Page:Australian enquiry book of household and general information.djvu/240

 Land for the orchard should be well worked and manured. Let it be ploughed, cross-ploughed, and ploughed again. One way of arranging the orchard is to prepare it in strips four or five yards wide, so that the trees can be put in and growing while the rest is being ploughed, or if not required the strips of grass can be left in grass. It is well to put as much bone dust into your orchard as possible, as it is good for all trees. Night is the best time to transplant trees, and for oranges and lemons soon after all frost has gone is the best time of year. Make your holes large and deep enough to allow of all the roots spreading to their fullest extent, and trim off any that may have got broken in transit. When the tree is in, and before filling in the earth, pour in some water (soap suds is good if you have it) round the roots of the tree, let it sink in, and then fill in gently round the roots, and press the earth firmly down. Trees subject to blight, or where they are likely to become affected, should be whitewashed. For this purpose there are many washes all no doubt equally good. About the simplest I know of is made by soaking chillies in ordinary lime whitewash. Another is soft soap and kerosene — quarter of a pound of the soap to one gallon of water, and about half a pint of kerosene. Quassia chips and soft soap also make a good wash for blight. In choosing or buying trees it is as well to select them from blight proof stocks, and bud or graft them himself.

In pruning his trees the inexperienced fruit grower often finds a difficulty in distinguishing the fruit buds from the leaf buds, and he may discover when too late that he has cut away all his leaf buds instead of those he should have pruned. The leaf buds of such trees as pear, quince, apple, cherry, are more slender and pointed than the fruit buds — the latter rounded and plump, or what the children call "fat." It is a good plan to pluck one and open it, then compare it with the leaf buds on the tree. The leaf buds on most trees seem to grow closer to the wood, particularly in the apple varieties.

The fruit spurs are merely the shoots that have come from leaf buds and become fruit bearers. Often the leaf buds are in clusters. When pruning a young tree it is sometimes necessary to cut away some of the leaf shoots to prevent it wasting its strength in too much leaf growth. In very warm climates, such as North Queensland, the fruit grower has to adopt a different system of pruning to what he has learned in a colder climate. The short winters and long fruit producing seasons, during which many trees bear two, and even three crops require very vigorous measures.

Many trees if allowed to bear to their full extent so weaken or exhaust themselves that only a whole or a couple of season's rest