Care op Fruit Trees. 599 



year under a most neglectful treatment, and then occasionally throws 

 in a crop of apples to boot. 



p^My reader may agree with these general remarks, but he insists 

 that we tell him jnst how to make his apple orchard bear. He 

 wants methods. And this is just what no one can give him. 

 Every farmer should know his own farm better than any one else 

 knows it. He knows the soils, the exposures, his own limitations of 

 help and capital, and all the many interacting factors which make a 

 piece of land a farm. Some one may be able to instruct him in 

 principles, but he must apply them for himself. A principal may 

 need a different application on every farm. Every farmer knows 

 this fact, when he comes to think of it ; for there are no two good 

 farmers who perform the same operation in the same way. If a 

 person once knows the underlying reasons for plowing in the fall or 

 in the spring, or deep or shallow, he can soon think it all out for 

 himself just how he ought to plow on his own place. 



What will make my orchard bear? Nobody knows. Ask the 

 trees. Study the conditions. Think about the orchard. Try one 

 method here ^' and another there. Try to Hnd out why it does not 

 bear. Perhaps the varieties are not productive ones. Perhaps the 

 flowers do not fertilize. Perhaps the soil is too low or too poor. 

 The orchard may need spraying, or, possibly, even manuring or 

 plowiug up, or pruning. Or, oftener, perhaps it needs cutting down 

 and a new one started all over again, with the matter done right 

 from the beginning. It is hard work to break a colt when he is ten 

 years old, and then he never makes a good horse. 



It is certain that there is no one cause for the failure of all apple 

 orchards to bear. There are many, perhaps very many causes. The 

 experimenter should be able to discover these causes and to explain 

 them ; but just which one is at the bottom of the failure in any 

 particular orchard the owner himself must find out, if he can. 

 And he cannot expect to find out in one day or perhaps in one year. 

 He must revolve the matter in his mind, as he goes and comes, day 

 by day, in rain and shine, and he will finally come to an opinion, 

 unless, unfortunately, he has an opinion before he begins to revolve 

 the matter. 



It may help the farmer if I enumerate the chief causes which 

 seem to us to be responsible for most of the failures of orchards. 

 "These suggestions are meant to apply with particular force to the 



