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RENOVATING OLD STANDARD PEAR 

 TREES 



Old pear trees wMch have ceased to bear any but under- 

 sized fruit are often an eyesore ; still the owner may be 

 unwilling to resort to the heroic remedy of cutting 

 them down. My remedy is not so trenchant, and, 

 instead of destruction, will restore them to health and 

 vigour; it is simply to head the branches down to 

 within three or four feet of the main stem. Prom 

 these stumps will be at once produced young shoots 

 in abundance, and in three years they will be thickly 

 covered with fruit spurs, and the tree will be in 

 condition to bear fruit from young wood no longer 

 distorted and small, but fine in size and quality. I 

 do not speak from theory, but from practice, as I have 

 operated on trees which I thought hopeless, which have 

 now robust young heads on old trunks. The old 

 bearing wood of fruit trees appears to become too con- 

 stricted and dense to allow the sap to flow freely, hence 

 the inferiority of the fruit. 



The vine, after seven or eight years of spur-pruning, 

 produces small branches, which gradually lessen ; the 

 same treatment should be applied by cutting away the 

 old stem, and rearing a young rod from the base. 



Apples and plums do not bear this treatment so 

 happily as the pear. 



