Fruit Growing 41 



take rooted pear suckers, graft the Bartlctt on them, and save the cost of 

 nursery stock? Last year my Hve-ycar-old Bartlctt orchard zvas full of 

 blossoms, but, though many pears became as large as white beans, the 

 majority of them dropped. 



The pear and apple do not make a good union. The grafts may 

 grow for a while, but finally fail. Do not use suckers as stocks. 

 You can dig up some year roots and use them as starters by making 

 root-grafts with Bartlett scions and do better than with suckers, 

 but a good pear seedling is the proper thing either for budding or 

 root grafting. Unless you have some experience in such work, it 

 will be cheaper in the end to buy good nursery trees. The non- 

 bearing of your young trees is probably due to their youth and 

 vigor. 



Bees and Pear Blight. 



A fezi.1 years ago, I planted alfalfa bctivecn my pear trees and the 

 trees bore a very heavy crop that year. Then blight made its appearance, 

 and it zvas claimed that the bees carried the blight. I therefore plozved 

 under the alfalfa and destroyed zvhat fezv beehives I had. If the theory 

 that the bees carry the blight from tree to tree is not correct, I zt'ill ex- 

 periment zvith alfalfa again this year. 



It is true that bees carry pear blight. It is also true that you 

 are not likely to get many pears without bees to pollinate the blos- 

 soms. You cannot escape the carriage of the pear blight by re- 

 moving tame bees, because wild bees are abundant in all parts of 

 the State. The way to overcome the blight is to pursue it by ampu- 

 tation of diseased branches continually, so that there may be no 

 contamination for the bees to carry. You are certainly warranted 

 in continuing your alfalfa growing without regard to this question, 

 using water enough to keep the alfalfa growing well without satur- 

 ating the soil to the injury of the trees or inducing too much summer 

 growth on them. 



Forage Under Sprayed Trees. 



Is it safe to use arsenical sprays in a pear orchard in zvhich alfalfa is 

 raised betzvecn the trees and afterzvard cut and fed to cattle? 



It was fully demonstrated by experiment about 25 years ago 

 that herbage under trees sprayed with paris green at the rate of 1 

 pound to 160 gallons of water was not injurious to animals pasturing 

 upon it. We are not aware that such an experiinent has been made 

 with the more recently used arsenates — which can be used with a 

 much higher amount of arsenic to the gallon because they do not 

 injure the foliage — to determine whether the herbage below would 

 be poisonous or not. Presumably not, because modern spraying 

 does not admit as much loss from run-off as was the case with old 

 spraying methods. 



Pears on Quince. 



/ saw some time ago a report of some French e.vperiments in grafting 

 the pear onto quince root. The report said the fruit produced zcas much 

 larger than on any other root. 



