GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 47 



I have fought Mr. S.'s battle here in California. I know he is 

 right. I have seen the same practice which he narrates applied to 

 the olive, and only six berries were produced from an orchard of over 

 thirteen hundred trees, after the most diligent and careful cultivation 

 for six years, while cuttings which I planted at the same time (taken 

 from old bearing trees) all bore fruit the third year. One tree bore 

 eleven gallons the fourth year, and I have had trees bear twenty-three 

 gallons the fifth year and a barrel the sixth year. The difference be- 

 tween an orchard of thirteen hundred trees bearing six olives the 

 sixth year and a single tree of the same age bearing a barrel, thirty-one 

 gallons, of fruit, is worth noticing, and demands investigation. And 

 yet, right here in Southern California, with all these facts before 

 them, there are nurserymen who still persist in planting cuttings from 

 trees which are now forty or fifty years old, which trees never pro- 

 duced a hatfull of olives, which trees should bear one hundred gal- 

 lons at a crop. 



I never plant a cutting from any tree which has not produced 

 fruit, and I am perfectly willing to take cuttings from the oldest bear- 

 ing tree in the country. I am ready to guarantee every tree I sell to 

 bear fruit if planted here. I will guarantee 75 per cent, to bear the 

 third year and every tree to bear the fourth year. 



Very truly, 



FRANK A. KIMBALL. 



IT OFTEN happens that when apple trees or an apple orchard has 

 arrived at bearing age, from ten to fifteen years (according to va- 

 riety) (?), while making a good growth of wood every year, they may 

 fail to form fruit buds and bear fruit. In many instances trees have 

 reached the age of twenty years or more, healthy, vigorous trees, 

 that have not produced fruit enough to pay for the first cost of tree 

 and transportation. Now there are a good many who would be glad 

 to know if there are any means by which such trees can be made to 

 bear. It is a well known law of vegetation that a rapid-growing tree 

 or plant is inclined to make wood buds rather than fruit buds, and 

 that sap has a strong tendency to flow into terminal buds rather than 

 into side buds. It is a prevailing opinion of experienced horticultur- 

 ists that any check of growth has the effect to promote the growth of 

 fruit buds reproductive organs. I have known instances where 

 flourishing young orchards, that had always been under cultivation, 

 and formed no fruit buds but annually a rank growth of wood, have 

 been seeded down to grass, and fruitfulness followed in two or three 

 years. The owners believed that the sod checked the too rampant 

 growth of wood and induced the growth of fruit buds. Possibly 

 they were right. Again, pear growers are well aware that, to make 

 rapid growing pear trees fruitful, it is necessary to shorten-in every 

 year's growth to promote the formation of fruit buds. This fact is 

 so well known as to be unquestioned by well informed pear growers. 

 Why may not the same methods be applied to apple trees ? I know 

 that it would be a tedious operation to go all over the top of a large 

 apple tree and shorten-in the previous year's growth, but, if it would 

 cause a barren tree to become fruitful, it would be labor well ex- 



