1909. 
327 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
PRUNING THE APPLE TREES. 
About this time in the year the professional tree 
pruner usually gets in his deadly work. While there 
may be some who are experts in this work, who do 
YARD FOR TWO BROODS. Fig. 129. 
really make it a business to prune fruit trees right, 
yet there are so many who claim to be experts who 
know nothing at all about the work, and the injury 
these bogus professionals do to the orchards of the 
unsuspecting fruit grower is so great 
that it seems an occasional warning 
should be given. Recently I was 
in an orchard of thrifty apple trees, 
old enough to begin bearing nicely. 
The trees evidently had been given 
fairly good care, and had been well 
headed when young, but probably 
had not been pruned for five or six 
years, and with the right kind of 
pruning they could have been put 
in good shape without much injury; 
but evidently this professional tree 
butcher had induced the owner to 
give him a job, for two or three 
rows had been literally butchered, 
and if the same treatment were ap¬ 
plied to the remainder of the orchard 
it might better have been cut down 
to the ground. All the fruit spurs 
and limbs, both large and small, in 
the center of the tree had been re¬ 
moved, except three or four 
branches growing upright, and these 
had been sheared until they re- . 
sembled an inverted lion’s tail more 
than anything else. All the lower 
limbs, some three inches in diameter, 
had been cut off so the teams could 
get under the trees, I presume, and 
fully half of the bearing surface of 
the trees had been removed. This 
description does not do justice to 
the conditions, but, at any rate, 
what might have been made a good 
and profitable orchard was simply 
being ruined by the reckless ignorance of some one. 
Of course, every farmer or fruit grower should 
know enough to prune his own trees right, but it 
is a fact, nevertheless, that many farmers—and even 
some orchardists—do not know how, and would 
rather depend upon some one who does know than 
to investigate and learn to do this work themselves, 
and since there will always be those of this class 
OATS OR CORN IN VIRGINIA. 
Will some one tell me which it would be more profitable 
for me to plant on ordinary light land, oats or corn, using 
the necessary cultivation for corn, and the same amount 
of fertilizer per acre for oats and corn accordingly? I 
would like to hear from some one who has had experience, 
as I am much interested in the cultivation of oats. 
. Franklin, Va. w. t. w. 
The best thing you can do for your land will be 
TRINESTER YARD. Fig. 130. 
they should be protected in some way. Another 
very marked fault in pruning is seen in many orchards 
where large limbs have been cut off five or six 
inches from the trunk or main limb. The result 
is that this stub decays, and as nature cannot send 
the new growth out so far to cover over this stub, 
it remains until it rots and drops off, leaving a 
SPRING BLOOMING BULBS. Fig. 131. See Ruralisms. Page 338. 
to adopt a good rotation of crops. The land in your 
section is level, light and easily improved. Some 
cotton is grown around there, but I do not think 
that cotton should be the money crop of your section, 
as peanuts make a better crop with good farming. 
Then, in your lands and climate, I would never 
sow oats in Spring, for they will seldom amount 
to much, while with good farming you’ can easily 
get that land up to the production of 50 bushels of 
Winter oats per acre. Spring oats catch the hottest 
weather, and seldom fill out well. There are now 
a number of varieties of good Winter oats that are 
far better for the South. As Tiie R. N.-Y. recently 
said, the southern farmers are “fertilizer crazy,” and 
seem to think that for every crop planted they 
must have a special fertilizer formula. I get thou¬ 
sands of letters from farmers in the South, and the 
whole burden of the majority of these letters is 
“what fertilizer formula, and how much per acre,” 
for this, that or the other crop, and they seem to 
think that all that is needed to make crops is to 
use fertilizer, and very generally they use the ready¬ 
made 2-8-2 goods, which are necessarily one-fourth 
or more sand or other worthless filler, to make the 
price low. What the southern farmers need more 
than fertilizers is good farming in a rotation adopted 
to their crops. 
You are in a section where the peanut crop should 
be a very profitable one with good farming. But 
good farming means that you must feed stock and 
make manure to restore the wasted humus to the 
soil. Now, whether you should plant a certain piece 
of land, the condition of which I know nothing, 
in corn or oats, depends on what you propose to 
do with the land regularly. I have never found that 
it pays to use a complete fertilizer, or one containing 
COOP FOR HEN AND CHICKS. Fig. 132. 
more than pay for the fertilizer and the land will 
be no better. It may pay you to use a mixture 
of acid phosphate and potash for the time being. 
But fertilizers properly used can be made the means 
for the permanent improvement of 
the soil. Used as they generally are 
in your section and all over the 
South, they have been the means of 
robbing the soil and the farmer alike. 
I have often said on the institute, 
platform and in the papers for the 
last 40 years, that the southern 
farmer who farms right will never 
need to buy a complete fertilizer, 
for he can get all the ammonia he 
needs, and can actually increase it 
in his soil by a good rotation of 
crops and the growing of legumes 
and feeding them. You are in a 
section where the cow pea, the clover 
of the South, thrives wonderfully, 
and by its use and the sowing of 
Crimson clover as a Winter cover, 
you can build up your land to won¬ 
derful productiveness. I know your 
land, and know that that section 
should be making 75 to 100 bushels 
of peanuts and the same of corn, 
if the land was farmed right. No, 
I would not sow oats in Spring 
anyway there. I would suggest that 
you plant the land in corn. Then 
make all your land into a three-year 
rotation. Plant peas among the corn 
at last working. Cut the corn off at 
the ground and cure in shocks, 
and at once disk the land well, and 
sow Winter oats in September. Cut 
these and at once break the stubble 
and sow cow peas again, and when 
the pods turn yeljow mow them and make vines into 
hay, and sow Crimson clover seed on the stubble 
after a light disking, rolling after sowing. Get out 
all the manure you have made from feeding the 
peas and corn stover on this clover and turn it under 
in the Spring for corn and peanuts, half corn and 
half peanuts. Give the peanuts a dressing of 400 
pounds of basic slag phosphate and 50 pounds of 
TRINESTER SITTING COOP. Fig. 133. 
muriate of potash per acre. Then repeat the rota¬ 
tion, and the next round put the peanuts where 
the corn was before, and the corn where the pea¬ 
nuts were. w. f. massey. 
Some of us know that it requires many a hard pound 
to get an ounce of real knowledge into us. 
decaying place in the main limb which may eventu¬ 
ally cause it to decay, and may even lead to the 
final decay and death of the tree. It is true that 
nature prunes by allowing the dead limbs to decay 
and drop off, and many times the wound so made 
will heal over nicely, but we must remember that 
an entire limb will drop off at a much earlier stage 
in the process of decay than a stub five or six inches 
long, as its weight will break it off, and nature 
can heal the wound, while the stub will not drop 
off probably until the rotten wood extends far back 
into the main limb. If these two points could be 
kept in mind by every owner of an orchard, viz.: 
to avoid the man who claims to know how to prune 
but doesn’t, and to cut all limbs close to the main 
limb so the wound may be readily healed over, many 
orchards might become a source of profit that will 
otherwise be lost or seriously injured. 
Indiana. _ f. j. heacock. 
a due percentage of nitrogen, the most costly part 
of a fertilizer, on the corn crop. It will make you 
more corn, of course, but the increase will seldom 
