232 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



holes, stop them up with very wet mud or dirt, and then touch 

 it off with a battery, so it will all go at the same time. 



A Member: There is a question I would like to ask. In 

 treating- an old orchard you cut out a great deal of the top, 

 don't you 



President Rogers : If I understand the question, I should 

 answer by saying that if I had an old orchard, or some old trees 

 in very bad condition, I would prefer to do my pruning gradu- 

 ally, say, for three years, to get those trees down to a shape 

 somewhere near my ideal. I should prefer to put some time 

 in on cultivation. I do not believe you can take an old or- 

 chard and bring it up to good standing in three years without 

 care and development of that orchard. I believe that you have 

 got to work your orchard to bring it up, just as you would a 

 run-down animal — exactly. You have got to begin to feed, by 

 going very carefully, and bring it up iby stimulating it, and if 

 you overdo it you are liable to do more harm than good. If 

 you overdo your cultivation and pruning, you are apt to ruin 

 your tree, and you might as well cut it down. A great many 

 people at the present time, I think, are going a little too far in 

 dehorning or cutting back trees. They are doing it all in one 

 season. According to my way of thinking, you are just 

 throwing away your money. 



A M;EMBER : I hardly think it does. Another thought 

 that comes to me is that perhaps in that subsoiling we will stir 

 the soil so much deeper that it will naturally store a good deal 

 more moisture. 



President Rogers : Very true, but you take a tree that 

 has not been cultivated, that is in sod or weeds, and that has 

 not been cultivated for five or ten years, and your roots are up 

 at the top of the ground. Xow, rather than to try to subsoil 

 that orchard, I would say to cultivate that orchard' very shal- 

 low. If I was going to plow, I should plow it just as shallow 

 as I could the first time, and the next year I would try to plow 

 a little deeper, and in that w^ay try to work the roots down a 

 little. The roots are what the tree lives on, and what su]>ports 



