AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
IH 
may assist them in their efforts to further pro¬ 
gress. With sucti preliminaries then, we proceed, 
as the first in value and importance of Orchard 
fruits, with 
THE APPLET 
Of its origin and history, no matter. The fruit 
vas growing here before we ourselves saw the 
light, and we only have to look at it all about us, 
and as we would have it under our own cultiva¬ 
tion. It flourishes and produces in various quality 
and perfection, with occasional exceptions, caused 
by soil, exposure, or local influences, from Quebec, 
in the severe Canadian latitude of 47° north, on 
the St Lawrence, down to that of mild and sunny 
30° on the Gulf of Mexico ; and from the Atlantic 
Ocean on the east, to the Pacific on the west. 
Where it grows in abundance, it is a fruit of 
housekeeping necessity with those who have long 
been accustomed to its use, and of luxury every¬ 
where else. Everybody loves apples, and of the 
fruits of the temperate climates, it is decidedly the 
best for all uses, ami the most important. Where- 
ever it can be grown, no /arm is complete without 
its apple orchard, and no garden is perfect with¬ 
out its apple trees, more or less. Its varieties are 
legion in number, and good varieties too. Many 
of them are particularly suited to the immediate 
ocality where they originated, arid refuse to flour¬ 
ish elsewhere; others are of such plastic nature 
as to grow, and thrive, and bear their fruits near¬ 
ly irrespective of where they may be transplanted, 
and produce good fruit everywhere, soil and cli¬ 
mate favoring them. 
So, then, presuming that the apple grows and 
'lourishes in pretty much every locality wherein 
we have a reader, we shall proceed to discuss the 
«pple orchard as if it were within the immediate 
range and purpose of the husbandry of every single 
subscriber to our pages, and tell them what little 
we know, and think, and believe about it. Pre¬ 
suming that everybody who contemplates planting 
an orchard has satisfied himself that his farm or 
or garden is fitted to grow apple trees, the locali¬ 
ty need not now be questioned, and the first mat¬ 
ter to be disposed if is the 
SOIL. 
This may vary in character, and composition 
from a light sandy, to a deep and strong clayey 
loam; or to perhaps better explain it, from a near¬ 
ly Icachy sand, to an almost unctious, or sticky 
clay. We say “ nearly,” and “ almost,” because 
we should despair of growing a fine orchard on the 
extremes of either one or the other of these, yet if 
properly treated, the apple is so universal in its 
growth that it will adapt itself to almost any de¬ 
scription of soii possessing the elements of a crop 
if the cereal grains, grasses, or garden vegetables ; 
so, it may be laid down as a rule that any soil ca¬ 
pable of growing ordinary farm crops, with a dry 
bottom, will grow a fair orchard. Stony, and grav¬ 
elly soils, if of ordinary fertility, are well suited to 
the apple ; but they should be warm soils—that is 
not springy, cold, nor wet—such being fatal to 
both the successful growth of the tree, and the 
quality of the fruit. Could we choose an orchard 
site exactly to our own taste, it should be a free, 
foamy soil, rather more inclining to clay than sand, 
with a slight mixture of gravel in it, resting on a 
rather compact subsoil in which a limestone clay 
predominated, gently exposed to the South, and 
whether that exposure inclined easterly or west¬ 
erly of South, would not matter, provided it were 
sheltered from the strong prevailing winds of the 
locality. The soil, however, should be a dry one, 
naturally. We would not trust so important an 
item as an orchard of any kind to the contingen¬ 
cies of artificial drainage by tiles or other process. 
They mhy get stopped up, or fail in their duties by 
casualty, to which the orchard should be in no 
degree dependent. The soil, therefore, should 
of itself be dry, warm, sweet and genial—as much 
so in natural capacity, as for a garden, or a corn 
field. An orchard is planted for, and will flourish 
a life time of three generations of men, and be in 
its prime for two of them ; therefore it should be 
no subject of a contingency so important as a nat¬ 
ural defect in the soii on which it stands is con¬ 
cerned. 
Thus, the selection of soil for the orchard be¬ 
ing so wide in variety, a radical defect in its con¬ 
struction should not be tolerated. In naming our 
choice of a soil and exposures, we have only in¬ 
dicated a preference, in case we could take it out 
of all which might be offered, being well aware 
that there are various other compositions of 
earth that are nearly, if not quite, as good as those 
we have indicated. It should also be in a good 
condition of fertility, not for a single crop merely, 
but rich in the elements of various and continu¬ 
ous crops. Trees are gross feeders through their 
roots. They spread wide, and penetrate deep. 
They suck moisture from the earth far below what 
annual farm crops can do, and they absorb the 
fertilizing matter from a wide breadth of soil 
around their trunks. Therefore they require a 
perpetual supply of food on which to subsist, par¬ 
tially inherent in the soil itself, and partially to be 
supplied by artificial applications from other 
sources. New, or hitherto uncropped soils usual¬ 
ly possess the elements of orchard growing abun¬ 
dantly in themselves, but in old soils these must 
be supplied from abroad, and among the best ap¬ 
plications are ground bones, leached ashes, 
lime, and marl, with common stable manures, 
spread broadcast on the land as for ordinary 
cropping. The land so prepared brings us to the 
important process of 
i-lanting. 
This, really the most important work of all that 
is connected with the orchard, is, in the great 
majority of cases the most imperfectly done of 
any. As we do not propose to go into a minute 
course of instruction in planting, we simply refer 
our readers to either one or more of the popular 
treatises on fruit with which the shelves of our 
booksellers throughout the country abound. 
Without one of these—and we will simply name 
Downing, Thomas, or Barry; Kenrick, Fessen¬ 
den, or Elliott, as they may happen to be at hand, 
for this immediate purpose—the new beginner 
will be sorely at his wits to succeed in this part of 
his important work. In one, or either of them, 
he will find the rules of planting so thoroughly 
laid down, that he cannot mistake the proper 
method. To do our own duty, however, we will 
say that the hole for receiving the young tree 
should not be less than three feet in diameter— 
four or five, or even six, would be better, accord¬ 
ing as the soil may be loose, or compact, and not 
less than one-and-a-half to two feet deep. The 
hole afterwards should be filled up to where the 
bottom roots are to rest with the top soil, and 
when planted, they should be covered with the 
best and finest mould, well shaken in as the pro¬ 
cess of filling proceeds, and trod by the foot as it 
is completed. The tree, when planted and set¬ 
tled, should stand not more than an inch lower in 
the ground than it did in the nursery. It should 
also stand erect. If naturally leaning, it should 
be supported by a stake to give it a straight start, 
which is an important thing in its future progress. 
THE PLAN OP THE ORCHARD 
is also important. Let the shape of the field be 
as it may, the body of the plantation should be 
square. It may take as a base line one of the 
hounderias, if that line bo a straight one, regard¬ 
less of the points of the compass. If there bis 
unequal spaces on the sides of the field when the 
compact part is planted, such spaces maybe filled 
with trees, as far as they will admit, on extending 
lines with the others. The distance between the 
trees may depend, somewhat, on the size the trees 
will ultimately attain ; but we would have that 
distance uniform—not less than thirty-three feet, 
which is two rods, nor more than fifty feet, which 
is six inches over three rods. Sunlight, and air, 
and enough of each, are indispensable for the full 
development of all fruit bearing trees and their 
crops, while shade, damp, and closeness are the 
bane to the healthy expansion of the one, and to 
perfection in quality, size, and flavor of the other. 
Let, therefore, the trees stand well apart; no 
ground will be ultimately lost, and the future re¬ 
sults all the better. 
WHAT VARIETIES OF APPLE SHALL BE PLANTED 1 
This, next to the fact of having an orchard at 
all, is the most important question to be deter¬ 
mined in the whole matter, and in solving it sev¬ 
eral incidental ones have to be considered. If 
fruits are to be grown for family consumption 
only, and to but limited extent, those which suc¬ 
ceed in your immediate locality, and to which 
you are partial in their several seasons, are of 
course to be preferred. But if for a general mar¬ 
ket, the most popular and best kinds which are 
decidedly successful in your locality, should be 
selected ; and this leads into a discussion some¬ 
what out of the beaten track of the books, and 
Pomological Conventions. It is a very natural 
and common way, when one is about to plant an 
orchard, to take his fruit book, which he has at 
hand, run over the descriptions of the several va¬ 
rieties they contain—a large majority of which 
he finds to be of “ the best,” and most desira¬ 
ble qualities and appearance, and out of so many 
rare fruits presented, select five or ten times as 
many varieties as he actually needs, without ask¬ 
ing the question whether, although every one of 
them is what it is described in its native locality, 
and some other places, it is suitable to the soil, 
climate and locality, he has secured. He is not 
aware that the kind of apple which is admirably 
adapted for cultivation at or near the place of its 
origin, may be nearly worthless at a hundred or 
five hundred miles distant, in a different altitude 
or soil, or temperature. Yet such are the facts, 
well known to observing pomologists, but not 
represented in the books with the precision they 
ought to be, if at all. And yet, most of the prom¬ 
inent works on fruits, which we now consult, 
have been published since the days of our first 
pomological conventions, where men have assem¬ 
bled from all parts of the country, compared notes, 
and strived to enlighten each other in these par¬ 
ticulars ; and out of all the published proceedings 
of these conventions, containing hundreds of 
names of varieties grown in different sections of 
the States and the Canadas, one having no per¬ 
sonal experience in growing apples could give but 
a wild guess as to what kinds he ought to select 
for his own locality. A variety which would be ex 
ceedingly profitable to grow in one State, may be 
worthless in another, and we have scarcely a single 
one which is equally well adapted to all localities, 
climates and soils. For instance, Massachusetts 
has originated the Baldwin, the Roxbury Russet, 
and the Westfield Seek-no-further—three of the 
best apples known, and good wherever they will 
grow in perfection ; but south of Lake Erie only 
one of them, the Roxbury Russet, is fully reliable 
and only in places worth cultivation. Rhode Isl¬ 
and has produced the celebrated Greening, which 
bears its name, and nowhere north of that State 
and Connecticut, and west of them does it 
