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THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
CHERRY GROWING. 
By J. W. Gaines. 
The ideal soil for the production of top-notch cherry, is, 
as I regard it, a rich loamy clay soil, with red clay sub-soil 
underlaid, six to ten feet below the surface with gravel. 
Selfdraining soil like this enables our trees to avoid wet 
feet, which the cherry so much abhors. 
The soil and its preparation. —Clover plowed down and 
followed with a crop of corn is a good preliminary method 
of preparing for the plant. The immediate preparation 
needed should be done as early as the ground will work well, 
but not before. The soil should be thoroughly pulverized 
and worked up to “garden” conditions. This I consider 
very important. Do not let wet weather or late seasons 
tempt you to economize at this point. Defer planting until 
you can meet these requirements. Give' your stocks the 
highest sense of comfort by preparing for them a nice 
“feather bed.” Do not banish them to the cold comforts of 
a mortar bed, or compel them to play hide and seek among 
the clods. 
The stocks. —I prefer good one year number one stocks, 
5 to 8 m. m., dug when ripe, and kept per¬ 
fectly dormant until planted. The tops 
should be trimmed to straight stems 
and the roots cut back to four and one 
half inches, if straight and if branched, 
from three to six inches, the length being 
governed by the branches thereon. The 
branches may be cut from one to two 
inches in length. Tie in bundles of 50 
or 100 and cut the tops back to 12 inches 
with a hatchet. 
Planting and cultivating. —Plant as 
early as the ground can be put in suit¬ 
able condition as above indicated, the 
earlier the better. Begin to cultivate the 
day you commence to plant, and if they are not too fre¬ 
quent, follow every rain with the cultivator just as soon as 
the ground is sufficiently dry to work and before it crusts 
over. During dry weather,cultivate right along, conserving 
the moisture with an effectual dust mulch. 
Budding. —In southwestern Ohio, we usually commence 
budding cherry from July 25 to August 10. However, look 
to the condition of the stocks rather than the calender, for 
guidance, and watch them closely. We have had buds 
inserted September 25 make a good stand but it is good 
policy to bud as early as the stocks will admit. 
Tying the buds is an important matter, quite as much so 
as inserting them, and should be closely supervised. Car¬ 
pet warp or white wrapping yarn is preferable for tying 
cherry buds. The strings should be cut from fifteen to 
eighteen days after budding. 
Pruning. —I regard the last of February or the first of 
March the best time to cut off the budded stocks. One 
year cherry should be pruned in February. I never head 
Dukes or Morellos unless they are very tall yearlings. We 
rub our one year cherry from the ground up about two-fifths 
of the height of the stem, and in July or early August, prune 
a little higher, which gives a good fat tree, one that will 
caliper nearly the same at the lower limbs as it will three 
inches above the bud, and is much preferable to one rubbed 
up to three limbs, resulting in a tree that will have a stem 
tapering from three-fourths near the collar to about three- 
eights inch at the lower limbs. 
Spraying. —A complete spraying apparatus is now re¬ 
garded as quite as necessary to successful cherry growing as 
cultivators. “Early and Often” should be the motto 
painted on your spray cart in big letters. Stocks, buds and 
one year trees should be sprayed throughout the season, 
avoiding hot parts of the day during heated spells, when 
plain water will sometimes scald foliage. Ordinary Bor¬ 
deaux mixture, using five pounds of copper sulphate to 
fifty gallons of water seems to be about the right thing, with 
the usual addition of lime. 
The one essential to effective spraying is power. Whether 
that power is derived from traction steam, gasoline, com¬ 
pressed air or man, is a question of mechanics and economics 
but power, you must have. Bordeaux mixture -is more 
effective and less dangerous when a thin film remains oh the 
foliage, than when- the tree is drenched. The difference 
between sprinkling and spraying is some¬ 
times the difference between failure and 
success. Not the quantity of material 
used, but the manner of application is 
the important point. The growing sea¬ 
son for cherry is very short, and it is 
important that they be kept busy during 
that time, but if it is further curtailed 
by yellow and dropping foliage, the 
result will not be a satisfactory number 
of first class trees. 
The frequency of application will, of 
course, depend upon the weather. Show¬ 
ery weather not only tends to remove 
the material from the foliage but is 
specially favorable to fungus growths, and renders necessary 
frequent applications under such conditions. 
These suggestions are submitted with the full knowledge 
that our best laid plans and elaborately detailed methods 
some times “gang aft a glee.” Failure will sometimes 
follow our most painstaking efforts, but success is more 
likely when we do well our part. 
Advertising Certainly Paid Him. 
A man in Kansas is convinced that advertising pays. 
He advertised for a lost five dollar bill, and a stranger who 
had picked one up on the street, read the advertisement 
and restored the bill to the advertiser. A few days later 
while looking over a waist coat, he had laid off, the original 
lost bill was found in a pocket. He says advertising pays 
one hundred per cent. 
“All clean and worthy business benefits by the sunshine, 
and it is a mistake to keep in the shade.” Printer's Ink. 
“If you stop your horse from drawing your cart, you can 
of course, push it from behind a little way. But why take 
the momentum off? The timid advertiser will know what 
this parable means.” Printer's Ink. 
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