THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 49 



apples," that those "Idaho apples," those "Colorado apples," or those 

 " apples from Missouri " or somewhere else are the apples to grow, and that 

 they are. the ones you are going to make money on. Wherever you are 

 fairly well located, just look around about your own home place. There 

 is a glorious opportunity there, and my experience in life is that .most of our 

 best opportunities are right close at home, if we will only open our eyes and 

 see them. (Applause.) 



DISCUSSION. 



President Cook: Regarding root pruning, will you give us a little light 

 on the subject as to how and when? 



Mr. Hale: I will tell you how I got on to that trick some years ago. I 

 had two Yellow Bellfiower trees in a very rich, fertile spot, that were growing 

 very rapidly, reached some 16 or 18 years of age, and had never fruited to 

 amount to anything. We were obliged, in digging a ditch to drain a swamp, 

 to go within six feet of those trees and cut down twelve feet; so we cut off 

 all the roots on one side of those trees. It was done in midsummer — July 

 or early August; I imagine early August, but it doesn't matter particularly. 

 Those trees bloomed freely the next summer, the first time they had ever 

 bloomed freely, they bore a tremendous crop of apples. They never made 

 much of any more tree growth but have always been fruitful and that shock 

 to those trees gave me an idea that shocking to a greater or less extent was 

 a good thing for apple trees that were growing rapidly and not fruiting. I 

 have since had vigorous growing trees at 8, 10 and 12 years of age that were 

 making trees and not fruit, and I have tried a rougher plan of putting in a 

 very big four-horse plough and breaking up the land away down deeper 

 than we usually plough, putting in a heavy subsoil plough and of course 

 breaking and tearing the roots and no doubt injuring them. Unquestion- 

 ably roots ought not to be pruned that way, but in every instance it has 

 checked tree growth and stimulated great f ruitf ulness ; and that is the w^ay 

 I worked it. I feel that it injures the tree; I know that it weakens the tree; 

 I am quite confident that the tree won't live as long; but what I want apple 

 trees for is for apples, and not for growth and beauty of wood. And so 

 from seA^eral experiments of that kind I am satisfied that this plan will check 

 the tree growth and will stimulate early fruitfulness. Therefore I say crowd 

 the growth of the tree early, and grow trees just as fast as you can grow 

 them by early summer and spring cultivation, not by late fall growth; 

 and when you get them to the size you w^ant break up the roots in that 

 way or some other in midsummer. 



Then again, I have practiced a good deal of summer pruning with my 

 peaches. I feed the peaches pretty liberally and grow them pretty fast 

 and get the wood so big and heavy when they are three or four year old 

 trees that I have tried summer pruning with them. I have gone right in 

 and thinned out a great many of the surplus short, entirely in July where 

 from three to five feet in length — thinned out perhaps half a dozen from 

 around inner part of tree; and then I have taken the others and cut them 

 off from one and one-half to two feet; I have taken others and gone in a 

 little earlier, along in June, and thinned out the surplus branches and punched 

 off the others to stop an upward growth, and I have shocked those trees 

 so they have never grown to as big size as trees not so pruned. They get 

 right into the game of peaches; that is what I am playing with them for, 

 and they get right into the game and give me what I am after. That has 

 led me to try the same in summer pruning on six, seven or eight year old 

 7 



