WHAT I SAW IN KENT.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 13, 16 January 1912, Page 6

WHAT I SAW IN KENT.

NEW ERA IN FRUITGROWING

(By W. Beech Thomas, in the Daily

Mail.)

I have journeyed into Kent to visit one of those wonderful apple orchards to which mamy a pilgrimage is made from many parts of the world, from California itself,, from Natal, from Australia. For the orchard, over and above its beauty, is cultivated and tended in Kent to-day with more than the science on which Government insist in far Western America.

To-day the apple blossom is, to my eyes, by far the most beautiful thing in the gush" of leaf a-nd flower in. which England is mantled. There is no shr.iib that I know of which can surpass the apple merely as ornament, and its decorative value is. hardly less when the cloistered nun, like Falstaff babling o' green fields, can only think in her cell that "in the country the trees of the garden are full of fruit." " , The old farmhouse orchards are dying off ? and. we see fewer and fewer grass closes given up to fruit/ It ; is still a not'uncommon sight in Hertfordshire to see green orchards carpeted with daffodils, but one has; to know where to go for them ; the daffodils are there by accident rather than design, and the dying fruit trees are planted in the gardens. How many a. neat and homely ghmpse one catches from the train among the little gardens that run' up to the line in London suburbs, near Surbiton, or Barnet.'or Dulwich

THE NEW GARDEN ORCHARDS. There Is one garden to the east of the South-Western line which is a pool of blossom about the island or the home. Thousands of people must remember it as a picture- of an English home, and hundreds have probably imitated it. The garden orchard is taking the place of the grass, and the reason is largely th© proof, wonderfully demonstrated by Mr Spencer Pickering in the orchards of the Duke of Bedford's farm, that apples flourish best on cultivated land, a<n.d, m most cases, least Well on grass. He can ever alter the color of his apples from green to streaked- varieties of red -by -letting the grass; come nearer to the. The 'th& grass v.ihe greater the alteritioa in'the natural color of the fruit. ;;'The: increase -of; -•garden fruit:. tree's ;isadding immensely to the beauty of summer England, but the .owners' of all these gardens can augment both the pleasure and profit of their plots by ,a/doptingr a little of the methods of the professional gardener under whose, trees^my day was spent. Thei garden is on the site of an old hop garden. The change is characteristic. For "th© iiopvine's incense that fills the Kentish hills" is substituted here, as in Worcestershire, by the finer, more delicate, perfume sat the apple blosThe fruit is .driving the hop, the most intensive of atll our crops. The old kiliis, beaconing from afar, Have "become cool storehouses for the apples, and might have been built for the purpose. Close by the kilns is a little- room fitted up as a laboratory, a new thing in the equipment of a commercial fruit garden. In this a number of experiments have been cm ado on different sprays. Indeed, the lime and; salt wash, which now in the early spring bleaches every other orchard "in England<into a snow-white, hue, was first concocted in this little room. At regular intervals, boughs or twigs from different parts of the orchard-,are;, taken to this little laboratory 'for microscopic investigation. ...'■'■'■ ; . This year, which, is so far conspicuous for a marvel, ".of health in the world of plants, even the microscope has revealed no" plague, and the usual sprayings hare been intermittent. At Maidstbne, however, some gvhxvers have gone the length, almost undarcd before in England, of spraying their trees when the blossom is out. A FIELD OF LOGANBERRIES. The hops are everywhere giving way to fruit; but in walking towards vthe culminating glory of'this beautiful farm the first field we passed along looked at first glimpse singularly like a hop field. It was set out in lines and avenues, quite suggestive of hops, except that and wires were sub"stitutecl for the poles and string. The -supplanter. of the ii&& was in this field " £he loganberry, that lusty - offspring of the parentage of the raspberry and blackberry. The logan, new and finethough it is, is.likely, I should think, to give place in turn., to an offspring of itself, the lowberry, which is at least as fine and very much sweeter. But as yet very few people seem to have heard of "this berry, which' is probably the best produced by crossfertilisation for years. Its parentage are the logan and the blackberry, so that it is two parts blackberry, as it indicates in its color, and one part raspberry. The next field to the logans wan the youngest part of theforchard. Lik-a every part of the modern fruit farm, i:t. is perfectly symmetrical. - The little. apples, each three years old, had all the anuaaranee of grown trees. They had the comicality of the dwarf. Each was as carefully sprayed with lime and salt as the most hoary sinner which had grown a deposit of lichen and fungus and was providing house room for a hundred families of insects. Each was bearing a good show of bloom, and promised 'to provide quite a stock of apples. Between the- young apples, and in lines as r>lumb. strawberries were just coming into full bloom. In this garden you can tell the age ot the trees by the nature and amount of the crop alongside. For the first year strawberries may do well while there is no shade to hinder ripening. After the strawberries many lines ot gooseberries are planted, and for the future these are gradually lessened till only one row is loft down the middle of each avenuo of apples. Even this may disappear finally when the trees have come to their full size, tor nothing is here allowed to interfere with tlie apple culture. The farm as a sort of demonstration that Kent ■is not less good,'is probably a good deal better than California or British Columbia or Nova Scotia, or any of the noted fruit countries. THE BEST APPLE. The fame of the ferm has been won largely by its .-Ecklinvilles, a green cooking * apple of special virtues; and several acres of these trees made the farm. These older orchards ©limb up a-considerable slope and disappear over the ridse. # The summit gives an incomparable- view. On one side you see the Thames winding eastwards, and on the other a chalk valley out by deep;.pits. On the plain the trim farm lies with its precise and mathematical lines over the plain, and immediately below you is such a- wealth of bloom as only comes now and again in an. atmus mirabilis. The undulating orchard gives the appearance of a deep ridge and furrow. The apples, suec?:-:::;h'o domes of white

; and pink running into one another, i mark the ridges; and smaller plum trees, which have passed from white to the deep green of loaf and set fruit, mark the furrows. A month ago the furrows were white and the ridges dark. It is an extraordinary pleasure to go close and see the polished branches of the trees. A good housekeeper who enjoys a spring cleaning would appreciate the orchard. The only mark on the trees is the smoother band round the trunk where every ; single tree over the 100 acres has heeii "greasefaanded," a practice that .in itself has stamped out half the ' worst plagues. The scene is- regular, j but no longer, as in the younger ' orchards, geometric. An acre or two lef pears is almost in disorder, and I another of yellow Ingestre apples is so level and so evenly and fully flowered that you can hardly detect the lines of trees.