226 
and clean tilth with the plough or the spade; 
no other pruning should be practised than the 
excision of branches which are broken or de- 
cayed, or of branches which cross one another, 
and which, if left, would rub and tear the bark ; 
and any suckers or low- growing shoots which 
may from time to time make their appearance 
ought to be entirely dissevered from their stems. 
The keeping of apples through the winter has 
provoked general attention, exercised much in- 
genuity, and educed a large amount of invention; 
| and still it continues to be far from well or uni- 
versally understood. Methods have been recom- 
| mended of preserving them on the shelves of 
| 
rooms inaccessible to frost; of burying them in 
the earth, in the same manner as potatoes; of 
placing them in layers or sheets, alternately with 
layers of straw or fern; of spreading them on the 
| floor of a loft, out of contact with one another, 
and exposed to a free ventilation from the exte- 
| rior air; of covering them with bran; of cover- 
ing or immersing them with dried white sand; 
of shutting them up in warm closets; of main- 
taining them in the low, unfreezing, uniform 
temperature of a cellar; of constantly excluding 
them from the light, but permitting the access 
of the air; of subjecting them to preliminary 
| 
| 
| 
sweating in heaps; of storing them immediately 
after being gathered; of very frequently, or so 
often as once a-week, examining them, wiping 
them, and removing all which show specks or 
other incipient symptoms of decay; of packing 
them in boxes or barrels with a thick covering 
of linen or other closely-textured cloth; and of 
wrapping them in paper, and packing them in 
close boxes. But, excepting the simple and easy 
conditions of keeping them dry, clean, and in- 
accessible to frost, all the really effective art of 
protecting apples from early decay consists in a 
careful gathering of them at the periods of their 
being ripe. The practice, so generally prevalent, 
of making what is called ‘a clean sweep’ of an 
orchard, or of clearing it at one gathering, is 
monstrously unphilosophical, and constitutes the 
true origin of probahly three-fourths of all the 
tendencies of a crop to early decay. Judgment 
is exercised in other harvestings, and why not 
in this? One variety of pea ripens later than 
another, and is allowed a longer time by the cul- 
tivator to remain ungathered; one variety of 
wheat is not quite ready for the sickle, when an- 
other variety has been cut, dried, and housed; 
and one variety of potatoe retains its haulm 
green to a later period than another, and is al- 
lowed to remain correspondingly longer in the 
ground, But many varieties of apples usually 
grow together in one orchard; these varieties 
generally differ very widely from one another in 
their dates of complete ripeness; even apples of 
one variety, growing upon one tree, are not all 
ripe at one period; and, therefore, the apples of 
an orchard, far more than the pease of a garden 
a — 
| 
| 
i 
} 
_ or the grains and green crops of a farm, ought to | 
APPLE-TREE. 
be gathered in a series of harvestings correspond- 
ing to their successive periods of ripening. Some 
kinds are quite ready for gathering very early in 
autumn; other kinds are usually not ready till 
the middle of December or even the early part 
of January ; and the kinds which yield the great 
bulk of crop for preservation till spring, extend 
their periods of ripening through a range of sev- 
eral weeks. When the fruit begins to drop freely, 
but not a day earlier, the harvesting of an or- 
chard ought tocommence. The gatherers should 
have ladders of sufficient length to reach to the 
top of the trees, and shallow baskets for receiving 
the fruit, and conveying it to the fruit-room. 
Only the ripest fruits of each tree, or those which, 
when raised to the level of the footstalk, part 
freely from the tree, ought to be taken; and they 
should be laid gently in the baskets, one by one, 
till the baskets are full, and then conveyed to 
the barn or the fruit-room, and removed, one by 
one, from the baskets to the barn-floor or the 
fruit-room shelves. Only a process like this is 
wise and economical; and it ought to be repeated 
every third or fourth day till the whole crop of 
the orchard is gathered. 
The fruit-room ought to be situated in the 
driest, coolest, and most shaded spot which com- 
ports with convenience, perfectly free from damp, 
suitable in size to the extent of the orchard, and 
previded with beech or piane-tree shelves, about 
two feet broad, and ten inches asunder. The apples 
must lie ten or twelve days in heaps on the barn- 
floor, or in sheets on the fruit-room shelves, to 
undergo the peculiar constitutional chemical ac- 
tion technically called sweating; and, during the 
whole of this period, if the weather be clear and 
dry, abundance of air must be admitted,—but if 
the weather be damp, the exterior air must be | 
completely excluded. At the end of the ten or 
twelve days, the apples must be wiped one by 
one with clean soft cloths; all which are not per- 
fectly sound must be removed, and those on the 
barn-floor may be packed in chests, barrels, or 
other suitable packages for final storing and for 
the market ; while those in the fruit-room, after 
the shelves are wiped on both sides to perfect 
dryness, must be returned to the shelves. About 
the end of January the latter ought again to be 
turned over, and any which are damp, as well as 
both sides of the shelves, carefully wiped. From this 
time, the room, in order to prevent the fruit from 
becoming shrivelled, must be kept close, and the 
apples handled only with the utmost gentleness, 
and never except for the removal of damp from 
themselves or the shelves. During the remain- 
der of the season, or till the end of summer, the 
apples must be lifted two or three times, and the 
shelves wiped to dryness ; and, on every occasion, 
the fruit ought to be handled only with gloved 
or at least perfectly dry hands, On every fourth 
or fifth day, too, the shelves should be examined 
by the eye, that every decaying apple may be 
removed, and its place thoroughly wiped. A 
