340 The Principles of Fruit-growing. 



at that time, ordinarily, on account of our friends, 

 the bees." 



Coote reports that peaches under glass set less 

 fruit when sprayed in full bloom with either warm 

 or cold water than they did when pollinated by 

 means of a brash.* 



RENOVATING OLD ORCHARDS. 



It is impossible to give any specific method of 

 procedure when it is desired to renovate an old 

 and profitless orchard. It is first necessary to dis- 

 cover the causes of its unprofitableness to diagnose 

 the difficulty and then to go straight at the root 

 of the evil. It must be remembered, too, that an 

 old, neglected orchard cannot be expected to arrive 

 at the profitable condition which trees enjoy which 

 have received proper care from the beginning, no 

 matter how thorough the means of recuperating it 

 may be. At the best, one can only make an apol- 

 ogy for long years of neglect and mistakes. It is 

 probable, too, that the trees may sometimes become 

 so fixed in habit that no amount of good treatment 

 can make them bear satisfactorily. If the grower 

 once arrives at a clear conception of the agencies 

 which make for productiveness, he will readily per- 

 ceive what the trouble with his orchard may be. 



In general, it may be said that the first thing 

 to do to revive an old orchard is to till the land. 



* George Coote, Bull. 34, Oregon Exp. Sta. (1895). This bulletin also cot- 

 tiiius observations on the pollen production of varieties of fruits. 



