N«. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRlOUIVrURE. 795 



bushels of applos per tree. I have peach trees the same age with 

 a diameter of from 30 to 33 feet that bore me 10 bushels of peaclies 

 this past season and have borne me annual crops since their second 

 summer. Is this luck? Not a bit of it. If you wish to raise a 000- 

 pound hog you must feed it well, never leaving it to get stunted. So 

 with a tree, feed it well and as it attains age stop all cropjjing, but 

 don't stop the feed. 



But you must change the diet as you have a different object to 

 attain. In the early stages you wanted wood growth. You wanted 

 a tree and for that you needed more nitrogen, but now having the 

 tree you want fruit and for this you need potash and phosphoric 

 acid; the latter to develop the kernel, the true seed, and the potash 

 to develop and harden the wood. Develop fruit buds. Give to 

 the fruit its color, its flavor, to develop the saccharine matter. And 

 if all these things are properly attended to, you will have no off- 

 year. This I know is contrary to the opinions of most people, but 

 is not contrary to the laws of nature. In fact nature calls for an 

 annual reproduction, and to accomplish this it must develop seed 

 and with proper care you develop the edible part at the same time. 

 You do not expect the grape, or corn, or cereals to fruit only on al- 

 ternate years, neither should you expect the apple to fail in fulfilling 

 the mission required by nature. The only reason they do fail is 

 that they produce such enormous crops that it completely exhausts 

 the energy of the tree, depriving it of its vitality to such an extent 

 that it is unable to store up enough strength in its buds to develop 

 a crop the following year. It may bloom just as full but there is 

 not enough vitality in these blossoms to give fruit. The result is 

 they nearly all drop. It is then called the "off-year," whereas, if the 

 trees had been fed sufficient available food, for both tree and fruit, 

 and the tree had been properly thinned, the tree would have brought 

 as large and better paying crop, and at the same time stored up vi- 

 tality enough in its fruit buds and its sap to have developed a full 

 crop the following season and performed the functions required by 

 nature. . . „a 



THINNING 



This is the third essential to large perfect well-developed fruit 

 of high quality. In its effort of reproduction the tree has little re- 

 gard for the edible portion of the fruit. The seed or kernel is the 

 part upon which it expends all its energies. The peach in its ori- 

 oinal state was not an edible fruit. It was only after years of high 

 culture and cross fertilization that it became the fine luscious fruit 

 it is at the present tim.e. The outer or edible part is nearly all water 

 and can be developed to very large size. By thinning or removing the 

 larger proportion of the fruit set, yoij relieve the trf? Of Its blirrl^D' 



