Page 8 



BETTER FRUIT 



May, 19 19 



<Af!^ ■ 1.:-^,^ 



Red Raspberry field in winter, sliow ing the dead canes removed at the lett and tlie new earns 

 woven on wire. The scene at the right shows the dead canes on which the past season's crop 

 was raised and the new canes upright. Note the height of the new canes, which is 6 to 8 feet. 



fields, so the pickers do not have too 

 far to carry their berries. It is the aim 

 to get the berries into the shed and out 

 of the heat as soon as possible, espe- 

 cially if the berries are to be shipped. 

 At the receiving shed the berries are 

 packed in crates and then hauled twice 

 and three times a day to the shipping 

 station or canneries, located both in 

 Sumner and Puyallup. 



As a whole the business of growing 

 raspberries is quite satisfactory. Where 

 the soil is right and proper attention is 

 paid to cultivation and fertilization, 

 large yields are obtained. With a 

 strong fruit growers' association main- 

 taining the markets for fresh fruits and 

 a canning company which uses the 

 overripe and surplus fruit at good 

 prices, the Puyallup Valley grower is 

 more fortunately situated than the 

 growers of fruit in most other sections. 



table, spring beds and clean straw- 

 filled ticks, also with wood and water. 

 It pays to have as good accommodations 

 as possible, as a better class of pickers 

 are secured and they are more apt to 

 stay throughout the season. 



When the pickers start their work 

 they are given a waist carrier, which 

 ties around the waist, holding two cups, 

 and a hand carrier holding six cups. 

 Each picker is assigned a row in the 

 field and told by the field boss just how 

 to pick the berries. The pickers are 

 required to clean the row of the ripe 

 berries at each picking; this is neces- 

 sary to keep the berries ripening well, 

 because if some berries are left on the 

 vines they become over-ripe and draw 

 the nutriment from the vine to ripen 

 the seeds, making the green berries 

 ripen more slowly. Receiving sheds 

 are located conveniently throughout the 



DiscussesWinterPruningvs.SummerPruning 



By M. Mitra, Ohio State University, Department of Horticulture 



IN a recent article on pruning pub- 

 lished in the February issue of 

 Better Fruit, Professor C. I. Lewis 

 of the Oregon Agricultural College has 

 very ably discussed the various phases 

 of efficiency in pruning in relation to 

 food materials (carbohydrates and soil 

 nutrients) so as to maintain a balance 

 between the vegetative growth and 

 fruit bearing of trees. Dealing with the 

 question of pruning. Professor Lewis 

 is rather inclined to urge a judicious 

 summer pruning instead of winter 

 pruning, which has been found to be 

 satisfactory under the Oregon condi- 

 tion. Of course, it is useless to estab- 

 lish a hard and fast rule for pruning, 

 which must necessarily be done in con- 

 sideration of the variety of fruit trees 

 and the locality in particular as need 

 be, but in regard to the season of 

 pruning, it seems, we must adopt a 

 practice that will cause minimum loss 

 of plant-storage food with an optimum 

 amount of vegetative growth and fruit 

 bearing on a balanced ratio. In order 

 to bring a state of equilibrium between 

 these two factors, the season of pruning 

 is of utmost importance. In dealing 

 with the subject of pruning on the 



basis of food materials in plants one 

 must understand at first the basic prin- 

 ciple of the translocation of food mate- 

 rials within the trees, especially the 

 carbohydrates, both in the dormant and 

 growing season. 



It has been found by experiment on 

 the trees under natural condition from 

 October, 1918, to March, 1919, that the 

 carbohydrate materials (starch and 

 sugar) in plants move in a cycle, as it 

 were, during these six months. For 

 this purpose both seedlings and large 

 bearing apple trees and a few others, 

 situated under the same condition in an 

 orchard of the Ohio State University 

 campus were studied. To state briefly, 

 it has been definitely found that the so- 

 called storage organs, as the apple fruit 

 spurs, are not the real storage organs 

 of the apple trees, although they might 

 accumulate starch for a time during the 

 growing season of the tree. It is partly 

 owing to the change of temperature that 

 a translocation of carbohydrates oc- 

 curs which differs materially both in 

 the dormant and growing season of the 

 trees. 



At the beginning of the fall season, 

 especially in the latter part of October 



when the trees shed their leaves, the 

 starch granules are found in abundance 

 in the fruit spurs and steins. But as the 

 temperature lowers by the latter part 

 of November, the starch granules begin 

 to disappear until by the early part of 

 January only a trace of starch is left. 

 This has been found by microchemical 

 lest and also by quantitative analysis 

 both in the seedlings and growing apple 

 trees. Tests on the roots of the same 

 have shown the presence of abundance 

 of starch in both cases all throughout 

 the dormant period. 



This seasonal disappearance of starch 

 from stems and spurs brings forth an 

 open question of three possibilities for 

 the disposal of starch by the plant 

 during its dormant condition. After 

 hydrolization by enzymic action the 

 starch is either utilized by the plant 

 itself as a result of metabolic process 

 or it is translocated to the thick stems 

 and roots and change to starch therein 

 until the flow of sap begins, when it is 

 again hydrolized to sugar and comes 

 up with the soil nutrients or it is partly 

 utilized by metabolism and partly 

 stored in the stems and roots. (This is 

 the main object of study of the writer 

 at present.) Microchemical test has al- 

 ways shown less quantity of starch and 

 sugar in the spurs than in the roots all 

 throughout the dormant period. What- 

 ever it may be in any case during the 

 latter part of the dormant season, the 

 carbohydrate food material (starch) is 

 found to be lacking in the upper part 

 of the tree. At the beginning of the 

 spring season when the soil nutrient 

 rushes up to the upper part it takes up 

 with it a considerable amount of sugar 

 which is the product of enzymic 

 hydrolysis at the roots. The transloca- 

 tion of sugar from the roots to the 

 upper part of the tree is the most pro- 

 nounced in the sugar maple, which is 

 caused by a favorable weather condi- 

 tion for these typical trees. 



A similar phenomenon of the change 

 of starch to sugar in relation to the 

 temperature has been found by Hassel- 

 bring and Hawkins (U. S. D. A. Jour. 

 Agri. Res. 3, 1915) in the storage experi- 

 ment of sweet potatoes. It was found 

 that in sweet potatoes stored at a lower 

 temperature there is a gradual disap- 

 pearance of starch from October to 

 March and a reformation of the same 

 from March to June. Here the changes 

 of starch to cane sugar and vice 

 versa are correlated with the seasonal 

 changes in the temperature. 



During the growing period when the 

 leaves come out new carbohydrate ma- 

 terial is formed by them and the starch 

 begins to show again in the stem and 

 buds, as is evidenced in some of the 

 ornamental shrubs at present, which 

 completely lost their starch during the 

 dormant period. All throughout this 

 growing period of the tree the starch 

 granules are found to be distributed all 

 around the plant organs, more or less, 

 until the next fall. 



The above discussion clearly points 

 to the fact that during the dormant sea- 

 son there is the minimum amount of 

 carbohydrate materials (starch and 



Continued on page 26. 



