162 
The Garden Magazine, November, 1920 
trees dealt with and shown, are presumably field grown and therefore 
are an object lesson for the commercial grower rather than the home 
gardener. The latter, if he is limited for space cannot hope to make a 
great fruit garden with trees of the type shown. The pruned Apple 
is a most deplorable specimen, while neither of the Pears would win a 
prize for shapeliness. 
Regarding the pruning of young trees, it has long been recognized 
in England that this depends upon circumstances. The commercial 
grower who wants a tree first, before he thinks of fruit, should not 
prune the first season unless his soil is in specially good heart or he 
plants early. If he plants in the spring, no live commercial grower will 
touch his trees save to trim off damaged shoots. The following year, 
however, the expert cuts back well into the original wood and from 
the breaks that follow he builds his tree. Varieties that will respond 
to it are trained in basin form so that there is no tall growing leader and, 
especially is this so when half-standards or bush trees are being grown. 
The modern grower does not want trees away up in the air making 
spraying and picking difficult; this applies to Apples in particular. 
Pears cannot be heavily pruned unless on the Quince stock, for the 
more they are knifed the more persistently they make watery, non-bear- 
ing wood, as is shown by the illustration on page 28, September issue. 
Incidentally, it is incorrect to speak of these shoots as suckers; the latter 
term is only properly applied to growths pushed up from the roots. 
As to the work carried on at Cornell, it is not convincing for one does 
not know just how much pruning was actually done; the trees illustrated 
suggest undue cutting. Pruning must be governed by circumstances; 
varieties even call for different treatment. Some fruit on the terminals 
and, if spurred, little fruit ever shows itself. Personally I favor maiden 
trees, that is, one year old from the bud for planting which one may 
develop as desired and, while apparently small for a start, they are in- 
finitely better than some of cut-backs supplied as fruiting trees. Par- 
ticularly is this so for Apples and Pears on dwarfing stocks, but even 
with these, it is not good policy to prune the season of planting unless 
the soil is moist and rich. 
It may be mentioned that trees on dwarfing stocks should be lifted 
at the third year. Regarding the cutting off of food supplies through 
top pruning I am under the impression that the root area is more or less 
governed by the top. We see it in well-established trees, particularly 
Pears on the free stock. Rampant growth cannot be suppressed by 
top-pruning because the roots are too vigorous; and we therefore 
root-prune and thereby make the trees develop fruit buds instead of 
wood. 
The experiments at Cornell only demonstrate long accepted theories; 
and, if the teachers here have all along been advocating rule of thumb 
pruning, their principles are at fault. I cannot however imagine that 
undue knife manipulation among young trees is general among com- 
mercial growers, otherwise New York State would not stand so high 
as an Apple producer. — T. A. Weston, N. J. 
Burning Money 
To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 
L AST spring, just at “cleaning up” time, 1 called at a suburban home 
■* and found the owner busy in the garden trying to burn a damp 
accumulation of leaves. 1 remarked that he must be flush to be burn- 
ing money in such a reckless fashion, that those leaves were just what 
his light, sandy soil needed as a mulch and to furnish humus. One 
corner of the garden was occupied by blackberries which he said dried 
badly during the summer droughts. Yet he had raked some of those 
very leaves from the ground about those plants! I suggested that, if 
he would cover the surface with a thick mulch of leaves, it would pre- 
vent this disastrous drying and insure a better crop of berries, something 
he hadn’t thought of, but seemed willing to try. 1 wonder how many 
others are equally thoughtless? In autumn, our town and, I presume, 
other towns are blue with smoke from burning leaves. When fallen, 
they are considered a nuisance to be gotten rid of in the easiest way. 
On the contrary, they are valuable for a number of purposes. They 
are not the best poultry litter in the scratching shed, or bedding for 
stock, but answer fairly well in the absence of something better, and 
when worn out (or before) are a useful addition to the compost heap. 
They are excellent for covering bulb beds for winter protection, though 
they need to be held in place in windy locations by brush, evergreen 
boughs or by wire netting. When decayed, together with rotted sods 
and other kindred material, they are excellent for potting soil. It is a 
mistake to burn them. Gather them instead when they are dry and 
store them away in burlap bags for various future uses. — F. W. Valen- 
tine, New Jersey. 
TWELVE CORDON APPLE/ ON WIPE/ PLANTED DIAGONAL! Y IS 'APART 
RA/PBEPRtE/ ON WIRE/ 
TWELVE CORDON PEAR/ 
BU/H APPLE/ 
/IX BLACK CURRANT/ 
//X RED CURRANT/ 
TWELVE CORDON PEAR/, TH[/E WERE, CROWN f RON N AIDER/ AND 
A/PAR ACU/ BED 
PART OF VEGETABLE GARDEN 
Making Much of the Small Fruit Garden 
To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 
ALT HOUGH I have not had any great opportunities for seeing 
many gardens, I must confess that the average gardens of modest 
dimensions that I have seen in New Jersey are not impressive in regard 
to fruit trees and, by the tone of the timely and pointed article 
by L. R. Hartill in September Garden Magazine, I assume that these 
conditions prevail more or less in many places. Considering the cli- 
mate and the freedom with 
which many trees grow, it 
has struck me as peculiar 
that the small home garden 
is so lacking in really well 
grown fruit trees. 
As an old-time resident of 
England’s garden county, 
Kent, may 1 be excused for 
remarking that there one 
finds in the small gardens of 
a quarter acre or less, a 
greater variety of fruit trees 
than is usually seen here- 
abouts, although Peaches 
are impossible except on 
warm walls. Some years 
ago, on a patch 25 ft. x 30 
ft., 1 was successfully fruit- 
ing a row of Raspberries, 
six Red Currants, six Black 
Currants, ten bush Apples, 
eighteen cordon Apples, 
eighteen cordon Pears, eigh- 
teen cordon Gooseberries, 
and two espalier Plums, 
almost every plant a distinct 
variety! The bush Apple 
trees on several occasions 
yielded from 15 lbs. to 25 
lbs of fruit each, while the 
cordon Apples and Pears 
gave not only wonderful crops but remarkably fine fruit, some of 
the Pears ranging up to eight ounces. 
I am somewhat puzzled by the fact that no garden that I have seen 
here has this class of trees. In all instances the trees I see are either 
ancient crocks, badly ridden with disease and pests, or fairly young 
standards or half-standards with no particular claim to shapeliness or 
fruitfulness. Perhaps I have been unfortunate in my location. At 
all events, I have been disappointed, for the soil and general conditions 
suggest that really wonderful results should be obtained. The so- 
called bush trees that 1 have examined in several gardens were nothing 
more than bastard half-standards, and “runts” at that. They never 
were good and never will be, and 1 have been astonished that any re- 
putable firm should offer such stock. 
When I think of the three year old bush trees that I could buy in 
England some years ago at 80 cents to $1.00 apiece I just sigh; trees 
that would settle down to fruiting freely a year or so after planting and, 
with careful pruning grow steadily and improve year by year. So good 
were these trees after I had cropped them for nine years that I was able 
to lift and sell them without trouble when I quitted. True a bush 
tree 4 ft. or so in diameter and 6 ft. tall, will not yield a crop equal to a 
fully grown standard, but in my own case I was growing a whole orchard 
on the space that would barely hold more than one good standard and 
I had early and late fruit, culinary and dessert. — T. A. Weston, N. J . 
Fall Planting of Fruit Trees 
To the Editor of The Garden Magazine: 
T AGREE with Mr. Hartill (Assets of the Fruit Garden, September 
1 number) that many fruit trees can be successfully planted in the fall. 
I have moved all the things he names — Plums, Peaches, and Quinces as 
well, and I am sure something has been gained. But I have done this 
only on a small scale and have had plenty of water at hand. 
1 consider it would be a hazardous proposition to do any large amount 
of planting with the soil as it is in September, dry. To be sure of 
success, the roots would have to be kept moist as long as the plants 
carried any leaves. It is essential in order to get the full advantage of 
