Hints on Vegetable and Fruit Farming. 
101 
cally unlimited demand, at %s. to 12s. per sieve. Also for Green- 
gages, of which the best sorts are the early Gage, Reine Claude 
Hative, and a late Gage, Reine Claude de Barry. Blecker's 
Yellow Gage is also an excellent fruit and is always in demand. 
Although acres of them are planted in East Kent, they are more 
fitted for the farm-garden or for snug sheltered spots. As they 
are valuable fruit, to ensure full prices for them they should be 
packed in small boxes in single layers, and set off with a little 
fringe of coloured paper, in the same way as they are sent from 
the Continent. 
Cherky-TREES yield a handsome return in localities suitable 
to their growth, as in parts of Mid Kent, near Maidstone, upon 
the Lower Greensand, and in East Kent upon the loams- and 
brick-earth of the Tertiary soil over the Chalk, where they thrive 
particularly well, though the situation is high and exposed. As 
they blossom early in May, they are liable to receive injury 
from spring frosts. These trees require a dry subsoil, there- 
fore are not suited to heavy clay soils. The ordinary method of 
obtaining standard trees is to graft upon stocks of the wild cherry, 
Cerasus avium. Standard trees may be purchased at from 
Is. Ad. to 2s. each, and should be planted about 30 feet apart, 
or forty-eight trees to the acre, upon cultivated ground with 
gooseberry- and currant-bushes under them, and plum-trees may 
be set between them. After ten or eleven years the bushes 
should be taken out and grass seeds sown, as cultivation does 
not suit cherry-trees when they have attained a certain size; or 
the trees may be planted at once upon grass-land. The plum- 
trees may remain from twenty-five to twenty-eight years, at which 
time the cherry-trees will be in full vigour. There is no reason 
why cherry-orchards should not be made in many English 
counties. Encouragement should be given in every way by ■ 
landlords to their tenants to plant them as well as apple- and 
pear-trees. Pyramidal trees or bushes are formed by grafting 
upon the Mahaleb stock, Cerasus mahaleb, a native of the South 
of Europe. These are very prolific, and may be planted in the 
same way, and with as much advantage as apple, pear and • 
plum pyramids and bushes. 
Pyramids and dwarf trees of the English red cherry, or 
Kentish Red and Flemish, should be planted in every available 
spot, in gardens and in plantations. They do not take much 
room, and invariably make high prices, because their fruit has 
a fine subacid flavour, and is peculiarly suited for bottling, 
drying, and preserving. The Morello cherry also is recom- 
mended to farmers for growing against north or west walls, or 
north heads and sides of barns, or lodges, or stables, while the 
south and east sides of buildings would be occupied by plums. 
