88 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 



merit stations make exhaustive trials on all kinds of trees, 

 vines and small fruits, planting some with mere stubs of roots, 

 half an inch, and others with five, ten, fifteen and twenty-inch 

 length, setting enough of each to allow of taking up some 

 every year to demonstrate at once that beyond a length of one 

 inch, the quantity and size of the new roots is invariably in 

 an inverse ratio to the amount of old roots left on. The 

 more and longer the old, the more lateral and weaker the new 

 ones. Let them subject trees of different ages and lengths of 

 tops, up to four or five years or more, to the same treatment, 

 and the result will be the same. The older close root-pruned, 

 even with four-foot tops, will, if staked, quickly re-establish 

 themselves on strong, deep, new roots and make fine trees, 

 while the same age long-rooted ones will become permanently 

 surface-rooted and dwarfed forever. But it is much better to 

 cut back the tops to one foot, and form an entirely new head, 

 as from a seed. 



In planting an orchard of any fruit after this method, I 

 would most earnestly advise, even on ground thought to be 

 rich, that each tree be well top-dressed, AFTER BEING SET, with 

 cotton-seed meal, well rotted barnyard manure, or other fer- 

 tilizer, except fresh stable manure. But neve r put manure of 

 any kind, except plain bone meal, in the hole or around the base of 

 a close root-pruned tree, and see then that it is well mixed with 

 the soil. This fertilizing will force a strong initial growth, 

 and thus induce the trees to strike many and deep, perpen- 

 dicular roots, and if correctly root-pruned, as shown by the 

 tree I hold in my left hand in the cut, few or no lateral roots 

 will be emitted for several years, the trees confining their at- 

 tention entirely, by instinct, to anchoring themselves deep in 

 the moist earth, thus enabling them to resist any drouth, and 

 face unmoved the fiercest storms. No wind can shake or 

 loosen the hold of a close root-pruned tree, no matter how 

 high the future head, or long the trunk. Such trees will make, 

 as they did for Mr. Hale, a perfectly uniform growth, and if 

 propagated from bearing trees, as all should be, will all come 

 into beari-ng at the same time, and mature to full size, with- 

 out thinning, crops that would paralyze trees planted with 



