24 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



or large crops the odd years ? The production of fruit tends 

 to weaken the tree, and, the larger crops a tree bears, the 

 more will it be weakened or exhausted ; so that all the nour- 

 ishment or plant-food the tree can prepare is used in ripen- 

 ing its fruit, and there is none left to develop fruit-buds for 

 the coming season: the result is, our trees bear only every 

 other year. 



In the rich prairies of the West, apple-trees bear more or 

 less every year. I think tins was the case when it was first 

 settled about here ; but continual cropping has so exhausted 

 the soil and the trees, that they cannot obtain and prepare 

 sufficient plant-food to ripen a crop of fruit, and develop 

 fruit-buds, the same season. If the bearing only every other 

 year is due to over-bearing these years, exhaustion of the 

 soil or trees (as it undoubtedly is to some or all of these 

 causes), we have it in our power to change the bearing years 

 of our fruit-trees, and make them bear the years we want 

 them to bear. This is something worth giving particular 

 attention to : if trees can be made to bear the odd years, 

 it would make considerable difference in the returns from an 

 orchard. I have in mind a man who has quite a large 

 orchard that bears the odd years. He received for his fruit, 

 for the seasons of 1877 and 1875, from three dollars and 

 seventy-five cents to four dollars per barrel ; for 1873, 1871, 

 and 1869, from five to six dollars. 



There are two ways by which the bearing years of an 

 apple-tree can be changed. . One is by taking scions from 

 trees bearing the odd years, and only the odd years, and 

 grafting with them. I know two men who have practised 

 this method. One of them says they come true nearly every 

 time, nearly eighty per cent. The other says that sometimes 

 they would come true nearly every time, then again very few 

 would come true, but says, that, by manuring the trees well 

 the even years, he believes they could be entirely changed. 

 This would be worth trying, as many orchards scattered up 

 and down this valley contain about as many varieties as they 

 do trees ; and more than half of them are good for nothing 

 but cider. If such trees were grafted over with Roxbuiy 

 Russets or odd-year Baldwins, they would become more 

 profitable, if they bore the even years, than to let them remain 

 as they now are. 



