G08 Agricultural Experiment Station, Ithaca, N. Y. 



are tlie " strong " lands, or those which contain a basis of clay, and 

 these are the ones which soonest suffer under unwise treatments. 

 The nursery land is kept under clean culture and it is therefore 

 deeply pulverized. There is practically no herbage on the soil to 

 protect it during the winter. When the crop is removed, even the 

 roots are taken out of the soil. For four or live years, the land 

 receives practically no herbage which can rot and pass into humus. 

 And then, the trees are dug in the fall, often when the soil is in 

 unfit condition, and this fall digging amounts to a fall plowing. 

 The soil, deeply broken and robbed of its humus, runs together and 

 cements itself before the following summer ; and it then requires 

 three or four years of "rest" in clover or other herbage crop to 

 bring it back into its rightful condition. This resting period allows 

 nature — if man grants her the privilege — to replace the fiber in the 

 soil and to make it once more so open and warm and kindly that 

 plants can find a congenial root-hold in it. 



5. All remedial treatments are generally hegun too late in the 

 life of the orchard. — It is probable that plants become fixed in their 

 habits by living long in uniform conditions, and that this habit is 

 not readily broken. At all events, every observing horticulturist 

 knows that it is often a difficult matter to induce in plants a habit 

 of life which is directly contrary to the accustomed one. Apple 

 trees should bear well when they are ten years planted. If they 

 have not established a bearing habit by the time they are twenty 

 years old, it may be a difficult matter to impress a new character 

 upon them then. "Whilst we advise the plowing up and pruning of 

 all neglected and profitless orchards, we can not hope that this treat- 

 ment will always rescue the most confirmed cases of unproductive- 

 ness. By the time an apple orchard is eight or ten years old, the 

 owner should begin to see indications of its probable future behavior, 

 and he should then begin his endeavors towards any change which 

 he desires to bring about. 



. If an old or mature orchard still refuses to bear, it is likely that 

 some radical change in the method of treating it may be useful. 

 Many orchards develop a habit of redundant wood-bearing, and 

 these are often thrown into fruiting by some check to the trees, as 

 severe pruning, girdling and the like. Probably every orchardi^t 

 has observed that the attacks of borers sometimes cause trees to 

 bear. It is an old maxim that checking growth induces fruitful- 

 hess. This is the explanation of the fact that driving nails into 



