Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1875 — Fall Planting. [ARTICLE]

Fall Planting.

The question is often asked, When is the best time to plant fruit trees? We answer that upon all soils suitable for an orchard the fall is the best time. The fall is a season of comparative leisure with the farmer and ample time is afforded him to prepare the ground thoroughly and to dig the holes of large size and to prepare the work in the most perfect manner. In the spring a thousand jobs are pressing upon the farmer, all demanding his immediate attention, and the orchard is usually deferred to the last, when every oilier crop would suffer less by the delay. If a tree is planted, in the fall the earth becomes firmly settled abound the roots before spring, and if the weather should prove, as it frequently does, warm in February and March young roofs will be formed often three inches long; and if the planting is delayed nntil spring, after these roots have put out, they are broken off and lost in the act of removal from the nursery, and consequently so much of the vital energy of the tree is lost in the effort of nature to repair tlie injury. If planting is delayed until spring it is almost always put off until a late period after the bufis have considerably swelled and many of the fibrous roots have put out, these then become dried and many of them are lost, and the dry weather that frequently follows causes the death of thousand of trees annually. In fall planting, if the soil is dry and porous, as it should be, tlie ground around the tree may be left level; but if the subsoil is of a wet, retentive character the earth should be raised two or three inches around the trunk of the tree, to the full diameter or the hole, in order to turn the excess of water from the roots. Trees should not be removed from the nursery until sufficient frost has occurred to entirely suspend vegetation and the leaves have mostly fallen.— Rural World.