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As the birth and the quality of the stock in your garden will have a great deal to do with the success or failure of your adventure on a veritably small scale, it's important to get the stylish trees you can, anywhere, at any price.
But don't jump to the conclusion that the most expensive trees will be the stylish ones.
From dependable nurserymen, dealing directly by correspondence, you can get good trees at veritably reasonable prices.
As a general thing, you'll succeed stylishly if you have nothing to do with the unbreakable" free agent."
He may represent a good establishment; you may get your trees on time; he may have a novelty as good as the standard feathers, but you're taking three veritably great chances in assuming so.
But, leaving these questions away, there's no particular reason why you should help pay his traveling charges and the printing bills for his lithographs(" made from factual photos" or" painted from nature," of course!) when you can get the stylish trees to be had, direct from the soil in which they're grown, at the smallest prices, by ordering through the correspondence. Or, better still, if the nursery isn't too far down, take half a day off and elect them in person.
If you want to help the agent along present him with the quantum of his commission, but get your trees direct from some large dependable nursery.
Well-grown nursery stock will stand important abuse, but it'll not be at all corrected by it.
Do not let yours stand around in the sun and wind, staying until you get a chance to set it out.
As soon as you get it home from the express office, unload it and " heel it in," in the wettish, but not wet, ground; if under a chalet, so much the better.
Dig out a narrow fosse and pack it in as thick as it'll go, at an angle of forty- five degrees to the natural position when growing.
So stored, it'll keep a long time in cold rainfall, only be careful that no rats, mice, or rabbits reach it.
Do not, still, depend upon this knowledge to the extent of letting all your medications for planting go until your stock is on hand.
Be ready to set it the day it arrives, if possible.
PLANTING:
Planting can be done in either spring or fall.
As a general rule, north of Philadelphia and St. Louis, spring planting will be stylish; south of that, fall planting.
Where there's apt to be severe freezing, " heaving," caused by the alternate freezing and thawing; injury to the recently set roots from the too severe cold wave; and, in some western sections, " sun scald" of the dinghy, three injuries that may affect.
If trees are planted in the fall in cold sections, a low mound of earth, six to twelve elevations high should be left during the downtime and leveled down in the spring.
However, when hot, dry If set in the spring.
weather is apt to follow, they should be completely mulched with waste, straw, or coarse ordure, to save humidity-- care being taken, still, against field mice and other rodents.
The trees may either be set in their endless positions as soon as bought or grown in" nursery rows" by the purchaser one or two times after being bought.
In the former case, it'll be the stylish policy to get the strongest, straightest two-time stock you can find, indeed if they bring ten or fifteen cents all more than the" mediums."
The former system is the usual one, but the ultimate has so numerous advantages that I give it the emphasis of a separate paragraph, and prompt every prospective farmer to consider it precisely.
In the first place, also, get your trees a little cheaper.
If you purchase for nursery row planting, six- bottom to seven- bottom two- time-old apple trees, of the standard feathers, should bring you about thirty cents each; one-time" kids," six bases and fanned, five to ten cents less.
This gain, still, isn't an important bone -- there are four others, each of which makes it worthwhile to give the system a trial.
First, the trees being each together, and in an accessible place, the chances are a hundred to one that you'll give them better attention in the way of spraying, pruning, and cultivating-- all extremely important in the first time's growth.
Second, with the time gained for the redundant medication of the soil where they're to be placed permanently, you can make conditions just right for them to take hold at formerly and thrive as they couldn't do otherwise.
Third, the shock of broadcasting will be much lower than when they're packed from a distance-- they will have made a fresh growth of thick, short roots and they will have come shaped.
Fourth, you won't have to waste space and time with any backward black lamb among the lot, as these should be discarded at the alternate planting.
And also there's one further reason, cerebral maybe, but important; you'll watch these little trees, which are largely the result of your labor and care, when set in their endless positions, much more precisely than you would those direct from the nursery.
I know, both from experience and observation, how numerous frugal youthful trees in the home estate are done to an early death by children, careless workmen, and other creatures.
So if you can put a twelve-month check on your desirousness, get one-time trees and set them out in a straight row right in your vegetable garden where they will take up veritably little room.
Keep them cultivated just as completely as the rest of your growing effects.
Melons, sap, or nearly any low-growing vegetable can be grown near them.
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