Home Vegetable Gardening, F. F. Rockwell [popular novels .txt] 📗

select them in person. If you

want to help the agent along present him with the

amount of his commission, but get your trees direct

from some large reliable nursery.

 

Well grown nursery stock will stand much abuse,

but it will not be at all improved by it. Do not

let yours stand around in the sun and wind, waiting

until you get a chance to set it out. As soon as you

get it home from the express office, unpack it and

“heel it in,” in moist, but not wet, ground; if under

a shed, so much the better. Dig out a narrow trench

and pack it in as thick as it will go, at an angle of

forty-five degrees to the natural position when

growing. So stored, it will keep a long time in

cold weather, only be careful that no rats, mice, or

rabbits reach it.

 

Do not, however, depend upon this knowledge to

the extent of letting all your preparations for planting

go until your stock is on hand. Be ready to

set it the day it arrives, if possible.

 

PLANTING

 

Planting can be done in either spring or fall. As a general rule, north

of Philadelphia and St. Louis, spring planting will be best; south of

that, fall planting. Where there is apt to be severe freezing,

“heaving,” caused by the alternate freezing and thawing; injury to the

newly set roots from too severe cold; and, in some western sections,

“sun-scald” of the bark, are three injuries which may result. If trees

are planted in the fall in cold sections, a low mound of earth, six to

twelve inches high, should be left during the winter about each, and

leveled down in the spring. If set in the spring, where hot, dry

weather is apt to follow, they should be thoroughly mulched with

litter, straw or coarse manure, to preserve moisture—care being taken,

however, against field mice and other rodents.

 

The trees may either be set in their permanent positions as soon as

bought, or grown in “nursery rows” by the purchaser for one or two

years after being purchased. In the former case, it will be the best

policy to get the strongest, straightest two-year stock you can find,

even if they cost ten or fifteen cents apiece more than the “mediums.”

The former method is the usual one, but the latter has so many

advantages that I give it the emphasis of a separate paragraph, and

urge every prospective planter to consider it carefully.

 

In the first place, then, you get your trees a little cheaper. If you

purchase for nursery row planting, six-foot to seven-foot two-year-old

apple trees, of the standard sorts, should cost you about thirty cents

each; one-year “buds,” six feet and branched, five to ten cents less.

This gain, however, is not an important one—there are four others,

each of which makes it worth while to give the method a trial. First,

the trees being all together, and in a convenient place, the chances

are a hundred to one that you will give them better attention in the

way of spraying, pruning and cultivating—all extremely important in

the first year’s growth. Second, with the year gained for extra

preparation of the soil where they are to be placed permanently, you

can make conditions just right for them to take hold at once and thrive

as they could not do otherwise. Third, the shock of transplanting will

be much less than when they are shipped from a distance—they will have

made an additional growth of dense, short roots and they will have

become acclimated. Fourth, you will not have wasted space and time with

any backward black sheep among the lot, as these should be discarded at

the second planting. And then there is one further reason,

psychological perhaps, but none the less important; you will watch

these little trees, which are largely the result of your own labor and

care, when set in their permanent positions, much more carefully than

you would those direct from the nursery. I know, both from experience

and observation, how many thrifty young trees in the home orchard are

done to an untimely death by children, careless workmen, and other

animals.

 

So if you can put a twelve-month curb on your impatience, get one-year

trees and set them out in a straight row right in your vegetable garden

where they will take up very little room. Keep them cultivated just as

thoroughly as the rest of your growing things. Melons, or beans, or

almost any low-growing vegetable can be grown close beside them.

 

If you want your garden to pay for your whole lot of fruit trees this

season dig up a hole about three feet in diameter wherever a tree is to

“go permanently.” Cut the sod up fine and work in four or five good

forkfuls of well rotted manure, and on these places, when it is warm

enough, plant a hill of lima pole-beans-the new sort named Giant-podded

Pole Lima is the best I have yet seen. Place a stout pole, eight to ten

feet high, firmly in each hole. Good lima beans are always in demand,

and bring high prices.

 

Let us suppose that your trees are at hand, either direct from the

nursery or growing in the garden. You have selected, if possible, a

moist, gravelly loam on a slope or slight elevation, where it is

naturally and perfectly drained. Good soil drainage is imperative.

Coarse gravel in the bottom of the planting hole will help out

temporarily. If the land is in clover sod, it will have the ideal

preparation, especially if you can grow a patch of potatoes or corn on

it one year, while your trees are getting further growth. In such land

the holes will not have to be prepared. If, however, you are not

fortunate enough to be able to devote such a space to fruit trees, and

in order to have them at all must place them along your wall or

scattered through the grounds, you can still give them an excellent

start by enriching the soil in spots beforehand, as suggested above in

growing lima beans. In the event of finding even this last way

inapplicable to your land, the following method will make success

certain: Dig out holes three to six feet in diameter (if the soil is

very hard, the larger dimension), and twelve to eighteen inches deep.

Mix thoroughly with the excavated soil a good barrowful of the oldest,

finest manure you can get, combined with about one-fourth or one-fifth

its weight of South Carolina rock (or acid phosphate, if you cannot get

the rock). It is a good plan to compost the manure and rock in advance,

or use the rock as an absorbent in the stable. Fill in the hole again,

leaving room in the center to set the tree without bending or cramping

any roots. Where any of these are injured or bruised, cut them off

clean at the injured spot with a sharp 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 well planted tree will give more fruit in the first ten

years than three trees carelessly put in. Get the tree so that it will

be one to three inches deeper in the soil than when growing in the nursery.

Work the soil in firmly about the roots with the fingers or a blunt wooden

“tamper”; do not be afraid to use your feet. When the roots are well

covered, firm the tree in by putting all your weight upon the soil

around it. See that it is planted straight, and if the “whip,” or small

trunk, is not straight stake it, and tie it with rye straw, raffia or

strips of old cloth-never string or wire. If the soil is very dry, water

the root copiously while planting until the soil is about half filled in,

never on the surface, as that is likely to cause a crust to form and

keep out the air so necessary to healthy growth.

 

Prune back the “leader” of the tree-the top above the first lateral

branches, about one-half. Peach trees should be cut back more severely.

Further information in regard to pruning, and the different needs of

the various fruits in regard to this important matter, will be given in

the next chapter.

 

SETTING

 

Standard apple trees, fully grown, will require thirty to forty-five

feet of space between them each way. It takes, however, ten or twelve

years after the trees are set before all of this space is needed. A

system of “fillers,” or inter-planting, has come into use as a result

of this, which will give at least one hundred per cent, more fruit for

the first ten years. Small-growing standards, standard varieties on

dwarf stock, and also peaches, are used for this purpose in commercial

orchards. But the principle may be applied with equally good results to

the home orchard, or even to the planting of a few scattered trees. The

standard dwarfs give good satisfaction as permanent fillers. Where

space is very limited, or the fruit must go into the garden, they may

be used in place of the standard sorts altogether. The dwarf trees are,

as a rule, not so long-lived as the standards, and to do their best,

need more care in fertilizing and manuring; but the fruit is just as

good; just as much, or more, can be grown on the same area; and the

trees come into bearing two to three years sooner. They cost less to

begin with and are also easier to care for, in spraying and pruning and

in picking the fruit.

 

CULTIVATION

 

The home orchard, to give the very finest quality of fruit, must be

given careful and thorough cultivation. In the case of scattered trees,

where it is not practicable to use a horse, this can be given by

working a space four to six feet wide about each tree. Every spring the

soil should be loosened up, with the cultivator or fork, as the case

may be, and kept stirred during the early part of the summer. Unless

the soil is rich, a fertilizer, high in potash and not too high in

nitrogen, should be given in the spring. Manure and phosphate rock, as

suggested above, is as good as any. In case the foliage is not a deep

healthy green, apply a few handfuls of nitrate of soda, working it into

the soil just before a rain, around each tree.

 

About August 1st the cultivation should be discontinued, and some

“cover crop” sown. Buckwheat and crimson clover is a good combination;

as the former makes a rapid growth it will form, if rolled down just as

the apples are ripening, a soft cushion upon which the windfalls may

drop without injury, and will furnish enough protection to the crimson

clover to carry it through most winters, even in cold climates.

 

In addition to the filler crops, where the ground is to be cultivated

by horse, potatoes may be grown between the rows of trees; or fine

hills of melons or squash may be grown around scattered trees, thus,

incidentally, saving a great deal of space in the vegetable garden. Or

why not grow a few extra fancy strawberries in the well cultivated

spots about these trees? Neither they nor the trees want the ground too

rich, especially in nitrogen, and conditions suiting the one would be

just right for the others.

 

It may seem to the beginner that fruit-growing, with all these things

to keep in mind, is a difficult task. But it is not. I think I am

perfectly safe in saying that the rewards from nothing else he can

plant and care