164 State Horticultural Society. 



graphs showing the girdled York tree with 93/2 bushels on, and the tree 

 standing next to it with a bushel on. You will notice that while the apples 

 do not show very plain the limbs are touching the ground. In the picture 

 of the treated tree we got part of the tree next to it and the left side does 

 not show so full, but it was. A successful meeting is my wish. 



Yours truly, 



J. E. May. 



SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS IN GIRDLING FRUIT TREES. 



(J. E. May, La Plata, Mo.) 



Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen — After listening for two or 

 three years to the talks and discussions on the girdling of fruit trees in 

 order to bring them into bearing, I decided to experiment on some apple 

 and pear trees growing on my farm that did not bear, although old enougli 

 to do so, and telling our Secretary of my success, he asked me to pre- 

 pare a paper on the subject. The paper will be short, as the experiment 

 was conducted only during the present year, having girdled the trees 

 during June of 1903. We planted our orchard during the spring of 1895 

 and up to the present time Ben Davis trees have given us four crops, 

 while such varieties as York Imperial, Mammonth Black Twig and 

 Wealthy have only produced a few scattering apples. After thinking the 

 matter over for some time I decided to girdle a tree of each of the varieties 

 that did not bear, and so on the 9th of June, 1903, took my knife and 

 proceeded to the orchard and took a strip of bark from a York, M. B. 

 Twig, Babbit and Wealthy, and also girdled one branch of a Flemish 

 Beauty pear nine years old, that had scarcely had a bloom during the 

 nine years. Should say that on the Wealthy I only girdled one branch. 

 I did not tell my family what I intended to do, but after I had finished I 

 took some strips of the bark in and they asked what I had been doing, 

 and told them I had concluded to make my trees bear or know why. The 

 hired man said, "They are dead trees, sure," and my son said, "They will 

 be wilted before night," and they looked at me as though I was a fit 

 subject for the asylum, but the trees failed to die or even wilt, and in 

 a day or two one could see the new bark forming where the cut was 

 made. It was with a great deal of interest all watched those trees dur- 

 ing the fall of 1903 and spring of 1904. 



At blooming time the trees and branches girdled were white with 

 bloom, as were most of the other trees with the exception of the Wealthy 



