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A N U A L

PR AOTI ( -A L OR C II AR J )- WO] ;
AT TU: 'APR

UNIVERSITY FARM

03

No. 4, 1896.)

CAPE OF GOOD HOPE.

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

MANUAL

OF

PRACTICAL ORCHARD-WORK
AT THE CAPE.

BY

P. AlACOWAN AND EUSTACE FILLANS.

•- UNIVERSITY QF CALIFORNIA
LIBRARY

BRANCH OF TRF
COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE

[COPYRIGHT.

CAPE TOWN;
W. A. RICHARDS & SONS, GOVERNMENT PRINTERS,

1806.

PREFACE.

At the suggestion of the Under Secretary for Agri-
culture this pamphlet upon Orchard practice has beeu
prepared, as a precursor to a work of closer local applica-
tion for which the data do not yet exist. Time only can
show how far it meets a present want. Throughout an
effort has been made to avoid empirical rules without
reasons, to state in the simplest manner such laws of
vegetative life as particularly concern the fruit-grower,
and from them to deduce as necessary consequences the
correct rules of practice. It is not possible to produce a
manual of universal application in a country like the Cape
which has two distinct and conversely differing climates
of west and east, and where the variations are further ac-
centuated by the rapid increase of altitude as one passes
inland. The writers hope that by the observations and
data furnished by intelligent cultivators in these very
divergent intercolonial climates, it may be possible here-
after to define with more accuracy the climatic areas and
approximate altitudes which demand variations in garden-
ing practice no less than in the objects of culture. The
pamphlet will have fulfilled its purpose if it enforces
attention to the points most neglected in fruit-culture.
These are the incredible neglect of the mechanical con-
dition of the soil and general avoidance of deep trenching,
the unintelligent use of irrigation, the absence of any
effective system of sub-drainage, unscientific pruning both
formative and in maintenance, and an easy satisfaction
with seedlings that have thrown back, instead of growing
only pedigree sorts propagated by bud and graft. Reform
of cultural custom and practice on these five points lies at
the foundation of all improvement in Cape fruit growing.

P. MACOWAN, F.L.S., F.R.H.S., &c.
EUSTACE PILLANS, Agricultural Assistant.

PRACTICAL ORCHARD-WORK AT THE CAPE.

The Artificial Character of Modern Fruit Trees.

1. Cultivation implies, first, a previous knowledge of the
nature and constitution of the living being we propose to
care for, and secondly, a previous knowledge of the soil and
atmosphere in which it holds its dual life. It is only by
such preknowledge that the cultivator can suit the condi-
tions of growth to the wants of the thing to be grown, and
thus place it in the best possible position for fulfilling the
history of its life. Nothing short of this work, done of set
purpose and as the outcome of exact knowledge, can be
called cultivation.

2. But it is something more than this. It is not enough
to reproduce plants in the precise form in which they exist
in nature. Firstly, the cultivator, for his own benefit,
aims at guiding and controlling the growth of certain plants
so as to make them develop very differently from their
normal original condition. Thus in one plant he endeavours
to obtain seeds of large size and bland taste, in another the
effort is to do away with seeds as far as possible and pro-
duce a large succulent fruit, in others, shortening of the
axial growth, and great enlargement of the leaves is aimed
at, The plant then with certain limits is, like clay in the
hands of the potter, capable of being remodelled, by causing
this or that organ to take on an excessive and unusual
development, without at the same time interfering with the
balance of functions necessary for its general health. This
complex art is one great part of cultivation. To practice it
with success obviously demands something more than the
loose, popular notions of plant-life, which are picked up
without special study or thought, or come by imitating the
traditional methods of our neighbours.

3: Secondly. — For many hundreds of years a close watch
has been kept upon the seedlings arising in the reproduc-
tion of all cultivated plants. Whenever a sport or other
chance variation has ' appeared, presenting characters of a

desirable kind, the gardener has been quick to detect it,
and by budding or grafting to give it permanence. And
this continual watchfulness, awaiting the chance of
betterment by natural variation, has produced the fruit and
vegetable sorts approved and kept in being all over the
world, so that in orcharding, as in all knowledge and civil-
ization, we are to-day the heirs of countless unknown
benefactors who have preceded us and handed down to us
their best results. It must therefore be constantly kept in
mind that the objects of our culture are distinctly artificial
products obtained by centuries of selection and variation,
and do not exist as wildings, nor can they put up with the
conditions sufficient for wildings. As soon as skilled care
ceases they cannot escape deterioration, and ultimately
dying out. And that indispensable skilled care is orchard-
work, a branch of cultivation in the wider sense, and is
just as essential as the quick-witted observation which has
detected chance improved variations when they do occur,
and fixed them for all time.

The Construction and Function of the Root.

4. The descending axis which fixes the root in the
ground by means of its numerous branches, has a central
cylinder of wood-tissue, in which are large vessels, big
enough to be recognised easily when cut across with a
sharp knife. Eound this is a layer of softer tissue, sheathing
it completely. It is convenient to call it the corteX)
because the word bark is used in a loose indefinite sense.
In a seedling the cortex of the root is extremely delicate,
almost transparent, and absorptive of moisture. In a
mature tree the enlarged roots, popularly so called, have
entirely lost the power of vitally absorbing water from
the soil. They collect nothing whatever, their duty being
to maintain the stability of the tree and to conduct away
upwards through their woody central cylinder the fluid
obtained from the soil for the use of the stem and foliage.

5. Then what part of the root does drink up the fluid
food-material from the soil ? Only a portion behind the
extreme end of each delicate root-tip. This absorptive
region is covered with fine root-hairs forming often a

close pile like velvet, and thus
enormously increasing the surface
through which water can be taken
up. It has not yet hardened and
become discoloured. Long before
this change has taken place the
hairs drop off, and the portion of
the rootlet on which they grew is
comparatively useless for purpose
of absorption. Meanwhile the tip
of the rootlet has pushed further
into the soil. New root-hairs have
arisen on the newly-grown length,
and they in their turn fulfil the
duty required. The actual grow-
ing tip itself absorbs but little.
It is covered with a protective cap
of tissue, which is constantly
wearing away and as constantly
being renewed, and which serves
to protect it from actual contact
with the particles of the soil
through which it is forcing its
way.

6. All these facts can easily be
demonstrated. A rape seedling
carefully taken up exhibits the
naked apex of the main root and
the zone of root-hairs at some dis-
tance behind covered with adherent
particles of soil. If these be
gently washed off the close pile
of hairs comes distinctly into view.
Each hair is hollow and opens
gure i. directly into some one cell of the

root-wall, even as the finger of a glove opens into the

cavity left for the palm of the hand.

7. Then it would seem that the transplant-trees one is
accustomed to receive, with no ball of their original earth

Figure 1 .—Root-hairs of a young wheat-plant.

B 2

4

round their base and with
but few root-branches pro-
jecting below, cannot im-
mediately take anything
from the soil when planted
in a new spot r Most cer-
tainly they cannot. The
first effort of life after re-
planting is to throw out
new root-fibres, each with
its protective cap to explore
and forage among the fresh
soil. As they elongate,
absorptive hairs cover the
space of a few inches be-
hind the cap and begin
their function, pouring the
fluid taken up into the
tissues of the root. As
the lengthening proceeds,
the hindmost hairs die off
in a few days just in pro-
portion as new ones arise
behind the apex. Thus it
appears that the part of
the root which absorbs is perpetually moving forward
and coming in contact with unexhausted particles of
soil, instead of lying inactive among material which it has
worked out. The root-hairs cling tenaciously to the par-
ticles they touch, and as it were mould themselves on
them. Their moist surface is capable of dissolving traces
of the mineral constituents therein, and the solution
passes inward to the carrying system of the root. Having
made ever so few new rootlets and having begun to absorb
through the root-hairs upon them, the transplanted life of
the tree is begun.

8. This knowledge should distinctly influence practical
work in planting fruit trees. Extreme care in lifting and
preservation of as much as possible of the small fibres of

Figure 2. — Rape seedlings showing root-hairs covered with soil, and the same
washed clean.

Figiu-e 2.

5?

Figure 3. Figure 4.

the root will repay the trouble taken. You thereby give
the tree less repairs to make good. Use the six-pronged
fork in the up-take, and as much as possible avoid the
knife-edge of the spade. The quick formation of new
rootlets depends upon a certain congenial warmth of the
soil, with the presence of sufficient and not too great
moisture. Hence in the parts of the Colony where, owing
to altitude, the winter is severe, it is bad policy to trans-
plant in early winter under the idea that the roots get hold
of the ground before they make their spring start. Near
the coast, where one may in winter have many consecutive
days of mild weather, the root-system of trees so treated
may begin to develop. But it is certain to be checked by

Figure 3. — Active and inactive zone of root of wheat-plant.

Figure 4. — Tip of a root-hair covered with particles of soil, greatly magnified.

6

the first cold spell, and on the whole such winter-planting
is risky, and the losses greater than the gains. It is better
to follow the method necessary at higher altitudes and with
severer seasons, that is, spring-planting in soil which is
daily becoming warmer under the increasing power of the
sun. This is more conformable to the physiological life of
the plant, and ensures its not receiving an injurious check.
With this knowledge the coarse method of chopping
young transplants out with a spade so that they have only
a few black ragged stumps left in lieu of roots will never
be permitted. Such transplants if set in the ground must
begin life by callusing the many wounds in the wood- tissue
of their stumps, and then sending out rootlets from this
callus-layer, just as if they were cuttings set in to strike.
They have not even the chance that ordinary cuttings get,
for the trunk and its numerous buds make immense de-
mands upon the infant rootlets, far more than they can
satisfy. And thus the miserable thing languishes, makes
the poorest of growth above, and gets thrown back a season
or perhaps more, merely for want of reasonable care in the
up-take.

9. In a tree planted in well tilled, well drained, well
opened soil, the advance of the root- tips is continuous till
the limit of the tree's requirements is reached. In general
one may say that the expanse of the foliage of a fruit tree
gives a tolerably accurate measure of the expansion of the
root-system under ground, but obviously the feeding-ground
of the roots is not close to the trunk, but in a circle,
whose radius is never less than half the height of the tree
when matured. "Whoever is aware of this phenomenon of
a steady advance in the roots will go dead against the
mischievous custom of applying irrigation -water and
manure in a sort of hollow dug round the base of the trunk.
Nor will he be a consenting party to the habit of planting
trees in holes cut in an impervious clayey soil which has
never been trenched. The normal advance of the root-
system is stopped by the impenetrable walls of the pit, and
the tree becomes unhealthy and shortlived, in spite of doses
of manure and unlimited irrigation.

10. The relation of the root to the soil both as to
mechanical condition, water-content and chemical con-

stituents will be treated hereafter. These paragraphs give
the most important facts as to structure and growth by
which the fruit grower has to guide his practice.

The Soil-constituents of Plant-food.

1 1 . We have now to consider what substances form
the food of plants, and which of them the soil must contain
in order to supply their wants. When the wood of a tree
is burned slowly with very small access of air there results
a mass of charcoal or carbon. All the moisture and a
little of the carbon originally in the wood-substance have
been driven off like gas by the heat. Whence did the
carbon come ? Wholly and entirely from the atmosphere,
which contains a variable amount, from 3^ to 6 measures,
of carbonic acid gas in every 10,000 of air. The foliage
absorbs this carbon -containing gas, and turns the carbon
to account in building up the tree's tissues. Let us sup-
pose the log of charcoal is allowed to burn slowly away.
All the carbon passes into the atmosphere again, being re-
converted into carbonic acid gas. But there is left behind
a small quantity of ash of a mineral nature. This handful
of ash is the sum total of what the tree has drawn out of
the soil in a dissolved state by means of its root-hairs, and
without which constituents it could not have maintained a
healthy life. If we analyse this ash we shall clearly get
to know what substances a soil must contain in order to
be fruitful, and what earth- elements go to make up the
food of plants, independently of those contained in the
essential air and water. They are as follows : — Nitrogen,
sulphur, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium,
iron, perhaps also chlorine. Of course, very small quan-
tities are required, but they cannot be omitted. Plant life
cannot go on continuously without a sufficient proportion
of each one. Two other substances are always present, viz.,
sodium and silica, but they are not essential for healthy
growth. Alumina, the base of clay, is also very widely
diffused in most soils, but is not taken up by plants.

Nitrogen is presented in the form of ammonia and
nitrates, and it seems probable that the ammonia is decom-
posed and converted into nitrates before absorption takes
place. Not only is this element added to the soil by

manuring, but it has been demonstrated that the vast
number of bacteria existing in the superficial layers of
earth are perpetually acting on the atmospheric nitrogen
and converting it to the purposes of the soil.

Sulphur is present as sulphates, like gypsum, which is
sulphate of lime ; and to a varying extent this element ap-
pears in animal manure.

Phosphorus occurs in bone-earth, which is phosphate of
lime, and in guano, In the majority of our Cape soils it
forms a mere trace, and its practical absence is one of the
severest drawbacks we have to contend against both in
cultures and the raising of stock.

Potassium is proportionately abundant in such Cape soils
as are derived from the weathering down of granite ; iu
others the amount is much less. It occurs as potassium
nitrate and chloride in many manures, and may con-
veniently be applied artificially.

Calcium, the base of lime, acts in plant tissues chiefly
as a carrier of sulphur-elements. When this work has
been effected, it is comparatively useless to the plant, and
is stowed away as a refuse material in the form of minute
crystals of oxalate of lime in the older cells. We shall
presently see that other important uses of lime relate to
the mechanical constitution of the soil, upon which it has
a signal effect.

Magnesium and iron both assist in stimulating the func-
tion of the chlorophyll or green matter of the leaf -eel Is.
Plants grown without those elements become pale, sickly
and yellowish. The addition of a trace of iron and mag-
nesium salts immediately fetches up the normal healthy
green appearance.

These statements are not theories or fancy views. They
are drawn from rigorously conducted experiments iu what
are termed water-cultures, and it is impossible to traverse
the conclusions to which they lead.

Respiration of Active Roots dependent on the
Mechanical Condition of the Soil.

12. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the culti-
vator that the roots of trees are not passive occupiers of the

9

ground, but have vital functions to perform which require
the soil to be presented to them in a suitable mechanical
condition. They have to respire. If the soil around them
be so compact as to exclude air, or if it be drenched with
water so as to drive the air out of its interstices and keep
it out, the roots will infallibly die. In fact they can no
more do without the small quantity of air they need than
animals can do without the enormous supplies necessary to
their more active respiration. The difference is one of
degree only. The respiratory process is the same, con-
sisting in the intake of atmospheric oxygen, its use to
oxidize carbon compounds, and the subsequent output of
carbonic acid. But because vegetable respiration, even
from the leaves, is very sluggish, and masked from
observation by the much more active work of assimi-
lating carbon to build up the tissues, it is apt to
be overlooked. And from this ignoring of a vital
necessity spring some of the worst errors in cultural
practice. We have enumerated certain mineral soil-con-
stituents which must be present amidst the vast bulk of
earth the planter has to deal with. It follows from the
above that besides these, and in far greater bulk, there
must be present air and water. The only way in which
these two elements, a gas and a fluid, can be secured for
the service of the roots is by breaking up the soil into a
more or less powdery, porous, open condition by mechani-
cal means. In the interstices of the separated particles of
earth there enters an abundant modicum of air, nearly
equal in cubic measurement to the bulk of the solid matter
of the soil. One may almost predict the degree of success
of any crop by the degree to which atmospheric air has been
mixed up with the earth it is to grow in. The traditions
of agriculture unconsciously point to the same truth. To
till land is to mix the top stratum with air. Coarse plough-
ing of wet lands is leaving the great slab-like clods lying
loose to dry out their water and absorb air instead.
Harrowing among other ends, mixes air very completely
with the loose tilth. But the most thorough and effective
addition of this necessary ingredient is obtained by the
process of trenching. By trenching almost every cubic inch
of the soil is dissociated, large cavities full of air are left

10

open among the loosely thrown upcast, and although these
diminish a good deal by pressure of the superabundant
material, yet the air they contained forces its way into the
microscopic interstices between particles far smaller than
grains of sand.

So much for the air- supply demanded by the root
respiration. Let us consider the water supply. It is
unfortunately the current belief that trees must have
water given to them much in the same way as one waters
a horse. Either whole bucketsful are poured in at the base
of the trunk, or a stream is turned on to flood its surround-
ings. This is in direct opposition to the natural way trees
take up their water supply. "It is characteristic of the
mode of life of land-plants that they only flourish, as a
rule, when their roots are evenly distributed throughout a
soil that is relatively dry, and only partially flooded with
water."* The practice of agriculture bears testimony to
this fact in that damp low-lying lands are made highly
fertile by an adequate drainage which renders them
relatively dry. The culture of plants in greenhouses teaches
that land plants rooted in pots very easily perish if they
are watered too often, and one of the first lessons a garden
apprentice receives is " to keep his watering can quiet."
Land plants and particularly trees, carry on their root-
functions continuously only when the soil surrounding them
is relatively poor in water. A complete saturation must
be very brief and soon relieved by draining away, or else
it acts injuriously.

12. Let us consider how the enormous losses of water by
daily transpiration from the leaves are made good by im-
bibition from soil, not wet, but only just perceptibly moist
to the touch, and therefore in the best possible condition
for sustaining healthy root-growth. Every minute particle
of earth, even down to those too small for distinct" vision,
is enveloped in a thin film of adherent water held fast by
surface attraction, almost as if it had been dipped in water
and brought out wet. Where particles by reason of their
angular shape happen to fit closely together, the attractions
combine to hold a thicker watery layer. The remaining

* Sachs. Vorlesun gen, XV. Engl. Transl. p. 265.

11

interstices are filled with air. Among these surf ace- wet ted
particles the root-haiis make their way, clinging tightly to

Figure 5.

Figure 5. — Diagrammatic representation of the relations of the root-hair to air
and water in the soil. The angular bodies are earth -par tides sheathed with a
surface-film of water. Thf root-hair descending from the root has a similar water-
film upon it. Larger portions of water fill in the interstitial angles. The
numerous blank spaces, similarly film -en circled, are portions of air distributed
among the mass. — (From Sachs).

12

them with their
porous cell Avail,
and absorbing such
part of the watery
layer as they touch.
It needs little know-
ledge of the laws of
diffusion and capil-
lary attraction to
see that the fluid so
absorbed is made
good by neighbour-
ing water-particles,
and that, given ab-
sorption at any
point, an indraw
takes place towards
it. Every root-hair
then is a centre of
attraction to the
water constituting
the moisture-layer
of all particles of

earth within its range. And such absorptions, multiplied
by millions, amply supply the almost incredible number
of gallons of water daily transpired as vapour from the
foliage of a large tree.

13. But have these physiological facts any value in prac-
tical work? Much every way. They are what all successful
tree culture is founded on, whether the workman knows
and intelligently applies them, or whether he follows em-
pirical rules that have been taught him without explanation
of the reason for them. They show that compact, unaerated
ground, which has never been mixed up with its own bulk
of air by trenching to something more than the depth to
which average roots penetrate, is not fit to grow trees.
They show that the unfitness is only locally and partially
rectified by digging out a two or three foot hole and
making its earth contents as loose, aerated and open as the

Figure 6.

Figure 6. — Absorptive tips of root-hairs, highly magnified.

13

whole orchard area ought to be. They show that when the
advancing root -system of the tree has got through the poor
thirsty dozen cubic feet of decent soil in its hole, it reaches
the compact earth walls around it and progress is barred.
If the feeding tips force their way in, there is little or no
air, and they cease to respire freely. If they coil back
upon the loose earth in the hole, they find it impoverished,
for it is their leavings of former years. Of course the
trees' demands are just as great as ever, but the stifled
rootlets in the hard untrenched soil, and the famished ones
ia the hole-space cannot supply them. Then follows a
lingering period of death, more or less drawn out according
to circumstances. The young wood of the year dies back
in the dry summer, making the well-known appearance
atop that gardeners have likened to stag's horns. The leaves
drop before their natural time. The fruit, if any, is small,
dry and worthless. Branch after branch dries out, smitten
with sheer famine, till the end comes. This fatal error of
insufficiently trenching up land meant for orchard purposes,
and relying on the contents of small artificial pits, is one of
the two reasons why Cape fruit trees are so short-lived. The
other reason is not far to seek, being dependent upon the
same series of facts regarding the mechanical condition
of the soil. Let us look back at the diagram representing
a feeding root-hair as it feels its way among the congenial
mixture of earth-particles, water-films and air. Carry the
idea it represents over to a Cape fruit-tree planted in a hole
the size of a 3 x 3 x 3 feet packing case, and surrounded
by compact unworked ground. It is our turn to "have
the water." Well, we run it on the depression round the
tree. In half-an-hour the hollow is full. Bubbles of air
keep pointing up in the pool. Now pray call to mind the
diagram representing the conditions demanded for healthy
root-life. Look at the large air-spaces. Then consider
that by filling that three-foot hole with water till it stands
above like a pool every bubble of the vital air has been
drowned out and forced to ascend and escape at the sur-
face. What should be full of air is now full of water.
The roots are completely immersed and their respiration is
stopped. Fortunately, this state of things does not last
long. Even the most compact clays slowly absorb water,

14

and the destructive surplus percolates away through, their
substance, relieving the asphyxiated roots, and making
way for air to enter from the surface. Such ill-judged
contradiction of the laws of root-life therefore does not at
once kill the trees. But the practice of more or less com-
pletely asphyxiating them by drowning several times a,
week is by far the commonest cause of the casting of fruit,
the dying out of the special young shoots of the year, and
the general short space of life allotted to a Cape orchard
in other than sandy open ground.

Means of ensuring the proper mechanical condition

of the Soil.

14. We will assume that the cultivator has the conviction
firmly established in his mind that success depends upon
the degree of completeness with which he can make his
soil resemble the mechanical conditions present in a sponge.
The foundation of his practice must be the maxim that
trees do not grow in earth alone, but in a mixture of earth,
air and water. That mixture is soil, if the word is properly
understood ; and his first care is to convert the earth of
his erven into soil. The difference between the two is
something like that which exists between the rudest bar-
barism and a high civilization. Little or nothing is
possible to the former ; everything is possible to the latter.

Selection of a Locality.

15. ISTo great reflection will be needed to show that the
proper selection of a locality for an orchard may very mate-
rially dimmish the amount of labour and expense requisite
to produce the mechanical conditions so much to be desired.
Unless absolutely shut up to a definite acreage without a
chance of skilled selection, no person would attempt to
make an orchard upon a compact clay, or in a place where
the level of the ground relatively to other properties
rendered it the recipient of surplus water from above. It
is essential, even when a man can choose his ground, and
receives no seepage from his neighbours, that there be the
freest possible outlet for his own drainage, whether of rain
water or that which he supplies by irrigation. Yet one

15

frequently sees the fruit-tree patch located in a mere sump,
where in winter the water will weep into a hole made but
one spit deep,* and that without the least effort being made
to lower the water-table permanently by drainage, so that
it shall never reach the level of the average depth of the
roots. The locality then should be on a gentle slope to
ensure the best water conditions, so as to fulfil the pro-
verbial saying — " soon on and soon off," which concentrates
in itself a good deal of gardening wisdom. In another
place other conditions of selection, particularly that of
aspect and shelter will be dealt with.

16. By far the most thorough and satisfactory method of
inducing the desirable spongy condition of the soil, is the
simple yet expensive and laborious operation of trenching.
Much has been done by the implement-maker to effectively
break up raw earth and let vital air into it; but for
the most part these mechanical appliances, however
successfully they deal with such tilth as may suit cereals
or even root crops, do not go deep enough for the best
orchard preparation, except at an expense for steam-gear
which brings their work pretty close to the cost of the much
more effective hand labour of trenching. At least this is
the case with the imported appliances available here. The
great thing to be wished for in this regard is that the fruit-
grower shall deal as handsomely by his orchard as he has,
through long custom and prescription, habitually dealt by
his vineyard. The depth to which the trenching should
penetrate depends greatly upon the nature of the soil. It
must be remembered that if in clay-land it penetrates only
two feet, the drainage of the winter rains and much of the
irrigation -water in spring and summer will creep along that
two-feet level. The deeper therefore, under such circum-
stances, the cultivator pushes such trenching, by so much
does he lower the water-table, and gives his trees immunity
against water-logging of their roots. Should the soil be
sandy and naturally open, rapidly relieving itself of surplus
water by percolation downwards as well as along its natural
slope, the necessity for deep trenching is not so absolute,
and limits itself more particularly to the aeration of the

* In gardt net's English a spit is the amount of earth^taken out by one effort of
the spade.

16

soil. Under any circumstances however a sufficient number
of well-planned French drains should be taken out down the
main slope in every part of their course, and should
descend into the subsoil a little lower than the depth to
which the trenching has been regulated. This excellent
system, perhaps the only one that will for a long time be
in use in this country, consists of a Y-shaped trench cut
down into the subsoil straight along the main slope of the
land. The greatest care must be taken to leave the bottom
of the trench unbroken, and in an exact plane. Clearly if
its bottom wavers in the least the water will not get a free
outflow, pools will form in its course, and much of the value
of the drain will be lost. To one unaccustomed to earth-
work, it would seem the simplest thing in the world to take
out a drain, but it is really. a skilled operation, and only a
labourer who has practised it under a sharp foreman will
carry out the true plane requisite for the bottom water-flow
without many mistakes and repeated patchings. Remember
that whenever the subsoil-floor of the drain has been taken
out too deep, and has to be repaired and fetched into line
by ramming material into it, you will have a soft place,
where the water has a tendency to hang. It is therefore
very good policy to employ for this task men who have had
considerable practice, seeing that the work is better done,
and more economically, because more rapidly executed. It
is not necessary that the bottom of the trench should be of
the full width of an ordinary spade. Draining spades for
the special purpose of finishing off such work are made
barely six inches wide, and there is economy in their use.
The usual custom is to fill the channel with rounded river
pebbles, or similar rubble, to a depth of about nine inches
or a little more. Angular fragments of stone are to be
avoided if possible, as they do not give nearly such large
interstices, and they are much more apt to cause clogging
and stoppage. Upon the top of this pebble-bed it is cus-
tomary to put a layer of brushwood or takkies, well battened
down. The only object of so compressing the brushwood
is to work the layer together and prevent filling from soil
dropping through it into the pebble-bed. Some time in the
near future when cultivators have found out that a little
capital buried under the surface of the soil, which gives

17

them their returns, is a profitable outlay, we shall do some-
thing better than cover in our French drains with such poor
stuff as brushwood, which in the nature of things cannot
maintain its resistance for more than a very few seasons.
Ultimately it must moulder away and help to fill the open-
ings in the pebble layer. The better method, and the one
which will ultimately be followed by progressive men, will
be to buy up galvanized iron sheets that have served their
purpose above ground, cut them into strips about a foot
wide, and make them serve for drain roofing under ground,
just as they may have served as house roofing above. A
coating of gas tar on both sides will probably double the
length of their underground spell of service. It is not too
much to say that the term of usefulness of a French drain
covered in with galvanized stripping will treble or quad-
ruple that of one in which the covering material has been
the porous and easily rotting brushwood.

17. But after all the French -pebble drain, however great
improvement it may be upon our present system of either
open sluits or no drainage at all, is far from being a perfect
thing. Those that come after us will undoubtedly have
something to say about the ever recurring necessity for
taking up these make-shift affairs, cleaning them out, and
giving the water once more a free passage. They will then
have little hesitation in doing precisely what English
farmers, from one end of the country to the other, have
already done, even upon land on which they are merely
tenants and not the owners, that is, the laying down of
permanent drain-tiles. Properly laid, those drains outlist
several generations of farmers, carry off the water with
three or four times the certainty and swiftness of the
French drain, and never clog up. There is at least one
oxample on the Cape Peninsula of work of this class, and
by its means an immense acreage of worthless drowned
land, on which cattle could not venture without risk, has
been converted into one of the most productive market-
farms to be seen in the country.

18. The gospel of trenching and draining is a hard one ;
it means considerable outlay long before a return can be
expected, and the customs of the country in everything
connected with land seem to have been based upon a

c

18

general theory of no capital and snatch-crops. It is not
thus that fruit-farming is made a commercial success other-
wheres. A certain sort of success, although decidedly no t
the best, may be attained by spreading the total expendi-
ture in trenching over several years. Thus an orchard of
say 20 acres,* upon a gentle slope, may be trenched up in
strips of land straight down the incline with a drain along-
side each strip. Eor example let the trenched piece No. 1
be laid off 20 feet wide and the drain to follow.

•- < m>~ MAINOUTFAT.I, 7>PAT>J r^ >>>:>>

I.

Plot 20 ft. wide, trenched up 1st year.

11.

Plot 20 ft. wide, ploughed for snatch-crop the 1st year,
trenched in 2nd year.

III.
Plot 20 ft. wide, trenclnd up 1st year.

IV.

Plot 20 ft. wide, ploughed for snatch -crop the 1st; year,
trenched in 2nd year.

The next plot of 20 feet is ploughed up the first year
and used for a snatch- crop. In the second year, it is
trenched exactly as was No. I. Next to this lies the third
plot trenched up at the same time as No. I. Then comes
a second line of drain, followed by plot No IV., treated as
was No. II. for a first year's snatch-crop and a second
year's trenching. And thus the alternations go on over the
whole area. By this means about half the cost of complete
trenching an acre to be devoted to fruit culture would be
distributed over perhaps two or three years. The greut
thing however to be enforced is that a scamping treatment

* At present there is scarcely any such thing in this country ; what we call
rchards, a Calif ornian or Florida grower would call a " fruit-garden."

19

of the ground, which would be avoided by every good
wine-farmer if proposed to be applied to a vineyard, is for
the same reasons and in the same measure, not good enough
for fruit-trees. At least let the peaches and apricots, the
oranges, apples and pears, get the same chance dealt out
to them which we accord to the vine.

Manuring of Orchard Ground.

19. During the time of trenching is the best time for
manuring the ground if its natural poorness requires that
assistance. The old method of putting a basket of manure
in a hole near the foot of the tree will not do at all. But
as the strata of spaded earth are taking their new position,
a labourer is told off with the six-pronged fork to scatter
the manure between their layers. By this means the
manurial ingredients are diffused pretty evenly throughout
the whole mass. If your supply runs short, let the third
foot of the depth go without the dung, and give what you
have to the upper two feet. "With a still shorter supply
you will have to be very sparing. You will find it more
thrifty to have the top spit of the ground left very rough.
Then scatter what manure you have over the ragged sur-
face, and turn it in when you finally level it down to a
cultivable smoothness. Practically this Amounts to a top-
dressing only. "Where you are working with a clayey
soil, manure that is not particularly rich in animal matter,
but contains much of incompletely decomposed straw, finds
its best use in assisting aeration and preventing the pack-
ing together of the soil.

Do not suppose that in such soils as fall to the lot of the
average fruit grower at the Cape, there is necessarily a
call for much manuring. We are very apt to look upon
manuring as a sort of cure-all, which with excessive irri-
gation is to save us the labour of trenching up the soil,
pruning the trees to fruiting condition, and looking well
after them generally. Have we not given them plenty of
rich compost ? Then why don't they bear satisfactorily ?
The fact is the majority of fairly fertile soils that have
been industriously cultivated will suit fruit trees without
other manure than a light top dressing, for years, if only

o 2

20

they get the inevitable and necessary opening-up by
trenching. Heavy manuring is the cultural need of
annual crops which have to spring up, blossom and seed at
racing pace, to get through with their short lives within
the year. Your fruit trees do not take life so fast, and
they therefore do not require the stimulus appropriate to
cereals and root-crops whose work is done in five or six
months. The parallel of the vine, which takes an enormous
manure supply every second or third season, does not run
exactly on all fours with the apple, peach and pear. These
trees and their like are not every year cut back to mere
skeletons of their former selves, and have not to make a
forest of bearing wood betimes to carry the great crop of
fruit they proffer to the farmer. The vine's annual output
is excessive compared with that of ordinary fruit trees,
•especially when you consider how small an average vine is
and how much larger an orchard tree. But common sense
will show that the more deliberate growth and more
limited fruiting of the orchard calls for less manurial en-
richment.

Laying Out and Planting.

20. Let us suppose that by the means indicated, either the
whole area of the orchard or the alternating 20-foot strips
of which we have spoken, have been thoroughly broken
up and converted into mellow, Avell-aerated soil. The
drains have also been laid out and their trenches filled in.
On no account will the judicious cultivator submit to have
an open drain left upon land that he cares for. It is a
waste of so much space. Its side-slopes inevitably become
gardens of weeds and harbours for pests innumerable. The
flume that brings the irrigation-water to the land must
perhaps be open, and the evils of that openness must be
put up with and kept in check by constant care. Some
day, it is to be hoped in the near future, we shall either
pave our water-flume with shale or some other material,
the rejected wane-planks of the saw-pit, or possibly the same
sort of galvanized iron that is doing duty in our French
drains. We shall by this means get rid of the perpetual
troubles arising from the damage to the banks by tread of
feet and the enormous loss that accrues through soakage.

21

21. The next consideration is the laying out and locating
the places for the trees. A few words may be given as to the
surveying devices which go to make up correct laying-out.
The simple method of staking two corners and putting in a
few sticks for sighting scarcely needs description, A
correct line down one side of the area is thus obtained.
The difficulty is to lay off a true right-angle for the
breadth -measure. The simplest way of doing this is to
measure off 80 feet along the true side with a tape line
and stake the point obtained. Then from the starting
point measure along the other side 63 feet, drawing the
tape as nearly as possible at a right angle, judging by the
eye, and put in a mark. Now, if the angle so made is a true
right angle, you will find that the diagonal or cross-line
measure, from mark to mark and completing the triangle will
give you exactly 100 feet. If it is less, the 60-feet mark
has been taken too far in ; if it is more, then you have
splayed it too far out, and in either case correction must be
made until the 100-feet diagonal measures up correctly.
Having thus got your true corner, the lines can be con-
tinued by the common method of sighting with upright
sticks. Along the whole area parallel lines can be set out
with great accuracy by measuring off the same distance
along the two opposite sides, staking the points and putting
up sighting-sticks between them. Upon these lines, at
given distances, the tree-planting marks are to be placed.
In this work as in everything connected with measure-
ments, it is best to do the whole job at once without a
break. Doing the task of setting-out piecemeal invariably
leads to irregular and unsatisfactory results.

22. The next point to be considered is one on which there
are almost as many opinions as there are planters. It is
the question of how many trees to put on an acre of ground,
or rather, how near may you plant fruit-trees and get a
good crop off them. The question however should not be
* ' How close can I stick my trees without being considered
mean to them ? " but rather " "What distance apart would
be best for their healthy growth?" The tendency is
naturally to put them far too near each other, because they
come to the ground mere yearlings from their date of graft-
ing, and are so small that it requires the planter to be next

22

door to a prophet and have a prophet's imagination to
enable him to figure to himself the size to which they will
grow in five or six years' time. The best check to a nig-
gardly appropriation of space is to keep in mind that what-
ever interval you allow, the foliage-head of two adjoining
trees must necessarily go halves in it ; and what is true of
the branching head is equally true of the branching roots,
which just as certainly share the feeding-ground between
them. The smallest distance which can be allowed between
tree and tree is 20 feet apart. Set squarely, this will givo
109 trees to a square of exactly one acre, and is the smallest
allotment that can be allowed for standard trees if they are
to do any good. The more liberal allotment of 22 feet
apart, giving 90 per square acre will probably pay better
in the long run. In other countries the result of ex-
perience is all on the side of generous allotment of space,
and new orchards are being set out with wider distances
year by year. For dwarf trees, such as are decidedly best
fitted to withstand the violent winds of this country, and
which require much less screening-shelter, a distance of 18
feet apart will be found sufficient. It gives 134 trees to
the aforesaid square of one acre. If you skimp the dis-
tance and think to advantage yourself by putting such
trees 14 feet apart with a total of 222, or 10 feet apart
with 435 to the square, you will find yourself puzzled to
get your plough or even your cultivator to turn between
them when you are working the tilth to eradicate
weeds. Therefore hold fast to the minimum of 18 feet
apart even for dwarfs. In laying out these distances along
the parallel lines that you have set out with your sighting-
sticks, be sure to arrange so that the rows shall, as it
were, break joint; any one tree of a row being opposite to
a blank space in the next row. The device is of universal use
in vineyards. The underground feeding space of the roots
is thereby more evenly divided, and the effect of high wind
very much diminished, because there is so much less
opportunity for the wind, as the foresters say, " getting
into the wood." If the boundaries of your ground are
already laid out and incapable of alteration, you will have
to be content with thus much done in foresight of danger
from the wind. You can do no more except you plant a

23

wind-screen of Lombardy poplars, to stand up in the eye
of the wind and break it up into air-spray. It is astonish-
ing what an amount of gusty weather these quincunxes or
or sets of five (for into that pattern they naturally run),
will bear up against w ithout damage, because each tree is
more or less a. safeguard to two of its neighbours down the
wind. But supposing that you can take your pick of land
previously unenclosed, then bethink you so to place your
orchard as to hang diagonally across the wind-run, not
with a hard line at right angles to it. Yet such common
sense is often forgotten, and the line is drawn straight
across the brute force of the prevailing winds, instead of
half coaxing, half slipping it aside.

23. Everybody thinks he can plant a tree, just as every-
one believes he can poke a fire, make a speech, or drive a
buggy — till he has tried. It is easy to plant a tree wrong
and make an utter mess of it, but we want a more excellent
way. Even supposing that your ground is well aerated by
trenching, it is quite worth while to have all the holes for
your graf tlings dug out before you begin. You get the
run of them better, you can correct the lines of setting,
and the stuff thrown out in the upcast is all the better for
being exposed to the sun and air. Particularly is this to
b<3 recommended when the loam you are planting in is just
a little too clayey. Let us suppose you have purchased
your graf tlings by selection from a first class nurseryman,
and with all due care to the nature of the stocks upon
which they have been worked, the pedigree sorts they
represent, and the proportions of the kinds according to
the fruit-business you intend to run. As soon as they
arrive, have the parcels opened without an hour's delay,
and heel them in properly at once. Do this even if the
holes are ready and you mean to plant next morning at
daylight. A score of things may happen to postpone your
work ; besides, the labour is very trifling. You dig
a furrow with one side specially slanting, in the lightest
and most open soil that you can command, taking
care that it is moist, or rather, damp without being
wet, and not exposed to the sweltering sunshine.
Along the slope of this you lay your trees one by
one from left to right, carefully sticking in a name-label at

24

the point where each sort runs out. When you come to
the last plant in each bundle shovel the fine earth gently
over the roots, a little at a time, so that it shall wriggle
well in among them, and it will he no harm should the
earth cover one half or even more of the stem. Suppose
the trees have come from far, you may dip the bundle in
water to wet the contents thoroughly, and then proceed as
before. If they have been very badly used in transit, and
the bark at the top looks at all shrivelled, you may give
them a somewhat longer bath, but not much. In such case
it is far better to rake the fresh earth-slope back a little
and cover the young trees with a thin cool upthrow of
earth. Mne times out of ten a day and a night of such
treatment will make them look as plump as ever. Nor is
this at all wonderful. Every green part of a tree, not ex-
cepting the stem, while it is young and still keeps its green
colour, transpires actively. Hence the temporary wilting
is due to the young bark having thrown off a considerable
quantity of moisture which cannot be replenished from the
severed roots. The cool, moist earth round the green stems
enables them to recover themselves and get back that
moisture they have lost.

24. Be very careful that no mixing of the sorts occurs
through the officious helpfulness of the labourers. In fact,
unless the number is very large, it is best for one person
only to do the heeling in, and thus secure accuracy in
labelling and the avoidance of mixture. It is altogether
aggravating to find an odd peach or apple breaking the
symmetry of a line intended to carry fruit all of one kind.
Eemember also that it is no business of the nurseryman to
cut back your graftlings to what he may choose to consider
a standard size. In fact this is done by most nurserymen
merely to save themselves a little trouble in packing, and
to make what they are pleased to term a neater bale.
Insist on having the trees sent you precisely as they were
lifted from the ground in the nursery -bed with the digging-
fork. The subsequent shaping of the tree is your work,
and must be deferred until you have got it stt in its place
in your orchard.

25. The actual planting of the tree is about as simple as
a thing can be. Yet often curious mistakes are made. It

25

is best for two men to divide the job. A little of the up-
cast earth is thrown upon the bottom of the hole, and the
soil is then loosened up by a chopping action of the spade.
More earth is added until it is found by trial that the
graftling tree will sit easily on the loose content and the
collar stand a little higher than the level of the surface in
which the hole has been dug. The contraction of the
filling will take up that slight surplus and leave it true.
The roots are then carefully looked over, all broken ends
are cut off with a sharp sloping cut facing downwards, and
the fibres distributed evenly upon the cushion of soil in the
liole. They must be divided fairly around 1he circum-
ference of which the stem is the centre. Little by
little the attendant shovels in small quantities of loose
?arth, and this is packed and worked in by the planter's
hands, so that close contact, and above all the absence of
hollows, may be ensured. At the same time the planter
looks to the accurate setting of the tree, both for line and
uprightness. Then both men shovel in the soil to the
mrface. Note that the firming of the soil immediately
imong and over the roots is done with the planter's hands.
Neither immediately on the roots nor even on the surface
*oil is there any need for the ill-considered tramping and
jumping on the in-throw which is so often practised. The
)bject should be to ensure for the root-system a firm yet
gentle contact with the moist aerated spongy soil. The
>revalent ramming-in of the earth may be useful in setting a
>ost, but we are dealing with a living organism from which
ve expect delicate rootlets to grow, and for which we desire
o prepare a suitable feeding ground. Some planters fill
he hole carefully up to the brim, and then gently press in
he whole mass with the foot, subsequently filling in the
pace so gained with more soil to level up once more,
jood work may be done thus, but there is no method more
easonable or more successful than the manipulation of the
Lrst additions of soil around the roots with the hands, to
^sure the proper degree of closeness and firmness without
osing the open sponginess of soil which is all important
o preserve.

26. Then, even if rain is falling at the time, the final
Deration must be watering. From a gallon and a half to

26

two gallons of water, according to the size of the hole, is to
be gently and slowly watered in from the rose of a can. It
will not do to slush it in from a bucket. The effect desired
is to settle the particles of soil finally in their places, and
establish an average of equal pressure around the root. A
sudden dash of water will convert the top stratum into
mud, and this will dry slowly into an impervious caked
surface, whereas after watering, the soil round the little
tree should be just as open and porous as before.

27. If you can choose your time, let the planting be done
in cool overcast weather, without either bright sunshine or
much wind. The caution given as to the vital transpira-
tion taking place from all green parts, even the stem of
young plants so long as it has not acquired its mature
brown corky layer, applies here. In a few days, if the
soil be not inhospitably cold, your tree will have begun to
callus the cut portions of the roots with new tissue, and
new white feeding fibres will spring from this layer and
from the uninjured branch-roots, each sending up watery
food-material into the stem. The little tree has caught on
in its new home.

2S. The Cape is a country where some things are killed
with mistaken kindness. On no account follow the common
custom of bottoming every tree-planting hole with a
shovelful of manure, under the idea that the tree is getting
thereby a special mark of attention. Independent of the
fact that " manure" too often means raw stable dung,
fermenting fast and reeking with ammonia, there is this to
be considered, that manurial ingredients can only be
satisfactorily taken up by those fine root-hairs we
described, when presented in a very diluted state by the
help of water. And, moreover, the fermentation and
decay of this organic matter gives off a large quantity of
carbonic acid gas, filling up the interstices of the soil and
driving upwards the atmospheric air which ought to fill
them. It is fortunate that gases have a wonderful power
of diffusion, and dilute themselves away with great
rapidity. Were it not for this, the custom of bottoming
tree- pits with fermenting dung would have been dropped
long ago as a sure means of asphyxiating the roots. If the
orchard has been prepared properly in average fertile soil,

27

or, if in one somewhat" poorer, a little old well-rotted
manure has been added during the trenching, there is not
the least need for these kindnesses. As a general state-
ment it may be said that orchard manuring is best done by
top-dressing, turning the material into the upper tilth to be
carried slowly by solution down to the level of the roots.
As each, tree is brought into place, a note of its position
and name is entered in the foremau's book, something
thus. Say it is peaches we are handling — u Row A, 1-10,
Eoyal George ; il-20, Grosse Mignon," and so on. From
these data taken at the moment, the chart of the orchard
is compiled, so that there may be no reliance either upon a
vague remembrance or upon the salesman's labels, which
wind and rain will soon render illegible. In this plan
every row is carefully plotted, and the individual trees
have their names entered in where they stand. By prefer-
ence make the plan upon a piece of the transparent tracing
linen used by surveyors. It does not readily tear, as all
paper will do, unless mounted on calico or other tissue.
Do not fold it square-wise, lest it rub through at the kinks
with much use, but rather fold it exactly like a window-
blind on a light wooden roller. It is not at all superfluous
to make the plan out in duplicate, so that in case of
accidents, fire or what not destroying the first copy, you
will not be utterly at sea as to the names and whereabouts
of your fruit-sorts. It may well be said that next to our
habit of letting seedlings run on to fruit, neglect of this
simple precaution is perhaps the chief cause of the absence
of any general knowledge of fruit-sorts and the qualities
which distinguish them one from another. "We have to
acquire such an amount of what is rather grandiloquently
called " pomology," in order to hold our own against
foreign growers who know fruit-sorts at sight as they
know their dogs and horses. It is not a good plan to
stake your young plants in the usual way Avith a suppDrt
drive n in among the roots you have so carefully established.
Much mischief is often done by this ill-considered opera-
tion. Yearling trees when headed back will almost always
be so inconsiderable in bulk as to afford no opposition to
the wind, and this is an additional reason for beginning a
plantation with them instead of with two to three year

28

olds. In all cases where staking is absolutely necessary,
as in large transplants that have already been cut back in
the nursery to form leaders, it is much the best plan to put
in two stakes 14 to 15 inches distance from the tree, and
tie it to a crossbar fastened horizontally from one to the
other. But no experienced person would choose stuff of
this sort, It is the beginner who buys his trees big. Year-
lings have mostly at the end of one season got such firm
hold of the ground with their roots that they have no need
of artificial support, and are every way preferable.

29. As soon as the row of trees is in place, the planter, in
accordance with his pre-arranged plan of future proceed-
ings, shortens back every graftling to the definite height
suited to its kind. Some cut back knee high, others allow
a little more height. In every case the level must be as
nearly as possible the same, and the section must be made
aslant, just above a bud, neither cramping it in nor
leaving a peg of wood above it. If the cut slopes back
too close behind the bud, leaving it as it were a projection
on the upper end of the oval section, there will not be sap
enough left to nourish it. Should a good inch or more
project above it, that piece will assuredly dry up and die,
probably bringing decay into the tissues of the stem below.
It is difficult to get amateurs to see the necessity for this
shortening back to a given height. It seems to be a
wanton throwing away of so much good stem-growth, and
they are apt to let the young trees run up like fishing-rods,
unconscious of the covert derision with which the skilled
gardener surveys their forest of sticks. It will presently be
quite clear why yearling trees were previously recommended,
and why shortening back is laid down as a necessity of
the case.

30. And when this operation of cutting back is in hand,
remember that you are dealing with tender young stuff,
which has not yet formed a hard wood-cylinder within, or
a corky bark without. On no account be tempted to use
the convenient and rapid secateur. However cleverly
made, with crescent-blades and a rolling pivot, the cut is
never so clean and satisfactory as that of the ordinary
pruning-knife fresh from the oilstone. The tender bark is

29

invariably somewhat bruised and the cambium-layer under-
neath crushed. A keen cut with the knife has none of
this nipping action, but leaves the bark perfect aifd in
close contact with the underlying wood right up to the line
of section. No careful grower who has examined with a
lens the rough clip of the secateur, and compared it with
the clean section of the knife, will ever use the former
rough and ready implement upon his young plantlings
while in the infant stage, whatever he may do subsequently
in coarser work. And yet another caution. It seems
almost absurd to add — when cutting transplants back to
the determined height, take care not to pull them . loose
from their seat in the soft earth with a jerking cut. Yet
one sees this thoughtless trick done times without number.
Hold the stem firmly with the left hand, while making the
sloping cut discreetly with just enough force and no more
to bring the edge through. So shall your care in planting
not be stultified by thoughtlessness in the next operation.

31. We have pointed out that fruit tree culture is essen-
tially a formative art. The trees we plant are not left to
take their natural growth, but are compelled to follow the
artificial conditions which long experience and observation
have shown to make for the cultivator's advantage. The
first of these interferences enforced upon the tree's life tends
to shape it into some one of certain compact and convenient
forms. In this country there is only one form of general
application. The tree is worked into a more or less inverted
cone, the main axis of growth being suppressed, and
secondary branch-growths encouraged to spring outwards
and upwards from the point of suppression or near it. Ulti-
mately the tree presents an outline more or less completely
Y-shaped, variations arising merely from the greater
or less angle formed by the chief branches with the line of
axis, and the amount of bearing wood allowed to develope
inward and outward of the cone. The chief exception to
this general plan is the orange and lemon series of fruit
trees, where it is essential to their well-doing that the axis
be not suppressed. But with other fruit trees, the inverted
cone system should be almost universal. Just as our Cape
vines are invariably pruned up en golelet, to use the
French Tine-dresser's phrase, with a short centre stock and

30

•

four or five lateral radiating arms, so that method is carried
out as.far as possible in the orchard. And espalier, cordon
and fan-trained trees are even more uncommon than vines
grown on vineyard trellising of wood or wire. In this
little pamphlet, no attempt will be made to detail the
method of shaping trees in what are, as far as the Colony
is concerned, merely fancy methods. It was not without
reason, but with a wise prevision of the power of the Cape
south-easter in destroying costly trellises that the Huguenot
fathers of our viticulture abandoned the cordon and Schalas
of their less wind-swept home, and adhered to the less
picturesque but far more suitable govelet form, or as we
might phrase it, the cup-shaped pattern.

32. The first step in shaping has already been taken when
we headed back the graftlings as soon as planted. The
buds on the remaining twelve or fourteen inches of stem
will speedily begin to shoot out into leafy twigs. Seeing
that all the carbo-hydrate food-material of the plant is
elaborated in the leaves, whence it passes down to the stem
and to the points where growth is going on, this early
foliage is performing the function of a stomach, and it is
not advisable to be anxious to cut these twigs out directly,
saving only those afterwards required. It is an error to
suppose that leafing exhausts the little tree. The exten-
sion of the feeding roots is materially assisted by the
existence of leafage above. But when the growth has
reached some five or six inches in length, the cultivator
passes every tree in review, selects as future laterals, three,
four or five of the shoots best placed for equal division of
the space at command, and either completely suppresses all
the other lower shoots, or pinches them out to a mere two
inch spur. Practice differs on this point. Some like to
make a clean stock at once, others, knowing that the bunchy
leafage left helps the tree-growth, let it remain to shade
the trunk which as yet is tender and liable to sun-scald.
The chosen laterals make their growth right away to the
end of the season.

33. During the dormant season succeeding, another step
towards shaping the tree is taken. Each lateral is cut back
to an outside bud, leaving about a foot of its length
remaining. Gardeners of experience keep in mind their

31

knowledge of the special habit of this and that sort which
they may be pruning. If the kind be one of spare and
lanky growth, apt to make a thin hollow head, they will
perhaps cut the laterals back to a bare six inches, and in
this way secure a closer after-set of branches. A sort lavish
of wood and hard to keep in bounds is left full long. This
" counsel of perfection " can only be hinted at here, to
show by an example how much observation and forethought
go to make a good gardener. The average given, viz., one
foot, will be found to cover average cases, and the reader
must get his experience where every skilled man gets it,
that is, by trial. Supposing that side shoots have been
made on the part of the laterals left, they are to be cut
back to the lowest or at the most the second bud from the
base. Many, as in the case of the main stem, cut them
away entirely ; a practice not to be recommended.

34. The second season comes round. Each twelve inch
lateral is allowed to make two sublaterals and no more.
The others are pinched out as they appear all through the
summer. In choosing the shoots for these and suppressing
the rest, much more judgment is required than in the simple
work of the first year. You have to consider what form
will be given to the tree by the increase of this or that
shoot you may elect to leave, and thus prophesy what your
tree will be like ultimately. And unlike other prophets,
you can force your predictions to come true. Leave all
these sub-laterals of the second degree to grow their best
throughout the summer following, unless they become too
rampant altogether, and break away into side shoots to the
weakening of their axial extension. The apricot has a
precocious habit of this sort, and has to be kept in order
by pinching in during the summer as may be necessary.

35. So matters proceed till the third winter pruning- sea-
son comes round. The tree has now got its Y-shaped profile
pretty distinct, and the dullest observer can see it is being
worked on a predeterminate plan. Do not let the tree give
more than a sample of its produce, just to assure you it is
the precise sort you planted it for, and that it agrees with
the authoritative descriptions in Hogg's Manual and other
pomological descriptive works. Thin such precocious bear-
ing down to just enough for judgment ; the fruit is rarely

32

equal iii size or flavour, to that of the crops you are to get
if you wait. The pruning you have to do is exactly a
repetition of last year's work, but a stage higher up in the
tree. You had originally four branches. You allowed
eight laterals to run, two from each of them. Now your
set of eight is to be converted into sixteen by choice of the
two best placed shoots on each. Pinch out the rest as
before. Cut back to about eighteen inches those you pre-
serve. And here a little judgment must be exercised.

36. Seeing that in this third series of reserved shoots we
have advanced much higher up in the cone pattern we are
shaping out, it is clear that the circumference of the pruned
head of the tree will give now a very much larger circle
than previously. The operator must therefore take care
that he does not " prune to a hollow head," that is, cut the
series all to outside buds, which will shoot outwards, en-
larging the cone, and give little or no provision for filling
the centre. Enough must be cut to side buds, or even
inner ones, to provide against an open head. All that can
be done in these verbal directions is to point out that cut-
ting to outside buds tends to enlarge the cone and thin the
head ; cutting to inside buds will as certainly decrease it
and thicken up the head. A judicious balance between the
extremes must be made, and this result will give a well-
formed Y-shaped tree whose centre is sufficiently dense
without crowding, and whose arms are not so extravagantly
splayed outwards as to make the junction whence they
spring too weak to bear the leverage exerted by the limbs
and their weight of fruit. Nor are they so much sloped as
to interfere with your hand-cultivator or your barrow.
Much may be learned by watching the practice of some
wise old gardener, and if possible following the mental
picture he has in his mind of what the tree is to be shaped
up to, and observing how he makes the buds to which he
cuts serve his purpose. Above all, the beginner must try
for himself, after getting the principles of the art well into
his mind. Undoubtedly he will make mistakes ; but every
mistake should be the very best lesson in never making it
again.

37. It is scarcely necessary to add that there is nothing
absolute in the number four taken as an example. Three

33

shoots only may be allowed to start from the yearling
transplant, giving next season six sub -laterals, and these
six will result in twelve. Custom and fancy have much
to do with the number chosen, and the only thing that can
be said is, that it is better to have too few than too many.
38. The result of the three years' shaping is to give a tree,
not of its own wild natural habit, but of one of the shapes
best fitted to turn the whole of its available powers into
fruit production. The subjoined figure gives an idea of

the general type to be aimed at, and a careful study of the
direction of the second and third series of shoots will show
that the uniform distance apart of the branches forming
the crown has been got by cutting after the manner here
indicated. The subsequent yearly pruning is really little
more than the maintenance of the artificial condition now
reached, plus certain adaptations called for by the peculiar
habits affected by this tree and that. Thus the peach, the
-apricot, the apple and the pear, each require a slightly

D

34

modified use of the knife, and this portion of the art —
pruning properly so called, as distinct from the first
shaping that has been here described, will be dealt with in
another chapter. It is easy to recognise in many fruit-
gardens, all over the country, the result either of entire
ignorance of the art of tree-shaping, or of several years'
neglect followed by a spurt of action with the saw and the
knife. One often sees a clump of apple trees which have
been duly planted and cut back, perfectly correctly, knee
high or less, to four or five laterals. Then something has
occurred to interrupt the care of the fruit-patch for a few
seasons. The laterals have grown out and upwards into
great boughs as thick as one's wrist. Anon comes repent-
ance with the saw, and cats them back shoulder-high,
making a huge wound which will take years to callus over.
A great crop of shoots rises from the dormant buds below
the section, and the head of the tree above the post-like
branches thickens up into a dense bush of barren wood with
here and there a strong leader struggling outwards to air
and light. Never having been stopped back they have no
fruiting spursf and blossom only on the last year's growth
at the very top. In due time there appears on each of
these flexible rods a bunch of apples jammed up against
each other to get space to grow, and bobbing round in the
wind. This is truly how not to do it. These are the
places where Sehizoneu^a or woolly blight, and Scland'ia, the
pear- slug, most do congregate, and establish nests of infec-
tion to destroy neighbou rs' orchards for miles around. Indeed
it would not be difficult to argue that if it be a sin and
shame for a man by ignorance or neglect to fail in duly
caring for his domestic animals, and if the law can be
invoked to make him treat these dumb children of the
Almighty properly, it is proportionately fitting that proper
knowledge and due care should be enforced upon every
man in the treatment of his fruit trees. It is asked " Shall
not a man do what he will with his own ? " the answer is,
Certainly not } the law prevents him from doing very many
things that either offend against the conscience, or create
a nuisance to his neighbours, and that latter malfeasance
is exactly what many orchards here and there are doing at
present. They are becoming hot-beds of insect and fungous

35

pests which radiate away from their central home in all
directions, and thus ignorance of cultural methods and the
habit of letting things slide may render a man's fruit garden
a curse to his neighbourhood. If he plants nothing, there
is nothing to be said. If he plants trees, he is morally
bound to care for them so adequately as to prevent their
being mischievous to others, or else, by some such law as
that which the government proposed for acceptance in 1895,
his neighbours should be empowered to make him.

39. It may be well to hear what successful fruit-growers
in other countries say as to this fruit-tree shaping :

1 . " All deciduous fruit trees should in this country be cut back after
planting to within twelve inches ' of the ground. I should prefer a
head within six inches of the ground. Among my early plantings I
can show trees with a clean trunk four to five feet high, and I keep a
few of these as monuments of my ignorance. The rest I shall cut
down and grub out. Leave three or four buds at the top of the tree,
and don't worry if the first year some small branchlets conie out all
along the trunk. They will help to shade your tree, and you may
have to use some of them to balance the head next spring. As a
rule your tree will not need the knife the first summer, and while
shading the trunk from, sun-scald is wise, cutting low will generally
give foliage to protect it amply."

2. " The top of the tree directly after planting out should be cut
back to, say, fifteen inches above the ground. Let three buds grow
at the top ; three limbs are better than four or five. When twigs
start out a little way below, pinch the terminal out and stop them.
They then put out a few leaves and shade the trunk. In the follow-
ing winter-pruning season cut off the three branches, leaving them
about twelve inches long from the trunk. Allow each of them to
send out two shoots, pinching back all others as soon as they utart out
as twigs. At next winter's pruning, the third year from the bud, cut
off these six branches to eighteen inches in length. Each of these six
is allowed to put out two shoots and the others are pinched back. The
next year the tree has twelve branches, and has assumed a goblet
form and is symmetrical, if care has been taken to pinch back all the
twigs except those encouraged to grow."

3. " The b?st method to secure a tree with a low head is to cut tin-
transplant off, not less than sixteen inches from the ground. Allow
a few of the healthiest buds near the top to grow, taking care the
head is evenly balanced. It is best that they be distanced a little, not
all springing from close to the top. All stuff that comes out below
these may be left to grow a few inches, and then must be pinched out
at the bud, allowing the bunch of foliage to remain to protect tho
trunk till the head is large enough to do that office. Then the trunk-
is cleared off bare. Allow the shoots forming the head to grow unin-
terruptedly all through the first season. The following \\inter cut
them back to tenor twelve inches, just above a series of strong healthy

36

buds. If the sort of tree is an upright grower, cut to an outside bud
if it has a spreading habit cut to an inside bud. The second season,
allow two shoots i;o start from each one of the parent branches, and
treat as before. By the third year, you will have got a handsoino
symmetrical tree, and your after pruning is meant to keep it so."

So much for the practical advice of three practical men
given in a country which of all others is most closely like
our own in climatic conditions.

40. The modern orchard does not, like the garden of Eden,
cultivate itself. It demands a full share of the attention
lavished upon cereal crops. The condition of openness and
aeration with free passage of moisture through it and away
has to be maintained. Where the area set out to fruit trees
is very large, as in California, the plough and harrow are
the implements greatly relied on for bringing the tilth to a
finely pulverized state. Their use involves considerable
difficulty in working among the trees, and here, where we
set out our trees as close as possible, they are not likely to
come into vogue. Our vineyards are often worked with
the spade, and our conservatism may perhaps make us
mlhere to that method till we learn to employ the " culti-
vator >J altogether. This excellent tool is quite competent
to cut up the soil to a depth of eight or ten inches, with
the assistance of a steady mule. Its special advantage is
that its chisel-shaped teeth open the soil thoroughly without
materially disturbing its general evenness, thus avoiding
the unhandiness of the plough furrows, all of which have
to be turned back again and worked to a level with the
harrow. The whole of the ground between and among the
toees must be kept in an open, worked condition, not only
because it would otherwise harbour weeds and other inter-
lopers which would night and day draw from the suil that
which of right belongs to the trees, but for another and
more important reason. An open pulverulent tilth at the
-surface is the best preventive of evaporation from the
underlayers in which the roots lie and perform their func-
tions. As soon as a hard continuous surface-crust is formed,
as, for instance, by drying out after irrigation, or after a
beating rain, the uninterrupted capillary attraction exerted
by the interstices of the soil-particles draws the moisture of
'the lower strata up to the heated crust, where it evaporates

37

as fast as transmitted. It is therefore not long before the
feeding-bed of the roots under such surface-crust is far too
dry for their proper function, the growth of root-hairs
(•eases, and the trees begin to show signs of flagging.
Unfortunately the habit of many growers is to endeavour to-
set things right solely by running in an abundant irrigation
and practically flooding the root-bed. As the water srets
slowly away by percolation, most of it is evaporated from
the surface and the crust reproduced, with the inevitable
result of the same capillary rising of the very water just
administered and its dissipation into the air. There is
therefore a pernicious alternation of a fast and a feast
forced upon the roots. The true remedy consists in inter-
posing a loose, powdery or fibrous stratum several inches
thick between the layers of soil in which the roots live and
perform their functions and the external air, ever greedy
of moisture.

41. Now there are two ways of doing this. One is of
limited application, although it answers perfectly. It con-
sists in covering the soil round a tree or plant with a layer
of short broken straw or waste stable fodder. Gardeners
know this plan of old, and call it " mulching." Under it,
however sun-smitten and dry it may become, the soil is
always more or less moist, never cakes into a crust, and
never robs the water content of the root-stratum. In fact
loss of moisture through the capillarity of the interstices
between the particles of the soil is completely stopped by
these tubes (for such they practically are), never reaching
the free air at. all. Some will take it for granted, off-hand,
that the preservative effect of the straw mulch is due only
to its shadowing the soil from the rays of the sun, ; but
careful experiments have completely disproved such sup-
position. About one-fourth only of the total effect is due
to the mulch preventing insolation ; the rest is due to its
stopping the capillary withdrawal of the soil's moisture-
content at a point short of the evaporating surface. If
then it were possible to mulch completely the surface of an
orchard or vineyard in this manner, there would rarely, if
ever, be so complete a drying out of the feeding ground of
the roots as to cause flagging and wilting of the foliage.
But the method is in a general way only applicable on the

38

small scale, as an artifice of the skilled gardener in his very
restricted area. The efforts made to put it in practice in
Californian orchards and vineyards have been limited
through the extreme danger of destruction by fire which a
large stratum of inflammable mulching material must always
threaten. Still, cases are reported where it is in use on
hill $lope cultivation, where the chances of a disastrous
wash-away are to be reckoned with, and it has proved
quite successful for the double purpose.

42. Now just what the gardener in a small way over
a few square yards can accomplish with a mulch
of straw-refuse, the farmer can effect nearly as per-
fectly by making a mulch of his own powdery soil.
If the top tilth is constantly kept broken up into
fragments and never allowed to skin over into a close crust,
it will almost as effectually check loss of deep seated
moisture by capillarity as would a mulch of straw-yard
sweepings. This then is the main reason why in all modern

orcharding on the large scale, the cultivator* is kept con-
stantly going in the intervals between the rows of trees.
Its eager teeth, like crooked chisels, cut into the soil some
three or four inches deep, and being chamfered off laterally,
the little broken lumps slip away sideways and lie atop of

* Figure represents the cultivator without the usual front (wheel. The cut is
kindly lent by Messrs. Lloyd, Burg Street, Cape Town, the agents for the imple-
ment. Th°y invariably send it out for Cape use with the front wheel.

39

each other loosely. It goes without saying that the passage
of the sharp tines ever and anon through the happy hoojg
of annual surface weeds cutfthem off paet recovery. The
land becomes perfectly cleat), like one of our vineyards,
well kept at the cost of perpetual hosing. Only such few
wexls, as by reason of a perennial creeping root can survive
and start again after being chopped up, will require hand-
pulling. And thus by use of the interchangeable imple-
ments carried by the cultivator, a man may coulter up
every square yard of his orchard into a loose protective
earth-mulch, and even rake it mechanically to the smooth
porous evenness seldom seen outside a garden parterre.

43. Seeing that the inevitable result of surface irrigation
is to produce a close crust on the surface wetted and subse-
quently dried, it will follow that whoever irrigates mnst
thus break up his top tilth into a mulch layer. Xo thing is
more strenuously insisted on by the most recent writers on
fruit-culture, men be it remembered who are speaking of
their own practice upon farms of an extent we have not
yet begun to dream of. And what is more, the advice is ;
acted on everywhere with more or less completeness. No
better test of what cnltivation a proprietor intends his land
shall have, can be obtained, than that which is furnished
by the particulars of the contract he makes with a tempo-
rary tenant holding the place in his absence. Wickson in
his Galifornian Fruits specifies one such agreement, giving
names of the parties concerned and the date. It is as follows :

" Contract price per acre for young orchard on gravelly
loam, $12-50, comprising — First: Plowing away from the
trees and harrowing to follow. Second : Plowing towards
trees and harrowing to follow. Ten summer workings with
cultivator. Three workings with shallow cultivator or
weed-cutter. Five hand-hoeiiigs around the trees. This
contract intends the most perfect and complete working of
the soil, and specifies the above in order that there may be
no difference of opinion between owner and contractor."

44. It is also stated that in lands infested with u morning
glory," a weed which is perhaps as troublesome as our
Indian twitch, the rate is higher, and weekly workings with
the cultivator are expressly stipulated.

40

Top Dressing— The Mode of Manuring Orchards.

45. In carrying out the perfect cultivation which is the
basis of modern fruit culture, there is abundant scope for
private judgment. With one person, winter ploughing and
harrowing for the heavier part of the task, followed by the
cultivator in one or other of its forms all through the
summer, will be preferred, especially where the soil is apt
to compact itself.. In. lighter lands the cultivator alone, kept
going off and on all the year round, will give the result
required with less costly labour. And in performing these
duties comes the opportunity for whatever occasional top-
dressing the soil may demand. That particular form of
manuring, subsequent to whatever has been done during
the first trenching up, is the proper way of keeping
an orchard in heart and restoring the materials taken out
Icy the trees for their substance and their fruit. It must
not be done by guess work, or simply from the suggestions
in the flaming advertisements of this and that firm's patent
manures. It is necessary to find out what constituent of
the soil is but poorly represented, and to keep this one in
mind in future additions. At the Cape it may truly be
said that the great and universal deficiency is phosphates.
To the want of phosphates is due lam-ziekte of our cattle
and sheep. They positively, on some land, cannot find in
the herbage enough lime-phosphate or bone -earth to make
their bones strong enough to carry their weight. Also iu
many corn lands there is now left the merest trace of phos •
phates, and the consequent weakened condition of the crop
lays it open to destruction by fungus pests which would
have been far less damaging to a crop in vigorous health.
In many soils, lime is the great deficiency. We bring this
needful building material from far, or are driven to use
clay in place of it — sure proof of our lack of lime. In
others potash is the special plant-food scantily furnished.
Thus every man has to find out the weak point in the soil
he cultivates before he can apply a rational remedy. We
have given a list of the elements essential to plant-growth.
All these must be had, although in very different pro-
portions. Some are present in all soils, even in the most
barren. Hence it is fair to say that fertilizing consists in •

41

fetching up to par some one or all of these four elements,
viz., nitrogen, potash, phosphorus in the form of phos-
phates, and lime. The best way toaonA'ince ourselves that
the orchard soil must have them, is to take the ash of our
common fruits and find out by analysis what mineral con-
stituents are found therein, and how much of each. Every
fraction of those constituents has been got out of the soil,
and the practical outcome of manuring consists in giving
them back again in such form that the plant can readily
take them up. This table will make the matter clear.

Apple . .

j

1

«

c

M

4-08

•I
8-75

|

Phosphorus or
Phosph. aoid.

N
6-09

35-68

1-40

13-59

Pear ..

54-69

7-98

8-75

1-04

15-30

5-69

Peach . .

74-46 J 2-64

6-29

•58

16-02

trace

Plum ..

59-21

10-04

5-46

3-20'

15-10

3-83

Grape . .

63-14

9-05

3-97

•06

1042

5-61

The above are percentage amounts. Those of* soda and
silica are omitted, seeing that these substances, although
present, are not plant-food ; nor does the table con! am
estimates of nitrogen or carbohydrates, for these sub-
stances are burnt oft in the production of the ash. The
woody substance of the trees themselves contains exactly
the same elements. That of the apple-tree for example
contains —

Potash.
19-24

Lime.
63-60

Magnesia.
7-46

Iron.
•07

Phosphorus. Sulphur.
4-90 3-29

No one can examine the abovre percentages without clearly
understanding what mineral substances go to make his soil
fertile, and therefore what he has to give back to it in
order to keep it so.

46. Let us take these fertilizers in their order. Nitro-
gen.— Trees take up what nitrogen they need as nitrates or
as ammonia. In soils such as would be selected for orchard-
ing, especially if prepared as directed in the preliminary

42

trenching, fruit trees will rarely suffer from deficienc)' of
either. They are best applied in the indirect way by
means of ordinary statfle manure, if only the cultivator
will prepare it properly. Raw dung that has not been
rotted down has no business to figure as manure, and in
light sandy soils may do serious mischief. Every man
who means to act fairly by his orchard, will see to it that
his manure-pit is covered up from rain and from sun, so
that the contents are neither leached out by the one nor
dried up by the other. The dung has to be kept at the
degree of heat and moisture most favourable for its rapid
fermentation, and be duly turned over to promote the
perfect decomposition required. The dung only becomes
manure and is suitable for the use of the orchard
when it has fermented down into a brown mass
of friable humus. Its manipulation serves two useful
purposes, first, the due aeration without which the
putrefactive bacteria cannot exist ; and second, the pre-
vention of too high a temperature, which would drive off
the ammonia and materially lower the manurial value of
the product. On no account should fruit-trees ever get a
top-dressing of fresh guano. It is popularly supposed to
be a sort of cure-all or. receipt for universal fertility, but
its improper use has done much mischief. With fruit trees
is is so easy to give an overdose, and then it materially
diminishes the production of fruit, and gives instead an
inordinate growth of wood and leafage. It is fair to say
that the only significance of guano to the orchardist arises
out of the general poverty of his manure heap, particularly
in phosphates. It does not often happen that he has the
means of accumulating a stock of stable dung only. Sweep-
ings of all sorts, prunings, brushwood, leaves, kraal drop-
pings, all go in to increase the mass. To this there is no
objection, provided it can be thoroughly fermented down ;
but from the nature of the materials the fermentation be-
comes a very slow process, and by the end of the year the
manure, so-called, is only about half made. To make up
its deficiencies and lack of ammonia and nitrates, a sprink-
ling of guano, previous to turning it over, may be admis-
sible. But the cultivator must be well aware of the risk
he runs, and give with a very sparing hand.

43

47. A series of analyses of the guanosupplied from the
Government stores in the years 1891 to 1894 gives per-
centages of ammonia varying from 7 to 19 per cent., the
average of fifteen samples being 13*53. Besides this
ammonia, guano contains phosphate of lime and potash to
an average amount of 16 per cent. It must be remem-
bered that this phosphate of lime is only very slowly
soluble, being in the tribasic condition.

48. It is a pity that hitherto no mineral phosphates similar
to apatite have been found within the limits of the Colony.
There are two sources whence phosphates can be con-
veniently obtained. These are, bones in the form of bone-
meal or reduced to powder by fermentation, and a
certain by-product of the iron manufacture, known in
commerce as Thomas' slag. Although bones contain
precisely that substance which is required in our
soils more than any other, they are as a manure, ex-
tremely slow in their action, becoming available as
plant-food only after being mixed with the soil for a very
considerable time. Nor do all soils act on bones with equal
rapidity. In well aerated open soils with a good deal of
organic matter present, they decompose soonest ; in clay
soils they will lie for years without change. Everything
depends upon the degree of fineness to which the bones
are comminuted. Hence bone-flour acts most quickly, —
bone-meal next, while the ordinary crushed bone, consisting
of large pieces, acts very slowly. This is because the
phosphoric acid in the bone has combined with the lime
with great force, forming what is known as insoluble or
tribasic phosphate. If it were not that the water which
percolates through the soil is impregnated with carbonic
acid, the bone-phosphate would remain unaltered indefinitely,
but the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the water
carries away one molecule of lime and leaves the phosphate
in a new and more soluble form, known as dibasic or soluble
phosphate. What is slowly done by the carbonic acid in
open soils, may be done rapidly by mixing the bones,
whether crushed or meal, with sulphuric acid. This
powerful substance, when added to the extent of about one
third of the weight of the bones, takes up the lime at once
ami leaves the valuable phosphate in a form in which it is

44

immediately soluble in the soil moisture, and ready for
absorption by the roots. Such a mixture is known in
commerce as super-phosphate, and is quite easily made by
the cultivator himself on the small scale, provided that he
has some knowledge of the corrosive nature of the acid he
is employing. The mixture dries in a few days, and if the
acid has not been used in excess, it may be safely preserved
in gunny-bags until required. Owing to the solubility of
its phosphatic portion, it will always be best used, at least
in orchards, as a top-dressing only. It must be remembered
too that half its bulk consists of sulphate of lime or gyp-
sum formed in the decomposition of the bones by the acid.
This of itself is a valuable manurial ingredient. It is the
form in which plants most readily take up the lime and the
trace of sulphur they require, and its effect upon any iiv
jurious soda carbonate, causing brackness in the soil is
immediate and effective. Thomas' slag comes into the
cultivator's hands in a very fine powder, and the phosphatic
lime it contains is much more readily broken up by the
action of the carbonic acid in the soil than is the case with
ground bones. On an average it is found to contain from
06 to 41 per cent, of phosphate of lime, and therefore it
compares favourably with the medium class of superphos-
phates which contain from 26 to 28 per cent, and with
pure dissolved bones containing 20 per cent, soluble
phosphate and 10 per cent, insoluble matter.

49. Confining our attention to the use of phosphates in
oichards only, it would appear that Thomas' slag has a
distinct advantage over other sources. It gives out the
element required, slowly, yet with sufficient readiness. It
does not throw all its content of phosphoric acid into the
soil the first season ; hence what may be termed its staying
power has a distinct and great advantage. The man who
applies bone-meal, hoping to secure this same staying power
for a number of years, most certainly gets it, but unfor-
tunately the amount of phosphoric oxide liberated per
season by his bone-meal is excessively small. In fact, for
a phosphatic manure it does not work quick enough. The
sum of the whole matter may be put thus : superphosphates
work too quickly, plain ground bones work far too slowly.
Thomas7 slag strikes a medium between the two.

45

50. We have incidentally referred to lime as one of the
food-materials which are only scantily provided in average
Cape soils. Of course there are places where the subsoil is
calcareous, but these are few and far between. In the
Karoo, deposits of lime are local, and apparently scattered
about capriciously over that great area, it may be as well
to observe that these incidental deposits have a curious and
peculiar origin. They are clearly what mineralogists term
kalk-sinter. When the Karoo in geological times was a
great fresh-water lake, where the Dicynodon wallowed
amid the mud and rushes, much as the hippopotamus does
in Central African lakes this day, there were hundreds of
places where springs rose up at the bottom underneath the
sheet of water. These deep-seated springs were very largely
charged with lime ; in fact, they might have been called
lime-water springs coming from calcareous strata lying at
great depths. When their water reached the exit of the
fissure at the bottom of the lake and diffused itself through
the liquid mass, much of the carbonic acid gas, by the aid
of which the lime had been kept in solution, was lost by
diffusion. The natural result was deposition of a precipi-
tate of lime all round the mouth of the fissure, making a
sort of calcareous floor, extending perhaps for many yards
in every direction, with the eye of the spring as a centre.
This process of deposit would go on just so long as the
fissure was open for the exit of the water. But in course
of time the same causes that produced the deposit on the
lake floor would cause a similar precipitation in the upper
part of the fissure delivering the spring, and would ulti-
mately choke it altogether. After that there would be an
end to any further lime deposit in that place. One can
easily understand this process going on at the bottom of
the lake, when examining pipes which have carried a stream
of calcareous water for many years and show their original
calibre reduced by deposit inside to one half or even less.
After the great upheaval of the claystorie porphyry just
south of the Karoo lake, numerous huge cracks were made
on the southern edge of the Karoo basin. The water of the
lake was drained off down the lines which we now recog-
nize as the kloofs and passes of the Zwartberg, Langeberg
and its other boundaries. The farmers of the Karoo are

46

now cultivating the flat bottom of the great Karoo lake,
and here and there they come upon these restricted deposits
of calcareous sinter, very convenient for either building or
mariurial purposes. It is a pity that similar stores of lime
do not exist all over the Colony.

51. We have spoken of lime as a plant-food. No very
large quantity is required, but there must be some. Given
this small quantity, the remaining function of lime in the soil
is something quite different. It sets up a chemical action,
setting free in a soluble and available condition materials
which existed in the soil, for instance, potash and phos-
phoric acid, but in an insoluble form, incapable of absorp-
tion by plants. There is plenty of potash in soils derived
from a granitic base, but it is locked up in combination with
silica. A generous application of lime combines with the
silica and sets free the potash. The case is much the same
with insoluble phosphates. Then it has a remarkable effect
in assisting the nitrification of all organic manures added
in the usual way. Also upon soils of a more or less com-
pact clay its mechanical effect is very remarkable. It has
a peculiar power of altering that mechanical condition of
clay which makes it what is termed colloidal, that is, plastic
and impervious to water. This condition is, for cultivation,
about the most unpromising that there can be. It is
scarcely possible to do anything with such earth by ordinary
means. The only method is thoroughly to incorporate with
it heavy dressings of lime and establish reliable drainage
along the natural water-table. The result is that the clay
becomes, as it is termed, " flocculated," or collected into
little clots, around and between which moisture and air can
intervene. Thus, and thus only, can plastic clay be con-
verted into cultivable soil.

52. Turning back to the analysis of fruit-ash, it will be
seen that the proportion of lime is considerable, amounting,
in the apple, to 63 per cent., in the orange to 22 per
cent, and in the plum to 10 per cent. Now all of this
large amount has to be given to the trees. It is therefore
a safe thing to be fairly liberal with lime top-dressings
to most orchards which have not a calcareous subsoil.
That is to say^ the only soils where lime freely used will
not be materially beneficial are those whose texture is

already very porous and upon, arid, which already have thu
percentage of lime demanded as plant-food, in these its
mechanical effect is not called for.

53. One is often asked what can be done to correct the
objectionable brackness or alkalinity of some of our soils,
so that some kind of an orchard crop can be obtained from
them. Once for all let it be stated that ordinary lime has
no curative effect ; what is wanted is gypsum, that is,
sulphate of liiue. The brackness known locally as zwart-
brak is due to carbonate of soda, a substance actually
poisonous to plants. The sulphate of lime exchanges con-
stituents with it, and you get sulphate of soda and carbonate
of lime as the result. Now although sulphate of soda is
not a desirable thing for one's soil, yet it is not nearly so
mischievous as the carbonate would be. Hence it is quite
possible for a cultivator whose circumstances oblige him to
work on an area which is more or less zwart-brak to make
a very tolerable culture off it by dint of a generous appli-
cation of gypsum. Before many years are past, the few
places where gypsum deposits are known to exist will have
•a future before them.

Green-manuring and Snatch-crops in the Orchard,

54. There is yet another method of adding to the manurial
constituents of the soil which should not pass without
notice. This is the raising of a quickly growing annual
crop between the rows of trees and turning it in with the
plough or cultivator to decompose under the surface soil.
Xitrogen and organic matter form the principal gains deriv-
able from this so called green-manuring upon the large
scale on corn lands ; they scarcely apply to the smaller scale
of orcharding. Thus, short of complete rotation of crops,
there is no better way of checking wire-worm in corn -hinds
than by raising a snatch of rape or colza as early in the
season as is possible, and turning it under just before it
flowers. The insects that harbour in an orchard however,
are very different from the wheat-grower's wire-worm, and

48

its nitrogen is much better added by means of stable manure
or chemicals. Besides, one of the greatest improvements
of modern times in relation to orcharding is the custom of
keeping the whole of the orchard area free from any growth
whatever — from weeds of course, and from snatch-crops
also. It has to be a well kept, pulverized, bare surf ace acting
as a mulch and air-absorber for the underlying root-stratum.
Will it ever be so at the Cape ? Perhaps not, just yet. Old
habits will be too much for us, and we shall for some years
yet go on growing our small stuff in among the trees in
the orchard. Be it so, since we as yet know no better.
But the great thing to be remembered in all these snatch
cultures (allowed to exist because of the hardness of our
hearts, and perhaps we may say — of our heads), is that
nothing whatever can be permitted except such things
as salads, onions, pumpkins, melons, all annual crops,
which deal only with the very superficial layer of soil at
the surface. It would be truly suicidal policy for a man
to lay down a crop of lucerne for instance, among his
trees. Its roots would soon get down a full yard deep and
try conclusions with the apple and peach roots to their very
great disadvantage. Yet such things are done in this year
of grace, 1896. Besides, there is a fatal temptation in
the matter of green manuring. It is so easy to deceive
yourself into fancying that you are letting the weeds run
riot all over your orchard of set purpose and as an act of
wisdom, because you mean some day, not fixed, to turn
them in as green manure. Depend upon it, the man who
lets weeds grow to avoid the labour of keeping his land
clean all through, will find plenty of excuses for avoiding
the labour of turning them in. And then what are we to
call his orchard ? A plot with a great many trees and a
few weeds, or a mass of weeds with a few trees among
them ? If there were no other argument against green-
manuring than this, there would be enough to leave it
prudentially out of the canon of fruit-growing.

49

TREES,

THE APRICOT.

It will be understood from the general preliminaries
respecting the forming of trees from the year old graftling,
that the balance of experience at the Cape is in favonr of
low dwarf trees, because of their occupying less space,
coming into bearing sooner, and being far less exposed to
injury from high winds and the accidents of harvesting.
The tendency to push the standard pattern with tall axial
growth has been a fashion of late, just as a few years agor
men coming out here with a European experience only,
condemned our Cape habit of pruning vines in the gobelet
dwarf style, and would fain have us set up poles and
trellises. We venture to say that the dwarf orchard tree-
will remain in vogue after most of the experimental stand-
ards have bsen cut back and regrafted.

The apricot pushes so vigorously and fast that special
foresight is required to prevent.it from growing beyond its
strength and courting its own destruction by too liberal
spreading of branches. It is advisable to take all trees as
graftlings of a year old from the nursery, if you understand
their management ; but this precaution is specially neces-
sary with the apricot. Let the shoots you encourage for
main branches be alternately set, step-wise, on the 12-15
inch main axis left after planting, and as far as possible
balancing each other all round the tree. It is bad policy
to have three or four branches springing from what is prac-
tically the apex of the stem, like a Y with many arms.
One may easily secure this alternating outspring by rubbing
out a bud here and there and letting the intermediate ones
develope themselves. Precisely the same precaution has
to be taken in the development of shoots arising after

50

the second and third primings. The result is that a well
managed apricot tree shows very few clear Y joints any-
where. The arms of the Y come out askew to each other,
one of the pair starting always a little lower down on the
branch it springs from than does its mate of the same
season.

We said the apricot is over lavish in its growth and
fruit. Therefore, bearing in mind that abundant foliage
means abundant elaborated sap, permit a fair show of short
laterals to push out from the main branches, and do not look
upon them as gourmands consuming the strength of the tree.
Crush the soft end with the thumb and finger when they
have advanced 4 or 5 inches, and let them make what
foliage they will. It is advisable to keep the fruit-buds
as near the main stem as possible ; you may always be
certain of the quality of the fruit produced there. The
second years' formative pruning is generally best made to
an inside bud all round. This has the effect of throwing
the growth of the tree inward, and as a natural consequence
the whole weight of the head, and also the considerable
additional burden of fruit in its season is held much more
perpendicularly over the main trunk than would be the case
had the outside bud been encouraged and the arms allowed
a wider angle of expansion. It is surprising how greatly
the leverage of the dead weight upon the forks of the limb
may be relieved by this forecast. Branches with which
no care has been taken are liable to split away from their
holding at the fork, owing to the comparative brittleness
of the quick-growing apricot wood, and an unsightly scar
and ill-balanced tree results. Nor is the matter much
mended if the owner, detecting the dangerous leverage
that threatens to terminate in the splitting of a principal
fork, helps the tree with an iron hoop bracing the limbs of
the fork together. Such makeshifts may save the branch in
a high wind, but they are confessions of bad management
and of not knowing one's business properly. The fruit is
borne on the wood of the previous year, and as the habit
of the apricot is to rush out into needlessly long shoots,
these must be shortened back sharply every winter and
more sparingly in summer. All ill-placed interfering
branches, and weak watershoots have to be sacrificed.

51

The vigour of the tree is such that the head will each
year fetch up a somewhat rounded outline instead of a flat
top, particularly if the practice of cutting to an outside
bud is followed.

The choice of stocks for the apricot lies between self-
seedlings and peach seedlings. Experience has shown that
the great yellow St. Helena peach makes an excellent
stock provided the soil is open, well worked and well
drained. It will not however stand the abuse of un-
necessary irrigation. That piece of mismanagement is
quick and sudden death to the peach as soon as the outlets
for free seepage get clogged. If the soil is not favour-
able to the peach, self -seedlings may be used, or in still
harder conditions, plum stocks have the best chance. Of
these the recently introduced myrobolan plum is highly
commended. Its use however is too recent here to allow
of actual experience being quoted. In places where the
soil is naturally very dry or the subsoil rocky and in-
nutritive, the almond may be used. Opinions differ
much as to its value, some declining to use it on the
ground that the graft does not make a sound junction with
the almond stock, and is liable to be blown out by the high
winds or to snap off. Others recommend it from trial,
claim for it a special fitness, and maintain that it makes a
satisfactory adhesion. It is probable that both views are
right in their own way, that is to say that the looser
textured wood of the apricot as grown in rich fertile soil
does not lit the harder tissues of the almond, but that
when its rampant tendency to rapid growth is checked
either by more sterile soil or drier atmospheric conditions,
its wood-layers approximate more to the texture of those
of the almond, and a better junction results. To this view
tends the tradition of French nurserymen, that the almond
is a preferable stock in arid chalky uplands. They use by
preference the hard-shelled sweet variety. In the Eastern
United States with a colder climate than ours, the plum
stock seems to have the preference. The varieties which
succeed best here are, Moorpark, Hemskirke, Eoyal, Grosse
Peche, Breda and Blenheim. The last two are the hardiest,
although rather small. The first-named variety demands
special care in shortening in, otherwise it is rather shy in

E 2

52

bearing. In all sorts of apricot moreover, thinning is to
be recommended. Without this provision the crop runs to
number at the expense of size, and growers of fine fruit
remark that to take off half the frurt that sets gives a
greater weight of product than if the entire setting had
been left on the tree to take its chance. Tins raises the
whole question of quality verms quantity about which
Cape growers have hardly made up their minds.

Apricots.

NAME. DESCRIPTION.

MOORPARK. Fruit large, roundish and compressed on the

sides, marked with shallow suture. Skin pale
yellow in shade, deep orange with red specks in
sun. Mesh deep reddish orange, particularly
rich.

HEMSKIRKE. Fruit above medium, round, flattened on sides,

suture distinct. Skin yellow and reddish next
the sun. Flesh bright orange, tender, rich
and juicy.

BLENHEIM. Large, oval. Skin deep yellow. Flesh yellow

and tolerably rich and juicy. This is a very
productive variety.

ROYAL. Large, oval and slightly compressed. Skin dull

yellow tinged with red, suture shallow. Flesh
pale orange, firm, rich and vinous.

THE PEACH.

To those who have a fair professional acquaintance with
fruit-tree growing, built up from an apprenticeship, jour-
neyman days as an improver, and the reflective observant
leisure of foreman and head-gardener, the case of the
peach at the Cape is one for commiseration. The tree i&
so liberal of its growth, so generous with its fruit, so
patient of ill-usage up to a certain point, that it has become
the souffre douleur of the careless, and the favourite of
those who think that potatoes and onions require care and
attention, but trees can look after themselves. Of late,
many orchards of ten or fifteen years standing, with trees

53

set in holes amid untrenched ground, have come to the end
of their possibilities. The increasing compactness of the
soil, drenched and dried alternately, and the clogging of
what natural drainage existed along the water-table slope,
has slowly killed out the roots, and the topmost branches,
with the imperfectly ripened late wood of the year, die
back to the usual stag-horn pattern. Then follow attempts
to revive the tree, hot manure to the collar, and excessive
flooding by irrigation. The whole root-system becomes
involved in the mischief, and we have a case of what we
may term " Cape Peach Yellows." It is such a pity that
the art and mystery of tree-growing is treated so differ-
ently from other arts and mysteries. ISTo man pretends
that with a piece of leather, an awl, and a few wax-ends,
lie can make a shoe, on the strength of having seen and
worn shoes all his life. A man who pretends to cure dis-
eases without having passed through the severe study and
practice of the medical schools is — we all know — a quack,
that is a mixture of rogue and fool in varying proportions.
Yet every third man you meet in the country will under-
take to plant an orchard and grow peaches without having
learned the first principles of the gardener's art. It is but
to dig holes and put trees in-- what more would you have !
The trees do the best they can for him as long as possible.
At length they succumb. Even their exceptional vigour
and hardiness gives in at last. If we are going to do things
light and act fairly by our trees we must study their special
wants and provide for them. The peach demands one thing
above all, that is a thorough and free drainage. The actual
content of the soil itself is of much less import than the
great requirement of unchecked respiration of the roots,
and that can only be got by ensuring the rapid escape
downward and away of all the natural rain, and still more
of the artificial irrigation water, sucking in the vital air
it holds in solution. No planned drainage — then no veteran
peach trees, — nothing but short-lived invalids cut off before
their prime. The soil must be a sandy loam, with a
tendency to dry out rather than to retain moisture. Sodden
clay is not worth the labour required to bring it by liming
and vegetable manure to anything like the proper soil for
the peach. Just as your soil gets further away from the

54

definition of being clayey, and fulfils the conditions of an
open mellow loam, the clods of which break in your hand
to fragments like meal, so will it benefit the noble peach.

However, something may be done to humour the peach
in the matter of soil. If one must work in heavy clayey
land, because of lack of other choice, then after effort at
improvement by liming to flocculate the clay, and addition
of strawy manure to open it into air pores, the plum stock
may be grown for grafting on. There is one disadvantage
however ; most plum stocks sucker very much under the
peach and give a vast amount of trouble. Of late years
the myrobolan or cherry plum has been used and answers
well, being free from this objectionable habit. But
wherever the main conditions we have insisted on are
reasonably fulfilled, the peach or self-stock is to be pre-
ferred. There can be none better than the great yellow
St. Helena peach for most localities. But in this widely
varied land, where our working altitudes range from sen
level to 5,000 feet, the grower must not go by book only.
He must look around and observe for himself which seed-
ling peaches in his neighbourhood are hardiest and finest,
and choose these for his stocks. When the ground is stony,
shaly and dry, the sweet almond may be used. But in
that case a little skill is requisite, something beyond the
rough cleft made in the stump and the scion wedged into
the split. It is astonishing that such rude work ever suc-
ceeds. We believe that — given a suitable dryish soil and
careful whip or tongue grafting — it is very little we should
ever hear of the standing complaint against these stocks,
that is, of young trees blowing loose from their almond
mother-stock.

Twenty feet is outside measure for the peach distance.
Some modern growers give more, but this is rather in
obedience to a general consensus of opinion that the old
crowding system must be discouraged and discontinued.
Thanks to the enterprise of a few of our nurserymen, very
excellent yearlings may be had, either self-stocks or myro-
bolan. Do not fancy you are getting more for your money
by buying two year olds. The peach is in such a hurry to
get along and make growth, that you are likely to have a

55

very perplexing lot of laterals already started on the two-
year saplings. Beginners find it difficult to harden their
hearts sufficiently, to out all these close and leave a scarred
uneven-looking foot of stem. Some nurserymen pinch out
the apical bud at a bare eighteen-iuch height, and en-
courage three or four laterals which will make a ramping
growth of five feet or more in the first season. These are
cut back to nine inches in winter, and are delivered to
purchasers who thus get a yearling plant with a two year
old head on it. We cannot do better than quote the direc-
tions of a practical fruit grower who has in our very
midst shown the way to success. He says : —

" After shortening the side branches of the tree in its first year's
growth to the length required, by cutting back to a bud, inner or outer,
right or left, according to the shape required, a long growth of young
wood will be thrown out. An amount of a quarter to three-quarters
of this can be then cut away, according to the taste of the grower and
the distribution of the fruit buds. After this pruning in a peach tree,
one can expect a small crop, and during the cutting one should keep
an eye on the double or treble buds, that is, the fruit buds, in view
of inducing a crop. As the tree gets older the same course of cutting
back and thinning out should be pursued, with intent to produce a
quantity of new or bearing wood successionally each year, thus
enabling the pruner to distribute his coming crop over the whole tree.
Nor should he forget the leaving of such well-matured wood which
may be forced out from the main stem as shall tend to balance the
general set of the tree and equalise its bearing. The branches left in
this way should, of course, be cut back in due course, leaving only a
few more fruit-buds that are wanted for the following year. In fact,
on the peach no laterals should be left of their full length, and the
pruner must always look to the fruit-buds, and never forget he is
cutting the bearing wood. You will occasionally see your fruit-buds
near the points of the branches. Under these circumstances you must
leave them, and do more thinning out of branches. Some farmers
have asked me if I approve of summer pruning the peach tree while
in its fruiting stage. I say most emphatically no, because by doing
this you cause a double growth of new wood, entailing twice the
aniuunt of cutting."

It is necessary to call attention to the difference between
the leaf- bud and the flower- bud, in the peach and other
stone fruits, as a guide to keeping the balance of wood and
fruit. The bearing shoots in the peach and nectarine
always show towards their base a number of acute solitary
buds with a brown scale-cover. These are leaf-buds.
Higher up will be seen a smaller number of buds standing
three together, a thin one in the middle, with a plump

56

silvery-coated one on each side. These latter are flower or
fruit-buds. Your object is to encourage them rather than
the other, many of which may be rubbed out, but as the
trees bear on the last year's wood, provision must be made
for fruit-bearing shoots for the next year, to come on in
succession. Those buds then which are best placed are to
be left for this purpose while you are disbudding the re-
mainder.

Major Downing, the veteran American pomologist, gives
directions for peach-pruning in a similar strain. He says :

" If the trees are left to themselves, the growth is mostly produced
at the end of the principal branches, and the young shoots formed in
the interior of the head die out. The consequence is that the head
is filled with long lean branches provided with young shoots
only at their extremity. Anyone can see that such a tree can only
possess half the number of healthy bearing shoots that it would have
had if filled throughout with vigorous young wood. The sap flows
tardily through the long rigid branches and there are not half enough
leaves to secure the proper feeding of the fruit. Such fruit as there
is comes at the ends of the branches which often break under the
awkwardly placed weight. Instead of this we substitute the shorten-
ing in method of pruning. As early as may be the work begins, i.e.,
cutting back half the last year's growth over the whole of the tree.
As the average is from one to two feet we shall take off from 6 to 12
inches. It need not be done with precise measurement ; indeed the
strongest shoots should be shortened back most in order to bring up
the others, and any long projecting limbs that destroy the balance of
the head are cut back to uniform length. This brings the tree into a
well rounded shape. By reducing the young wood to one half, we
apparently reduce the coming crop one half, so far as number of
fruits is concerned. But the remaining half, receiving all the sus-
tenance the tree has to give, come to double the size. The young
spurs which start abundantly from every part of the tree keep it well
supplied with bearing wood for next year, and the greater size and
luxuriance cf the foliage, as a necessary consequence, produce larger
and more highly flavoured fruit. Kemember, in shortening back, to
cut to a wood-bud for the finish of each shoot. Else you may have fruit
coming out at the very tip, unsheltered by leaves and certain to drop
early or come to nothing."*

It is scarcely possible to avoid sayiug something' upon
the subject of what is known in the United States as Peach
Yellows, and about which there was recently a scare in the
'Colony, contemporaneous with the spread of American
Pomological literature among us. Seeing that one of the
•acutest practical investigators, Erwin P. Smith, utterly

* Fruit and Fruit Trees, pp. 584, 086.

57

failed to discover any bacillus or other fungoid parasite,
and relinquished further enquiry as fruitless, it is probable
that the cause has been sought for in the wrong direction,
and that yellows is not a morbid condition produced by
parasitic interference, but something far simpler, viz., con-
stitutional exhaustion brought about by a long course of
bad cultivation, as regards soil, abuse of irrigation,
neglect of skilled pruning and continuous over- crop-
ping. To avoid lepeating here the conclusions come to and
published in the Agricultural Journal after a close examina-
tion of numerous supposed cases of yellows in the Colony,
Ave will subjoin, on this matter, the views of the eminent
pomologist from whom we have already quoted : — " We
believe the malady to be a constitutional taint produced by
bad cultivation and exhaustion, and perpetuated by sowing
the seeds of the enfeebled trees, either to obtain new-
varieties or for stocks. Let us look for a moment to the
history of peach culture. For a hundred years after its in-
troduction it was largely cultivated in perfect freedom from
disease and with the least possible care. The natural fer-
tility of the soil was then unexhausted, and the land occu-
pied by orchards was seldom or never cropped. Most of
it, though at first naturally fertile, was light and sandy,
and inevitably in course of time became exhausted. The
peach, always productive to excess in this climate, was no
longer able in the impoverished soil, to recruit its energies
by annual growth, and gradually became more and more
enfeebled and short lived. Wheat and grain crops bore
high prices, and the failing fertility of the orchard land
was still more lowered by a system of heavy cropping
between the trees without returning anything to the
soil. Still the peach was planted, left to produce a few
heavy crops, till it declined from sheer feebleness and want
of sustenance. It was then the custom for orchardists to
raise their own trees from seedlings, and the nurserymen
collected the stones quite indiscriminately for raising stocks.
Hence it is evident there were present all the conditions for
passing on a constitutional debility of the parent trees in
a greater or less degree to the seedlings. Still the system
of allowing the tree to exhaust itself by heavy and repeated
crops in a light soil was continued, and generation after

58

generation of seedlings, each more enfeebled than its pre-
decessor, at last produced a characteristic feeble and sickly
stock of peach trees throughout the district. The great
abundance of the fruit caused it to find its way into all the
markets along the sea coast. The stones from the fruit
thus introduced into the Northern States, being esteemed
something better than those of home-growth, were every-
where more or less planted. They brought with them the
enfeebled and tainted constitution derived from the parent
stock. In the new soil they re-produced the old failings of
their worn-out constitution, and thus, little by little,' the
morbid condition or the so-called " yellows" spread to the
whole Northern and Eastern sections of the Union.

From the history, let us turn to the nature of this
enfeebled state of the peach tree. Every good gardener
knows that if he desires to raise a healthy and vigorous
seedling plant, he must select seed from a parent that is of
itself decidedly healthy. Professor Lindley, in his Theory
of Horticulture, justly remarks: "All seeds will not pro-
duce equally vigorous seedlings, the healthiness of the new
plant will correspond with that of the seed from which it
sprung ." Again, the great Flemish pomologist, Dr. Van
Mons, declares that the more frequently a tree is repro-
duced continuously from its own seed, the more feeble and
short-lived do its descendants become. Moreover, the
peach is peculiarly constant in the reproduction of any con-
stitutional variation that may have arisen. A signal proof
of this is seen m the nectarine, which is merely a variety of
peach with a smooth skin, and not a distinct species at all,
yet it is perpetually re-produced without re\7ersion by sow-
ing its seed. It is evident from these premises that the
constant sowing of the seeds of an enfeebled stock of peaches
would naturally produce a sickly and diseased race of trees.
The seedlings will often appear healthy at first, but the
taint will sooner or later show itself, and especially when
the tree is allowed to produce an over-crop. That bad soil
conditions and over-bearing will produce great debility in
any fruit tree is matter of common observation. Even the
apple, the hardiest of orchard trees, requires a whole year
to recover from the exhaustion caused by an unthinued
crop. The great natural luxuriance of the peach induces

59

it actually to form new fruit buds while the branches are
still loaded with fruit, and thus, if not restrained by pruning,
is soon enfeebled.

These are some of the facts open to every day observation
which point towards this theory. The varieties most
subject to yellows are those which produce the heaviest
crops. Slow growing sorts and those which produce
but sparingly, like the nutmeg peaches, are almost entirely
exempt. We know an orchard where every tree has
gradually died from yellows except one whicli stood in the
centre. It is the Red Nutmeg, and is still in full vigour.
It is certainly true that these sorts often decay and suddenly
die, but it is always from the neglect which allows them
to fall a prey to the peach-borer curculio. The frequency
with which the peach-borer's work has been confounded
with yellows by ignorant observers renders it difficult to
arrive at correct conclusions respecting the supposed con-
tagious nature of the latter disorder. It may be said in
objection that a disease which is only enfeeblement of con-
stitution would not result in speedy death. The answer is
that the degree of debility produced in a single generation
of trees would not have led to such effects, or to any
settled form of constitutional disease. But the same bad
management has been going on for nearly a century up to
this day, the whole country over. Every year, in August,
the season of early peaches, thousands of bushels of fruit
showing the infallible symptoms of yellows are sold in the
markets. Every year the collected stones of these peaches
are planted, to produce in their turn a generation of diseased
trees, and every successive generation is more feeble and
sickly than the last. So feeble has the stock become that
an excessive crop is too frequently followed by the yellows.
In this total absence of proper care in selection of seed and
trees, followed by equal negligence as to cultivation, is it
surprising that the peach has become a tree comparatively
difficult to preserve and proverbially short-lived ? In
Europe, the peach is always subjected to a regular system
of pruning, and is never allowed to produce an over-crop.
Its lavishness is kept under control. Now yellows are un-
known in Europe, and notwithstanding the great number
of American varieties of this fruit sent over and now
growing there, the disease has never extended itself or

60

been communicated to other trees, or even been recognised
by English or French horticulturists."

It is scarcely possible to read this opinion of the veteran
pomologist of America without recognizing that similar
conditions have existed here in the Colony. Not one in a
hundred has for himself made the observation that the
peach is apt to ruin itself with overbearing, and has there-
fore carried out a vigorous system of pruning back in
winter and shortening in summer, to keep the output with-
in the limits of the trees' powers. Not one in a hundred
has trenched up the whole strip of land on which the trees
stand and secured to them a free rapid drainage. Is it then
wonderful that, encouraged to bear to excess, with roots
weakened for want of free aeration and perpetually water-
logged once or more a week, the peach tree succumbs at
last, and dies slowly of what we have called yellows, but
which is really exhaustion above ground and root-asphyxia
below ?

If it be asked, what remedy is to be had for what has
been taken at the Cape for yellows, the reply must be
founded upon this view of its cause. The system or no-
system of culture must be altered. If planted in the old
way in holes, a French drain must be taken out along each
row a little lower than the original bottom of the holes,
connecting each, and having a good outfall. This prevents
the mischief of waterlogging. The whole area of the trees
must be dug with the digging fork — not with the spade —
as deep as possible without getting seriously among the
roots. A top-dressing of lime should be turned in at the
same time, not so much for the purpose of adding to the
food-constituents of the soil as to aid in making available
the humus elements present, setting free potash, and, if the
soil be clayey, flocculating its texture to admit air. The
unhealthy parts of the tree should be cut away, and the
whole gone over discreetly with the pruning knife to reduce
the demands made upon the weakened root-system. Work
of this sort is as interesting to the skilled gardener and the
observant amateur, as the conduct of a difficult case is to a
physician. But people who do not care much for their
garden, and look on their trees merely as machines for
saving market cost of purchased fruit, had better not try
to bring them round. It would be far less trouble to stub

61

every one of the unlucky victims of bad management com-
pletely out, and begin over again by trenching up, draining
properly and replanting.

SELECTION or SORTS. — Such parts of the country as
belong to the coast region, and do not rise above
500 or 600 feet above sea level, have the best
chances of topping the market with early sorts and
securing the high prices brought by their first appearance.
At higher levels, earlies are not of much account. They
are elbowed out of competition when they appear by middle
sorts from the lower and more precocious level, and they
are very likely to catch a snap of late frost when blooming.
This is the danger of our clear, cloudless nights in early
spring. The heat of the day, accumulated in the earth, is-
radiated away rapidly into space when there are no clouds
to send it back, and during the hour before dawn the
mischief is done. It is u black frosts " due to radiation that
mostly cut off the early blossoming fruits of the high veldt.
As to the modes of comlating the evil by smudges of smoke
and by netting, consult the Agricultural Journal, vol. v.,
p. 252. Peaches intended for canning should be white or
yellow self-coloured sorts. Those which are red-stained at
the stone colour the syrup. They are much better suited
for drying, for the rosy tint on the inside curve has an
inviting appearance. All that can be done here is to give
details of a few of the very best sorts. It cannot yet be said
that known pedigree kinds have been to any extent recog-
nised as peculiarly suitable to this or that special locality.
No one has troubled himself about pomology and the
climatic distribution -of fruit sorts at the Cape, and nearly
all the data are yet to be received and recorded. The best
approved sorts are Alexandra, Brigg's Kedmay, Crawford's
ttarly, Crimson Galande, Grrosse Mignonne, Noblesse,.
Royal George, Sea Eagle, Susquehauna.

Peaches.

SORTS. DESCRIPTION.

ALEXANDRA. A freestone peach of the largest size. Fruit

marked with a deep suture. Colour, pale with
red dots next the sun. Flesh, white, quite
pale at the stone, tender, melting, juicy, very
pood.

62

SORTS.

BELLEGARDE.

BRIGG'S BED MAY.
CRAWFORD'S EARLY.

CRAWFORD'S LATE.

CRIMSON GALANDE.
EARLY ALEXANDRA.
EARLY BEATRICE.
EARLY EIVERS.
FOSTER.
HALE'S EARLY.
LA GRANGE.

MUIR

ROYAL GEORGE.

DESCRIPTION.

One of the handsomest and most delicious peaches.
Fruit large, round and regular, the suture shal-
low, with projecting point. Skin pale yellow-
ish green with a rich red cheek, often streaked
with dark purple. Flesh juicy and rich, free
stone.

One of the very earliest. Fruit round, large,
suture almost round it. Skin nearly white,
flushed with bright red. Flesh white, tinged
with red at the stone.. Very juicy and sweet
Free stone.

The finest of all early yellow-fleshed peaches, a
most taking fruit. Fruit large, oblong, with
shallow suture. Skin yellow with fine, red
cheek. Flesh yellow and melting, sweet, rich
and very excellent, Free stone.
A later free stone variety of the above, and
similar in every respect. As a market fruit it
is unrivalled. Flesh deep yellow, red at stone,
juicy and melting, with vinous flavour.

Fruit medium and roundish, skin almost covered
with dark crimson. Flesh tender, melting,
blood-red at stone. Free stone.

A very early ripening sort. Skin greenish- white
nearly covered with red. Flesh firm and juicy
and partially free stone.

One of the earliest , Fruit medium size with
marbled red cheek. Flesh melting and very

juicy-
Fruit large, pale straw-colour, with a delicate

pink cheek. Flesh melting, rich and juicy.

Free stone.
Fruit very large, slightly flattened. Flesh yellow,

very rich and juicy. Colour deep orange,

dark red in hue. Free stone.
An early free stone peach, fruit medium size,

nearly round. Skin greenish and mottled with

red when ripe.
A large white free stone peach of late habit.

Skin greenish white with red on sunny side.

Flesh pale, juicy, melting, very rich, high

flavoured and delicious.
A most desirable variety. Fruit very large.

Flesh clear yellow, dense, rich and sweet, a

good all round sort. Free stone.
Fruit above medium, suture deep and broad.

Skin pale with red dots. Flesh whitish but

very red at the stone, melting, juicy and rich.

Few peaches surpass this one in flavour and

beauty. Free stone.

63

SORTS. DESCRIPTION.

SUSQUEHANNA. Fruit large, nearly globular. Suture half round.

Skin rich yellow, with a beautiful red cheek
nearly covering the whole surface. Flesh
yellow, sweet, juicy, with a rich vinous flavour.
Free stone.

THE APPLE.

At the Cape, the difference of climate and rainfall be-
tween West and East affects the apple very considerably.
In the former, it is far less sought after and valued than
are the peach and the pear, and the evidence of the seasonal
market all goes to show that growers for sale have hitherto
been satisfied with a few varieties and those rather poor
ones. Choice apples of the very best sort are only to be
found in a few amateurs' gardens and rarely appear on the
market. Those most commonly seen appear to be bastard
seedlings of the Red Astrakhan or some similar sort, and
have passed through many stages of degeneration. In
general they come late and stay long, and this is their main
virtue, for neither in flavour nor size have they much to
recommend them. Of late, however, most of the best kinds
have been introduced and are now readily obtainable. The
climate of the South- West coast region is not very favour-
able to the apple. It requires a season of complete rest,
Hence its demands are best met by the dry, cold, and
practically rainless winter of the Eastern Province. West-
away it does extremely well as soon as the higher levels
are reached, and probably the Koude Bokkeveld will one
day be a noted apple-growing country, in virtue of the
more uniform low temperature that prevails during the
season of winter rest, in contradistinction to the capricious
alternations of temperature of the coast-level. On these
cool uplands the apple-tree is not forced into too rapid
growth and premature bearing. It is likely that when fruit
culture is better studied, high veld farmers will grow and
send away an immense and creditable apple crop to coast
markets, even as Kent, Gloucester, Hereford and Devon do
in England.

64

The apple is not nearly so hard to please in the matter
of soil as most other fruit trees. Provided its moderate
requirements of lime, potash arid phosphates are supplied,
the nitrification going on in all soils under culture, with the
ordinary stable manure in moderate supply, is amply suffi-
cient to supply nitrogen. The present fashion of heavy
top-dressing with guano and other ammoniacal manures is
to be deprecated. They have a tendency to produce wood
and foliage instead of fruit. The only soils in which the
apple is not likely to repay culture, (if the climate suits),
are thin dry sands and sodden clays. A strong loam may
be a good apple ground if it has plenty of lime naturally,
or if lime be artificially added. Even heavy granitic clays,
derived from the decomposed felspar, will grow apples when
well limed to set free the potash which they contain in an
insoluble state, and to flocculate the otherwise impervious
mass. Probably the magnesia derived from the mica par-
ticles in these soils has an influence, for no fruit contains
so much of that substance as does the apple. I o the recogni-
tion of this fact is due the modern practice of giving an oc-
casional light dressing of Kainit to the apple orchard, that
mineral supplying both potash and magnesia. But in all
cases a quick ready drainage is essential, and in clayey
loams it has to be expressly provided. Probably it will
not be long before a demand arises for orchard drain-tiles.
Drains laid with these are less expensive to dig and lay
than any other sort, and if the bed is evenly cut to the
given slopt^, they never fill up. The 2^-inch size is suffi-
cient for branches and 4 -inch for the main run. With
similar machinery to that which is now turning out excel-
lent bricks for the main drainage of Cape Town streets,
there would be no difficulty in producing Cape-made drain-
tiles in any quantity and at a reasonable rate.

PROPAGATION. — Seedling stocks are raised from the pips
of known sorts which have been recognised as strong
growers. In England the crushed pulp of the cider-press
is washed over and the pips separated. The special cider-
apples are all strong vigorous sorts, hence there is the less
need for particular selection. Some growers prefer the
pips of crab wildings. But of late years the convenient

65

fashion of dwarf low-headed trees has led to the general
use of the Paradise Douciii stock which produces a charac-
teristic dwarf growth, just as quince stocks do for the pear.
There is however one unfortunate disability about it. The
Paradise stock is very liable to the attacks of the woolly
American blight insect, Schizoneura Ivnigera, which is, in a
less fatal degree, the scourge of the apple as the phylloxera
is of the vine. Of this insect there are two forms or stages,
one subterranean, on the roots, the other aerial, on the
trunk and branches. The latter can be combated with
comparative case by repeated spraying. But no efforts
avail to cope with the underground enemy and make a full
end of him. Even bisulphide of carbon can hardly be
applied in sufficient dose to destroy the insect, without
seriously injuring the roots themselves. And if the colonies
on the stem and branches be killed out completely, new
emigrants creep up from below, moult and change into the
aerial form, and renew the plague. Exactly what has been
done to circumvent the phylloxera on the vine roots is now
being done in regard of the Schizoneura. It has been found
that several sorts of apple, particularly the Northern Spy
and the Winter Majetin, enjoy a comparative immunity
from the attacks of the Schizoneura. Fortunately these two
sorts have each their special character. The former has a
strong erect growth and a compact fibrous root. The latter
tends to make a more horizontal spread of branches, and
has long rambling roots. There is little difference in their
resistent power. Hence the Winter Majetin is selected for
loose sandy soils of slight consistency, and in these its
peculiar root-habit gives it a firm hold and enables it to
maintain itself when a Northern ^py would certainly be
blown over. All that has been said respecting the necessity
for reconstituting the Cape vineyards upon the resistent
riparia and rupestris may in a less urgent manner be pressed
upon the attention of the fruit-grower whose speciality is
the apple, and it would be well for those who are for the
first time starting an orchard to refuse to purchase any
apple graftlings which the seller cannot guarantee to be
worked on one or other of the stocks above mentioned.
For the present, doubtless, growers will be content to pur-
chase their grafted resistent apple yearlings from those who*

66

make a business of supplying them. The method they
follow is simple enough, though tedious. It is a form of
double grafting, and is not likely to be popular among
private growers. The operator picks out healthy portions
of the roots of the resistent variety, about a span long and
~ of an inch thick. Upon these, scions of the same resistent
apple are grafted, taking care that both root and shoot are
of equal diameter. The English graft, so called, or whip-
graft with a tongue, succeeds best. To utilize pieces of
root of smaller diameter, there is an ingenious device which
might be called spur-grafting. This is easily understood
from the figure, which, with some of the above details is
taken from an excellent resume* of apple-culture by A. H.
Benson in the N.v.W. Agricultural Gazette, vol. v. p. 314.
(May, 1894).

Figure 7. Details for Root -grafting.

A cut is made obliquely upwards near the scion, reaching
almost to the central pith. The root-piece is cut to a double
bevel of the same length as the cut in the scion, and in-
serted so as to match exactly its outside edge. In this, as
in the former case, the junctions are to be carefully tied
with raffia, slips of cotton, torn instead of cut from the
the piece, or worsted. No waxing is to be applied. The
grafts are set out in nursery beds with the junction well
below the surface, and great care is taken by mulching
and other means to prevent drying out. The surfaces soon
unite. The strongest and best placed bud on the graft is
.allowed to develop into a shoot, and all the rest are rubbed

67

out. After a year's growth, when the grafting season
comes round again, the special variety required is grafted
upon this shoot, or if the shoot be strong enough, budding
the selected sort may be done the same season. When
these have made a start, you have a pedigree apple with a
resistent trunk-base and resistent root. But both Majetin
and Spy are strong-growing kinds of apple, and give their
habit of growth, more or less, to the scions they bear. If
therefore a dwarfing effect is desired, an additional step is
requisite. Upon the resistent shoot, at the end of the first
year, there is grafted a Paradise scion. When this is estab-
lished satisfactorily, and the proper season arrives, the
ultimate variety wanted is budded or grafted upon this
Paradise intermediate bearer, and thus a peculiar dwarfing
effect is transmitted to it. Thus we may finally have a
tree which is, for example, Eibstone Pippin in its head of
branches and upper stem, Paradise at the base and collar,
and Winter Majetin at the roots. Perhaps some will con-
sider a crop of apples not worth all this trouble. But this
compilation is not written for those who want to avoid
trouble. Those who long to grow apples without the never
ending warfare with the woolly aphis are the people addressed,
and they will take any amount of trouble to be quits
with the enemy, and also will not grudge the extra sum of
threepence per tree charged by the nurseryman for his
apple trees guaranteed to be worked upon resistent stocks.

PLANTING AND GTROWIJSG. — It has before been stated that
it is best to purchase graf tlings of a year old. When planted
the little apple trees are cut back about knee-high, not only
to give the roots the best chance of making a vigorous start
before they are called on to supply moisture to a head of
leafage, but far more to enable the grower to form the tree
to pattern. It is a very common practice for those who
have started a garden with no gardening knowledge to plant
trees just as they come from the nursery and let them grow
as they will. If you were to go to these amateur places,
whip out your knife and cut the little apple trees down to
knee-height, the owner probably would never forgive you.
You might explain that a yearling with twenty or more
buds, all starting, could not fail to grow a besom head of

68

useless wastrels, crowding each other, and making fruit
spurs only at the end of each switch. Whereas when only
three or four of the buds are allowed to shoot from the cut-
back remainder of a similar yearling, there would be as
many fine strong radial bearers running up for a year, to be
pruned back in winter for an exactly similar production of
secondary radial shoots. You might explain and get a
grudging acquiescence. But you would always be looked
upon as a sort of horticultural Herod among the Innocents.
The great thing to be desired is that no one should under-
take planting and training fruit trees unless he will consent
to be taught by seeing the skilled practice of others. It is
a common custom to leave more of the stem of an apple tree
and a pear than would be done with stone-fruit trees. But
care must be taken to let no more than four or five buds
start on, and to choose these so that they divide the stem
among them evenly. Thus, let the first be about nine
inches above the ground, the next four or five inches higher
and pointing not exactly opposite in direction, but about a
third of the way round. Still higher, let the next bud-
shoot start another span higher arid fetch up another third
of the circle. Clearly, if this be done with a little judg-
ment, your mature tree will have a much stronger wood-
system as its foundation, than if all the three or four main
branches started away from just about the same height.
Nor is it advisable ever to permit more than four or five of
these to go to the making of the tree. Four is decidedly
preferable, and adhering to that number, small as it seems
when the tree is young, will save an enormous amount of
labour in after years in cutting out the useless perpendicu-
lars that always form within the head of a tree that is too
crowded.

If you have as yet no practised knowledge of sorts, begin
from the first to acquire it by observation of the little ways
your trees affect. They betray themselves to you, or
rather, make you their confidant as you walk among them.
Some sorts will let you see that they like to draw them-
selves in and run upwards as if they were imitating a
poplar. Very good, it is for you to remember that habit,
and always or mostly to cut to an outside bud, when pruning.
'You are their master — a skilled master you should be—

and it is for you to lay down the law to your trees and
make them obey. If other sorts are altogether too loose
and careless, flinging their branches around, remember that
peculiarity against them when the pruning season comes
round, and conversely let the apical bud to which you cut
point inwards. No grower should go through a strange
orchard without mentally taking stock of the trees and the
way they have been treated. The general habit of each
kind, new to him, should be carefully noted and remem-
bered. Such and such being its mature aspect, it follows
that when you get it as a graftling of a year for yourself,
you can recall what you have seen, and knowing what it
should grow into, prune it accordingly. And when such
experience enlarges, and you begin to feel able to rely upon
it and to produce the exact effects you wish, you have
taken the first step into the inner circle of gardening.
You are no longer an outside philistine amateur, nor even
an apprentice, but a passed- master of the craft.

Sorts of Apples recommended.

In giving the names of apples for choice there is great
difficulty because of the utterly different conditions of east
and west, coast and upland.

Apples.

SORTS. DESCRIPTION.

ADAMS' PEARMAIN. One of the finest dessert apples, a good exporting
variety . Pale yellow tinged with green,
covered with russet on shaded side, but deep
yellow streaked with red on sunny side.

BLENHEIM ORANGE. A good dessert and keeping apple. Fruit large,
roundish oblate, yellowish, becoming deep
orange, stained on sunny side with dull dark
red stripes.

B*N DAVIS. A handsome popular American variety, a dessert

apple recommended for export. Yellowish,
striped and splashed with two shades of red,
with areolar spots.

BISMARCK. A large handsome showy cooking apple. Rich

yellow, speckled all over, rich broken streaks
of crimson on sunny side.

BEAUTY OF KENT. A showy and juicy kitchen apple of strong-
growing habit. Fruit very large and roundish,
but flat at the base and narrowing to the
ribbed eye, greenish yellow with stripes of
purplish red.

70

SORTS.

Cox's ORANGE PIP-
PIN.

Gox's POMONA.

CELLINI.
OALVILLE BLANCHE.

CANADA EEINETTE.
CLEOPATRA.

DEVONSHIRE QTJAR-

RENDEN.

DUTCH MIGNONNE.

DUCHESS OF OLDEN-
BURG.

ECKLINVILLE SEED-
LING.

EMPEROR ALEXANDER

GOLDEN NOBLE.
GRAVENSTEIN .

DESCRIPTION.

One of the finest dessert apples. Fruit medium,
oblate, yellowish shaded, splashed and mottled
over the whole surface with crimson. Flesh
firm, juicy and yellowish.

Good kitchen apple, flesh white and juicy. Fruit
medium, oblate, greenish yellow," shade of
crimson in the sun.

Good dessert and kitchen apple. Fruit medium,
roundish oblate, deep yellow, with streaks and
mottlings of dark crimson.

Valuable cooking and dessert apple. Fruit
medium, conical flattened at base, lemon yellow
with red in sun. Flesh white, fine grained,
tender, acid.

An excellent variety ; fruit of the largest size,
very handsome. Oblate conical, flattened,
broad at base. Greenish yellow, slightly
washed with brown, sprinkled with dots and
russet patches. Flesh nearly white ; firm,
juicy, rich.

Valuable export variety, suitable for dessert and
kitchen. Greenish yellow, few green specks
intermixed with a thin grey russet and tinged
with brown on sunny side.

A table arid export variety of high merit.
Medium size, roundish, flattened and slightly
narrowed at the eye. Skin rich deep crimson,
sprinkled with green dots. Flesh nearly white.

A popular apple. Fruit large, roundish, oblate.
Skin dull orange, half covered with red dotted
and yellow russet spots. Flesh yellowish, rich
and aromatic.

Handsome dessert or cooking apple of vigorous
habit. Fruit medium, regular, roundish,
oblate. Skin smooth, streaked with red on
golden ground with faint bloom. Fruit juicy.

Good table variety, an excellent cropper. Fruit
large and handsome.

.Well known cooking apple, greenish yellow,
streaked partly with red and orange and
covered with russety dots. A good bearer.

Valuable cooking apple. Large, roundish, con-
ical, bright yellow with few reddish spots and
patches of russet. Flesh yellow and tender.

A superb apple. Tree very vigorous and pro-
ductive. Fruit rather large and flattened.
Skin greenish yellow at first, but becoming
bright yellow and pencilled with deep red and
orange. Flesh tender and crisp, with highly
aromatic flavour.

71

SORTS.

GLORIA MUNDI.
HAWTHORNDEN.

HUBBARDSTON NoN-
SUCH.

JONATHAN.

KESWICK CODLIN.

KING OF TOMPKINS
COUNTY.

KING OF THE PIPPINS.
LATE BI/OOMER.

KLAPROTH.
LORD SUFFIELD.
MONMOUTH PIPPIN.
MERE DE MENAGE.

DESCRIPTION.

One of the largest apples. Showy for dessertr
rather than for use or profit.

An excellent market apple, cooking. Fruit above
medium, regularly formed, roundish and rather
flattened. Skin smooth, pale yellow and nearly
white in shade, but blush when exposed to sun.
Flesh white and of pleasant flavour.

Fine large apple. Fruit roundish, oblong,
narrower near the eye. Skin smooth, striped
with splashes of pale and bright red. Flesh
yellow, juicy, acidulous.

Beautiful dessert apple of good flavour. Medium
size, regularly formed, roundish conical, skin
thin and smooth, light yellow with red stripes,
deepening into dark red in sun. Flesh white.

A noted cooking apple. Fruit above medium,
rather conical, with a few obscure ribs. Skin
greenish yellow, with faint blush on one side.
Flesh white, juicy and pleasantly acid.

A valuable market fruit. Large size, globular,
inclining to conic. Colour yellowish, mostly
shaded with red, striped and splashed with
crimson Flesh yellowish with rich vinous-
flavour.

A medium sized apple, roundish, oblate, pale
yellow, mixed and striped with red. Flesh
firm, sharp, sub-acid.

A valuable late apple, probably a Cape seedling,,
hardy and prolific, resembles Astrakhan, but
of far finer flavour. Medium size, deep crimson.
Flesh crisp and juicy. A good keeper and
eminently fit for export.

An excellent market apple, medium size. Form
oblate. Skin _ greenish yellow, streaked and
stained with red. Flesh white, and very crisp >
pleasant sub -acid flavour.

Valuable cooking apple, recommended for ship-
ping. Fruit above medium size. Greenish
yellow with tinge of red in sun. Flesh white,
tender, firm, sub-acid.

Fruit large, oblate or slightly flattened at base
and crown. Colour pale yellow with a beauti-
ful warm cheek and russet dots. Flesh juicy,
fine, brisk, aromatic, sub-acid.

Fruit very large, conical, yellow, shaded and
striped with red. Flesh firm, crisp, juicy and
sub-acid. This is a good showy market apple.

72

SORTS.

NORTHERN SPY.

OSLIN.

PEASGOOD NONSUCH.
PUMPKIN SWEET.
RED ASTRAKHAN.

RHODE ISLAND
GREENING.

HOME BEAUTY.
RIBSTON PIPPIN.

ROXBURY RUSSET.
STURMER PIPPIN.

STRIPED WINTER
PEARMAIN.

SCARLET NONPAREIL.

*STONE PIPPIN.

DESCRIPTION.

One of the best dessert apples. Fruit large,
oblate, roundish, conical. Skin thin, smooth,
greenish pale in shade, but in sun marked
with pale dots. Flesh white, fine-grained,
tender. Roots blight-proof.

An excellent apple. Fruit below medium. Form
oblate. Colour, clear lemon yellow when quite
ripe, with few grayish green dots. Flesh
yellowish, firm and crisp.

A good keeping apple. Fruit large and of good
flavour, recommended both as a dessert and
cooking apple.

Large sweet apple. Roundish, furrowed near
the stalk. Colour pale green with whitish
streaks and dots. Flesh white and very sweet.

Handsome dessert apple. Fruit fairly large, very
smooth. Skin deep crimson and occasionally
a little russet near the stalk Flesh, white,
crisp, rich acid flavour.

A well known favourite apple. Fruit large,
roundish, a little flattened. Colour dark green,
becoming yellowish when ripe. Flesh yellow,
fine grained, tender, crisp, rich acid juicy
flavour.

A late apple. Fruit large, roundish, approaching
conic, yellow, shaded with bright red and light
dots. Flesh yellowish, tender, juicy, sub-acid.

A well known dessert apple. Fruit of medium
size, roundish, greenish yellow, mixed with
russet near the stalk, dull red on sunny side.
Flesh deep yellow, crisp and rich.

A popular table apple. Fruit above medium size,
a little flattened. Colour, brownish yellow
with faint blush on one side. Flesh greenish
'white, juicy with sub-acid flavour.

A dessert 'apple. Fruit below medium, oblate,
approaching conic. Yellow with a bronzed or
crimson cheek. Flesh compact, rich, sub-acid.
A good keeper.

An old variety. Fruit large and roundish, in-
clining to oblate. Yellow, striped with red
and gray dots. Flesh yellow, juicy, crisp and
sub -acid.

Dessert apple of medium size. Roundish, oblate,
conical. Whitish colour shaded with red.
flesh yellowish, white, firm and juicy ; sub-acid
flavour.

Good all round apple. Fruit medium size,
conical. Colour pale green, becoming yellow.
Flesh very firm, almost sweet.

73

SORTS. DESCRIPTION.

STIRLING CA.STLE. An excellent kitchen apple, keeps well. Fruit
large and showy.

"WARNER'S KING. Fruit very large, roundish, ovate, deep yellow
with russet dots and patches. Flesh white,
tender and crisp.

WELLINGTON. Late cooking apple, large, round, somewhat flat.

Yellowish white with red on sunny side. Flesh
firm, cri-p and juicy, with aromatic flavour.

WORCESTER PEAR- Dessert or cooking apple. Fruit medium size,
MAIN. handsome.

THE PEAR.

Of all fruits raised in the orchard the pear is the
which bears up most sturdily against neglect and ill-treat-
ment. Given an orchard, abandoned for a few years, the
first trees to die out are the tender peach and apricot, then
follows the orange. The apple comes next, over-run by
the hateful woolly aphis above and below ground. Lastly
comes the turn of the plum, exhausted by excessive sucker-
ing, and when it has dwindled from a tree to a stump with
a bush of water-shoots atop, the pear will often still keep
up a show of foliage, and perhaps still tempt the prowler
with a few fruits as reminiscences of former fertility. The
pear wants so little and gives so much.

The soil best adapted for the permanent growth of the
pear is a moderately strong loam with enough lime in it to
ensure its openness, situated upon a dry subsoil. It is im-
patient of flooding, and is put back by wet hanging about
the roots for want of free drainage. Soils that are ex-
ceptionally rich stimulate a rampant growth of wood in-
compatible with good bearing qualities. Apart from ex-
tremes, however, the pear is not nearly so fastidious as the
peach, and gives excellent results with any ordinary garden
soil kept reasonably open and well drained.

The pear is essentially a •' dessert '' fruit, and is of
somewhat more limited service than the apple. But it is
just as distinctly a "keeping" fruit. In some respects

74

even it has an advantage over the popular apple, if growers
know their business properly. Let us see what this
amounts to. Stated as a maxim resulting from experience,
it is that the pear is never delivered by the tree in a state
of perfection. The peculiar flavour of the choicest sorts,
for example, Beurre* Superfin, Beurre' Clairgeau or Duchesse
d'Angouleme, is not developed by the active chemistry of
the sunshine and air. To do justice to the fruit it must be
picked at an early outdoor stage of ripeness, and trans-
ferred to the lower temperature of a storehouse. There,
amid cool air and away from the light in closed boxes or
on shelves, the tissues have time to eliminate slowly the .
special amylic ethers which give the pear its distinction,
and melt down the insipid cell contents into a rich buttery
syrup. To eat pears from the tree is very poor epicurism,
and argues small knowledge of the capabilities of this
luscious dessert fruit. It is just such want of skilled judg-
ment in picking and skilled handling in the storeroom
which has led some to affirm that the climate of the Cape
is unfavourable to the production of any but the commoner
sorts of pear. The observation and experience of one season
devoted to learning the trick of the pear, as to precise
degree of out-ripeness, with dark storage to follow, would
settle once for all that easy libel on the land we live in.
And pray consider how this speciality of the pear plays
into the hands of the merchant, as if of direct intent.
There is nothing to prevent the storage-mellowing from
being given while the fruit is in transit. It may easily
be taken from the tree in the comparatively flavourless
condition at which it will just lift from the spur OH the
palm of hand being placed below, and gently pressed
against it, be packed in that state, and in due time come
to judgment at some distant market in the highest possible
condition — a mouthful for the gods. What more could a
fruit do to assist the market grower ?

If this speciality of the pear were universally known
and acted up to, the fruit would soon take its proper place
as a dessert delicacy of the highest class, and fine grown
specimens would sell at dessert prices. And as it is no
more costly to grow good fruit than bad, there would
probably be an end to the sackfuls of wretched little green

75

abortions which crowd our markets. The fruit-store or
ripening-house should be fitted with skeleton shelves made
of battens laid fairly open. These serve for ordinary fruit
requiring free circulation of air and some manipulation
from time to time. For pears, however, there should be
provided flat shallow boxes with a close flap-cover, hinged
on with leather strips. The depth will be about four
inches, and the length and breadth about 24 by 18 or 20
inches. On the bottom is laid a very thin layer of buck-
wheat chaff, if it can be had, or finely cut and dried new
straw. Over this goes a piece of cheap woollen stuff, and
on it the pears are laid, close but not touching. The cloth
is large enough to fold right over and cover the fruit com-
pletely. Then the lid flaps down and puts the pears in
the dark. According to the kind, a space of time varying
from three or four days to nearly as many weeks inter-
venes. All that is necessary is to remove any individual
pear that has suffered a bruise, undetected at time of stor-
ing, and is bletting. If allowed to remain it would injure
the flavour of its neighbours. In this way the fruit ripens
to a rich, buttery consistence, possesses the indescribably
delicious pear flavour in perfection, and takes the eye with a
smooth skin and a high golden colour never seen on the
fruit out of doors. There are many sorts which, without
such treatment, ripen only to a dry, mealy consistence,
flavourless, and even gritty. Winter pears of dessert
kinds should hang as long as possible on the tree, and then
be wrapped in paper, singly, and put away for keeping.
Batches of these, in their turn, are transferred, a fortnight
before use, to a warmer room at about 60° to 65°, and
with this rise of temperature they too become buttery in
consistence and full flavoured.

In the propagation of pears it is inadvisable to bud or graft
on the chance suckers which rise in the orchard from the
roots of other pears. Sucker stocks are generally poorly
rooted, and follow their kind in producing suckers them-
selves. They therefore do not do full justice to the scion.
It is far better to raise seedling stocks from strong, vigorous,
common varieties, avoiding seed of the choicer sorts, in which
the vegetative system has been more or less sacrificed to the
fruit-bearing function. The raising of good pear-stocks re-

76

quires more attention than is necessary for those intended
for other trees. The fruit should be quite ripe so that the
seeds come away from the flights of the core. It should not
be allowed to dry out, but should be drill-sown while still
s jf t in deep rich soil that has been previously trenched and
manured. If the ground has been enriched with a little
wood-ash, to supply potash salts, it will be all the better.
The seedlings then have a chance of vigorous growth dur-
ing the first year. This is all important, for if not secured,
the plants seldom turn out well subsequently, and one
often sees poor, starved lots of pear- stock seedlings, three
and four years old, raised anyhow in hungry soil, and,
despite their age, far less fit for use than stuff grown as
here suggested, and only twenty months from the sowing.
Budding is to be preferred to grafting, and there is
no tree which gives so few failures as the pear,
when in good condition, owing to the thickness of
the cambium layer on which the buds are worked. To
secure a large percentage of buds that take well, it is
important to have the stock as vigorous as possible, and
decidedly in advance of the vegetative stage to which the
bud -sticks have reached. This is secured by selecting the
bud-wood some five or six weeks prior to the season most
suitable for budding, and carefully laying in the twigs in a
sheltered, shady situation in good soil, where they will lie
by in a dormant condition while the stocks they are to serve
are getting well ahead of them. This adjustment of
forward stock-tissues to comparatively backward bud- tissues
is a rule of practice invariably observed by the skilled pro-
pagator.

The pear will take kindly to many stocks besides
its own. In England it is sometimes grafted on the white-
thorn for use in stiff, clayey soil, where pear roots would
not thrive. Some fanciers graft on the mountain-ash and
medlar. Even apple stocks will carry a pear graft, but the
accounts given of the result are contradictory. The
American authorities say a pear on apple stock is very short
lived, speedily killing itself with profuse fruiting. Stoll,
the director of the experiment station at Proskau, recom-
mends grafting of pear on vigorous young apple stocks, but
acknowledges that their early productiveness is counter-

77

balanced at tbe cost of longevity. . The current practice in
California, whose climate resembles our own, is to adhere
to the self -stock, mainly because the custom there is to
allow the trees to run up to standard size, often reaching
thirty or more feet high. It is true, doubtless, that more
fruit is produced by a given number of standard trees than
can be got off as many dwarfs. But it must be remem-
bered that an acre of land will carry many more dwarfs
than it will of standards, a consideration which pretty
nearly squares the comparison. Besides, with our violent
gales and curiously perfunctory orchard labour, fruit borne
aloft twenty to thirty feet above ground has scarcely one-
tenth of the chance of getting harvested safe and sound
that comes naturally to the fruit of dwarf trees hanging
barely out of reach of a long arm. Taking all things into
consideration, we are of opinion that at present the practice
of pear growers will be towards dwarf trees rather than
standards, and, in that case, self-stocks capable of use and
giving good results will not be greatly called for.

The dwarfing stock par excellence for the pear is the
quince. The pear bud takes kindly to it, grows vigorously,
and the resulting tree bears eaiiy and well. There are just
a few exceptional pear sorts which fail on the quince, and
of these note will be taken hereafter. But the general
statement holds good, and it may even be affirmed that
most of the very large pears whose weight renders them
liable to be shaken off by the greater swaying of the boughs
of standard trees, not only hold on better to the dwarf
growth, but are distinctly improved in their characteristic
Savour. Nor is this to be wondered at. There are two
distinct tendencies in the fruit-tree — one is for the main-
tenance of the purely vegetative life of the individual, the
other for reproduction of its kind by fruiting and conse-
quent seed. The former results in vigorous wood-tissue,
plentiful branching and abundant foliage, the latter natur-
ally runs to fruit-bearing. Given an orchard tree — pear
in this instance — which is not to be left to itself, but
artificially dealt with to the profit of its owner, it is clear
that the over-production of wood and foliage must be kept
back by skilful treatment. The need of that check on
vegetative tendencies is the raison d'etre of pruning. But

78

let the same tree be grafted or budded on a stock which
materially controls the ascent and descent of the sap, it is
equally clear that we obtain a further check on rampant
vegetative growth, and give an additional preponderance
to the reproductive fruit-bearing tendency. The tree
grows more of fruit and less wood. There too follows a
practical corollary of some importance. Soils which are
barely sufficiently fertile to give tolerable results with self-
stocks will not prove satisfactory with those of dwarfing
kinds unless assisted by judicious enrichments. The check
upon the vegetative individuality of the tree may easily be
carried too far if the poverty of the soil comes in as a
further negative factor. Hence the well-founded custom
of coupling rich soil with the use of dwarfing stock.

There are several sorts of quinces, as distinct as sorts of
apples of a given race. The question as to which one suits
this or that sort of pear has not yet been taken up in
earnest and worked out. Unfortunately the scientific habit
of recording the data of pomological work at the time it is
performed, and subsequently collating results years after-
wards, is exceptionally rare. Yet by such investigation of
results it would be easy ultimately to arrive at valuable
practical conclusions, and to be able to allot special quince
stocks to special categories of pears. Doubtless this will
be done some day. At present we are in the stage of
pomological ignorance, in which a quince is a quince, and
all quinces are alike. In France and Belgium, the pear
countries par excellence, the Angers quince is recognised
and selected for exceptional vigour. Most of those scattered
all over the Cape appear to be derived from the Orange
Quince, and occasionally one will meet with what seem to
be seedlings of the broad-leaved strong-growing Portugal
sort. Many of the better varieties have been imported
recently, and are now in the market. The celebrated fruit-
grower, Mr. Thomas Eivers, who was one of the first to intro-
duce cultivation of the pear on quince stocks, has a note upon
the disputed longevity of such trees. He says: " I have so
often heard from market gardeners and others the opinion.
' It is no use to plant pears on quince stocks for they will
not live long,' that whenever I have seen pear trees of
roature age, I have looked to the stock to ascertain its

79

nature, whether it was pear, quince or white thorn, for I
have known some healthy free-bearing pears grafted on
the latter. Thus at Deepdene, near Dorking, I observed a
number of fine pyramidal trees. They were all worked on
the quince, and the gardener assured me they had been
planted thirty-four years. They are very healthy and are
growing in a soil of the driest and lightest description.
Presuming that they were three years of age when planted,
they must be now nearly forty years old, and most cer-
tainly appear as if they would live and bear fruit for
twenty years to come. A light, porous soil overlying a
cool stratum is, I believe, the most favourable for the pear
or quince stock. Hence should the soil in which they are
to be planted be heavy and stiff, it should be corrected by
a light compost, or pears on pear stock substituted."

Allusions have been made to the dislike which some fine
sorts of pears seem to show to the quince stock, and the
consequent difficulty of getting a perfect union. This is
particularly marked with the Jargonelle, with Marie Louise
and Bergamot Gansel; less distinctly with Beurre' Clair-
geau, Beurre' Eance and Beurre' d'Angleterre. As a general
rule cleft- grafting has a better chance of success in these
cases than simple budding. But the more satisfactory
procedure is that of double grafting. Upon the quince
stock is first worked a vigorous pear sort which takes
kindly to it. After perfect union and sufficient growth,
generally two years, the pear shoot is headed back and
made to carry the bud or scion of the desired variety.
Thus the vigorous Beurre' d'Amanlis makes a most perfect
intermediary between quince aud Jargonelle and the two
others above-named. Other strong growing sorts — e.g.,
Beurre* Hardy, Yicar of Winkfield, Beurre' Noisette,
Lavinicu, Jaminette, Beurre' Yert — may be used to carry
more tender or more fastidious pear varieties, which, even
if they make a sound, direct union with the quince stock,
are rendered thereby slow of growth.

In this system of over-grafting, with its opportunities
for new combinations, there is a great field open for ex-
perimental trials, and the last word respecting pear-
culture on dwarfing stocks has by no means been said. A
well known scientific gardener, Mr. F. W. Burbidge, draws

80

the attention of amateurs to this promising branch of en-
quiry, and points to the results already obtained by his
contemporary, Dancer of Chiswick, whose garden sends
out annually hundreds of baskets of the very finest dessert
pears to the London markets from bush trees all worked
upon the quince stock. He declares " there is no compari-
son between fruit produced on standard or orchard trees on
the pear or free-stock, and that from bush trees on the
quince."

Pears.

NAMES.
BON CHRETIEN .

DESCRIPTION.

Fruit large, obtuse pyriform, irregular and bos-
sed in its outline. Skin smooth, pale green but
ripening to clear yellow, tinged with streaks of
red in sun. Flesh white, fine grained and
tender, musky and vinous in flavour. A des-
sert pear of the highest merit.

BEFRRE CLAIRGEAU. Fruit large and very handsome. Curved pyri-
form. Skin smooth and shining, lemon yellow,
tinged with orange and red in sun. Flesh
white and crisp or half melting, sugary, vinous,
perfumed.

BEURRE Bosc. Dessert pear of high quality. Fruit large, pyri-

form, dark yellow, streaked with cinnamon,
russet. Flesh white, melting and buttery,
slightly perfumed.

BEURR& HARDY. A large dessert pear of great excellence Oblong-
obovate or pyramidal. Skin yellowish green,
covered with russet dots. Flesh white salmon
tinted, melting and juicy, acidulous with de-
licious perfume.

CLAPP'S FAVOURITE. Fruit large, obtusely pyriform, surface uneven.
Skin pale lemon yellow, splashed with crimson
and fawn on sunny side. Flesh white, grained
and juicy, buttery, melting, good flavour,
delicate, like Bon Ctnetien but not musky.

DOYENNE DU COMICE. One of the best. Fruit large, roundish, pyri-
form. Skin greenish-yellow, clearing when
mature, and often shaded with crimson, and
patches of russet dotted about. Flesh white,
fine, melting, sweet, rich and aromatic.
Grand dessert pear of large size. Fruit very
large, oblong-obovate with uneven surface.
Skin dull greenish-yellow spotted with russet,
sun side red. Flesh white, juicy, buttery with
rich flavour.

DUOIIESSE D'ANGOU-

LEME.

81

NAMES.
EASTER BEURRE.

FlORBLLE.

FERTILITY.

IDAHO.

JOSEPHINE DE MA-
LINES.

LOUISE BONNE.

MARIE LOUISE.

SOUVENIR DU CON-
ORES.

SECKEL.

WINTER NELIS.

DESCRIPTION.

One of the best late pears. Fruit large, obtusely-
obovate, roundish. Skin yellowish- green,
sprinkled with russety dots, brownish cheek.
Flesh white, fine grained, very buttery, with a
sweet and rich flavour.

Most attractive dessert fruit of a speckled
appearance. Fruit oblong-obovate and smooth,
at first green, but yellow when ripe, with deep
red on sunny side. Flesh white, fine-grained,
buttery, melting and good.

A profitable market pear, abundant cropper.
Fruit medium size. Flesh half melting, juicy
and sweet with a highly perfumed flavour.

An American pear of the largest size. Fruit
roundish with russety spots, colour, greenish
yellow. Flavour rich and vinous.

Fruit above medium. Skin yellow with greenish
tinge, but red on sunny side and covered with
russet spots. Flesh yellowish red, melting and
very- juicy, sugary, vinous and richly flavoured.

Most delicious pear of medium size, oblong-pyri-
form. Skin smooth, greenish yellow on the
shaded side and red on side next the sun,
covered with red and russety dots. Flesh
white, buttery and melting, very prolific.

Fruit large, oblong. Skin smooth, pale green,
changing to yellow, marked with tracings of
russet. Flesh white, delicate, buttery, rich and
sweet vinous flavour.

A very handsome pear. Fruit large, oblate,
uneven and undulating in its outline. Skin
smooth and coveied with cinnamon russet.
Streaks of crimson on sun side. Flesh yellowish
white, tender, very juicy and melting, resemb-
ling the Bon Chretien.

One of the richest flavoured pears. Spicy and
honey flavoured. Fruit small, regular, obovate.
Skin brownish green, after ripening turning to
dull yellow with russet red cheek. Flesh
white, buttery a* d juicy.

A good keeping winter pear. Fruit medium size,
roundish, obovate. Skin yellowish green dotted
with grey russet. Flesh yellowish white, fine-
grained, aromatic, buttery and very melting.

82
THE PLUM.

The chief practical difficulty in the growing of plums
of sorts, grown as formerly on the plum stock, was the
vast proportion of suckers sent out. The portion of the
orchard given up to them used to become full of these waste
shoots in a very few years. To avoid this result, many
growers used peach stocks. It was found that only a
limited number of plum sorts would thrive on that stock,
and, moreover, there was always the objection that unless
the ground is thoroughly drained the peach roots are apt
to die off. Everybody now knows the way peach trees in
heavy soils are apt to fail, though the cause is put down to
'< yellows " or anything else rather than to the want of a
well aerated root-bed. Both difficulties are avoided — the
former completely, the latter to some extent, by the use of
the myrobolan as a stock. It does not sucker out, and it is
not so tender at the root as the peach. On the whole it
may be recommended as the best general resource for
average soils. At the same time in places where the soil is
light and sandy, it may be advisable to use the peach for
stocks, and the grower must decide on the course he takes,
by observation of the growth and success of these two
trees on their own roots in established orchards in the
locality in which he intends to begin planting. Formerly
the apricot was a favourite stock, but it is now very pro-
perly disused. It makes a very indifferent union with the
plum, and when the tree has got up high enough to catch
the wind it generally breaks away at the joints. But
whenever the soil is retentive through a large percentage
of clay, the Myrobolan will give the best results. Wickson
points out the variability of success of the plum upon
peach, apricot and almond, and it would appear that not
only is difference of soil an element in the matter, but
also there are certain plums which will not succeed upon a
given stock while others answer admirably. He therefore
recommends, as an all-round stock, the use of the Myrobo-
lan (which practically places the plum upon its own roots)
until such time as experiment shall have shown the special
fitness of some other stock in the locality which may be in
question-.

85

It must be remembered that the plum is by no means
easy to bud or graft in a very dry climate. Care must
therefore be taken to choose not only the precise season for
the rising of the sap in the stock, but also to judge of the
local weather which prevails at the time of taking the job
in hand. Insert the buds, by preference, on the south side
of the stock, work quickly, and tie somewhat more tightly
than is usual with other buds.

Comparatively speaking, the plum is a very hardy tree
and equable in its growth, which never reaches above a
moderate height. It may therefore be permitted to run to
the standard shape, if the particular variety tends that way.
Most varieties will balance themselves pretty uniformly if
the ordinary care be taken the first year or two in shaping
the head. The plum will allow of a larger number of
principals to be" left after the second year, and this
will result in making the usual bushy or pyramidal
head. The plum really requires very little pruning beyond
thinning out a too crowded head, which is almost all the
winter pruning that the tree will bear ; in the summer a
pinching back and thinning out of the laterals is recom-
mended. The object is to produce as many as possible of
the short spurs which carry the fruit. Hence such long
straight laterals as may be retained must be shortened in
to at least half their length, and upon them the expected
spurs will begin to start ready to carry the next year's
crop. At the apex of these laterals new growths will be
formed in their turn, and such of these as are retained
must be treated in the same way.

Perhaps the most important feature in plum growing is
the production, on a commercial scale, of the dried prunes.
It is probable that the output of this wholesome and excel-
lent product will in a few years double itself again and
ugain, while the growing of plums for market for ripe fruit
will have but little significance. The best imported French
prunes are made of the Prune D'Agen, Brignole or Maitre
Claude. But other kinds of plums are also used. The
fruit is gathered when just ripe enough to come away
easily, and laid without touching on frames of lath. On
these it is exposed for several days to the sun until quite
soft. Every example that is the least touched by insects

G 2

84

or bruised is carefully picked out. The frames are then
arranged in a slack oven, closed up, and left for twenty-
four hours. The fruit is then taken out, turned and picked
while the oven is being reheated to a somewhat higher
degree than before. Again the fruit goes in for the same
length of time, removed and examined. A third time the
oven is heated, and after remaining in it for a third twenty-
four hours, the fruit is finally removed and left to get quite
cold. Each separate prune is then rounded up by turning
the stone in the plum without breaking the skin, and
pressing the two ends together with the finger and thumb.
The frames carrying the manipulated fruit are now returned
to the oven for an hour. On withdrawal a pan of water is
set on the floor of the oven, and left for about two hours,
or till the space is filled with vapour. A final stoving for
twenty-four hours in this medium finishes the operation.

THE ORANGE.

If there are any fruits respecting which the Cape grower
should by this time have accumulated a good working
experience, they are — first, the grape, and second, the
orange. It will hardly be said that the culture of the
latter has been dealt with skilfully. Success and failure
both seem to have come by the chances of site and soil in
most instances, and there appears to have been little con-
sideration of the requirements of the tree and careful
selection of places where those conditions will be fulfilled.

Perhaps the first datum to be taken in orange culture is
the character of the tree itself as compared with the average
run of orchard trees, such as the apple and the pear. When
experienced gardeners talk of this difference, they will tell
you that citrus trees must be dealt with more or less as
\ard-wooded stuff. To them that phrase means a good deal,
and implies doing many things and not doing many others,
care respecting which is not so much required with soft-
wooded stuff. The root-system is far more delicate and
finely fibrous than in the latter. There is therefore

85

demanded special care in the preparation of the soil and in
the drainage and aeration. Perhaps this touchy fastidious
disposition reaches its climax in heaths, azaleas and rhodo-
dendrons. So short is the portion of their root-fibres that
is physiologically active, that a very slight deprivation of
the air they require brought about by over- water ing, or a
temporary lack of moisture, is enough to kill them. The
gardener therefore makes his potting composts for these
plants very porous by the addition of fibrous peat and sand,
is extra careful to have plenty of drainage- crocks at the
bottom of the pots, and to water just enough and no more
at short intervals. Now the orange and the citrus tribe
generally are far from being equally fanciful, but their con-
ditions of health and longevity — so far as the roots are
concerned — are precisely similar in kind to those of the
above typical series of plants, and differ only in degree.
Consequently citrus-culture, to be a permanent success,
must be founded upon fulfilment of these natural peculi-
arities of the tribe. All citrus trees require certain special
cares in planting from the nursery. Their roots are natu-
rally horizontal in direction and spread near the surface,
keeping to the best and most fully aerated part of the soil.
It follows that in planting, the roots should be spread well
out upon the bottom of a hole of proportionately large
diameter, and made to radiate as equally as possible. If
the locality requires that the tree be supported for the first
few years because of prevailing winds, the stake, with its
lower end charred to preserve it, may be driven down into
the subsoil at the time of planting, and thus the operator
will escape the chance of destroying a principal root-branch
by forcing it in blindfold after he has covered up the roots
out of sight. As these trees are liable to gumming and
bark- canker at the collar if it be kept wet, it is of great
importance that they be not set deeper than they had pre-
viously stood in the nursery. There will always be a little
settlement after planting, because the earth employed in
filling is very loose, and this sinking may be allowed for
within reasonable limits.

Whatever has been said respecting the physical charae-
ter of a perfect soil, viz., the loose texture of its particles
admitting air throughout the mass, their surface attraction

86

causing a water-film to envelope each without closing up
the air-ways around it, and the absence of colloidal clay to
interfeie with capillarity, applies to the requirements of an
orangery with more force than to those of an ordinary
orchard. Where the OAvner has to complain of the gradual
decay of his citrus trees, one dying out after another,
there are mostly two causes at work, acting singly or to-
gether. They are — unsuitable conditions of soil and
treatment, and — insect and fungous plagues.

The whole citrus tribe differ considerably from the
ordinary orchard trees in their relation to the yearly out -
put of new wood, foliage and fruit. Hence they cannot
be treated in the routine methods of pruning which have
been described, nor can they be shaped to the truncated
cone pattern which answers so well with dwarf trees gener-
ally. It is absolutely necessary to encourage the axial
growth and thus have a tree with a more or less pyramidal
outline. This varies considerably by lengthening of
laterals^ so that the pyramid may become very obtuse at
the top, or the head may tend towards a globular shape.
But in all cases well-grown examples keep their main axis
undisturbed, and naturally resemble the style given to
other trees by pruning to standards. Generally speaking,
citrus trees balance their growth very evenly if they have
started well and are in a suitable aspect ; consequently,
the pruning knife has but little call to interfere. All that
is necessary is to cut out dead wood and the long ill-placed
wastrels which often fill up the centre of the tree and pre-
vent sufficient access of air and light. Whenever a cut-
has to be made near an inch in diamater, the edges should
be carefully pared all round, so as to ensure adherence of
the bark along the line of section, and the wound brushed
over with a little oil- varnish or a solution of shellac in-
spirit. Tar should not be used, except as a matter of make-
shift. Mature trees blossom and bear the fruit very near the
end of the branchlets, and the next season's fruiting growths
start from behind as new laterals, which overtake the previous
season's bearing-twigs, just beyond them, and fruit in their
turn. It is this peculiarity which produces the evenly rounded
outline of a well grown citrus tree, and also renders un-
necessary the continual shortening in which is required for

87

the peach and similar trees. In case a branch of unusual
vigour should push out so as to interfere with the balance
of the head, it is best to cut it well behind the average
length of its neighbours, and if possible, to a shoot on the
lower side. By this means the vacancy will be sooner and
more regularly filled up, and the common outline restored.
But let it be remembered that the citrus tribe are impatient
of the knife, and that one cause of the failure of many
orchards is the original mistake of setting the little nurs-
lings too close, say twelve feet apart, when first planted,
and subsequently being obliged to keep catting at them
when they mature and begin to jostle each other with a
bare six feet of space left to each all round. The prophetic-
eye of the planter should see as in a vision what the trees
will become in a dozen years time and give them fair play
and full twenty feet or more to divide between the future
spread of every pair.

The ease with which some kind of an orange may be
obtained by growing the seed, has, just as in the case of
the ppach, been the cause of the Colony being furnished to
a very large extent with trees bearing indifferent fruit. Of
these the most common seem to be derived from the well-
known Bahia orange of Brazil. Over fifty years ago one
of the patriarchs of fruit growing at the Cape, Mr. Joachim
Brehm of Uitenhage, became much dissatisfied with the
low class of orange then grown in the Eastern Province,
and introduced direct from Eio several young trees of the
true Bahia. From these, by careful bud-propagation large
numbers of this variety were dispersed far and wide, and
although the pernicious habit of allowing seedlings to fruit
has deteriorated the market supply, yet this most excellent
orange is in high favour and buds or grafts are readily
obtainable. Other seedling sorts are rather to be referred
to the large St. Michael and the Portugal orange. It
would therefore appear that the Colony possessed in the
first instance excellent named sorts of this delicious fruit,
but by the cultural error of propagating by seed, a mongrel
race has sprung up which does justice neither to the ex-
ceptionally suitable climate of the Cape nor to the possi-
bilities of the fruit itself.

88

It may be worth while to quote the words of an eminent
Florida grower upon this point. He says : " Do not let any
man or number of men in a pomological convention induce
you to establish a seedling orange grove. If you do, you
will some of these fine days wake up from a Eip Yan
Winkle dream and find yourself as far behind the age
and times as he is represented to have been. No two
seedling orange trees will ever produce fruit exactly alike.
Consequently your fruit will become promiscuous and varir
able in character and quality. You know what bad busi-
ness that is. Your neighbours, who have selected known
and uniform varieties, will find a more ready demand and
sale at full 50 per cent, advance on what you can get for
your mixed promiscuous fruit. Besides budded trees fruit
much earlier than seedlings. We choose certain standard
varieties, noted for their fruitfulness and excellence, and
reject all others. Then we bud on two-year old seedling
stocks, and invariably get fruit in two years. Now,
seedling trees may be eight, nine, or even ten years in
coming into bearing, and after all this delay one only gets
20 dollars per thousand for them, while 40 to 50 dollars per
thousand come easily for our selected varieties. They are
nearly twice as fruitful as the seedlings, and in some in-,
stances produce four times as much. We bud the Navel
(that is the Bahia), St. Michael, the Blood Orange, and the
Mandarin. The sooner your Calif ornian fruit-growers
understand this the better it will be for them."

So much for making a judicious selection of two or three
sorts and growing them only. Which are these to be ?
And are there no nameless fruits here and there in the
Colony which are good enough for the purpose ?

It is perfectly true that amid the multitude of seedlings
which have arisen here growers have, as was to be expected,
had the luck to raise a few good sorts equal to many that
are preconized and made so much of in Australia and
Florida. Perhaps one in a couple of thousand may be
worth perpetuating, and the lucky raisers who can bring
them forward as equal to the Bahia, the Mediterranean
Sweet, or the small St. Michael, and find their judgment
endorsed by experienced buyers, had better at once dis-
tinguish them by a name and give them a permanent

89

standing on the local market. But in all these cases the
essential points of smoothness of skin, thinness of rind and
rag, juiciness of sections and tenderness of membrane,
besides the sweet liveliness of flavour that goes to a good
orange must be present. Otherwise it would be far better
to let the seedling be lost in the crowd.

Sorts of Oranges Recommended.

Bahia. — Fruit large, solid and heavy ; skin fine in tex-
ture, smooth, fairly thin ; pulp firm, very juicy and full
flavoured, nearly seedless; central pith small. Tree of
medium height and moderately thorny, rapid in growth,
rather tender in cold localities. Seedlings of this fine
variety are to be found nearly everywhere, and are mostly
poor descendants wandering away from the original type.
The Americans have changed the name of this orange to
Washington Navel for patriotic or trade reasons, but the
history of its introduction into the States from Babia is
perfectly well known. There is no reason why Cape
growers should follow suit in changing the name under
which it was introduced to them by Mr. Brehm long pre-
viously. It is known to pomologists as the " Bahia," and
occasionally, eastward, it gets on our markets the local
name of nipple orange. The choice lies between these two,
and the former is the better name.

An Australian variety, probably a lucky seedling and
one of the thousand, is known as the Australian Navel. Its
flavour is as good as the prototype, but it pollinates badly
and is apt to cast its fruit when about half an inch in
diameter. Another peculiarity is that the fruit is variable
in size, large and small examples of equal ripeness growing
together. The nipple is comparatively large and promi-
nent, and the fruit will often split at the junction with the
true skin. These characteristics will mark it out as a sort
to be avoided.

St. Michael. — Fruit round, large and slightly oblate,
solid ; rind thin, close texture ; pulp close but not hard,
membranes tender, generally with a few small seeds.
Alters much according to locality. In congenial situations,
with proper shelter, it is very prolific ; but in cold, high

90

situations it becomes shy of bearing, and the rind thickens
considerably. Many indifferent seedlings of this sort exist
at the ?ape, and show a coarse skin, loose abundant rag
and tough membranes enclosing numerous seeds.

St. Michael (Paper-rind variety}. — Fruit small, globular,
very firm and juicy, and of excellent flavour ; rind thin
and pale, rag insignificant. Being a late ripen er and slow
to drop from the tree it is a good sort for local sale. The
fruits are singularly uniform in size, hence they pack and
travel well. The tree is a good bearer and much hardier
than its namesake. It is of dwarf size and therefore is
well adapted for garden growth.

Valencia Late.— This is much like the Paper-rind St..
Michael in texture, thin rind and juicy firmness. It is
however larger and somewhat ovoid. The tree does not
begin to bear so soon as most budded varieties, and this
peculiarity is in its favour, for it is thereby enabled to
mature its vegetative growth without being checked by pre.-
cocious fruiting.

Mediterranean Sweet,— Fruit excellent, ripening late,
varying from medium to large, skin smooth, pulp firm,
seeds few. The tree is rather dwarf, and as thorny as the
Paper-rind. It generally requires thinning to prevent
overbearing.

Joppa, — Eaised in California from seeds obtained in
Syria. Fruit large, uniform, firm, ringed at the summit,
riiid thin, and deep orange red, seeds few or none. An
early and abundant cropper of tall vigorous growth, leaves
large. An excellent all round fruit, fit for export, being
fairly sweet and flavoured before colouring.

Maltese Blood. — Many seedling varieties of unequal
merit are to be found at the Cape. The fruit of the best
sorts is rather small or medium, distinctly oval, with
medium rind and pulp mottled with red. It is advisable
to see and judge of the fruit before accepting buds or
scions of any particular tree for propagation. The curiosity
of the red pulp often leads the owner to overlook the dis-
ability of a thick, spoagy rind, and to offer material
decidedly dear even at a gift.

Bitter Seville or Bigarrade. — This is the tallest and
hardiest of the orange genus, and will stand very cold

91

winters if protected from the wind and irrigated intelli-
gently. Its flowers are the source of the valuable 01. Neroli,
which some day perhaps we may turn to account. The
fruit is of medium size, smooth, with a thin fragrant rind,
and but little rag ; pulp very bitter and acidulous. It is
the only proper material for making first-class marmalade,
a preserve which is intended to be .a sort of pick-me-up, or
incitement to a breakfast appetite. Here it is often made
of the common market oranges, and is mawkish to a degree.
The function of the pure bitterness is lost. It is as if one
should preserve olives in syrup. The great value of the
Bigarrade is however as a bearing stock, for which its
robust constitution and non-liability to disease specially
adapt it. Much has been written on this head, and pro-
bably in a few years we shall hear very little of citrus
fruits on lemon stocks, except as a history of the past.

Mandarin or " Naartje."— This orange is as distinct a
species from the ordinary orange as is the lemon or the lime.
It is one of the citrus trees which, like the peach among
stone fruits, rises from seed with comparatively less loss
of inherited qualities. Seedling Naartjes of good quality
are pretty frequent, but it is not advisable to have recourse
to growing from seed except for stocks. A fairly long ex-
perience of this delightful little tree goes to show that
fruiting seedlings are very apt to prove capricious bearers,
giving a bouncing crop for one or two years and then next
to nothing for the next year. Sometimes they refuse to
set their blossoms or even to blossom at all. These dis-
abilities do not occur with trees budded from good select
kinds.

The sorts are very imperfectly known by name here.
The Emperor Mandarin is decidedly the best of all, both
for quality and fruitfulness. The fruit is much flattened,
rind deep orange, delicate, fragrant, closely adherent to
the segments. What rag exists is close textured instead
of being fluffy and loose. The pulp is deep orange in
colour, juicy, and at once deliciously sweet and acidulous.
The tree is the largest leaved of its kind. The Thorny
Mandarin is a variety of the Emperor with a different habit,
as its name imports, and a smaller leaf. It is specially
hardy and bears freely, but the fruit is small. The quality
of the pulp however is not inferior.

92

The Scarlet Mandarin. —This is a larger-sized tree
with a tendency at first to make axial growth and after-
wards to spread out lateralty. The fruit is fairly large,
often equal to the Emperor, sometimes obscurely ridged
like a tomato. The rind is deep dull red, not so lively in
fragrance as the other sorts, and ultimately becomes almost
detached from the sections, giving the fruit an unpleasant
podgy feel. The rag is loose, fragmentary and scattered,
and the flavour is more or less mawkish, wanting acidity
and crispness. Of the Mandarins, however, it is the tree
which best will stand tropical heat. For Cape growing, it
is not to be named as a competitor of the cling-rind
Emperor.

THE LEMON.

The Lemon has not been much of a success at the Cape.
There has been little effort till lately to get first-class
known and marketable varieties, and the plague of seedlings
has had more visible effect on the market lemon than on
the orange. It is truly pitiful to see the large imports of
Sicilian and Lisbon lemons coming over six thousand miles
by sea to the country which could grow them quite as well,
if not better, than either of the countries exporting them.

The lemon is considerably more delicate in constitution
than the orange. It will neither put up with sudden vicis-
situdes of climate nor the alternations of care and neglect
which the orange would more or less successfully support.
The proof of this fact is to be found in many a garden and
orchard where the citrus trees are going back from year to
year. The lemons invariably die out first.

"With regard to climatic conditions, the lemon cannot be
expected to give profitable results in localities where sharp
spells of frost are to be dreaded in winter. As little will
it thrive in those nooks of hot and humid coast-land, where
we ought to be growing pine-apples and bananas. Pro-
bably the altitude of the upper plateau, 3,000 to 5,000 feet
above the sea, will, except in a few sheltered and excep-
tional localities, never produce the lemon in perfection.
The base of the first slope inland and the plateau^above the

93

elevation being from about 700 or 800 feet to a maximum
of 2,000 feet will supply the conditions requisite for pro-
ducing perfect lemons. It must be remembered that the
fruit is somewhat peculiar. It has to mature and ripen,
but that ripening process stops short of the conversion of
fruit acid into sugar, a change which constitutes ripeness
in almost all other fruits. Hence a cool summer and a
short duration of autumnal heat is sufficient for its needs,
while under such conditions the orange would fail to attain
its maximum sweetness. In fact, the lemon belt of a
country like the Cape Colony cannot quite coincide with
the orange belt, and there will always be many localities
where one of the two fruits comes to perfection, while the
other fails to do more than reach mediocrity. If, however,
the lemon must necessarily be grown together with the
orange, it is more important to avoid winter cold than great
summer heat. The slower continuous maturing required
for the former may to a certain extent be provided by a
skilful storage, ripening following an early period of
gathering from the tree.

The Cape custom of using the lemon as a stock for the
orange has led to the multiplication of seedling lemon trees.
So much has been written upon this subject, and the uni-
versal practice of European countries has so emphatically
endorsed the wisdom of using the Bigarrade or Bitter
Seville Orange as the healthiest and strongest citrus stock,
that little additional remark need be made here. It is on
this stock that even the lemon itself should always be
worked, and, owing to its hardiness and powerful root-
system, the fruit may be successfully grown on it in situa-
tions where on its own roots it would miserably fail.

Hence in purchasing budded lemons of named sorts, a
warranty should be required from the nurseryman that the
stock is the bitter Seville.

What has been said of the orange as to planting and
general care applies equally to the lemon, with but little
difference. Its bark is perhaps somewhat more apt to
damage from sun-scalding, and hence it is advisable to
train it to a lower branch-growth for self -protection. It is
also more prone to make long useless water- shoots, and
these are far better pinched out at an early stage than left
for the seasonal pruning.

94
Sorts of Lemons recommended.

Lisbon or Portugal Lemon. — Fruit of medium size and
fairly uniform, rind smoothly grained, not bitter, pulp
juicy and briskly acid, seeds few, keeps well, and is avail-
able longer than any other sort. Tree rather large, strong
growing, fruitful, very thorny when young.

Sicilian. — Medium size, rind smooth, thin, dense and
tough, not bitter, membranes thin, pulp juicy, strongly
acid, fragrant, tree prolific.

Villa 'Franca. — Fruit medium, pointed oblong, rind thin,
not bitter, pulp juicy and strongly acid, seeds feAV. Tree
hardy, spreading, somewhat drooping, nearly thornless. One
of the finest lemons known. Keeps well.

o

THE CITEON.

The Citron is as large a tree as the Bigarrade or Bitter
Seville orange, and is even handsomer in appearance. It
is very hardy, and will do well throughout the whole
region which we have termed the orange belt. The flowers
are large and purplish on the outside. The fruit is oblong
and rather clumsy in appearance, frequently growing very
large and weighing as much as three or four pounds. The
skin of the fruit, when fit for plucking is of a beautiful
waxy green tint which, if left upon the tree turns ulti-
mately to a bright clear yellow. There is a very consider-
able thickness of rind within, which is coarse and only
slightly bitter. The subacid pulp is useless. It is the
rind alone which gives value to the fruit, being prepared
as a confectionery sweetmeat, by the process known as
candying. The considerable imports of candied citron peel
into this Colony show veiy plainly that a citron grove
would pay a good return for outlay and labour, for there is
now no lack of manufacturing confectioners here who know
how to turn it to the best account. The tree comes fairly
true from seed, but should be budded from first-class
selected varieties upon the bitter Seville stock to ensure
hardiness.

95
THE FIG.

Of all fruit trees the Fig is perhaps the least particular
as to soil. It will give good results in almost any soil
capable of cultivation and not hopelessly barren. It has
therefore a wide range of usefulness, and one is surprised
to find it so sparingly brought forward commercially.
Wherever in this Colony the winter minimum temperature
never sinks so low as to kill the tree with frost, one may
depend upon getting a summer heat quite sufficient to ripen
the fruit. But, of course, the places where the fruit can
be grown to a market profit will lie far within this winter
extreme. Moreover, not every sort of fig which will grow
and bear well will fulfil the conditions required for a first-
class drying fruit. Many excellent table sorts are of no
use for drying purposes, and it is to the production of a
first-class dried fig that the grower has to turn his efforts.

Table figs by reason of their softness and speedy break-
ing up can only have a limited market area. Besides, the
fig harvest is apt to come on with a rush, to glut the mar-
ket, and disappear. Hence low prices induced by ever}'
man's anxiety to sell during the few weeks of the season.
This peculiarity leads naturally to the device of selecting
for the main crop the sorts which are found to dry best,
and thus get a permanently valuable return which may
without deterioration be held to await a rise of prices.

Besides choice of sorts in the above point of view, it
must be understood that the cultivation must likewise be
directed to the same end. A drying fig must be large.
The little, hard buttons often shown as Cape figs will not
do at all, except as dreadful examples of what to avoid.
But, with a good average size, there must be firmness of
fiesh and no excess of moisture. Hence the cultivator has
to exercise a wary judgment in the use of irrigation water.
It must be run in when wanted by the trees — not simply
when the owner's turn comes round. Excess of watering,
even when the drainage is perfect, as it very seldom is,
tends to produce fruit which dries slowly, shrinks greatly,
and becomes tough, or, if the soil has been richly manured,
may even cause the trees to run away to mere wood and

96

foliage. These points are here made out to show that if
figs good enough for eating while fresh may be grown
without intelligent care and thoughtful suiting of means
to the end required, it is far from being the case with figs
for drying.

The fig tree will get up, if permitted, to a very large
size. Calif ornian writers tell us of historic fig trees of 11
feet in circumference of trunk at the ground level, and 9
feet a yard from the ground. Fig groves are described
shutting out the sunlight and making a shady twilight
as of a cave. We have not these wonders to describe
in our newspapers, and it is perhaps just as well we
are without them. One occasionally sees examples 20
to 30 feet in height, but they are generally solitaires
that have grown large through mere letting alone on suit-
able situations where they have not been encouraged to
bulk thus large of set purpose. If at all numerous, such
trees would require to be set out over thirty feet apart, and
great waste of space would ensue. As with other orchard
culture, it will be found that dwarf trees are most econo-
mical both of land and labour, and their produce is far
more easily and safely brought to the basket. The follow-
ing is advice from a practical grower : — " Figs are long-
lived and strong growing trees, and should be planted
further apart than any other fruit trees, especially the
strong growing kinds like the Large Purple and White
Adriatic. Others, as the White Ischia, are not such strong
growers, and may be planted closer, but even they want
plenty of room. I would recommend planting from twenty
to thirty feet apart. Then fill in between with vines,
peaches, plums or quince — something that can be taken out
at the end of eight or ten years, or as soon as the fig trees
want all the space. The fig and grape do well together,
and I should prefer grapes as a filling if the land is adapted
to grape-growing."

The fig is mostly propagated by suckers or by cuttings.
The treatment of these is precisely the same as that well
known and practised here with vine- cuttings. They,
however, are more liable than those of the vine to dry out,
and should be indulged with some of the extra care which
distinguishes the garden from the vinejard. If fine

97

imported varieties have to be dealt with and many plants
raised from a small supply of material, the one- eye fig
•cuttings, with bottom heat and over-head frames, will
succeed quite as well as will one-eye vine cuttings.
Budding and grafting can also be done, if desired, but
quickness and an assured skill arc required just as with all
other milky-juiced plants. Experienced gardeners, how-
ever, rightly discourage these methods of propagating,
because of the impossibility of preventing the fig stock
from perpetually asserting itself with abundant suckers,
and they will probably never be carried out here save to
utilize trees that remain persistently barren year after year.
'Young fig-cuttings which _have struck recently are rather
tender to transplant. No time, therefore, should be lost in
transfer from the nursery to the orchard ground, and
special care should be taken in packing for transit.

Growers are not agreed to the height at which young
trees should be headed back, but on the whole the dwarf-
ing plan is recommendable. The rampant growth of the
fig demands that not more than three leader shoots should be
allowed to remain, and these should very equally divide
the circle of the future head. Cutting to inside buds in
the early shaping is the general rule to correct the some-
what natural sprawling growth of the tree, and when the
outline is once obtained pruning is very little required save
to cut out here and there an ill-placed branch which
-crosses its neighbours.

Fig Drying. — There has been very little written respect-
ing the drying of figs in the pages of the Agricultural
Journal. Hence, though not exactly in accordance with
the plan of this little treatise, it may be well to give a
few remarks upon the practice as carried on elsewhere.

Supposing the sorts have been selected and grown to
perfection. The preparation of first-class dried figs begins
with the gathering. No heavy-handed clumsy person can
pick figs — they must be handled delicately if they are to do
.any good. Every one must have the stem well on, all being
rejected that are broken off leaving it behind on the tree.
Pick into a light wire or chip basket hanging on the left
arm, for fig-picking requires both hands. From the basket
the fruit is laid carefully on the drying trays, all pointing

98

the same way, and none touching its neighbour. In doing
this, have a keen eye to the grading for size, and average
them to first, second and common as you lay them out.
When enough trays are filled to make a full charge
for the sulphuring chamber, run them in, set out enough
sulphur to burn for twenty minutes and let them stop in the
fumes for one hour. Then remove them into the sunshine
on supports of a height convenient for the frequent hand-
turning the figs require. Every fruit has to be attended
to separately, and when one side bleaches out the other
must be turned up. At sundown they must be run under
cover. In about three days, with good drying weather,
they will be so far dried out that they can be " rolled/' as
it is called, between the fingers- and thumb to equalise the
softness of the contents, but the greatest care and dexterity
is required for the first rolling lest the skin be broken.
After another day's drying, they are rolled again, and witl
bear a good deal more force. The manipulation ends by
pulling each fig out even and flattening it just as the Turkey
figs in the boxes appear. In another day, or perhaps two,
the fruit is what is technically termed " dry," that. is,
properly cured for keeping. But the word " dry " does
not mean dry in the usual sense. The fig is still soft,
yielding fruity glucose-laden tissue. You can of course
keep it out in the sun a week longer, and dry out of it all
the moisture. The skin will be as tough as biltong, the
flavour utterly gone and the fig itself fit only for the knob
of a walking stick or a coat button. Once overdried, figs
cannot be restored to softness. The curing having pro-
ceeded far enough the trays are stacked one above the?
other in a shed or storehouse for a day or two. The figs
are then, packed into the " sweating boxes," in which they
remain loosely lying for a few days, turning the contents
upside-down every day. That is for the purpose of averag-
ing mutually their amount of natural moisture. The next
process is packing. The figs are prepared for this by dip-
ping in hot water to which a little salt, a pound to 25 gallons,
has been added. The dip is done by means of open meshed
wire baskets swished rapidly through the hot liquor twice or
thrice. After draining the figs are laid out on the trays ard
covered over to keep off flies. In about 18 hours they are
ready for the boxes.

99

Every fig dryer should have his own fancy lining for his
boxes; the nattier and more catching to the eye the better.
The linings are laid in upon what is to be the top side of
the box when opened, and some packers lay in two or three
dried leaves of the sweet bay which we at the Cape might
improve upon with the lovely silver tree foliage dried flat
for the purpose. The fruit is then pulled and flattened and
fitted in with the greatest care, thick and thin end alter-
nately, and carefully turning over any hard stem that
might wound the next tier of fruit. When the level of
the sides is reached and a little overpassed, say by a full
half inch at least, the wood slat that is to be the bottom
and an intervening piece of paper are laid on. A dozen or
more boxes thus prepared are then put aside under some
simple arrangement for an even springy pressure. This is
sometimes effectively done by long laths bent like a bow,
one end reaching the rafters overhead and the other pres-
sing on the boxes. In a short time the soft figs yield and
mutually accommodate themselves to the decreasing space.
When the bottom slat is all but touching the sides it is
smartly nailed on with small neat wire nails. Then follows
the usual routine of stencilling or branding in the trade
mark, the quality and number of pounds guaranteed in the
box.

Sorts of Figs.

Black Geneva.— Fruit large, oblong, very broad at the
top, tapering thin to the stalk. Skin purple-black with
rich bloom. Flesh dark red, juicy, very sweet and luscious,
a hardy and prolific sort.

Blue (or black) Ischia.— Fruit medium size, turbinate,
flattened at the top. Skin deep bluish-black. Flesh deep
red, sweet, luscious. Hardy, prolific and early bearing.
Eipens earlier than the Black Geneva.

Brown Ischia.— Fruit medium, rounded, rather apt to
crack and twist if over-irrigated or in wet seasons. Skin
chestnut brown. Flesh reddish-purple, sweet and high
flavoured. Hardy, strong-growing and prolific and ripening
early.

100

Brown Turkey or Naples Fig. — Fruit large, oblong
pyriform. Skin brown red with a thick blue bloom. Flesh
red, sweet, luscious. Hardy and prolific, ripening early.

Castle Kennedy.— Very large, obovate. Skin dull
brown mottled with grey. Flesh pale reddish at centre,
tender, sweet, but not highly flavoured. Hardy, robust,
prolific and ripening very early.

Smyrna. — There are several closely related varieties
which go under this name. It is the best of drying figs.
Fruit medium, very sweet, firm and richly flavoured.

White Adriatic. — Fruit fairly large, pyriform, short
stalked. Skin yellowish green, very thin. Flesh clear*
red, drying yellow, very sweet and rich. A good drying
fig. Hardy and prolific.

White Genoa, or Grosse Marseille.— Fruit large, obo-
vate, rounded, short necked. Skin greenish yellow, spotted.
Flesh pale red, sweet and highly flavoured. Not very
hardy and bears moderately.

THE WALNUT AND CHESTNUT.

These two valuable trees have hardly yet received tbe
attention they deserve, and the tendency to treat them as
something akin to forest plantation trees rather than
orchard stock militates against their due estimation and
careful culture. The walnut absolutely requires a deep
rich soil with plentiful moisture deep down under the
superficial layer, if it is to make an adequate return for the
comparatively large space it demands. It certainly will
grow to wood if parsimoniously treated, but its marketable
return in such condition is only small. Hitherto it ha*
almost always been reproduced by seedlings from selected
nuts, and consequently the ordinary Cape Walnut of the
market is variable and often small. It is also a fact that
some seedling trees will remain persistently barren even
when fifteen to twenty years old. Of course, the care and
discernment which go to the production of other fruits will
equally beneficially affect this one, and at least one attempt

101

known to us has been made to import and propagate the
very best sorts known from France, in which country very
great attention is paid to the improvement of the race.
Either budding or grafting may be adopted, and even large
trees of unsatisfactory product may be improved by these
means. They are to be headed back in the off season, and
when fresh shoots have started for the following season a
few are selected for future growth and worked upon by
annular or ring-budding, the rest being cut out. It is im-
portant to note, in grafting the walnut, if that mode
be preferred, that the common split -graft should not be
used, or at least if tried, the section should never cross the
central pith. It is better by far to cut out an angular
wedge-shaped groove and cut the scion correspondingly to
fit in sideways. Even the scion should be cut as
to expose little or none of the pith. Inserting a
scion after the manner of a bud is also a good method.
Quickness of manipulation, very sharp tools, and unusual
care in covering up with grafting wax or its equivalent are
desirable. On the whole, for this climate, low grafting
and covering with a generous heap of soil for a season is
advisable, but the formation of accessory rootlet* from the
scion must be guarded against. As the walnut is late in
starting its sap and in leafing, it is necessary to collect the
scions in advance, and keep them over, stratified in sand
just moist enough to hang together, until the stocks are
fairly under weigh with their spring buds. The pruning
of these trees is very simple. The axial centre growtli
should not be headed back, for it is inadvisable to attempt
a dwarfed pattern. The lowest laterals should start from
3^ to 4 feet from the ground, and be allowed to spread
enough ultimately to shade the ground occupied by the
roots, and with young standards it is quite worth while to
protect the bark so long as it is tender with some suitable
sun screen on the north side. Any young shoots killed by
sunburn and hot winds should be cut back to the quick at
once to prevent the branch dying back. The fruit ripens
in a leisurely way and never all at once, hence it is not
advisable to make a harvest straight away. It is better to
collect the droppers first, and every week to go over the
trees with light rods to dislodge the largest fruit, the

102

earlier lots meanwhile being exposed to the air in the shade
on frames to dry sufficiently for storing, covering them up
at night. If thus treated for about four days, and turned
over repeatedly, they will be dry enough, but will require
a little vigilance to prevent any mouldiness supervening
inside. The soft-shell walnuts require close attention so
as not to carry the desiccation too far else they are apt to
crack, let in air, and shrivel the kernels. All are best
temporarily stored in boxes until marketed in the usual
way in bags. The custom of Lagging at once and standing
the bags on the more or less damp earth is the main reason
that there are so many musty walnuts about. In Kent it is
usual to wash over the whole gathering with clear lime-water
and then dry quickly in a draught of air. The result is
that the brown, inner skin peels off very readily and the
flesh gains in plumpness.

There are many good varieties known in France and
grown carefully to name. Prceparturiens is the earliest to
bear, as its name implies. Nursery plants only shoulder-
high will bear a little crop where they stand, although this
should not be allowed. The nuts are of fine quality and
good average size.

Serotine is not quite so well-flavoured and a little dry,
but as the tree does not trust itself to leaf or blossom till a
week or ten days after the average of other sorts, it has a
special value for high cold localities liable to late frosts.
The shell is apt to thicken and prove hard if the soil is
poor, thin and dry.

Mayette and Chabert. — Both of these are good croppers,
hardy and rather large fruited. They are perhaps the
most common sorts in cultivation in France, and are seen
in the markets everywhere.

Bijou. — This is the largest walnut in cultivation. It is
sometimes shy of bearing and capricious, but mostly
through not getting its demands satisfied properly. The
nut is of first-rate quality.

The walnut is remarkably free from parasitic enemies of
either kind. The only one to be feared is the red spider,
Tetranychus telarius, which spins its microscopic webs on
the under side of the leaves and produces a sickly condi-
tion, especially in dry seasons. The persistent use of

103

paraffine emulsion with the spray-pump, using the finest
nozzle available, directed from inside the tree to take the
enemy in the rear, speedily disposes of the difficulty.

Complaints are often made of walnuts not germinating
when sown, and of difficulty in transplanting them from
the nursery. The real reason is the general carelessness
with which the nuts are stored and the frequency with
which a fungous mould is allowed to penetrate the shell.
The walnut is natuially very slow in germinating. The
seed-bed should therefore be well trenched and drained and
be so deep as to preclude chances of its ever drying out
below the depth of the seed, or requiring heavy waterings.
The nuts should be planted with the outer shell still on,
and not more than a full inch below the surface. When
seedlings have completed their second season they should
be transplanted, because the habit of the walnut, like that
of the oak, is to develop an enormous tap-root with com-
paratively few lateral expansions. By transplanting, this
tendency is overcome, the descending axis is cut smoothly
off and a fine output of subsidiary lateral roots follows. If
the walnuts are sown where they are intended to remain,
and if there is not underneath a barren subsoil, a rocky or
a watery substratum, transplanting may be let alone. But
it is the safest course all round.

Attention is directed to the reports of the late excellent
Forest Officer, Mr. J. H. Cooper, upon the growth of the
Walnut in the districts of Can go and Oudtshoorn, given in
the Keport of the Superintendent of Woods and Forests for
1888, pp. 39-40.

As with the walnut so to some extent with the chestnut,
the French growers lead the way. It is less choice as to
soil and will succeed on soil altogether too heavy for the
walnut. But it is more likely to deteriorate or throw back
in seedlings than is its companion, and very many trees
bear mere empty burs all through their useless lives. Hence
there is the more need to be careful in selection and in
working. It succeeds best by annular budding, but may
be side-grafted with a little care and by the intervention of
the earth mound. The seedlings should be treated by
transplanting, the same way as the walnut, left a season,
budded, and afterwards planted out in the fourth year at
farthest.

104

The best sort every way is the large sweet Marron de
Lyon. Another good French variety is Combale or Cam-
balu. In England the popular sorts known to growers are
Knights* Prolific, Devonshire and Banks. In both these
trees, if the seeds are to be kept over for sowing, or sent
to a distance, much disappointment will be saved by strati-
fying them immediately on gathering in small foot-cube
boxes with sand or a mixture of sand and ordinary earth,
and storing in a cellar at an even temperature till required.

THE

The quince grows so readily in the bush form, and pro-
duces such heavy crops of fruit for which there is only a
very languid market at present, that it scarcely seems
necessary to say much about it here. Certainly the quince
is not prized at its full comestible value, perhaps because it
is so cheap. Yet it would be well worth while, now that
jam factories are at work among us, to pay more attention
to this fine fruit. The quince is best grown as a low
standard; this implies letting the central axis of the tree
get up, and working the laterals so as to make a pyramid
shape of it. Under any system the tendency of the tree to
run out into long, lanky shoots must be checked, and fully
as much as half the new growth of the year will require
cuting back. If this is not done, the weight of the fruit
acting with the long leverage of the branches will be apt
to snap them off. When the rooted cuttings are planted
in place, it is well to keep an eye on the buds just when
they begin to swell, and to rub out the weakest two of the
three which often appear together. This will prevent the
tree from wasting itself and will secure a neat, clean
growth. By far the best method for raising quinces of fine
quality is to graft selected sorts upon pear stock for
standard growth. If this were generally done, there can
be little doubt that this fine cooking fruit would take its
proper place on the market and would be much sought
after, instead of being a sort of pariah of the orchard. The

105

varieties that have arisen here as seedlings are very
numerous. In selecting a good sort regard should be had
to the quality of the fruit when cooked. Many quinces do
not colour well and exhibit hard spots here and there in
the flesh. There are also sorts that are subject to a fungus
blight, Entomosporium maculatum Lev., which makes havoc
among the leaves, causing them to turn brown and fall.
The result is imperfectly nourished fruit.

Quince trees of the newest and best varieties have been
introduced of late years, and are now to be had of nursery-
men. It would therefore be well to take some care in
selection of sorts, instead of being content, as heretofore,
with a bundle of cuttings from the nearest hedge.

107
Spray Calendar.

COMPILED BY THE GOVERNMENT ENTOMOLOGIST AND
PUBLISHED BY THE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE.

THE object of this Spray Calendar is to enable the fruit
grower to see at a glance what treatment should be given to
his trees to avoid or check injury from specific insects or
diseases. Only such insects and diseases are mentioned as
are known to be present and injurious in the Colony. It is
impossible to give technical information within the scope of
this calendar, but descriptions of all or nearly all of the
insects and diseases herein mentioned have been published
in the " Agricultural Journal," to which the reader is
referred. Information in regard to these, or to any par-
ticular insect or disease, with recommendations for treatment
to remedy or prevent the same, can be had of the Depart-
ment of Agriculture upon application to the Secretary, or
to the individual officers.

Specimens of the insect or of the disease should accom-
pany the letter in all cases possible, and these specimens
should always be sent in a tight tin or wooden box.

The time to apply the sprays is expressed by such
phrases as " When buds swell," since the actual date varies
greatly in different sections. No hard and fast rules can
be laid down as to how often the sprays should be used ;
but in general, adherence to the given directions will be
followed by success. Let the treatment in all cases be
prompt, thorough and persistent. If not effectual, communi-
cate with the Department of Agriculture, stating just what
has been done, under what conditions, and what results
were obtained. The officers of the Department will pro-
bably be able to explain your lack of success, and to advise
you how to proceed.

For Red Spider on all plants, use Paraffine Emulsion as
for aphides persistently — thoroughly drenching the lower
side of the leaves. Dry sulphur is also highly recommended.
On plants with hirsute leaves, such as the Cape Gooseberry,
Eed Spiders are very difficult to destroy, as the hairs
shelter them from the insecticide.

108

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110

BORDEAUX MIXTURE. — Copper sulphate, 6 pounds; quicklime, 6 pound-;
water, 40-50 gallons. — Dissolve copper sulphate by suspending- it in coarse clotli
bag near surface in four gallons of water, using a wooden or eirthen vessel. Slake-
lime in equal amount of water. Then mix the two and dilute. Ready for imme-
diate us e, but will keep indefinitely. Do not use air-slaked lime if it can possibly
be avoided. If it is used, take greater quantities than of quicklime. Then wkeu
mixture is made insert in it the freshly polished blade of a knife, and leave for a
few minutes. If blade then shows coppery discoloration, more limy must be added.
Some persons add six pounds of molasses to the formula given. Bordeaux Mixture-
and Paris Green may be applied together.

RESIN WASH. — Resin, 24 pounds; caustic soda (98 percent,), 5 pounds; fish
oil (2J- bottles), 3 pints; water, 100 gallons. Place ingredients in kettle, cover
with water and bring to boil. Stir until dissolved and cook for two hours, adding
hot water when there is a tendency to slop over. Then stir and add hot water to
fifty gallons. Put in spray tank and dilute with cold water. Use while warm.
Will keep. For all aphides dilute to 150 gallons. Winter Resin Wash is similarly
made, but dilution is only 65 gallons.

LIME- SULPHUR -SALT MIXTURE. — Quicklime, 40 pounds ; sulphur, 20 pounds ;
stock salt, 15 pounds; water, 60 gallons — Take 10 pounds lime, all of sulphur, and
10 gallons water ; boil for one-and-a-half hours or until all is dissolved. Slack
remaining lime in hot water and stir in the salt. When salt is dissolved, mix the
two solutions and cook one half -hour longer. Strain, dillute to 60 gallons, and
use warm. Stir while using. Slaked lime is sometimes used, but is probably less
efficacious.

PARAFFINS EMULSION.— Soap, l£ pounds ; paraffine, 5 gallons ; water, 2£
gallons. — Take whale oil or common bar soap ; cut up and boil until dissolved in
water. While still boiling add solution to the paraffine. Churn violently ; five
minutes if with pump or syringe, or fifteen if with paddle. Dilute, using nine
parts of -water to one of emulsion. Best if used warm. Will destroy aphides if
diluted fifteen times.

PARIS GREEN. — Paris Green, 1 pound ; water, 200-300 gallons. — For delicate
foliage add one or two pounds of quicklime. Follow directions on package in
mixing, and stir continually when using. Use very fine spray.

WHITE HELLEBORE. — Fresh White Hellebore, 1 pound ; water, 40 gallons. —
This will not burn foliage. Be sure the hellebore is fresh.

KNAPSACK PUMPS are most desirable for small orchards of young trees. Three
forms are stocked in Cape Town : — The " Vermorel," sold by merchants in many
small towns as well, price about 56s. ; excellent for Bordeaux Mixture, but not
applicable for Resin Wash or other oily or caustic sprays, unless specially fitted ;
the "Galloway," price 60s., stocked by Geo. Findlay & Co., and R. M. Ross &
Co., a solid, well-made pump, and good for all the spraying mixtures ; the
"Notus," price 40s., a much smaller pump, but good for all the sprays and well
worth its price ; stocked by Koch & Dixie. James Robertson & Co. have signified
their intention to stock all of these pumps. Not many other pumps are stocked,
but any may be ordered through dealers in agricultural wares. Wm. Roe, of Graaff-
Reinet, is agent for the " Nixon" pumps. They are first-class pumps and come
in three sizes. Write to him and other dealers for price lists and information. In
Cape Town, copper sulphite may be procured at 9d. per lb., or 20s. for 50 Ib. keg.
Resin costs 3d. by the lb., 12s. by the hundred-weight, or 7s. 6d. per hundred-
weight in 240 lb. barrels. Ninety-eight per cent, caustic soda cost 3s. 6d. per
three lb. can, or 33s. per dozen cans. Fiah oil may be purchased at 4s. 6d. per
gallon. Paris green sells at Is. 6d. per lb., and white hellebore Is. or Is. 6d. Nearly
all of the prominent ironmongers keep the articles, and many are stocked by the
chemists. First try to procure them of your local dealer, and if he does not keep
them, request him to lay in a stock.

•

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
BRANCH OF THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE

THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE
STAMPED BELOW

lm-5,'30

mw. inc.

Makers
Stockton, Calif.

PAT. JAN. 21, 1908

-led Of

SB?

/ 0 6>

LIBRARY, BRANCH OF THE COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE