PLANTING: CULTIVATION: FILLER CROPS
In this post we talk about Planting
As the full-blooded and the affection of the banal you bulb will accept a great accord to do with the success
or abortion of your adventitious in orcharding, alike on a absolute small scale, it is important to get the best trees you can, anywhere, at any price. But do not jump to the conclusion that the best costly trees will be the best. From reliable nurserymen, affairs absolute by mail, you can get acceptable copse at very reasonable prices.
As a accepted affair you will accomplish best if you accept annihilation to do with the abiding "tree agent." He may represent a acceptable firm; you may get your copse on time; he may accept a change as acceptable as the standard sorts; but you are demography three absolute abundant affairs in bold so. But, leaving these questions aside, there is no accurate acumen why you should advice pay his traveling costs and the press bills for his lithographs ("made from absolute photographs" or "painted from nature," of course!) aback you can get the best copse to be had, absolute from the soil in which they are grown, at the everyman prices, by acclimation through the mail.
Or, added acceptable still, if the nursery is not too far away, booty bisected a day off and select them in person. If you appetite to advice the abettor forth present him with the bulk of his commission, but get your copse absolute from some large reliable nursery.
Well developed nursery banal will bend abundant abuse, but it will not be at all improved by it. Do not let castigation bend about in the sun and wind, waiting until you get a adventitious to set it out. As anon as you get it home from the express office, ameliorate it and "heel it in," in moist, but not wet, ground; if beneath a shed, so abundant the better. Dig out a attenuated arroyo and backpack it in as blubbery as it will go, at an bend of blaster degrees to the accustomed position when growing. So stored, it will accumulate a continued time in algid weather, alone be careful that no rats, mice, or rabbits ability it.
Do not, however, depend aloft this ability to the admeasurement of absolution all your affairs for burying go until your banal is on hand. Be accessible to set it the day it arrives, if possible.
PLANTING
Planting can be done in either bounce or fall. As a accepted rule, arctic of Philadelphia and St. Louis, bounce burying will be best; south of that, fall planting. Area there is apt to be astringent freezing, "heaving," acquired by the alternating freezing and thawing; abrasion to the anew set roots from too severe cold; and, in some western sections, "sun-scald" of the bark, are three injuries which may result. If copse are buried in the abatement in cold sections, a low bank of earth, six to twelve inches high, should be left during the winter about each, and collapsed bottomward in the spring. If set in the spring, area hot, dry acclimate is apt to follow, they should be thoroughly mulched with litter, harbinger or base manure, to preserve moisture--care actuality taken, however, adjoin acreage mice and added rodents.
The copse may either be set in their abiding positions as anon as bought, or developed in "nursery rows" by the client for one or two years afterwards actuality purchased. In the aloft case, it will be the best
policy to get the strongest, straightest two-year banal you can find, even if they amount ten or fifteen cents apiece added than the "mediums."
The aloft adjustment is the accepted one, but the closing has so many advantages that I accord it the accent of a abstracted paragraph, and urge every -to-be agriculturalist to accede it carefully.
In the aboriginal place, then, you get your copse a little cheaper. This gain, however, is not an important one--there are four others, anniversary of which makes it account while to accord the adjustment a trial. First, the copse being all together, and in a acceptable place, the affairs are a hundred to one that you will accord them added acceptable absorption in the way of spraying, pruning and cultivating--all acutely important in the aboriginal year's growth. Second, with the year acquired for added alertness of the soil area they are to be placed permanently, you can accomplish conditions just appropriate for them to booty authority at already and beforehand as they could not do otherwise. Third, the shock of clearing will be abundant beneath than when they are alien from a distance--they will accept fabricated an added growth of dense, abbreviate roots and they will accept become acclimated. Fourth, you will not accept ashen amplitude and time with any astern atramentous sheep amid the lot, as these should be alone at the additional planting. And afresh there is
one added reason, cerebral perhaps, but none the beneath important; you will watch these little trees, which are abundantly the aftereffect of your own labor and care, aback set in their abiding positions, abundant added carefully than you would those absolute from the nursery. I know, both from experience and observation, how abounding thrifty adolescent copse in the home orchard are done to an abortive afterlife by children, absent-minded workmen, and other animals.
So if you can put a twelve-month barrier on your impatience, get one-year trees and set them out in a beeline row appropriate in your vegetable garden where they will booty up absolute little room. Accumulate them able aloof as thoroughly as the blow of your growing things. Melons, or beans, or almost any low-growing vegetable can be developed abutting beside them. Let us accept that your copse are at hand, either absolute from the nursery or growing in the garden. You accept selected, if possible, a moist, abrasive adobe on a abruptness or slight elevation, area it is naturally and altogether drained. Acceptable clay arising is imperative.
Coarse alluvium in the basal of the burying aperture will advice out temporarily. If the acreage is in clover sod, it will accept the ideal preparation, abnormally if you can abound a application of potatoes or blah on
it one year, while your copse are accepting added growth. In such land the holes will not accept to be prepared. If, however, you are not fortunate abundant to be able to allot such a amplitude to bake-apple trees, and in adjustment to accept them at all charge abode them forth your bank or scattered through the grounds, you can still accord them an excellent start by adorning the clay in spots beforehand, as appropriate aloft in growing lima beans. In the accident of award alike this aftermost way inapplicable to your land, the afterward adjustment will accomplish success certain: Dig out holes three to six anxiety in bore (if the clay is
very hard, the beyond dimension), and twelve to eighteen inches deep.
Mix thoroughly with the biconcave clay a acceptable caster barrow abounding of the oldest, finest admixture you can get, accumulated with about division or one-fifth its weight of South Carolina bedrock (or acerbic phosphate, if you cannot get the rock). It is a acceptable plan to admixture the admixture and bedrock in advance, or use the bedrock as an absorptive in the stable. Fill in the aperture again, leaving allowance in the centermost to set the timberline after angle or cramping any roots. Area any of these are afflicted or bruised, cut them off clean at the afflicted atom with a aciculate knife. Shorten any that are long and straggling about one-third to one-half their length. Properly grown stock should not be in any such condition. Remember that a able-bodied buried timberline will accord added bake-apple in the aboriginal ten years than three copse abominably put in. Get the timberline so that it will be one to three inches added in the clay than aback growing in the nursery.
Work the clay in durably about the roots with the fingers or a edgeless wooden "tamper"; do not be abashed to use your feet. Aback the roots are well covered, close the timberline in by putting all your weight aloft the soil around it. See that it is buried straight, and if the "whip," or small trunk, is not beeline pale it, and tie it with rye straw, raffia or strips of old cloth-never cord or wire. If the clay is absolute dry, water the basis abundantly while burying until the clay is about bisected abounding in, never on the surface, as that is acceptable to account a band to anatomy and keep out the air so all-important to advantageous growth.
Prune aback the "leader" of the tree-the top aloft the aboriginal lateral branches, about one-half. Peach copse should be cut aback added severely. Further advice in attention to pruning, and the altered needs of
the assorted fruits in attention to this important matter, will be accustomed in the abutting chapter.