PLANTING AN ORCHARD.

Patea Mail, 5 July 1881, Page 4

PLANTING AN ORCHARD.

For a new orchard the soil cannot be 100 finely pulverized. It should be in such a state of culture as to be fit for growing vegetables. The more it has been worked with the spade or fork, or with plough and harrows, the better the chance of success in planting fruit trees. With the soil in suitable state of preparation, the planting of trees is a comparatively easy matter. It is all the better if the ground has been worked some time before trees are put in. If, however, they are about to be planted in land not previously prepared, a good deal of labor and trouble will be necessary ; for holes of sufficient diameter and depth have to be made. When a person is pushed for time, and this method has to be adopted, it would be well to have the holes dug some weeks previously, care being taken to stir the subsoil, iu order to have the ground worked to a depth of about two feet altogether. On land not sufficiently fertile, a good opportunity is offered of enriching it before the trees are permanently planted. While holes are being dug, clay soils could be mixed with sand, or light soils with muck, or poor soils with manure, ashes, or bones. If stock-yard manure is about to be used, it should not be applied to the roots of the trees, but had better be spread to the surface after the hole is filled up, so that the rains may gradually wash down the fertilising properties. Fruit, however, as a rule, does not require so large a quantity of manure as surface crops. Before planting is done, some authorities recommend that on poorish soils a compost should be used, of which lime should form a part, on land not calcareous. Large holes are to be dug, and the compost placed at the • bottom*

so as to be under the trees. The easiest and most expeditious mode of enriching the land at the time of planting, is to mix a few handfuls of bonomeal with the soil as it is spread about the roots. This will invariably assist in giving young trees a good start—a very important matter in planting an orchard; as the object should be that each tree, by having proper attention from the very first, should grow strong and vigorous. It is better to have one tree properly planted than half-a-dozen shoved in the ground in a careless, slovenly, way; for one tree that gets fair treatment, is likely to produce six times more fruit than a number placed in the ground in an unskilful, unscientific manner. How can it be expected that trees can grow and bear frnit, when they are stuck a; the very bottom of holes dug in the ground, which all through the wet season are sure to hold water, there being no way by which it can escape ? Once for all, I may mention that no frnit trees should be planted deep—no deeper than they were in the nursery bed. They do far better when kept near the surface than when buried deeply in the ground. In taking up young trees, for the purpose of transplanting, the roots should be injured as little as possible. Before the trees are planted, the tops will have to be pruned, so that something like a balance may exist between the branches and the roots. It would not do to plant a young tree with a big head and very few roots to support it. All the buds on the stem and branches of a tree will either produce shoots or leaves, and they will all require their share of nourishment from the roots; not getting which they will be sickly or die away altogether. The trees thus prepared, and the holes ready for their reception—as it is safer to put a stake to each until the roots have become fixed in the soil—the stake may be driven in first in a slanting direction, and the tree tied closely to it. This will give an opportunity to adjust the roots, and to spread them out carefully in order that they may grow in every direction, so that in time the tree may be firmly rooted in the ground. If there are upper and lower roots, the former should be held up until the fine earth is spread all about the latter, and gently trodden down with the foot. The same process can then be taken with the upper roots, and when the hole is filled in, the whole can be firmly pressed with the foot, and the tree so secured to the stake that it will not chafe the bark. If any of the trees happen to have crooked stems, they should be tied to the stake in such a manner as shall lend to make them straight. In a small orchard where trees will be kept well pruned, and the place tilled by digging, it is not necessary to have fruit trees wide apart. But where the plough is about to be used trees will have to be 20 feet apart, or upwards. Indeed, on rich, deep soils, apple trees might require to be 40 feet apart.—“ Agricola ” in Auckland News.