| 
| 
| 
|| 
| stantly kept clear of weeds. 
|| October, if the plants have been healthy, they 
_ may be transplanted into clean, well-pulverized 
|| nursery-ground, set at the distance of one foot 
a 
224 
manure, is seriously to interfere with the natural 
economy of the apple’s vegetation, and must, to 
some extent, however imperceptibly, damage the 
constitution of the future plants. 
When pips are designed to be used as seed, 
and are obtained from the cyder manufactory or 
otherwise abstracted from the pomes, they ought 
to be preserved in dry sand, and kept out of the 
reach of rats and mice; and even after being 
sown, they ought to be protected from these ver- 
min by means of traps. The pips may be sown 
upon a bed of light earth, and covered to the 
depth of about half an inch. In spring, when 
the plants begin to appear, they must be care- 
fully weeded ; and if the season should prove to 
| be dry, they ought to be watered twice or thrice 
a-week. During summer, they must be con- 
In the following 
from plant to plant, in rows three feet asunder, 
_ and adjusted somewhat firmly in their places, by 
| lateral pressures of the soil. 
Stocks thus early 
transplanted do not require to be headed; yet 
when they incline to shoot downward, they must 
_ have their tap root shortened, in order that 
| they may be induced to send out horizontal roots. 
| If the soil is good, and kept clean from weeds, 
the stocks intended for dwarfs, may be grafted in 
the second spring after transplantation ; yet those 
intended for standards must not be grafted till 
the fourth spring, when they will be upwards of 
six feet in height. 
“A difference of opinion,” says Mr. Knight, 
“appears always to have prevailed respecting 
the quality of the soil proper for a nursery: some 
have preferred a very poor, and others a very 
rich soil; and both perhaps are almost equally 
wrong. The advocates for a poor soil appear to 
me to have been misled by transferring the feel- 
ings of animals to plants, and inferring that a 
change from want to abundance must be agree- 
able and beneficial to both. But plants in a very 
poor soil become stunted and unhealthy, and do 
not readily acquire habits of vigorous growth, 
when removed from it. In a soil which has been 
highly manured, the growth of young apple-trees 
is extremely rapid; and their appearance, during 
two or three years, generally indicates the ut- 
most exuberance of health and vigour. These 
are, however, usually the forerunners of disease, 
and the ‘canker’s desolating tooth’ blasts the 
hopes of the planter. I have seen many instances, 
in the black rich mould of an old garden, where 
young trees of the native crab could scarcely pre- 
serve their existence; and such mould appears 
almost equally fatal to the peach and nectarine 
trees. It has justly been remarked by Evelyn, 
that annual plants, having only a short time in 
which they are to fulfil the intentions of nature, 
readily accept any assistance from manure, and 
are rarely injured by the excess of it: but that 
trees, being formed for periods of long duration, 
are injured when attempts are made to accelerate 
their early growth by the stimulus of a large 
quantity of nutriment. In choosing the situation 
for a nursery, too much shelter, or exposure, 
should be equally avoided; and a soil, nearly 
similar to that in which the trees are afterwards 
to grow, should be selected, where it can be ob- 
tained. Pasture ground, or unmanured meadow, 
should be preferred to old tillage, and a loam of 
moderate strength, and of considerable depth, to 
all other soils.” 
The well-known variety called the Arbroath 
oslin or original apple, and all the burknot and 
codling tribes, grow freely from cuttings, and 
may be propagated almost as easily as poplars or 
willows. A new method of propagation has, 
within the last ten or fifteen years, been repeat- 
edly stated in public journals to have been in- 
vented and successfully practised in Bohemia,— 
to insert apple-tree shoots or cuttings in potatoes, 
and plunge them into the ground, leaving only 
an inch or two inches of the cutting above the 
surfaces; but this method has been fairly tried 
by experimentalists in Scotland, and found to be 
utterly inefficient. The general, indeed almost 
universal mode of propagation in Great Britain 
is by grafting or budding fine varieties upon the 
stocks of coarse, hardy, vigorous, straight grow- 
ing varieties; this method is facile, adapts itself 
to every form and size of required tree, and is 
applicable and efficient in the case of every kind 
of apple-tree; and, even in America, where the 
seedling system was so long universally preva- 
lent, this engrafting method is now in general 
use, nurseries being everywhere established, and: 
hardly any but the finest engrafted young trees 
being any longer in requisition. All stocks raised 
from the seed of crab-trees or of cyder varieties of 
apple-trees are technically called free stocks, and 
are employed for all orchard standards and for | 
The stocks of the paradise spe- | 
cies, as we formerly saw, are employed for dwarf | 
lofty espaliers. 
standards, for low espaliers, for the borders of 
gardens, and for low trees in any situation which 
are wished to bear fruit in comparatively early 
age, at the expense of becoming correspondingly 
soon exhausted. ‘ Some,” says Miller, “have 
made use of codling stocks for grafting apples, in 
order to stint their growth; but as these are com- 
monly propagated by suckers, I would by no 
means advise the use of them, nor would I choose 
to raise the codling trees from suckers ; but rather 
graft them upon crab stocks, which will cause 
the fruit to be firmer, last longer, and have a 
sharper flavour; and these trees will last much 
longer sound, and never put out suckers, as the 
codlings always do, which, if not constantly taken 
off, will weaken the trees, and cause them to 
canker; and it is not only from the roots, but 
from the knots of their stems, there are gener- 
ally a great number of strong shoots produced, 
which fill the trees with useless shoots, and render 
