CHE REFERENCE LIBRARY - ZetaTalk

CERTAIN ELEMENTS IN NURSERY PRACTICE ,179ing of nurst’r) lands, as other agricultural lands are supplemented,ad not, to rely on the eflect of a single ingredient tomeet il. present dificulty. This is the rational procedure.[‘ndoubtedl,v nursery lands will respond to good rotations,careful working, and thoughtful fertilizer management as readilyas other ill’C’itS. The nursery practice has been too much likea skinning process. Some nurserymen now feed live-stockand IN the manure in preparing and supplementing nurser)lands.Another di&ult~- in using nursery lands in succession isthe danger from soil diseases. The nurseryman must bec~;~rtM not to infect his land. Rotation Seems yet to be thew$, remt+*, if trouble arises.Grcrdes of freesCommon opinion demands that a tree, to be first-class,must be perfectly straight and comely. This arbitrary standardis but the expression of the general demand for large andgood-looking trees. Yet there are some vari.eties of fruit-treesthat cannot be made to grow in a comely shape, and there isa 1 ways a ten&n- to discontinue growing them, notwithstandingthe fact that they may possess great intrinsic merit.All this is to be deplored. The requiremen.ts of a first-classtree should be that the specimen is vigorous, free from diseaseor blemishes mtl that it possess the characteristics of thevariet>T. This allows a crooked tree to be first-class if it is aGreening or Red Canada apple, because it is the nature of thesevarieties to grow crooked. Wayward and often scragglygrowers among apples are Williams Early Red, Wealthy, Oldenburg.Wagner, and others. A crooked or wayward grower isnot nrc~essarilj~ a weak tree. It is advisable to top-work weakgrowingvarieties on strong-growing and straight-growing ones3.(See pages 1 ti7- 1 t $4 .)