1879. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



17 



■stalwart wood growth and rich fruit product, call 

 for unlike qualities in the sap, and different or- 

 gans and regimen for each. If those of one bal- j 

 ance the other, all right ; the tree grows and the ! 

 fruit shows its quality : but if not, those which 

 rule for the nonce the life and condition of the 

 tree, do so at the expense of its other faculty and 

 purpose. 



Nature gifts the tree with power to hold back 

 its fruiting till its wood gets stature, strength and 

 volume to endure the strain of its fruit births and , 

 ripening. It is so in all life. It has in every j 

 form its age of puberty and life renewal. As a ' 

 rule, all of a kind are wisely and evenly gifted 

 for the purposes of their being. But now and 

 then in the same families, there are marked dif- 

 ferences of growth and fruitage. Some fruit trees, 

 of the same species bear very early, while others 

 as the Dix and Urbaniste,&c., among Pears, wait 

 a long while before showing us a fruit. 



The Bartlett I think about the most prompt 

 of the Pear kind. Whether from the nursery, or 

 grafted on older trees, it yields an early crop. 

 Is not the reason of its tenderness, the strain 

 of its early and overbearing ? I have never known 

 tenderness to show itself exceptionally on young 

 ti-ees of the Bartlett, or on its grafts before they 

 began to bear heavily. I have had none die out, 

 but they die by inches after bearing as they do, a 

 load of fruit every year.. I think such trees may 

 be revived by stripping off the Pears for a year 

 or two, or by severe pruning, cutting back 

 boldly to induce new wood. Young side shoots 

 on those decaying or wasting trees do not die or 

 loose their tips till after much cropping. 



the rule tliat one year Apples are so high that 

 few can afford to buy them, and the following 

 year so low farmers can hardly afford to pick and 

 haul them to market. The practical question 

 growing out of this subject is, cannot something 

 be done to change the bearing year. Expex*- 

 ienced orchardists assure me they have produced 

 this result by picking all the young fruit. The 

 matter is certainly worth careful consideration 

 and experiment, and particularly so in this State, 

 with five counties so largely devoted to orchards, 

 one county alone having sent to market in a 

 single season a million barrels of Apples. 



A large amount of Apples this season will be 

 made into cider. One mill here intends to grind 

 tliree hundred thousand ( 300,000 ) bushels, and 

 three mills I hear are grinding eighty thousand 

 (80,000), and a multitude of smaller mills will 

 grind from five to fifty thousand bushels each. 

 In our five great orchard counties there will be 



I ground this season, according to the estimate of 

 good authorities, more than a million bushels of 



j Apples. This seems like a large estimate, but 



I I am disposed to think it not greatly exagerated. 

 ; Cider makers here pay eight to ten cents per 



bushel. 



SOME NOTES ON THE APPLE CROP OF 

 WESTERN NEW YORK. 



BY T. T. SOUTHWICK, ROCHESTER, N. Y. 



Late frosts in the Spring, and severe wind 

 storms during early Autumn, did much to reduce 

 the crop, yet the yield has been very large. In- 

 cluding barrel, costing thirty cents, prices have 

 ranged for picked fruit, from fifty cents for com- 

 mon, to one dollar for extra fine ; the average 

 price for good fruit being seventy-five cents. These 

 low rates are due to a moderate shipping demand 

 in consequence of a good crop East. Last Fall I 

 could make a peck of Apples buy a bushel of 

 Potatoes. This Fall I can make a peck of Po- 

 tatoes buy a bushel of Apples. It has become 



AN EXAMPLE OF THE SUCCESS OF AN 

 ORCHARD UNDER CRASS CULTURE. 



BY JAMES M. HAYES, DOVER, N. H. 



There has come under my notice within a year, 

 an orchard of Baldwin Apple trees upon one of 

 the rocky hillsides of New Hampshire, which 

 has never been ploughed; the ground was un- 

 usually rocky, sometimes so much so, that the 

 trees could not be planted in straight rows. 

 Upon this land the trees were set, manured lib- 

 erally, and it is to-day as fine an orchard as 

 Eastern New Hampshire affords, and there are 

 many good orchards here. Here is an instance 

 where the grass theory advocated by the 

 Monthly has produced good results, both of 

 grass and fruit. But most of our farmers are so 

 negligent of their orchards, if they leave them in 

 grass, that the trees are soon stunted and die. 

 Therefore, for those careless ones, there is no 

 other course except to plough amongst the trees. 

 But to him who believes in fruit culture, and who 

 follows it as a business, or out of love for it, and 

 who intends to give his trees as good care as he 

 would his cattle, then he can raise trees in grass 

 as well as elsewhere. 



