ORCHARD CULTURE. 
61 
yvill not only facilitate culture and gathering the fruit, hut wili 
add to the neatness and orderly appearance of the orchard. 
It is an indispensable requisite , in all young orchards , to keep 
the ground mellow and loose by cultivation ; at least for the first 
few years, until the trees are well established. Indeed, of twc 
adjoining orchards, one planted and kept in grass, and the other 
ploughed for the first five years, there will be an incredible dif- 
ference in favour of the latter. Not only will these trees show 
rich dark luxuriant foliage, and clean smooth stems, while those 
neglected will have a starved and sickly look, but the size of the 
trees in the cultivated orchard will be treble that of the others at 
the end of this time, and a tree in one will be ready to bear an 
abundant crop, before the other has commenced yielding a peck 
of good fruit. Fallow crops are the best for orchards — potatoes, 
beets, carrots, bush beans, and the like ; but whatever crops may 
be grown it should constantly be borne in mind that the roots 
of the tree require the sole occupancy of the ground so far as 
they extend and therefore that an area of more than the diameter 
of the head of the tree should be kept clean of crops, weeds, and 
grass. 
When the least symptom of failure or decay in a bearing 
orchard is perceived, the ground should have a good top dressing 
of manure, and of marl, or mild lime, in alternate years. It is 
folly to suppose that so strong growing a tree as the apple, when 
planted thickly in an orchard, will not, after a few heavy crops 
of fruit, exhaust the soil of much of its proper food. If we de- 
sire our trees to continue in a healthy bearing state, we should, 
therefore, manure them as regularly as any other crop, and they 
will amply repay the expense. There is scarcely a farm where 
the waste of barn-yard manure, — the urine, etc., if properly 
economized by mixing this animal excrement with the muck- 
heap — would not be amply sufficient to keep the orchards in the 
highest condition. And how many moss-covered, barren or- 
chards, formerly very productive, do we not every day see, which 
only require a plentiful new supply of food in a substantial top- 
dressing, thorough scraping of the stems, and washing with 
diluted soft soap, to bring them again into the finest state of 
vigour and productiveness ! 
The bearing year of the Apple, in common culture, only takes 
place every alternate year, owing to the excessive crops which 
it usually produces, by which they exhaust most of the organ- 
izable matter laid up by the tree, which then requires another 
season to recover, and collect a sufficient supply again to form 
fruit buds. When half the fruit is thinned out in a young state, 
leaving only a moderate crop, the apple, like other fruit trees, 
will bear every year, as it will also, if the soil is kept in high 
condition. The bearing year of an apple tree, or a whole or- 
chard, may be changed by picking off the fruit when the trees 
