REPORT OF MR. FRANCIS H. APPLETON.
519
The soil has been improved by transporting clay to the sandy parts and sand to the clayey parts. Happily the estate of Kolia itself furnished the material for this purpose in abundance and conveniently accessible.
Two hundred and fifty to three hunded loads of clay per acre have been transported to the sandy patches occurring on most of the fields, and also to a cultivated tract of two hundred and sixty acres.
To facilitate this labor, I procured a wire-tramway, which was also of assistance in laying out my vineyards and in bringing down large quantities of soil from the hills.
To prevent loss of time in the employment of my draught cattle and laborers, the farm-buildings are placed in the middle of my farms, and the roads made to radiate from them. The latter have a convex surface and side ditches, and the main roads are macadamized. The length of roads thus laid out is more than fifty miles.
All boundary lines, roads and ditches are planted with fruit-trees of the same sorts, and six orchards have also been established.
The land near the Elbe and belonging to the farm of the Kaiserzdorf, is the only tract bordered by apple and pear- trees, planted alternately. I have set out 544 apple-trees, 445 pear-trees, 20,046 plum-trees, 6,442 wild and cultivated cherry-trees, 810 chestnut-trees; making in all 28,287.
The method introduced by me in 1836, of setting out fruit- trees in hills above the surface of the ground, has proved very good. The trees grow very luxuriantly, and their trunks are entirely free from moss. Those, on the contrary, planted in the old way, six to twelve inches below the surface, are weak; their trunks and brauches are covered with moss and their roots decayed.
To prevent the gardeners from setting out these trees in pits, as was formerly the custom, I issued directions iii 1868 to dig holes only six to eight inches deep in the meadows, pastures or other tracts devoted to grass, where they were to be set out, and to refill these previous to planting. The trees are then to be placed on these spots, and their roots spread out and covered with earth to a distance of four feet from the trunks.