THE APPLE. 



63 



perceived, the ground should have a good top-dressing of manure, and of 

 marl, or mild lime, in alternate years. It is folly to suppose that so strong- 

 growing a tree as the apple, when planted thickly in an orchard, will not, 

 after a few heavy crops of fruit, exhaust the soil of much of its proper 

 food. If we desire our trees to continue in a healthy bearing state, we 

 should therefore manure them as regularly as any other crop, and they 

 will amply repay the expense. There is scarcely a farm where the waste 

 of barn-yard manure, the urine, etc., if properly economized by mixing 

 this animal excrement with the muck-heap, would not be amply suffi- 

 cient to keep the orchards in the highest condition. And how many 

 moss-covered barren orchards, formerly very productive, do we not every 

 day see, which only require a plentiful new supply of food in a substan- 

 tial top-dressing, thorough scraping of the stems, and washing with 

 diluted soft soap, to bring them again into the finest state of vigor and 

 productiveness. 



The bearing year of the Apple, in common culture, only takes place 

 every alternate year, owing to the excessive crops which it usually pro- 

 duces, by which they exhaust most of the organizable matter laid up by 

 the tree, which then requires another season to recover and collect a 

 sufficient supply again to form fruit-buds. When half the fruit is thin- 

 ned out in a young state, leaving only a moderate crop, the apple, like 

 other fruit-trees, will bear every year, as it will also if the soil is kept in 

 high condition. The bearing year of an apple-tree, or a whole orchard, 

 may be changed by picking off the fruit when the trees first show good 

 crops, allowing it to remain only in the alternate seasons which we wish 

 to make the bearing year. 



PRUNING. 



The Apple in orchards requires very little pruning if the trees, while 

 the orchard is young, are carefully inspected every year early in March, 

 and all crossing branches taken out while they are small. When the 

 heads are once properly adjusted and well balanced, the less the prun- 

 ing-saw and knife are used the better, and the cutting out of dead limbs, 

 and removal of such as may interfere with others, or too greatly crowd 

 up the head of the tree, is all that an orchard will usually require. 

 But wherever a limb is pruned away the surface of the wound should be 

 neatly smoothed, and if it exceeds an inch in diameter, it should be covered 

 with the liquid shellac previously noticed. 



INSECTS. 



There are several insects that in some parts of the country are very 

 destructive or injurious to this tree ; a knowledge of the habits of which 

 is therefore very important to the orchardist. These are chiefly the 

 borer, the caterpillar, and the canker-worm. 



The Apple-borer is, as we usually see it in the trunks of the Apple, 

 Quince, and thorn trees, a fleshy white grub, which enters the tree at the 

 collar, just at the surface of the ground, where the bark is tender, and 

 either girdles the tree or perforates it through every part of the stem, 

 finally causing its death. This grub is the larva of a brown and white 

 striped beetle, half an inch long (Saperda biviitata), and it remains in 

 this grub state two or three years, coming out of the tree in a butterfly 



