1634 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OP PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



young trees from tlie nursery row, set- 

 ting the roots well down and grafting 

 them into the healthy tissues above. 

 These trees will tend to grow together 

 and finally fill in the portion cut away. 

 Care must be taken, however, that the 

 thrifty sprouts from these young trees 

 do not become affected with blight. 



Summer Cutting 



Summer cutting intelligently applied 

 may do a great deal of good in saving 

 trees which would otherwise be lost. This 

 is especially advisable where there is 

 only a little blight in the orchard (by 

 this I mean to say that unless the infec- 

 tion is so serious as to necessitate the 

 destruction of the entire tree), and it 

 should always be practiced. The dry 

 summer weather of most of the Pacific 

 coast country, especially from Southern 

 Oregon southward, is certainly not fa- 

 vorable for new infections, but occasion- 

 ally spring rains occur rather late, and 

 sometimes extend into the summer and 

 after the blossoming time. Under East- 

 ern conditions, or where excessive spring 

 and summer rains are the rule, summer 

 cutting is only half successful, and has, 

 therefore, been condemned by most pear 

 and apple orchardists as a failure. Sum- 

 mer cutting is a failure, or is made ap- 

 parently so because of the fact that new 

 infections, invisible at the time the work 

 is done, may develop in a few days so 

 that a week after the most thorough 

 cutting out of the blight a new crop of 

 infection is found thriving. Another 

 source of difficulty in the spring or sum- 

 mertime arises from the rapid extension 

 of the blight infection in the branches 

 of varieties that are very susceptible to 

 the disease. Sometimes, especially where 

 the infection has reached a large leader 

 or the body, the germs may often be 

 found a foot or two beyond the discolora- 

 tion, as the disease is spreading so rap- 

 idly that the bark has not had time to 

 discolor sufficiently to be detected; there- 

 fore, in summer cutting the removal of 

 the infection must be at a greater dis- 

 tance from the point of infection than in 

 fall and winter work. Experienced men 



can judge somewhat of the distance by 

 the rapidity with which the stained bark 

 blends of£ into the normal bark. Fur- 

 thermore, a reddish streak will often be 

 apparent in the cambium and young 

 wood, and by following it up a clue may 

 be had as to the possible trend of the 

 blight. The greater the distance in 

 which the blending takes place the lower 

 the cut must be made, and conversely. 

 Disinfection is more important in sum- 

 mer cutting than in winter cutting, and, 

 although in the dry Coast climate the 

 sunlight and dry atmosphere will usually 

 take care of most of the germs acci- 

 dentally left on cut surfaces, it is by no 

 means true that infection may not take 

 place from such cases. Furthermore, a 

 foggy morning following the cutting 

 might spoil the whole procedure, so the 

 only safe way is to always disinfect. 

 Often in using the tools, accidental cuts 

 or punctures are made, and it may hap- 

 pen that infection may be produced by 

 them. The work of summer cutting of 

 blight should be done with as great care 

 as possible; if this is not done one may 

 reasonably expect to do it all over again, 

 and, perhaps, lose some very valuable 

 trees. 



Experience on the Pacific coast shows 

 that such varieties as the Spitzenburg 

 apple, the Bartlett, Howell, Easter, Bosc 

 and Cornice pears are very susceptible, 

 and at no time should one disregard the 

 removal of a fruit spur or a twig which 

 is found to be infected with blight. Dur- 

 ing the past eight years on the Pacific 

 coast it has been my experience that 

 thousands of trees have been saved by 

 the prompt removal of infected twigs 

 and fruit spurs. 



Never remove an infected spur by 

 breaking it off. First find the limits of 

 the infection and then remove the spur 

 with a knife. I have in mind a particu- 

 lar case in which the advice "to break 

 off the infected spurs" nearly ruined an 

 orchard. 



By far the greater part, probably as 

 high as 80 per cent, of the loss of pear 

 trees in California and Southern Oregon 

 has resulted from body and root infec- 



