THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
255 
THE ODD YEAR OH APPLES. 
How To Even It Up. 
One of our readers in Pennsylvania lias an 
orchard in sod, which he says, produces very 
fine fruit every other year. He wants to change 
this over, if he can, to annual bearing. Is it 
possible, from your experience, to do this? 
If you had an orchard in sod and desired to 
make it bear a fair crop eacli year, how would 
you start to work to bring this about, by 
cultivating, fertilizing or in other ways, to 
wipe out the odd year’ 
Cultivation and fertilizing, either or both, 
will induce a degreee of fruitfulness on the 
non-bearing year. Most of our standard 
apples at the East, however, are rather per¬ 
sistent biennial bearers, and in many cases 
a full crop of fine, perfect fruit every other 
year is more satisfactory than an irregular 
bearing of overgrown, defective fruit every 
year. Persistent cultivation and fertilizing 
with non-nitrogenous manures will increase 
quantity and quality, and while the biennial 
habit may not be wholly broken up as to 
individual trees, the orchard will at length 
cease to bear as a whole every other year. 
Dutchess Co., N. Y. w. h. hart. 
Fruit production is very largely influ¬ 
enced by food supply and environment. If 
trees are properly pruned, I should expect 
results in the desired direction if half of the 
fruit were removed in the “year of plenty,” 
and a liberal application of a high-grade 
complete fertilizer, say 15 or 20 pounds per 
medium-sized tree, were made, in conjunction 
with thorough cultivation. If practicable I. 
should keep the orchard under cultivation for 
several years, and should repeat the thinning 
process and the fertilizing on the pext heavy 
bearing year. The practice suggested has re¬ 
sulted satisfactorily in the orchards under 
the direction of the writer. 
Maine. w. xr. munson. 
I have been successful in making Baldwins 
bear both years by heavy fertilizing with 
potash and phosphoric acid and very severe 
thinning of the fruit in July or first of Au¬ 
gust, when the trees were overloaded. I 
have quite a number of old Baldwin trees set 
by my father in 1853, which all these years 
have been bearing heavy crops in the even years 
and nothing during the odd years. I am 
gradually changing them, so that now I am 
getting a good crop on the even year and a 
light crop during the odd year, but it re¬ 
quires much severe thinning, and not later 
than August 1, and very few men will do it. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. b. j. case. 
We have a 32-year-old orchard that has 
been in sod for the past 20 years. It is so 
located that we have to turn a good deal of 
stock in it during the Winter, and for this 
reason we do not care to plow. It is a 
strong limestone soil, naturally adapted to 
Blue grass, and has a heavy Blue-grass sod 
now. Up to six or eight years ago there was 
little or no attention paid to the regulation 
of the crop, but the orchard bore heavily 
every other year. Since then we have been 
giving the orchard a liberal application of 
barnyard manure in early Spring, and have 
cut the ground up with young cattle and 
hogs. This was because it seemed necessary 
that we run this stock in there. We would 
have preferred using a Cutaway harrow. As 
soon as the grass is well in head we mow and 
rake the cuttings under the trees. We have 
secured four good crops in the past six 
years, once killed by frost and the other there 
was but little bloom. In some localities this 
treatment might bring on bitter rot, but we 
have not been troubled with it, nor do I 
think it will give any serious trouble where 
Bordeaux is used. There is usually quite a 
bit of volunteer- clover, which no doubt is 
very beneficial. We do not cons'der our ex¬ 
periment a success thoroughly, but do think 
that the attention has given us more apples, 
and fee! that had we done more thinning and 
some cultivation we would have got more re¬ 
sults. Our treatment had no effect on the 
Baldwins. They positively refused to respond 
except every other year. Our experience with 
a younger orchard leads us to believe that the 
crops can be regulated to considerable ex¬ 
tent, barring late frosts and such, by sowing 
to cow peas and clover, with some fertilizer, 
careful pruning, spraying and thinning. This 
all takes time, labor and money, and the at¬ 
tention of a careful man, who must not fail 
at the eleventh hour, or all previous work may 
be lOSt. D. A. ARNOLD. 
West Virginia. 
We prefer to have a crop of apples only 
every other year for two reasons. First, 
the trees need rest every other year, and sec¬ 
ond, we have no buyers in our country the 
off year, and consequently the prices are low 
and the fruit hard to sell. As to the mat¬ 
ter of changing the bearing of this man’s or¬ 
chard, there is only one way that I know 
of and that is to thin the crop very severely 
on the year which it now bears, and stop 
cultivation about the first of June, and sow a 
heavy crop of oats or some heavy feeding 
crop under the trees in June so as to stop 
the growth suddenly in July. This is the 
month apple trees set their buds for the 
next year’s crop. It is a well-known fact that 
checking the growth at this season of the 
year will cause the tree to load itself with 
blossom buds for another year, but we pre¬ 
fer a big crop every two years to a 
light crop every year, d. gold miller. 
West Virginia. 
I should let it remain in sod, as it is do¬ 
ing well, and if possible would make a hog or 
sheep pasture of it. If soil is of a clayey 
heavy nature, which I presume it is. I would 
make an annual dressing of say GOO pounds 
dissolved rock and 200 pounds muriate of 
potash per acre; then commence to prune. 
If tops are full of wood cut away nearly 
one-half of the fruiting wood, avoiding cut¬ 
ting large branches as much as possible, but 
trim out the smaller branches. The only 
chance of changing the habit is to make con¬ 
ditions as near right as possible, and then 
reduce the number of fruit set. This must 
be done either by severe pruning or thinning, 
the former most practical. Varieties vary 
very much in this respect. We will take two 
opposite varieties for example. The Baldwin 
is almost invariably an every other year 
cropper, and one of the most difficult to 
change, while Ben Davis, with right treat¬ 
ment will bear annual crops. If the orchard 
in question is 30 or more years old I should 
not try to change it. but if younger with 
proper conditions it can be changed to a 
certain extent, at least. Proper nourishment 
and reducing the number of fruit to at least 
one-half should produce the desired results. 
It is numbers, not quality of fruit, that 
counts. CHAS. BLACK. 
New Jersey. 
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