62 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



September, 1909 



It all resolves itself into a definition of 

 profit. Dwarf fruits pay well — in enjoy- 

 ment and enthusiasm. Even their most 

 enthusiastic advocate in America — Pro- 

 fessor Waugh — never claimed more than 

 this. But the commercial fruit grower 

 would better look elsewhere for his kind 

 of profit. 



EARLY BEARING AND QUALITY 



Dwarf trees do bear very young. A 

 fruit or two may be expected even the year 

 after planting. This is a great comfort and 

 encouragement to the amateur. If he had 

 to wait six to eight years for a standard tree 

 to bear he might get discouraged. Early 

 bearing is especially appreciated by the 

 average suburbanite, who moves every now 

 and then as a matter of principle. But 

 these few fruits would be a negligible 

 quantity commercially. In other words, the 

 early bearing of dwarf trees is an amateur, 

 not a commercial, advantage. 



The superior color and quality of fruit 

 grown on dwarf trees is a matter open to 

 dispute. It is scarcely worth considering 

 commercially, but may be worth the atten- 

 tion of the amateur. 



USE AS FILLERS 



It has been advocated that dwarf trees 

 should be used as fillers between standard 

 trees, to give quick returns while the latter 

 are coming into bearing. I have never 

 found any one who will recommend this 

 plan after having tried it. It is open to all 

 the objections of the filler system in general 

 and has several special disadvantages. 



Dwarf trees and standard trees, even of 

 the same fruit, cannot be grown together 

 to any better advantage than apples and 

 peaches, or peaches and currants. The 

 dwarf trees require different treatment — 

 they crowd the standards, they are not 

 taken out soon enough, and so on. The use 

 of fillers has been overdone, anyhow. The 

 system, I believe, usually costs more than 

 it gains; because the permanent trees are usu- 

 ally stunted. In the majority of cases it 

 would be more profitable to crop the orchard 

 in corn, potatoes, or some other hoed crop 

 than to stuff it with fillers. The use of dwarf 



Summer pruning means much in keeping trees 

 dwarf . The ends of ambitious shoots are pinched 

 off. This throws growth into the weaker branches, 

 giving a more symmetrical tree 



The high headed tree is easy to cultivate under, 

 but hard to prune, spray, and harvest. Low head- 

 ed trees are usually preferable 



trees as fillers has not been a success in any 

 case that I have seen it tried commercially. 



THE CONVENIENCE OF DWARFS 



An incontestable merit of dwarf trees is 

 their convenience in pruning, harvesting, 

 and especially in spraying. They are 

 within reach. It is increasingly necessary 

 to spray, and to cover every part of the tree 

 and fruit with spray. This can be done 

 on dwarf trees. Any one who has tried to 

 dislodge San Jose scale from the top of 

 an apple tree fifty feet high will appreciate 

 this point. It has seemed to some that for 

 this reason alone the time is coming when 

 dwarf trees will supplant standard trees in 

 commercial operations. Some large orchards 

 of dwarf trees have been set out with this 

 thought in mind. 



Undoubtedly the tendency will be more 

 and more toward smaller and earlier- 

 bearing trees as an economic necessity. 

 But it is doubtful if the present type of 

 dwarf trees will ever rule the commercial 

 orchards of America. They do not have 

 enough bearing surface; and they have to 

 be petted too much. It is certain that the 

 stature of the trees in our commercial or- 

 chards will be reduced, but not to the 

 extreme type represented by apples on Para- 

 dise stock, for example. Reduction in 

 stature will be secured by the use of stocks 

 that will make half standards, as apples on 

 Doucin stock or trees of only moderate height, 

 — say twelve to eighteen feet for apples; 

 and by methods of training and pruning 

 that will keep the height of the tree 

 reduced, but still allow it to spread later- 

 ally. Trees twelve feet high and twenty 

 feet wide will be more common twenty- 

 five years from now than at present. It 

 is becoming absolutely necessary to bring 

 the bearing surface down closer to the 

 ground; but I believe that in commercial 

 operations this will be accomplished by 

 the use of half standard stocks, and by 



pruning, rather than by the use of the very 

 dwarf stocks common to-day. 



In the natural order of things, the old, high 

 topped orchard will be eliminated. The 

 time is coming when commercial apple 

 growers will deliberately cut down certain 

 varieties when they are fifteen to eighteen 

 years old, for the older the orchard, beyond 

 a certain point, the greater the cost of pro- 

 duction. The effort will be to get varieties 

 that bear very early, force them to produce 

 very large crops early in life, and when the 

 trees begin to get large and difficult to spray 

 to advantage, to discard them for new plant- 

 ings. This is far more likely to be the evolu- 

 tion of commercial fruit growing than that 

 the dwarf trees should crowd out standards. 



THE AMATEUR IDEAL 



Dwarf fruits in America are the product 

 of the amateur ideal. It belongs peculiarly 

 to the man who is not bothered much about 

 whether fruits pay, but is concerned chiefly 

 about whether there is enough fun in growing 

 them to make it worth his while. The 

 amateur spirit is the result of stability, not 

 of restlessness. It is the antithesis of com- 

 mercialism. In the early days we imported 

 a large stock of the amateur ideal direct from 

 the Old Country. It came to fruition in 

 the Downings, in Wilder, Thomas Barry, 

 and kindred spirits. During the past fifty 

 years we have been too busy making money 

 to pay much attention to the amateur ideal. 

 It has been an era of promoting, developing 

 exploiting; days of big things — including 

 big orchards. During this invasion of 

 commercialism the amateur ideal has been 

 kept alive at a few places, notably near 

 Boston by the Massachusetts Horticultural 

 Society. Now, with the trend of popula- 

 tion more and more countryward, the ama- 

 teur ideal is gaining ground. 



It will be a long time, however, before 

 there is in the country anything like as 

 much general interest in amateur fruit- 

 growing and gardening, and especially in 

 such a highly specialized art as the culture 

 of dwarf trees as there is in Europe. Our 

 people are restless, on the move, and fruit 

 trees can not be picked up, like a bedstead, 

 on April ist. As a people we are inclined 

 more to strenuous pleasures than to placid 

 pastoral enjoyment. Most of us would 

 rather go to a ball game than work in 

 a garden. It will take centuries, even 

 as it has in England, to develop in our 

 people, as a national characteristic, the 

 intense love of plants — for their own sake 

 not for what they will bring — which we 

 admire in the English, Scotch, German, 

 Dutch, and French nations. But it will 

 come in time. 



In brief, I believe dwarf trees have little 

 place, if any, in the commercial fruit growing 

 of America. They may be used to supply 

 an extremely restricted and aristocratic trade, 

 among very wealthy people, but this market 

 will be, of necessity, very limited. Standard 

 trees will continue to dominate our commer- 

 cial fruit growing, but the stature of standard 

 trees will be gradually reduced. Dwarf 

 trees, however, will continue to delight the 



