NINETEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 51 



should be broadcasted. In applying fertilizers you would 

 not think it was necessary to emphasize the fact of broadcast- 

 ing them. You will still find many intelligent fruit growers 

 putting the fertilizers close up to or around the trunks of 

 the trees. I think in an old orchard where the trees are sit- 

 uated anywhere from thirty to thirty-five and forty feet 

 apart, no man can make a mistake by covering the entire sur- 

 face with the fertilizer. The trees will get it all in time. 



Question : How early in the season do you plow ? 

 Mr. Drew : Just as early as I can. 

 Question : About this time ? 



Mr. Drew : No, I should put it off a little later. I 

 should plow it through very early in the spring. 



Mr. Buell: I would like to ask the speaker how much 

 wood it is safe to cut off a tree where you are trimming an 

 old orchard, — how large a limb? 



Mr. Drew : Well, I have cut off some that were quite 

 large, some over eight inches in diameter. On some trees I 

 have cut off forty feet of the top of an apple tree, and I 

 have got some of those trees to-day that are doing well. That 

 is pretty radical treatment, and it would not be necessary ex- 

 cept in those trees over forty or fifty years old, which run 

 up pretty well. Where people have gone to work and kept 

 encouraging the trees to go away up in the air you have got 

 to do something of that kind. At the present time you can- 

 not afford to have those trees away up in the air where you 

 have got to use a ladder twenty-five to thirty feet long to get 

 up to them. I do not like a high-headed tree. I believe in 

 keeping them down, but on these old trees it is very hard to 

 give a general rule. What I do may not be applicable to the 

 needs of some other man. There are many trees where you 

 can benefit them by simply cutting out the main branches in 

 the center of the tree, and then heading in the branches more 

 on the side, so that you can get them down. As I said in 



