STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. II3 



that has been planted to potatoes two years running, and it is in 

 excellent condition. The other block was put into an old field 

 that has had nothing done to it for perhaps five years, only just 

 to cut the grass, so that block is not getting the fair show that 

 the other one is getting. Yet they have put on a good growth 

 already. They were mulched very heavily with perhaps sixty 

 to seventy pounds. 



Dr. Twitchell: What do you mean by forcing trees? 



Mr. Gardner: I presume that would refer, perhaps, to an 

 average growth of over eighteen inches. 



Dr. Twitchell : I have some trees that with two pounds of 

 fertilizer, in the spring, made a growth of two and one-half 

 feet. They haven't been forced, surely. They had a space seven 

 feet around them, hoed, as I hoe my corn — weeds kept down. 

 I have a row of trees in front of my bungalow that has made 

 pretty good growth that haven't had any fertilizer since the 

 second year, except what they have taken from the garden — 

 they are alongside the garden — until 191 3 when I broke the land 

 on the other side and have planted it two seasons. Mr. Yeaton 

 and Prof. Hitchings saw the trees this fall, circumference 

 about sixteen or seventeen inches. They were set in 1909. 

 Speaking about forcing trees, I don't know whether I have 

 forced those or not. I haven't thought of it. I commenced 

 with those trees set in 1910, putting two quarts of bone meal 

 into the cavity before I set them, worked into the soil. Then I 

 commenced on half a pint of fertilizer, 4^-9-7^, and increased 

 that every year, until this year they had two and a half pounds. 

 The trees are healthy. This year they have made larger growth 

 than before. Many of them made a growth of two feet to two 

 and a half feet. But still I feel that there has not been any 

 forcing process. There has been no thought of that on my 

 part. 



Mr. Gardner: Of course the main thought in young trees is 

 not, perhaps, so much the amount of growth they put on as the 

 amount of growth that ripens thoroughly before winter sets in. 

 Of course if we don't have our tops well matured and well 

 ripened they are going to suffer more or less from winter-kill- 

 ing, at least, checking the tree. Some of the Gregory orchards 

 put on a large growth, and late, in cultivated gardens, where the 

 cultivation was kept up during the summer, yet even on very 



