Vol. LXIX. No. 4078. 
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 24, 1910. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
CARING FOR OLD APPLE TREES. 
Dishorning Old Veterans. 
Give me any information that you care to on the 
treatment of apple trees that have not had any attention 
for five years. u. s. m. 
We answer this question on the assumption that 
there are only a few trees, and that the inquirer is 
an amateur not familiar with orchard culture. Sup¬ 
pose you asked a question like the following: “I have 
just taken several new members into my family. They 
have not had proper attention for a 
long time. What can I do for them ?’’ 
You can see that we could not even 
guess at an answer. One of these new 
people might need nothing but a hair 
cut and a good meal to start him at 
work. Others may be sick or deformed, 
or so badly out of condition that it will 
take weeks to set them right. Just so 
with the apple trees. Are they old or 
young? Have they made any recent 
growth? If old, do they bear any 
apples? Are they covered with scale? 
All these things should be known if any 
treatment is to be suggested. Usually 
neglected trees stop growing or make 
very little new wood. You can easily 
distinguish the new wood by examining 
the ends of the twigs. The new wood is 
smooth and light-colored, and you can 
easily find a little bunch or joint show 
ing where this season’s growth began. 
When old trees are neglected very little 
new wood is made, and a number of the 
old limbs die. The tree needs feeding 
and pruning to stimulate new growth. 
Cut off all the dead limbs and those on 
the inside of the head which grow to 
the center. We would not advise you 
to cut any of the sound limbs without 
consulting some good fruit grower. The 
trees must be fed. If they are in sod 
put on a good coat of manure and in 
the Spring plow or spade sod and 
manure under and give good culture 
through the season. If you cannot get 
manure use a strong fertilizer freely. 
The chances are that such trees are well 
plastered with the scale, and it will pay 
to give them a thorough soaking with 
soluble oil or lime-sulphur as directed 
by the manufacturers. If the trees arc 
younger they have probably made a 
badly shaped head by growing crooked 
inside branches. These inside branches 
must be cut out and the head shaped 
by cutting out limbs that interfere. Do 
not be afraid to cut the trees freely, 
and feed and spray them as directed 
above. The pictures show some old trees 
that have been “dishorned” or severely 
cut back. These are in the Connecticut 
orchard managed by Geo. A. Drew. On 
many Eastern farms are to be found 
orchards of Baldwins or Greenings which were 
planted 50 or more years ago and have been neglected. 
Some of them have about stopped growing, or have 
thrown out a lot of water sprouts on the lower limbs. 
Such trees usually stand in a poor sod, and have not 
been fed, pruned or sprayed for years. Even with 
this neglect many of them still produce considerable 
fruit. They are usually high headed and the first 
step is to stimulate them into new growth and make 
a new head nearer the ground. The pictures show 
how Mr. Drew has cut back these old trees to start 
with. The result is a strong head down by the ground. 
BEST TOOLS FOR A STONY FARM. 
Does It Pay To Pick Stones ? 
My farm is pretty well covered with stones, and is 
almost entirely underlaid with slate rock. The former 
owner (40 years ago) divided about 150 acres of it 
into 26 fields with heavy stone walls. In about 60 
acres of wood, where a goat could only navigate with 
d-fficulty, he built stone walls in every direction. 
Where he got the stones from, I do not know, for 
there did not appear to be any missing on the fields 
when I got here. But he raised famous crops of hay; 
all the old inhabitants whenever I meet them speak 
cf seeing Timothy and clover waist high, all over 
the place. I raise mostly grain, and my tools are 
plows, disk harrows, smoothing harrows, and when 
grass seed is to follow,. I use a weeder before seed¬ 
ing, and in cases where soil is lumpy, use the roller. 
After sowing, I go over with the roller, and pick off 
all stones that the roller does not crush beneath the 
surface. Many of our fields are bordered with gullies, 
and we put the stones in them. In other cases we 
pile them along the walls. My ambition is to send all 
these and the walls with them to the stone crusher. 
It unquestionably pays to pick off the stones. Surely 
seme grain will grow in the space that the stones 
would occupy, and cutting your crops within two or 
three inches of the ground, instead of eight or ten, 
adds considerably to your straw or hay. There is 
constant trouble with tools in a very stony field. 
My experience bearing on this question is this: 
The first year I had about 75 acres of rye, 11 acres 
of it I was able to clear thoroughly of stones. These 
11 acres brought returns fully four times the aver¬ 
age of the rest of the fields. Probably 
this result was not altogether owing to 
the clearing, as the soil was a little bet¬ 
ter, but we were able to run the reaper 
right down to the ground, and this made 
a big difference in the straw. It seems 
to me that stones must grow rapidly. 
Fields where we have picked them off 
faithfully for five years, seem to show 
just as many when they are plowed 
again. frank hyde. 
Westchester Co., N. Y. 
Spring-Tooth and Dump Wagon. 
The spring-tooth harrow is the only 
one that will work in stony land and 
give satisfaction. We have had some 
very stony land on our farm, and I 
would say that the most important im¬ 
plement next to the plow and spring- 
tooth would be some form of dumping 
wagon or cart, as it certainly will pay, 
here on high-priced land, to clear it of 
stones, and I think it will pay on any 
farm, as the cultivation can be much 
more thorough. You can use better 
tools and secure larger crops with the 
same labor or less labor than working 
over the stones each year. If many of 
the stones are fast or what we call rocks, 
then a couple of short drills and strik¬ 
ing hammer will save lots of dynamite 
by putting a small hole of a few inches 
in each rock. Flat rock can be broken 
by placing the dynamite on the top and 
covering it with some dirt, but bowlders 
or chunks should be drilled. I have 
found that an old pair of gloves worn 
when handling the dynamite will often 
prevent the awful headache that results 
from using the stuff. We have used 
the stones in ditches and also in improv¬ 
ing the highway adjoining the farm. 
FLOYD Q. WHITE. 
EASTERN “LEAN PICKINGS.” 
I live near enough to the salt water so 
that I can see it as I write this, and ac¬ 
cording to our Wisconsin friend on page 
1119, the glaciers must have taken all the 
fertile soil off my farm into the ocean. 
But as I did not know it before I went 
ahead a year ago and plowed up 3J/j acres 
that was all mossed over and did not cut two good 
loads of hay, and planted it to potatoes, using one 
ton of fertilizer to the acre, or just three tons on 
the acres, and harvested 1,254 bushels of nice 
potatoes, just 46 bushels less than 400 bushels per 
acre. I also had one acre of dent corn, using one- 
half ton fertilizer per acre, and harvested over a 
hundred bushels of ears. I don’t believe there is 
any land in Wisconsin that will grow as large crops 
per acre as can be grown in the State of Maine. We 
are glad that New England is a manufacturing dis¬ 
trict also, for it gives us good markets near home. 
STARTING A NEW TOP ON AN OLD VETERAN. Fig. 504. 
AN OLD APPLE TREE “DISHORNED.” Fig. 505. 
