350 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



been talking orchard management at horticultural society meetings 

 and other .similar places and 1 have been thinking all the time that 

 1 was advocating modern practices to meet modein conditions. 

 However, listen to this: "But the misfortune is, that too freiiuent- 

 ly after orchards are planted and fenced, they have seldom any 

 more care bestowed ujjon them. Boughs are allowed to hang dang- 

 ling to the ground, their heads are so loaded with wood as to be 

 almost impervious to sun and air, and they are left to be exhausted 

 by moss and injured by cattle, etc." 



Doesn't that sound ver}' much like a description of some of the 

 present day conditions? And again: "The feelings of a lover of 

 improvement can scarcely be expressed on observing the almost 

 universal inattention paid to the greater number of our orchards, 

 and that people who go to considerable expense in planting and es- 

 tablishing them, afterwards leave them to the rude hand of nature; 

 as if the art and ingenuity of man availed nothing, or that they 

 merited no further care." 



Veril}', a repetition of much that is said about many orchards, 

 of the present day. But if modern conditions are thus represented 

 to any extent, somewhat ancient conditions are also portrayed in 

 the language for it is thus that old Bernard McMahon wrote more 

 than a hundred years. ago in his "American Gardener's Calendar" 

 which was published in 1806. It is interesting to note in passing 

 that this is probably' the first distinctly American book relating 

 to gardening and fruit growing that was published in this country. 



The statement I have quoted above therefore apparently repre- 

 sent common conditions with reference to the orchards at a very 

 early day. Unfortunately such conditions have persisted to a greater 

 or less extent to the present time. It necessarily follows then that 

 there is nothing new or modern in the oft-repeated observations of 

 the present day relative to our neglected orchards. There have been 

 such orchards from the beginning and there doubtless will be such 

 ones when the end of time comes. 



I have been wondering a good deal lately what real progress we 

 have made anyway in the management of orchards during the present 

 period of rapid extension of the fruit industry. 



Whatever other changes there have been, none are greater than 

 the changes in the "point of view" regarding fruit production. And 

 our present understanding of fundamental principles surely rep- 

 resents marked lines of advancement. Listen again to Bernard 

 ' McMahon to show a contrast between some of the notions of a 

 hundred years ago and present-day conceptions about the same 

 thing: "When a tree has stood so long, that the leading roots have 

 entered into the under strata, they are apt to draw a crude fluid 

 which the organs of the more delicate fruit trees cannot convert into 

 such balsamic juices as to produce fine fruit." Even if the orchards 

 of Bernard McMahon's day were representative in many respects 

 of the orchards of our own time, the undestanding of his time 

 regarding the nutrition of the trees was indeed not the modern one. 

 And we note a very marked advance towards what we believe is 

 the truth when it comes to the matter of plant foods. Nearly 25 

 years later than the time when Bernard McMahon wrote — in 1829 

 — Jethro Tull said, "It is agreed that all the foljowiilg materials 



