April, 1912 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST 



87 



I 



A Lesion in Pruning. — An Old Apple Tree That Still Hb< Too Much Wood 



Care of the Peach Orchard* 



F. M. Clement, Dutton, Ont. 



THREE things I would insist on from 

 the first are the following : That 

 the tree has life. Its growth and 

 development then depends on the atten- 

 tion and care you give it. Second, 

 be sure that food is taken in a 

 soluble form, which means that the 

 grower must prepare the food for the 

 tree ; and lastly, remember that the 

 cheapest way of supplying fertilizer is 

 by careful cultivation. 



Tihe meaning of the word manure is 

 the same as to manoeuvre or to work by 

 hand. The Greeks realized that if they 

 cultivated the land very carefully the 

 crop was increased. In other words, 

 careful cultivation makes available the 

 plant food or makes it soluble so that it 

 can be used by the tree. The import- 

 ance of thorough cultivation during the 

 early spring weeks cannot be too strong- 

 ly emphasized; at this time the tree is 

 carrying its load of fruit, producing new 

 wood and forming in embryo the tiny 

 fruit and leaf buds for the next season's 

 crop. That is the critical time in the 

 life of the tree. A single cultivation in 

 June is worth two or three in July. 



CHECKlNa GROWTH 



It is just as important to check growth 

 in early August as it is to produce it in 

 May and June. Many trees through- 

 out Ontario were severely injured last 

 winter because of late cultivation or 

 stirring the soil when digging the pota- 

 toes or roots from between the rows. 

 This started new growth, which was not 

 sufficiently hardy to stand the winter. 

 A young orchard at Sparta was severely 

 injured last winter because of this. The 

 grower is one of the best, if not the 

 best, in the county, but because he cul- 



tivated a little too late about one-sixth 

 of his trees were injured or killed, and I 

 understand that Mr. Johnson, of Forest, 

 had a large number of trees injured be- 

 cause of cultivating or stirring the soil 

 a little late in the season. If the trees 

 are not too heavily laden, sow cover 

 crop in early July. This will tend to 

 check the growth and to ripen the wood 

 and buds. 



FERTIIilZING 



Our best men also differ in their me- 

 thods of fertilizing their orchards. Here 

 again we have the two extremes of little 

 or no fertilizer, to a large amount of 

 fertilizer applied each year. One pro- 

 minent grower whom I know does not 

 use any farmyard manure. He depends 

 on thorough cultivation. He claims that 

 humus or a good cover crop such as 



clover plowed under and carefully culti- 

 vated will give all that the trees on a 

 loam or sand loam require, and his re- 

 sults seem to bear out his theory, as ihe 

 has produced good crops for six or seven 

 years without using farmyard manure or 

 commercial fertilizer. Another grower 

 whom I know, uses a limited amount of 

 farmyard manure each year, and in the 

 early summer applies along with it about 

 seventy-five pounds of potash and two 

 hundred pounds of bonemeal per acre. 

 He also is getting excellent results, and 

 I understand that he has not missed a 

 crop in the last four or five years. 



What appears to me to be the ideal 

 method is to cultivate t!horoughly up to 

 the first or middle of July and then sow 

 a crop of clover, vetch or rye or a mix- 

 ture of them to be plowed under early 

 in the following spring or when the rye 

 is about eighteen inches high. Com- 

 mercial fertilizer of bonemeal and po- 

 tash, about two to one, applied at the 

 rate of about two hundred and fifty 

 pounds to the acre, along with this 

 should return to the soil all and more 

 than the crops are removing from year 



As yet very few growers have the 

 courage to thin the fruit. They cannot 

 bear to see large quantities of fruit pull- 

 ed off and thrown on to the ground and 

 consequently as yet few of the growers 

 are thinning systematically. A large 

 number practice it a little, but it cannot 

 be said that it is a regular feature of 

 ordhard practice. To my mind it is just 

 as important as cultivation and manur- 

 ing because we lose the value of our 

 early labor by not continuing the good 

 work a little farther and removing some 

 of the fruit that is tending to break down 

 the tree. 



In a thinning experiment conducted in 

 the orchard of Mr. Haynes, of St. Cath- 



hxrtact from a paper read at the laat an- 

 nual convention of the Ontario Fruit Growers' 

 Association. 



The Same Tree After Pruning had Been Completed 



(Both Photos by F. Brooks, Barrie, Ont.) 



