STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 7I 



To bear fruit the tree has to perform two distinct operations ; 

 form the bud or embryo one year, and fertilize and mature the 

 fruit the next year. I believe the forming of the bud requires 

 about as much food and effort as to mature the fruit, and a 

 tree that is feeding a big crop of apples cannot, as a rule, take 

 on the burden of making fruit buds at the same time ; and so, 

 many trees bear only every other year. 



I am pretty well convinced that if you prune some of the 

 bearing wood of an orchard, during the winter previous 

 to its crop year, thin the fruit early if there is still a heavy 

 crop, and give the orchard extra good tillage, you will get fruit 

 buds formed for a small crop in the off year. The off year 

 when the tendency of the tree is to form too many buds, do 

 not thin or prune and hold up on fertilizer and cultivation tt* 

 check the forming of the buds. 



This method cannot be followed blindly, but by watching 

 the trees and formation of buds and fruit you can usually in- 

 fluence the trees to quite an extent. Here are the records of 

 blocks of trees worked after this method : 



BLOCK NO I. BLOCK NO. II. 



1910 1098 barrels 



191 1 1480 



1912 1552 



1913 2381 



1914 3482 



1915 1905 



923 barrels 



557 " 



765 " 

 581 " 



847 " 



Spraying and Dusting. 



We have two enemies to fight — plant diseases and insect 

 pests, each of which may be divided into two groups ; the 

 former into bacterial diseases and fungi, and the latter into 

 sucking insects and chewing insects. Fire blight and collar rot 

 are the two principal bacterial diseases, and with them I want 

 to class old cankers or rotten limbs. The only protection from 

 them is to avoid breaking the bark on the tree and painting 

 any wound there may be. The only cure is to cut back into 

 healthy tissue and clean out the wound and paint it. I like 

 coal tar or asphalt tar better but have used lime-sulphur, fol- 

 lowed by ordinary paint. 



