Fig. 
happily are becoming more and more common every 
succeeding year. 
In reply to the inquiry as to the best treatment for 
trees,—The first thing is to get a good soil. To set good 
trees on bad land, is like building a house without a foun¬ 
dation, or like sitting down to dine at empty dishes ; there 
is nothing to support the growth of the tree—no food 
to supply it with proper nourishment. If, therefore, 
the soil is not already such as to yield a crop of sixty or 
seventy bushels of Indian corn per acre, it should be 
made so, if trees are expected to flourish in the finest 
manner. The first thing is to obtain sufficient depth of 
soil,—to enable the roots to extend themselves freely, 
and to hold moisture without drying up in protracted 
drouths. This may be obtained by digging very large 
holes, say eight feet in diameter, and a foot and a half 
deep, and filling them with rich earth. But a better way 
is to plow the whole surface to that depth, and to enrich 
it well by manuring. A common plow will descend six 
or seven inches; by passing another plow in the furrow, 
that is by trench-plowing, the soil may be loosened to 
ten inches or a foot. But by means of a good subsoil 
plow in the common furrow, a depth of fifteen to eigh¬ 
teen inches may be attained. Now, to work the manure 
down to that depth, and make the whole one broad deep 
bed of the richest soil, it must be first spread on the 
surface evenly after the whole has been well subsoiled, 
then harrowed to break it fine and mix it with the top 
soil, and then thrown down by a thorough trench-plowing. 
Oct. 
For although the trench-plowing can hardly 
be worked a foot in depth of itself, yet after 
a good loosening with the subsoil plow, it may 
be at once extended down a foot and a half. 
If this is done in the fall, and another good 
plowing given in spring, the whole will be in 
fine condition for the reception of trees. Does 
this seem like a great deal of cost and labor? 
It is the very cheapest way of getting fine 
crops of the best fruit, for the way in which 
strong, long, and healthy shoots will run 
up even the first year will seem like nothing 
short of magic; and the short time in which 
such trees will begin to hang out their ruddy 
or golden treasurers, and the size, beauty, 
and richness of the fruit afforded from such an orchard 
kept well cultivated during its early years, will astonish 
those who have never seen any but slip-shod culture. 
After a tree is well set out in such an admirably pre¬ 
pared soil, the subsequent treatment although of the 
greatest importance, is very simple. It consists merely 
in keeping the soil mellow, by repeated stirring, and 
preventing the growth of any vegetable for several feet 
from the tree, whether it be weeds or the growth of a 
crop. A hoed -crop is however admissible, as being next 
best to clear mellow ground, because most of the sur¬ 
face is still kept well stirred during the operation of 
tillage. A sowed-orop, grass, or weeds, is ruinous to 
young trees. 
These hints, we are aware, are not new to many; but 
it is often better to repeat and old and important truth, 
till all practice it, than to search only for what is new. 
Stocks for Pears—Grafting Roses. 
Owing to the prevalence of leaf blight in pear seed¬ 
lings, I was induced to make some experiments on thorn 
and mountain ash, the result of which may be interest¬ 
ing to those cultivators who cannot obtain healthy pear 
seedlings. I found that the Tyson, Osband’s Summer, 
Madeleine, Julienne and St. Ghislain, were exceedingly 
thrifty on the English whitethorn; and entirely failed on 
the Washington thorn, with the exception of Osband’s 
Summer, of which I have trees of this season’s growth, 
from three to four feet high, quite stout, and some of 
them considerably branched, so much so as to afford 
five or six stocks of buds of good size. On Mountain 
ash—Fondandte d’Automne, Duchesse d’Orleans, St. 
Ghislain, and Osband’s Summer, were remarkably fine. 
They were all splice-grafted on the roots of year old 
seedlings, the splice tied with candle wicking, and waxed 
with common grafting wax, laid on warm with a brush, 
thus entirely excluding the air, and which also enabled 
them to be handled with more safety to the graft than 
if whip-grafted. 
Roses of several varieties, such as the common Black 
Moss, Gen. Duboury, and indeed all the Bourbon’s I 
tried, succeeded admirably by splice grafting—and then 
placing five or six in a pot filled with charcoal, leaf-mold, 
and loam, say one-eighth charcoal—then put in a mod¬ 
erate hot-bed, the frame being covered with cloth instead 
of glass. In about three weeks they were nicely united, 
and made fine saleable plants in the autumn of the same 
season. E. S. Macedon, 8th mo. 80th. 1851. 
334 THE CULTIVATOR. 
