II H, 
RURAb NEW-VOKKER 
;ei 
HOME BEAUTY THEE—SIX YEARS OLD. Fig. 301. 
The chief criticism is of the method or lack of method 
in pruning. Many of the trees have been headed very 
low, which is the principal fault found. Some pictures 
accompany this, and any advice as to the proper prun¬ 
ing will be welcome. 
It was not intended to have them headed so low, 
hut during their first year the tops died off almost to 
the graft, and they were given up for lost. They 
grew, however, and formed their own heads, in some 
cases within a few inches of the ground. The Rome 
Beauty and Wagener trees are beginning to bear quite 
generally, and two Spy and one Baldwin show fruit 
this year. Fig. 361 shows a Rome Beauty tree in its 
sixth year. It was a four-cent whip, and has made 
better growth than some trees costing four times as 
much. In fact, on an average the small, cheap whips 
have given better satisfaction than the ordinary size 
of nursery trees, perhaps because they have not re¬ 
quired as much to sustain them as the larger trees. 
Fig. 302 shows a Wagener tree of the type that is bear¬ 
ing. It has been well mulched from the beginning. 
Fig. 363 shows a Baldwin, one that died back and 
formed a very low head. Fig. 364 shows a Spy that 
seems to have too dense a head. 
It is not intended to hold this attempt up as a model, 
but merely to show what one man is doing with a very 
limited amount of money and time. The orchard 
would probably make a much better showing were he 
able to give his whole time to it, but with the two or 
NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 3, 1910. 
three weeks at his disposal each Summer, the care of 
20 acres of young orchard is quite a problem to handle. 
It seems inadvisable, however, to make the change 
without sufficient capital to support him at least one 
year while waiting for results. r. a. young. 
R. N.-Y.—The interesting thing about Mr. Young’s 
orchard is that it shows what a city man can do at 
WAGENER TREE MULCHED FROM THE START. Fig. 362. 
long range. One thing we have claimed for the mulch 
system is that a man can develop a fair orchard with¬ 
out heavy expense or constant oversight. Mr. Young 
could not have handled his 20 acres of trees had it 
been a question of thorough culture. As it is, he has, 
while retaining his city job, been able to get good 
growth on these trees and bring them nearly or quite 
to fruiting with very moderate expense. There are 
BALDWIN-FORMED ITS OWN HEAD. Fig. 363. 
many locations, especially near towns or cities, where 
such an orchard might suffer from fire or other damage 
by trespassers, if there is no one in the immediate 
vicinity to keep watch over it. All such possibilities 
must be considered before risking one’s capital. The 
high price of fruit in the cities gives an exaggerated 
idea of the profits to be secured. There is profit under 
right management, but there is hard work in plenty, too. 
NORTHERN SPY MULCHED TREE. Fig. 364. 
gardens accessible to familiarize himself as to heuv 
the thing is done. That surely is a good way to 
the business. The inference is that the employer, \\*ho 
claims to own 25 acres of good land and has $3,000 as 
a working capital, proposes to himself to make a profit 
in market gardening by proxy. Perhaps he and all 
the other parties concerned (including the Amherst 
professor who recommended an incompetent man) 
may be benefited by the experience of the writer, who 
was brought up on his father’s farm (at ordinary 
farming) until 20 years old, and has since had 37 
years’ experience in market gardening—growing vege¬ 
tables in the open and under glass for the market. lie 
learned by an unfortunate experience that market gar¬ 
dening by proxy was not a success, and that the only 
way to make it profitable was to learn the business 
thoroughly himself and then personally superintend 
every detail. 
Ordinary farming, as formerly and even now gener¬ 
ally carried on, and scientific market gardening are so 
unlike that experience in the former would help but a 
little in a general way, but would by no means fit one 
for a successful market gardener without a long special 
training in that specific kind of farming. Probably 
that Amherst professor who recommended the young 
man as suitable to manage a market gardening busi- 
Vol. LXIX. No. 4062 
THE TRUE MULCH CULTURE. 
Growth of Trees in Sod. 
It may interest some of yonr readers to know of 
the doings of a city man in his attempt to become a 
farmer. lie is now in the seventh year of bis attempt 
to change a run-down farm into an apple orchard, 
while employed in the city, 100 miles away. The trees 
have been mulched from the beginning with all the 
material that grew in the orchard, which in several 
places was very scanty. The grass has been cut once 
a year during July, and raked up around the trees. 
They have had no cultivation except hoeing once a 
year over a space two feet in diameter around the base 
of each tree. Two or three times they have had a 
handful of fertilizer around each tree. The soil in 
many places is quite shallow, underlaid by a ledge of 
rock, but generally sloping enough to give good drain¬ 
age. In some cases this treatment has secured quite 
good results, and in others quite poor, depending ap¬ 
parently on the amount of mulching material available. 
The neighboring farmers are beginning to think there 
is something in the idea of a mulched orchard, al¬ 
though they show no signs of a desire to do likewise. 
ORDINARY FARMING; MARKET 
On page 771 “One of the Public” recites his 
ence in employing, for starting a market gar 
business, a young man who had been brought up 
his father’s farm in Massachusetts, and then given a 
short course at the Agricultural College, who was 
recommended to be just the kind of man wanted by 
one of the professors at Amherst to whom he applied 
for a right kind of a man to start his new enterprise. 
But unfortunately the young man did not prove com¬ 
petent for that kind of farming, in which he never had 
had experience. After the employed young man had 
moved his family and settled down to business he, as 
well as his employer, found himself incapable of doing 
that kind of farming successfully, and another had to 
be employed as a “helper,” or, from the account, to 
show him how to do it. This second man hired as 
helper to the first, it seems from the employer’s state¬ 
ment, does not himself claim to be an experienced 
market gardener, but is doing the best he knows to 
learn how by visiting all the greenhouses and market 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER 
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