^p> While it Is not the intention to publish anything in this magazine that 

 i^^F is misleadng or unreliable, yet it must be remembered that the articles 

 published herein recite the experience and opinions of their writers, and this 

 fact must always be noted in estimating their practical value. 



Vol. 45 OCTOBER, 1917 No. 10 



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The Unfruitful Tree and How to Correct It. 



PROF. S. A. BEACH, HORTICULTURIST, AMES, IA. 



We grow orchard trees primarily for fruit. Some people 

 seem to forget that and grow them for wood, but as horticul- 

 turists we do not recognize that standard. The orchard tree is 

 grown, or should be grown, for fruit. What is the condition, 

 then, that we wish to secure in the tree? 



Plant Food: In the first place, we must recognize that 

 the tree cannot make fruit out of nothing. It has no such magic 

 ability. It must work; it must do its appointed work in order 

 to produce fruit for the reproduction of its species, of its kind. 

 What is that work? 



Well, in the first place, it must establish itself in the world. 

 Take the apple, for instance — it is easy for me to talk about the 

 apple ; I have thought about it so much my mind naturally runs 

 in that channel. What is the natural home of the apple? It 

 is indicated by the present botanical name. The botanists keep 

 changing the name every few years, and it is hard to keep track 

 of it, but they call it Malus sylvestis, that is to say, "the apple tree 

 of the woods." It is found, I am told, in its native state in for- 

 ests. Any tree that naturally grows in forests, the first thing it 

 must do in life is to make a place for itself. If it started at once 

 to fruiting it would be crowded and shaded out of existence by 

 the taller trees which overtopped it. So the very first thing that 

 the young tree must do — and that is evidently bred in the bone 

 and sinew (so to speak) of the apple tree — the first thing it 

 must do is to send its roots deeply into the ground and send up- 

 its trunk as rapidly as it can into the sunlight, where it can 

 fight for life. So we find the first condition in the early life of 

 the tree is a condition of rapid vegetative growth. 



(369) 



