Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1883-09-08

does more injury than the entire years
crop, 1t there are any washed places
Fill them up with straw. By all means
save your soil.
To improve the soil you must either
manure the entire surface, as you would
garden, and continue clean culture,
or sow in stock peas and turn them as
a green crop, or sow in clover. Our
custom is to cultivate young orchard
we'll for three years. Sow wheat in
the fall. Manure the trees in the latter
part of the winter with mixture of
straw and stable manure. Do this
some cold frosty morning, when you
can haul over your wheat and not in
jnre it. Sow clover in the spring, and
as soon it is up, SOW ashes and land
plaster mixed quite plentifully on the
clover. This usually insures a stand.
We pasture little to clean up the
waste wheat, and allow the clover to
grow all it will. If the spring mulch
extended out some three feet from the
bodies of the young trees, they have
grown well Notwithstanding the wheat
and the clover, while without this
mulch they would have grown very
little.
If there is any danger of mice in
juring the roots of the trees during
winter, remove the mulch from around
the roots of the trees late in the fall,
and replace it again in the spring, as
you did when in wheat, only put on a
little more, letting it extend out about
four feet from each tree. If you put
the manure on first and the straw on
top, it makes it better. This is feeding
and mulching combined.
You can either pasture your clover
with hogs, NOW it, or turn it under as
a green crop. The latter is much the
best for your orchard. For the third
year clover crop we recommend the
same treatment, only let the mulch ex-
tend little further out as the limbs
increase in length. Your trees are
now six years old and should be bear
ing little. If any are too full, thin
out the fruit.
With good culture the seventh and
eighth years, after the rest and improve.
ment your orchard has received, it
should make very fine growth. Do
not neglect the annual top dressing of
straw and manure, or both, as you may
deem best, letting it extend as far out
as the tips of the limbs. You are now
ready for crop of stock peas, or wheat
and clover. We say wheat, because it
is less Objectionable than oats or rye.
1t is of the utmost Importance to bear
in mind that all our culture is for the
benefit of the orchard. The crops we
take from the land must be less and
less remunerative, because the older
our trees become the more room they
require. Therefore, trimming the trees
up high and blowing close to them is
all wrong. Spreading trees, like Wine
Sap and Limbertwigs, are the best
bearers. The bodies are protected
from the rays of the evening sun, and
never blistered,
1t is impossible to prescribe course
that will suit every case. The one
suggested SO far will suit most orchards
now set out. The good sense of the
reader can modify it as seems best.
In early settlement of the country,
when orchards were set out on rich,
fresh land, the trees grew very large,
came into bearing slowly, and the in.
! sect enemies were few to what they are
now. Consequently some of these old
trees are yet to be found seventy-fve
or eighty years old. Now a large ma
jority of our young orchards are sci
, out on old land, much of it badly worn,
) and the only way to succeed with such
is to constantly improve it. Lime
/ ashes, bone meal, and rich soil from the
/ woods are all of great value as fertil
3 izers, and can be used when convenient
g Our trees are now about ten years
r old. If all the conditions essential tt
t success have been complied with, they
should be worth at least Sd each, and