CHAPTER IV HOW TO RAISE A FRUIT TREE Let each pupil grow an apple tree this year and attempt to make it the best in his neighborhood. In your attempt suppose you try the following plan. In the fall take the seed of an apple--a crab-apple is good--and keep it in a cool place during the winter. | CHAPTER IV 45 CHAPTER IV HOW TO RAISE A FRUIT TREE Let each pupil grow an apple tree this year and attempt to make it the best in his neighborhood. In your attempt suppose you try the following plan. In the fall take the seed of an apple--a crab-apple is good--and keep it in a cool place during the winter. The simplest way to do this is to bury it in damp sand. In the spring plant it in a rich loose soil. Great care must be taken of the young shoot as soon as it appears above the ground. You want to make it grow as tall and as straight as possible during this first year of its life hence you should give it rich soil and protect it from animals. Before the ground freezes in the fall take up the young tree with the soil that was around it and keep it all winter in a cool damp place. Now when spring comes it will not do to set out the carefully tended tree for an apple tree from seed will not be a tree like its parent but will tend to resemble a more distant ancestor. The distant ancestor that the young apple tree is most likely to take after is the wild apple which is small sour and otherwise far inferior to the fruit we wish to grow. It makes little difference therefore what kind of apple seed we plant since in any event we cannot be sure that the tree grown from it will bear fruit worth having unless we force it to do so. Illustration FIG. 63. A YOUNG FRUIT-GROWER SECTION XXII. GRAFTING By a process known as grafting you can force your tree to produce whatever variety of apple you desire. Many people raise fruit trees directly from seed without grafting. Thus they often produce really worthless trees. By grafting they would make sure not only of having good trees rather than poor ones but also of having the particular kind of fruit that they wish. Hence you must now graft your tree. First you must decide what variety of apple you want to grow on the tree. The Magnum Bonum is a great favorite as a fall apple. The Winesap is a good winter apple while the Red .
