STATE HORTICULTURAL SUCIETV. 16Y 



Strawberries will bear special fertilizers, such as a mixture of bone- 

 dust, plaster, pulverized hen-manure and superphosphate of lime. They 

 should be mulched late in autumn, for winter i)rotection. 



Pruning. — This subject is a delicate one to approach, as fruit growers 

 are separated much more widely in their creeds and practices upon it 

 than upon almost any other point in fruit culture. 



I will premise the itw words which I have upon this point with the 

 remark that what may be correct practice east of the Great Lakes may 

 not be so with us, and that the "meat" eaten by Eastern cultivators 

 "has caused " many a Western one "to offend" in this direction. This 

 is hardly the place for a full discussion of the reasons for a careful, 

 judicious and very limited use of the knife and saw in our Illinois 

 orchards. It is sufficient to say that immense damage to our orchards 

 has resulted from an excessive and injudicious use of the pruning-saw — 

 probably more than from any other single cause. 



It has been found that, by a careful attention to the position and 

 direction of branches, while young — which is easily given by use of the 

 thumb and finger, and occasionally the knife, during the first six or eight 

 years of the life of the tree — very little cutting will be required thereafter. 

 The point to be gained in the cultivation of apple orchards in this State 

 is to develop an abundance of healthy foliage, evenly distributed over the 

 tree, and not to "cut away half of the branches to let the sun shine upon 

 the fruit." 



Vine growers do not, as a rule, pinch their vines as severely or as 

 often as in former years, having found that two summer pinchings of 

 each fruiting branch — leaving three or four leaves beyond the last 

 cluster at the second pinching — is, on the whole, more economical than 

 three or four pinchings and summer prunings of each shoot, as is still 

 practiced by some vineyardists. A renewing the vineyard by layering a 

 shoot between the vines, once in about four years, is recommended by 

 some, and probably a majority, of our best wine growers ; as the best 

 fruit grows upon vines from two to four years old. 



The Present Status. — Three consecutive years of almost unpre- 

 cedented drought, followed, in the winter of 1874-75, by long-continued 

 cold, of an intensity almost unparalleled in this latitude, well nigh proved 

 fatal to our fruit trees ; but the copious rains of the past summer, together 

 with the general barrenness of our orchards, such as has never before 

 been known in the State, and which has been so deeply deplored by 

 many, have resulted in producing a good wood-growth and preparation 

 for future health and productiveness. I hazard little in saying that, had 

 our orchards been as productive this year as for the last two years, and 

 the season as dry, one half, at least, of all the orchard trees in the State 

 would have been ready for the axman upon the recurrence of another 

 spring; so that the apparent calamity of unprecedented barrenness will 

 doubtless prove "a rich blessing in disguise." 



