STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 139 



were girdled part way round, some of them more than three- 

 quarters of the distance. This past season in one of the orchards 

 we have been doing some tree surgery. We have cut out the 

 diseased wood so as to get down to the clean wood in order 

 to make a good healing, and then have filled those with cement. 

 We are intending, and probably it will be carried out next 

 spring, to bridge graft below, starting in below where the mice 

 have girdled and inserting tlie scion below. While it is of course 

 going to be a great deal of injury, as it has set back the tree in its 

 productivity quite a good deal by the loss of the flow of the sap, 

 yet we believe that by bridging that over we can induce that 

 tree to bear the noi'mal crop again. Those are some of the 

 few things that we are trying to demonstrate to the people 

 that it is feasible to do. 



Now in almost all of the orchards we have given absolutely 

 thorough cultivation from the early spring until about the 

 middle of August. In one of the orchards we have left, partly 

 from necessity and partly for an experiment, a piece around 

 the tree four feet. V/e plowed up to four feet each way. There 

 is an eight foot space, four feet from either side, and where it 

 has been plowed both ways there as really a circle of eight feet 

 around the tree that has not been cultivated, and where the 

 trees have had a thorough, clean cultivation in the rows ad- 

 joining those with the eight foot space, we can see by the new 

 growth this year that it has made quite a good deal of difiference. 

 Where there was clean cultivation there has been from two to 

 five inches more growth. Now that may seem to you a small 

 thing, two to five inches, but when you consider that the average 

 growth of our orchards throughout the State is only about eight 

 inches, you will see it is really a phenomenal growth. And 

 that has been accomplished more through cultivation than it 

 has from the fertilization. 



The fertilizer experiments have been as follows : In No, i 

 orchard, the first four rows this year had no fertilizer whatever ; 

 the next four rows, 500 lbs. of the commercial fertilizer which 

 analyzes 4-8-6, — nitrogen 4, phosphoric acid 8, potash 6 ; and 

 the next four rows had a half a ton of that same grade. That 

 is the grade of phosphate used this year in all of our orchard 

 work. This year with the cultivation that we have given the 



