262 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



parties. It is important that the pruning of the orchard should be com- 

 pleted before the sap starts in the early spring and before the busy 

 orchardist is engaged in other work. 



Idaho, E. F. STEPHENS:. 



TREATING OLD ORCHARD. 



SPRAYING AND SYSTEMATIC PRUNING WORK WONDERS IN A 



NORTH CAROLINA ORCHARD. 



The late Dr. Knapp showed a deep understanding of human nature, 

 when he said: "If you tell a man anything, he won't believe it, you may 

 show him, and he won't believe it; but you make him do it with his own' 

 hands and he believes," or words to that effect. Dr. Knapp was speaking 

 in reference to agricultural methods in the south and in favor and ex- 

 planation of his plan of demonstration farms. He did great work for the 

 south through that plan, and we have today demonstration orchards in 

 every section, monuments to the benefits of spraying. 



Three years ago the writer bought a small place in the Blue Ridge 

 mountains, with a small neglected orchard on it. We were busy the first 

 year in building, but noticed that in August the leaves became affected 

 with small brown spots, and before the end of that month had nearly all 

 fallen off. The fruit was scattering and small, and a neighbor said the 

 trees had been planted about twenty-five years, and never had a decent 

 crop of fruit. 



The following winter we pruned the sky-scaping tops entirely out, also 

 thinning the lower part of the trees, and in most cases getting what would 

 pass for a "sane and safe" tree, one from which the apples could be picked 

 with an eighteen-foot ladder. 



Now, having pruned the tops, we next proceeded to prune the roots, 

 and this is the way we went at it: We took a good sharp two-horse plow 

 and two good heavy mules and a willing but skeptical man, and plowed as 

 deep as eight inches right up to the trees, snapping and cutting roots ruth- 

 lessly, for mind you, we were considering the removal of the entire 

 orchard, as the trees had been neglected so long that borers had made a 

 sad depredation among them. 



At this plowing we turned under quite a crop of wild strawberry vines, 

 some grass and a lot of briar and small stunted weeds;- then we seeded 

 to crimson clover, inoculating the seed. We hired a man with a minia- 

 ture fire department to do the spraying, for we had never done any spray- 

 ing, and he had an orchard. But when he drove up without having made 

 any solution, we were nearly discouraged, and when he turned his solid 

 stream on the trees, we told the good woman of the house that it would be 

 as well to pay the man and let him go home, for having read The Fruit 

 Grower, we could easily distinguish between spraying and squirting. 



That fall we had quite a crop of cider apples, but not a decent speci- 

 men in the entire lot; the leaves had again fallen during July and August, 



