July, 1915 
THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 
287 
The average fruit tree in the suburban garden is not usually as thrifty as this, 
simply because it is not cared for 
acid. Coal ashes is sometimes used 
for a mulch, but it contains little 
or no plant food. It always is 
better to use hay or grass or some- 
thing like that in a garden. Wood 
ashes should be used as a fertilizer 
and not as a mulch. 
As soon as your pear trees are 
planted, loosen and fine the surface, 
and spread six to eight inches of 
mulch material for several feet about 
the trees, and over the entire surface 
between the trees if possible. It is 
better to keep the material sLx or 
eight inches away from the trunks 
themselves. The other fruits men- 
tioned as succeeding under mulch 
conditions may be treated the same 
way, but usually it is best to culti- 
vate the ground about them for 
three or four weeks each season, then 
cover it with the mulch the rest of 
the year. Or you may mulch for 
one or two years, then cultivate for 
one or two years. Aim to keep 
every foot of your garden surface 
either cultivated or covered with a 
good thick mulch. Raspberries and 
blackberries do particularly well 
under proper mulch conditions. 
They even seem to grow finer fruit 
when mulched than when cultivated. 
In mountain sections mulched apples 
do just as well as cultivated apples, 
but in lowland sections apples 
should be cultivated. 
Some growers prefer to put on twelve to 
eighteen inches of the mulching material. 
Any depth more than six inches will con- 
serve the moisture perfectly, and will bring 
about soil conditions under which the trees 
will thrive. The faster the mulch rots, 
the better. It can be forked about to suit 
your convenience. If left at the same place 
all the time very little additional material 
each year will keep up the supply. 
PRUNING AND TRAINING 
Teach your trees where to grow and where 
not to, by restraining some buds and twigs 
and branches and by encouraging others. 
Only by doing this can you get the maxi- 
mum growth and size and bearing capacity. 
If trees are not watched they revert to 
nature’s ways of growing, and these ways 
are not good ways for making the greatest 
yields of flawless fruit, or even enough 
growth of tree. Only one bud in forty that 
grows ever gets a chance to make a limb or a 
fruit. You must pick out that one. The 
best way of pruning is to watch the trees 
as they grow. Go over them once a month 
or oftener through the entire growing 
season. Pinch off tips and buds that try 
to grow in the wrong places. This 
will direct the growth into the limbs 
and buds you want to develop. If 
you do this your trees will have the 
maximum amount of bearing wood 
and you will have no general prun- 
ing to do. 
I prefer to keep going over my 
young fruit trees and plants from 
the time they start growth in the 
spring until in July or August, rather 
than prune them in the winter, be- 
cause during the period of growth 
the wounds heal quicker, the strength 
of the tree is diverted into the limbs 
and spurs I want developed (when- 
ever I pinch a tip off another limb) 
and then at that time I can see just 
how thick the top is because the 
leaves are on. Winter pruning is 
done in commercial orchards be- 
cause there the pruning job takes a 
lot of work, and winter is the time 
when other work is slack. No such 
reasons apply to gardens. 
Always have a system to your 
pinching of tips and pruning — some- 
thing to work to. Here is my sys- 
tem. First of all, I know what I 
want. It is a big lot of bearing 
wood and lots of fruit spurs, good, 
regular, healthy growth, and quick, 
heavy bearing of flawless fruit. To 
get these things it is necessary that 
I keep open the heads of my little 
trees and let in the light. I build 
the heads or direct the growth of the proper 
frame-limbs, so that they will be open 
rightly, and will support the heavy crops 
of fruit I hope to get. I head back the 
trees just enough to give stockiness and 
vigor to the trees, bearing in mind the 
modifications necessary because of the 
nature of the variety, the fruit, and whether 
the tree is a standard or dwarf. Then I do 
all my pruning with the idea of developing 
fruit spurs. When cutting off a branch 
or limb on a young tree, I seldom cut close 
to the parent limb, but leave a stub two 
to six inches long. This nearly always 
The man who owns this “orchard” is convinced that fruit growing is a thing of the past. 
He says that for “some years now an orchard hasn't paid” 
But look at this orchard which immediately adjoins the one shown on the left. Anyone 
can see why its owner says it pays to “run" an orchard 
