x AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS April, 1912 
@—4 (bldwell fawn Mower(b=2, 
‘LARGEST 
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UNITED STATES. THEY IMPROVE 20 BEAUTIFY THE 
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Jend for Catalogue 
Ss 
Lane Double Hangers 
“ND 
Lane “D” Hanger Lane “B” Hanger 
When you do build, build right. Do not cut away the timbers or depend on 
flimsy spiking. 20,000 Hangers in 100 stock sizes adapted to all conditions are in 
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aluminum—consult your architect—then permit us to estimate on your requirements. 
LANE BROS. CO., 434-466 Prospect Street, Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 
tions of growth during both years. Apple 
trees usually bear abundantly every other 
year, perfecting fewer buds during the sea- 
son of heavy fruiting, and many fruit buds 
during the season of scanty yield. It is ad- 
visable to do the severest pruning after a 
heavy yield, either in early Winter or early 
Spring, when the sap is not flowing or the 
wood is frozen. Give to the soil a heavy 
application of such material as will aid in 
the growth of the tree during the off year. 
Well-rotted manure and decaying nitro- 
genous plants such as clover, furnish the 
necessary elements. 
FERTILIZING 
Quick-acting fertilizers which affect the 
growth of blossom and fruit directly should 
be applied in the Spring of the fruiting 
year. 
Manure should be spread under the 
trees over all the shaded portion of the 
ground before the ground is ploughed in 
the early Spring. Nitrogenous plant food 
from clover is made available to the trees 
by its growth and subsequent decay. Dur- 
ing the season that the apple trees are in 
heaviest bearing the clover should be broad- 
casted beneath the trees, usually about the 
middle of July or the first of August. 
From one-half to a pound of seed per tree 
should be used. On small areas it may be 
raked in with a steel garden rake, or a har- 
row may be used. The-kinds of clover usu- 
ally sown for this purpose are the ordinary 
red clover (Trifolium Pratense )—fifteen 
pounds to the acre—and scarlet clover (Tvi- 
folium Incarnatum)—twenty pounds to the 
acre. The former is perennial; the second 
comes to maturity in May or June following 
its planting and dies, but the fertilizing 
function is the same with each variety, as 
they store nitrogen in the nodules of their 
roots. These clovers may be ploughed un- 
der in the Spring or chopped into the ground 
with a cutaway harrow later in the sea- 
son, leaving a quantity of rich plant food 
in the ground. 
In the Spring of the year of abundant 
yield the following fertilizing elements 
should be applied beneath the trees, using 
twenty pounds to a tree: Two parts of ni- 
trogen, nine parts of acid phosphate and 
twelve parts of potash. The soil is then 
cultivated until fruition. 
PRUNING 
Pruning is a vital consideration. In the 
case of young trees it consists of thinning 
out conflicting branches in such a way that 
a reasonable amount of sunlight has access 
to the branches. This must be done every 
year. 
The trunks of the trees must not re- 
ceive any injury, as the trunk is the connec- 
tion between the root system and the as- 
similative or leaf system of the tree. With 
the apple, as with other exogenous trees, the 
vital part of the trunk is the outer part 
beneath the bark. Between the hardened 
older wood and this bark the cambium layer 
of cellular tissue is, during the growing sea- 
son, forming new bark and new wood and 
conveying sap from the roots to the leaves. 
The wood already formed in the heart of 
the tree makes no new formation and con- 
veys no sap, but this heart-wood is impor- 
tant in that it sustains the weight of boughs 
and branches. Many old apple trees with 
rotten heart-wood support healthy branches, 
even bearing fruit, because nurtured by the 
sap-wood. A tree in this condition has not 
long to live, however, as the mouldering 
portions corrupt the healthy wood. The de- 
cay of the heart-wood is generally due to the 
admission of water through channels made 
by insects, or by cracks in the boughs near 
the trunk—a common occurrence with trees 
having heavy horizontal limbs. 
