What was said of January, as regards planting, applies also to February; but I would rather plant in February than January if, from one cause or other, fruit trees had to be put in before March. The ground generally crumbles better. Note, however, that the condition of the soil is the real guide. If the ground is dry enough to crumble readily, January planting is satisfactory. Regarding fruit tree planting as essentially dry weather work, I would say: Get your trees as soon as you can, and lay them in some sheltered place with loose earth over their roots to keep them safe from frost, but do not put them in their final positions until the soil is sufficiently dry to fall readily off the tools when turned up. There can hardly be such a thing as soil being too dry in winter.

Methods Of Planting Fruit

Modern opinion, seems undecided on the question of deepening soil for fruit by bastard trenching, as gardeners do for vegetables (see remarks in the January chapter). Some growers hold the view that the circumstances of fruit and vegetable growing are so essentially different that the one is of no value as a guide to the other. There is something in this. Nearly all vegetables are annual crops, and the ground on which they grow is regularly broken, so that after it has once been stirred deeply it has no chance of settling down again into the solid mass which was its state before cultivation began. Fruit trees are permanent crops. Such tillage as they are subjected to is confined to shallow digging with a fork, and consequently the ground is liable to become compacted again two or three years after planting. But I am not prepared to admit that the labour of loosening the under soil is necessarily wasted because the ground thus settles back. If the work has the effect of giving the tree a good start, it is repaid.

On two points, however, there ought not to be any division of opinion - the value of firm planting and of surface manuring. The former is desirable because it brings about that intimate association between root and soil which is so essential for root formation, and the latter tends to keep the roots near the surface.

Human nature is very trying with regard to its fruit trees. Persuade a man to plant his trees wide apart, in order to give them plenty of room, and he will probably go and intercrop close up to the stems with vegetables, overlooking the fact that vegetables absorb the same kind of food as fruit, and will certainly rob the trees. This is a common mistake in kitchen gardens, where fruit trees are often planted round the outside of the vegetable borders, and it is often made in orchards, where large trees are intercropped with smaller ones, and the latter again with Raspberries and Strawberries. To put things into plain, workaday figures, let me suggest the following:

Worcester Pearmain, a valuable early dessert Apple; the tree is a healthy grower, and a prolific bearer.

It is an excellent SORT for a small GARDEN, to PRECEDE Cox's Orange Pippin.

Where fruit trees of different classes are mixed in an orchard, it is an excellent plan to work as follows:

And until the latter grow out and require all the ground, Vegetables or Strawberries can be grown down the centres of the spaces, so that they would be 3 3/4 feet away from the fruit bushes.

In small gardens, amateurs would find it a good plan to adopt the rule of cropping no nearer to fruit trees, whether on walls, wires, or in open rows, than four feet.