56 
GLEN SAINT MARY NURSERIES 
Cultural Department 
A FEW GENERAL REMARKS 
When nursery stock is received, it should be immediately unpacked from the 
bale or box and placed in a cool, shady place, and the roots and tops thoroughly 
wet down. Roots of trees should never be exposed to sun and should not be 
allowed to become dry. Always keep them covered with moss, straw or a wet 
blanket when planting. 
If trees cannot be transplanted immediately after they are received, they should 
be heeled-in in a cool, shady place and watered well until they can be set out. 
If trees should be delayed in transit and arrive in a dry condition, take them 
out of the package and bury for two or three days in moist earth, covering tops 
as well as roots. This will fill out shrunken stems and limbs. 
In more northern sections — ^and at rare intervals in tlie southern — trees get 
chilled in the boxes owing to severe changes of weather en route. If any signs 
of ice appear in the packing material, bury the trees and packing material in earth, 
and leave for several days, or until the frost is thoroughly drawn out. 
Do not set trees or plants too deep, particularly oranges. One can generally 
judge about the proper depth for setting the trees by the earth marks on the trees 
showing how deep they were in nursery rows. If set at the same depth, this will 
be about right. 
Peach trees are apt to set too much fruit, and this fruit should be thinned out. 
Commence when the fruit is of the size of a marble and continue at intervals until 
half grown, always removing stung or imperfect specimens. At the final thinning, 
reduce fruit to three or four inches apart. A heavily loaded peach tree will 
produce as much fruit—by measure—-if three-fourths of the original number set 
are thinned out ; and the value of the fruit on the tree that is thinned will be 
greater than that on the unthinned one. 
If curculio are troublesome, jar peach and plum trees in early morning, fre¬ 
quently after the fruit is set, and catch insects in a hopper-like arrangement made 
for the purpose or a sheet spread under the trees. These insects should be destroyed. 
Borers sometimes give trouble with peach trees. The trees should be ex¬ 
amined frequently near the ground, and the borers, where found, dug out with a 
sharp-pointed knife. 
Cotton-seed meal and organic fertilizers should be used very sparingly, if at 
all, in an orchard. Complete commercial fertilizers from mineral sources are 
generally better and less liable to injure trees, should a too liberal quantity 
be applied. 
The fertilizer formulas, given in these pages, are based on the needs of the 
usual southern soils, but it must always be borne in mind that with the vast 
variety of soils it is impossible to lay down any hard and fast rules and formulas 
applicable to any and all sections. There are reliable manufacturers of higli-grade 
commercial fertilizer who can furnish good goods, already manufactured, in the 
kind, of fertilizer wanted. One should, however, be continually studying his 
particular soils and conditions and endeavoring to post himself on the elements of 
plant-life needed for the particular purpose he wishes to accomplish. 
^ Orchard cultivation should, as a general rule, be shallow during the late 
spring and summer months. In all sections subject to damage from cold it is 
desirable to turn under the cover-crop with a turn plow in the late fall or early winter 
