as for all superior fruit 
of every kind, contracts should be made, if possible, to supply 
it directly to the retailer. 
Plum-trees and Damsox-TREES are grown on grass or in 
plantations. Standards are set 15 feet apart each way, which would 
take 193 trees per acre. In very strong land they are set 18 feet 
apart. In Kent they are frequently put between apple- and 
pear-trees, and are removed when these trees get'large. Plum- 
trees and damson-trees are often set with fruit-bushes. This 
is a kind of plantation which tenants with long leases might 
undertake without much risk, as the plum-trees will come into 
profitable bearing after five or six years, and the damson-trees 
after four or five years. Plum-trees are raised from common 
plum stocks, grafted or budded with scions of the kind re- 
quired. What is known as the Brussels stock is used for 
producing large quick-growing trees ; the Pershore plum-tree, 
grown so largely in Worcestershire, which can be raised from 
cuttings, is also a good stock. For bush and small pyramids, 
the grafts or buds are worked upon the Mirahelle petite, a stock 
having a bushy and prolific habit. The famous Farleigh or 
Crittenden damson, which is so wonderfully productive and 
profitable, can be easily raised from its own suckers or spawns 
without grafting or budding. Nurserymen, however, hold that 
better trees are obtained quite as quickly by grafting upon 
ordinary stocks ; the stems of these are clean, and free from the 
disfigurement caused by cutting away shoots from the natural 
stocks. 
Plum-bushes may be planted in plantations with gooseberry- 
or currant-bushes with immense advantage. Wind does not 
injure them. They bear fruit abundantly. They may be 
planted thickly ; the fruit is of fine quality, and can be picked 
without ladders, or breaking the trees. When the superior 
advantages of fruit-bushes of all kinds are fully realised, we 
shall see a great revolution in English fruit-culture. The 
American fruit-growers are largely adopting this system, and 
gardeners who grow fruit for market have found out its supe- 
riority over the old method. Good sorts of plums for planta- 
tions are the Early Rivers, Early Diamond, Blue Prolific, 
that would keep well with care until rebniary and March, to salesmen in 
October or November. Some Kent fruit-growers keep apples and pears in oast- 
liouses, which are fairly suitable. All large fruit-growers who wish to make the 
full value of their fruit, must arrange proper places for storing it until it is 
properly fit for use. 
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