October  i7,  1898. 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
321 
Being  recently  at  a  large  orchard,  I  noticed  it  was  the  only  tree  bearing 
a  crop  at  the  time  of  my  visit.  Durondeau  is  again  most  reliable.  The 
value  of  careful  root-pruning  has  been  apparent  in  many  gardens  ;  this 
year  a  wall  of  cordons  attended  to  in  1890  has  borne  the  largest  crop  in 
our  district.  Such  care  always  pays. 
Plums. —The  flowering  time  was  grand,  but,  alas!  cold  winds  and 
very  cold  nights  almost  destroyed  the  crop  in  many  parts,  though  as  the 
season  advanced  the  yield  was  much  larger  than  was  looked  for  at  one 
time.  Good  prices  have  ruled,  and  the  crop  has  been  gathered  in  fine 
condition,  the  dry  season  preventing  loss  by  splitting.  It  is  a  remarkable 
thing  that  there  is  sure  to  be  a  crop  of  Plums  somewhere,  and  no  doubt, 
taking  a  series  of  years,  that  Plums  would  come  out  the  best  paying 
orchard  crop.  Rivers’  Prolific  has  been  short  in  Kent,  although  one  place  is 
reported  to  have  grown  1500  bushels.  The  comparative  failure  of  this  sort 
is  no  doubt  due  to  its  blooming  so  early — in  many  years  an  advantage. 
Apples. — This  is  our  most  important  crop,  as  it  lasts  from  August 
till  May.  I  can  here  report  a  general  shortage,  and  although  left  for 
notice  till  the  last  (by  chance)  this  crop  furnishes  the  most  important 
lessons  of  the  year  to  my  mind.  On  all  sides  we  see  grass  orchards  bare 
of  Apples  while  young  and  thriving  plantations  are  giving  good  returns 
and  most  excellent  samples.  The  fact  is  that  the  old  trees  are  weakened 
by  years  of  drought  and  neglect  ;  many  are  this  year  so  hard  hit,  full 
of  red  spider,  bare  of  foliage  and  new  growth,  and  exhibit  such  a  general 
building  up  the  woody  formation  of  the  tree,  and  i3  also  of  use  for  the 
grazing  sheep  and  a  marvellous  stimulant  for  old  orchard  trees,  cheap 
in  bulk  and  handy  in  use.  Evidence  is  not  wanting  to  prove  that  libe¬ 
rality  in  manure,  energy  in  greasing  for  winter  moth,  spraying  for  aphides 
and  codlin  moth,  pay  on  all  sides,  and  the  fact  is  specially  brought  home 
in  a  dry  season  like  this,  following  as  it  did  on  the  two  light  rainfalls  of 
1896  and  1897. 
Year  by  year  the  prejudice  against  Apple  trees  on  the  Paradise  stock 
is  breaking  down.  Let  me  summarise  its  advantages.  (1)  The  trees 
are  dwarfs,  and  require  no  ladders.  (2)  They  bear  the  second  year,  and 
the  dropped  fruit  is  not  injured.  (3)  The  fruit  is  more  handsome  and 
clear  than  from  orchard  trees,  (4)  and  therefore  make  top  prices.  (5)  The 
trees  can  be  planted  12  feet  apart.  (6)  They  are  within  reach  for  check¬ 
ing  aphis  and  other  parasites,  for  pruning  and  other  attentions.  7)  They 
bear  freely  when  the  orchard  trees  do  not.  A  word  as  to  prejudice.  No 
doubt  many  of  the  earlier  raised  trees  on  the  Paradise  were  budded  on  an 
inferior  kind.  Every  good  nurseryman  has  now  discarded  this  bad  stock, 
and  trees  on  the  best  Paradise  are  as  healthy  as  trees  on  the  Crab,  and 
can  be  relied  on  to  last  and  produce  as  long  as  that  old  style  ot  tree. 
Peaches  and  Nectarines.— These  have  suffered  severely  from 
curl  in  early  spring,  but  as  soon  as  summer  weather  returned  they 
recovered,  and  the  best  crop  for  years  has  rewarded  those  cultivators 
who  syringed  their  trees  freely  and  kept  down  the  red  spider,  and  also 
W-J/M 
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Fig.  57.— ONIONS  PROM  AMPTHILL  HOUSE  GARDENS. 
want  of  vigour,  that  it  may  take  many  years  of  care  before  they  come 
again  to  a  profitable  return.  And  why  is  this  so  ?  Because  the  gr  owers 
forget  that  the  grass  roots  penetrate  so  deeply  that  they  absorb  all  the 
nutriment,  and  the  Apple  trees  get  none.  When  horses  and  lean  cattle 
are  put  in  the  orchard  the  evil  is  but  emphasised — a  case  of  burning  the 
candle  at  both  ends. 
Contrast  these  exhausted  orchards  and  pale,  thin  foliage  with  the 
younger  trees  in  plantations  on  cultivated  land,  and  the  difference  is  at 
once  seen.  We  starve  our  old  orchards  and  expect  a  return  without  outlay 
or  trouble.  When  a  crop  is  produced  on  these  aged  trees  it  is  often  so 
heavy  that  it  takes  the  trees  a  year  to  recover.  If,  however,  we  were  to 
feed  pigs  or  fatting  sheep  in  them,  the  nutriment  resulting  would  enable 
the  trees,  by  encouraging  surface  roots,  to  fruit  every  year,  and  thus  pay 
bountifully  for  the  outlay. 
I  have  in  my  eye  a  plantation  four  years  planted  where  the  trees  have 
been  well  manured,  heavily  pruned,  and  the  land  well  nurtured  and  kept 
clear  of  weeds  ;  and  Apples  have  been  so  abundant  and  fine  that  they 
were  thinned  twice  before  the  main  crop  was  gathered,  and  the  prices 
obtained  for  the  fruit  have  been  nearly  twice  those  obtained  for  old 
orchard  samples,  while  below  them  Gooseberries  have  been  picked  twice 
green  and  once  as  red-ripes  ;  these  with  the  Apples  giving  an  enormous 
return  per  acre.  The  tenant  uses  bonemeal,  kainit,  and  fish  guano,  and 
it  was  evident  from  the  growth  and  the  entire  absence  of  weeds  that  this 
arrangement  was  a  paying  investment. 
Therefore  we  must  treat  our  grass  orchards  liberally  by  surface 
dressings  of  stable  manure  in  winter,  and  also  by  mulchings  and  top- 
dressings  of  artificial  manures.  Especially  do  I  recommend  kainit  on 
light  soils.  It  contains  a  proportion  of  salt,  which  is  beneficial  alike  in 
gave  water  freely  to  the  roots  as  required.  The  fruit  was  of  large  size  and 
remarkable  colour,  and  the  quality  superb.  The  Peaches  and  Nectarines 
grown  in  our  orchard  house  were  never  finer  in  size  or  flavour.  The  superb 
fruit  shown  at  the  Crystal  Palace  in  1898  show  will  never  be  forgotten. 
Colour  on  Fruit. — This  season  has  confirmed  us  in  our  opinion  that 
high  colour  in  fruit  is  not  caused  by  the  sun’s  heat  alone.  Speaking 
generally,  fruit  was  twenty  days  later  than  usual,  and  if  evidence  were 
wanted,  the  exhibition  of  Plums  at  the  Crystal  Palace  afforded  it  con¬ 
clusively,  as  never  before  have  such  a  grand  lot  been  set  up  there.  It 
was  also  remarked  that  Pears  and  Apples  were  not  so  highly  coloured  as 
usual,  and  this  I  consider  to  be  from  the  absence  of  those  refreshing  dews 
and  showers  we  generally  get  in  September,  which,  combined  with  wind 
and  free  air,  appear  to  be  essential  to  produce  colour  and  finish.  In  other 
words,  besides  what  trees  take  from  the  soil,  they  require  favourable  con¬ 
ditions  in  the  atmosphere  to  complete  their  growth.  The  colour  which 
our  fruit  took  on  after  the  shower  of  September  30th  was  pronounced  in  two 
days. 
In  preparing  this  paper  at  the  request  of  our  worthy  Secretary,  I  do 
do  not  pretend  to  exhaust  the  subject,  but  only  to  have  introduced  it  for 
discussion  by  the  members  of  the  club,  and  I  wish  to  state  that  I  can  only 
speak  for  my  own  district,  where  more  than  ever  growers  arc  giving 
attention  to  fruit,  more  even  than  Hops  and  corn,  as  being  ihe  most 
lucrative.  But  as  the  fruit  crops  drain  upon  the  soil  most  freely,  so  it 
is  necessary  that  the  fertilisers  should  be  applied  liberally.  A  remark¬ 
able  feature  in  the  enormously  extended  area  of  land  under  fruit  is  that 
the  prices  keep  up  ;  and  the  day  visibly  draws  nearer  when  the  home 
producer  will  oust  the  foreigner  from  the  market,  excepting  in  Pears  and 
those  tropical  fruits  which  our  variable  climate  cannot  produce. 
