February 17, 1897.] 



Garden and Forest. 



69 



The tree may be looked upon as a machine for manufacturing 

 plant substances out of crude materials obtained from the soil 

 and air. The work is done in the green portions of the plant, 

 almost wholly in the leaves. In the presence of warmth and 

 sunlight the crude material enters with the sap through the 

 root, rises to the leaves, and with other material taken from 

 the air it is built up into starch, sugars and other compounds 

 which go to sustain the life and the growth of the plant. The 

 total amount of such product which a tree can manufacture in 

 a season is largely determined (1) by the amount of available 

 plant-food in the soil, (2) the amount of foliage which con- 

 tinues healthy and vigorous throughout the season, (3) the 

 total amount of sunlight and temperature favorable for the 

 growth experienced during the season, (4) by a certain factor 

 which may be called individual capacity and vigor of the tree. 

 The amount of food material which a tree can supply in a given 

 season for growing a crop of fruit is therefore largely fixed by 

 the conditions last named and the amount of reserve material 

 which was stored up in the tree the previous season for 

 future use. After an Apple-tree has reached maturity the 

 forming of fruit-buds during the latter part of each season is a 

 perfectly normal process which will take place whenever the 

 tree has sufficient nourishing material to supply this demand 

 in addition to sustaining its growth, ripening its wood and 

 providing leaf-buds for the coming season. The fruit grower 

 may provide to some extent for the formation of fruit-buds 

 each season by directing to that end the favoring influences so 

 far as they are under his control. The foliage may be pro- 

 tected from attacks of disease and insects by spraying, so that 

 it can elaborate the food material essential to developing the 

 various plant tissues. By tillage and fertilizers enough plant- 

 food in readily available form can be provided in the soil. By 

 judicious pruning the amount of bearing wood may be regu- 

 lated so as to reduce the labor of thinning the fruit, and suffi- 

 cient light may be admitted to the inner and lower branches 

 to help the leaves in manufacturing substances essential to 

 the growth of fruit. Finally, by thinning the fruit so as to pre- 

 vent the prodigal waste of the resources of the tree in seasons 

 naturally favorable to excessive yield, the trees may be brought 

 into more regular bearing, and in the end a much larger 

 amount of first-class fruit can be produced. It may be ob- 

 jected that it is impracticable to thin apples because the fruit 

 does not ordinarily bring a sufficiently high price to cover the 

 cost of extra labor, and this is perhaps the most serious objec- 

 tion to the practice which presents itself to practical growers. 

 Questions as to the best way of doing the work must be settled 

 by practice in accordance with local conditions. Mr. Charles 

 A. Green has written to The Rural New-Yorker that he took 

 off from one-third to one-half of the fruit on a tree in a short 

 time with an ordinary steel garden rake. Mr. T. Greiner has 

 suggested in the same paper the shaking off of fruit and whip- 

 ping it off with long poles. Both men admit that these meth- 

 ods are crude, and, no doubt, they suggest them simply 

 because they are inexpensive. They are objectionable because 

 no discrimination can be used as to the kind of fruit which is 

 removed. Besides this, they cannot be used in June when the 

 largest apples are no more than an inch and a half in diameter 

 and the trees must, therefore, carry their full burden till later 

 in the season before the fruit is large enough to be raked, 

 clubbed or shaken off. The energies of the tree are thus 

 wasted, and the fruit which is left cannot be expected to show 

 as great an improvement as when thinning is done earlier in 

 the season. More careful methods must eventually be 

 adopted before thinning becomes an established practice. 



It is well known that the lower branches and shaded parts of 

 the tree bear a larger proportion of fruit inferior in color, size 

 and quality than the branches which have more light. Most 

 of these lower branches may usually be reached from step- 

 ladders or racks fastened on wagons so that the parts of the 

 tree which most need to be thinned can be reached with com- 

 parative ease. It would seem that by some such method a 

 large part of the thinning could be satisfactorily done with 

 cheap labor under experienced supervision. It should be 

 remembered that the increased value of a crop is not the only 

 item to be credited to the practice of thinning. It costs con- 

 siderable labor to prop the branches of trees and save them 

 from breaking under excessive burdens, and this goes to 

 counterbalance the expense of thinning. Besides this, in an 

 unthinned crop a large amount of inferior apples must be 

 handled at little or no profit, or possibly at a loss. The ripen- 

 ing of this inferior fruit practically shuts out the possibility of 

 a crop the next year. Looking over the season of 1S96 we see 

 broken trees and broken prices. Looking forward to the sea- 

 son of 1897 we see barren trees, with prospects of good prices. 

 And after all the labor the late great crop has imposed, and 



the loss it has brought to many fruit growers, is it not worth 

 inquiring whether the thinning of the fruit in 1896 would not 

 have paid ? Would it not have been better if half the second- 

 class apples grown in New York had never been marketed? 

 If throughout the apple-growing sections half the seconds and 

 all the culls had been thinned out early in the season, the 

 remaining crop would have been exceptionally fine, and New 

 York would have sustained the reputation for fine apples, 

 which would be a material help in marketing succeeding 

 crops. Besides this, having exceptionally healthy foliage and 

 a favorable growing season, it is reasonable to expect that the 

 partially unburdened trees would have provided fruit-buds for 

 at least a fair crop next year. 



PLANT-FOOD IN SOIL. 



Professor Roberts read a paper entitled " An Inventory of 

 the Land," which was a study of the productive power of soil. 

 From a number of analyses he found that, on an average, eight 

 inches of surface soil contained of potential plant-food to the 

 acre 3,053 pounds of nitrogen, 4,219 pounds of phosphoric 

 acid, 16,317 pounds of potash. This means so large an amount 

 of the necessary elements of plant-food that one wonders why 

 we do not secure larger crops and why we need to manure the 

 land. Of course, with our present methods of tillage a very 

 large percentage of this plant-food is not available, and the 

 problem is how to treat this dormant food so that it can be used 

 by the growing plants. The first consideration which im- 

 presses Professor Roberts is that it is not lack of foodinthesoil 

 so much as lack of moisture which causes plants to languish. 

 The prime object of successful tillage then ought to be to 

 make the land a reservoir for the storage of moisture and to 

 so treat it by stirring the surface as to prevent its evaporation, 

 or, in other words, to compel it to pass off through the plants 

 and do its work in supplying them with food. A number of 

 experiments made during 1895 and 1896 on land of light and 

 gravelly texture in cultivation without the use of any fertilizers 

 seem to prove that large crops of potatoes, say 350 bushels to 

 the acre, could be grown by cultivating between the rows so 

 frequently as to pulverize the soil and liberate the plant-food. 

 Of course, if there had been more rain there would have been 

 better crops, but the tests seem to show that the soil could be 

 so worked as to release as much plant-food as the crop could 

 digest. At all events, it is Professor Roberts' belief that there 

 is enough inert plant-food in the soil which can be made avail- 

 able by a little extra expense in tillage and cultivation, and 

 that by the same method in ordinary seasons enough water 

 can be preserved in the soil to develop a paying crop. 



Notes. 



During the first week of this month 47,000 bunches of 

 bananas were received at this port. 



During the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1896, 376 publica- 

 tions were issued by the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture. Exclusive of reprints these publications comprise 



10,170 pages, and the total number of copies of all of them was 



6,561,700. 



At the more elaborate dinners and balls given by wealthy 

 society people this winter the chief decorations have been of 

 costly Orchids interspersed among the fronds of Adiantum 

 Farleyense. The Florists' Exchange tells of one dinner table 

 laid for thirty-two covers which was decorated with five hun- 

 dred flowers of Cattleya, 2.200 of Dendrobium and 200 spikes 

 of Laelia anceps, laid in a foundation of Adiantum Farleyense. 



The new white Rose, Lillian Nordica, for which Mr. M. H. 

 Walsh, of Woods Holl, Massachusetts, received a certificate of 

 merit from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society last year, 

 was exhibited at a recent Saturday meeting of the same 

 society in Boston and attracted great attention. The flowers 

 have long, straight stems, rich dark green foliage and exqui- 

 site fragrance. The seedling blooms freely and is from Mar- 

 garet Dickson crossed by Madame Hoste. 



As we stated last December, Albemarle Pippins have been 

 uncommonly scarce this season, the entire crop in Virginia 

 amounting to but 1,000 barrels. Most of the single car-load of 

 this fruit which came to this city was exported, but the English 

 supplies of this favorite apple have been mainly of the similar 

 Newtown Pippins, from the Hudson River district in New York 

 state. Five car-loads of Newtown Pippins recently reached this 

 city from Oregon and California, and these, carefully repacked 

 in boxes holding a bushel, have been shipped to London, 

 where they have been pronounced the best apples of the kind 

 seen there this season. They have realized as much as $5.50 



