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JOURNAL  CF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
Anril  23,  1903. 
Unproductive  Fruit  Trees. 
This  is  a  subject  which  is  often  written  and  talked  about, 
and  yet  many  people,  outside  the  ranks  of  that  minority  of 
gardeners  who  make  a  hobby  of  fruit-growing,  are  content 
to  look  on  helplessly  while  certain  trees  year  after  year  pro¬ 
duce  little  or  no  fruit.  I  know  a  garden  in  which  there  are 
a  number  of  bush  Apple  trees,  some  of  which  in  summer  are 
a  dense  mass  of  foliage — as  shrubs  they  would  be  consi¬ 
dered  handsome — but  they  have  not  borne  any  fruit  for 
years.  They  are  pruned  every  year  by  a  man  sent  by  a 
local  nurseryman — a  man  in  a  good,  large  way  of  business — 
and  it  never  occurs  to  the  owner  of  the  trees  that  there  is 
anything  more  to  be  done.  This  is  not  by  any  means  an 
isolated  case.  The  natural  thing  for  a  fruit  tree  to  do  is  to 
produce  fruit,  and  when  it  does  not  do  so  there  is  a  cause 
for  the  failure — usually  a  cause  which  is  easily  ascertainable 
by  anyone  who  will  carefully  study  the  tree,  but  always  a 
cause  which  can  be  remedied  if  the  tree  is  of  bearing  age, 
that  is,  not  too  young  or  too  old.  This  is  a  fact  which  every 
owner  of  a  fruit  tree  should  fully  realise.  It  was  stated 
some  time  ago  by  a  well-known  fruit  grower,  that  if  every 
Apple  tree  in  this  country  did  its  duty  we  should  have  no 
need  to  import  any  more  Anples.  This,  of  course,  cannot 
be  an  exact  statement,  biit  I  mention  it  for  what  it  is  worth. 
The  causes  of  the  non-bearing  of  fruit  trees  are  many 
and  diverse  ;  excess  of  vigour,  lack  of  vigour,  hard  pruning, 
want  of  pruning,  and  general  unhealthiness  are  some  of 
them,  the  latter  condition  generally  arising  from  a  bad  root¬ 
ing  medium  or  disease.  These  causes  often  act  and  react 
upon  one  another,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  case  of  excess  of 
vigour  caused  by  hard  pruning.  As  excess  of  vigour  is 
perhaps  the  most  common  cause  of  unfruitfulness,  at  least 
with  dwarf  or  restricted  trees  of  any  sort,  we  will  deal  with, 
this  first,  as  it  is  a  large  subject  of  itself. 
It  has  just  been  stated  that  unfruitfulness  can  be  reme¬ 
died  if  the  tree  is  of  bearing  age.  This  is  an  important 
reservation.  If  the  tree  is  a  standard  a  few  years  must  be 
allowed  it  to  acquire  strength  and  size,  as  it  cannot  support 
a  crop  until  the  branches  are  strong  enough  to  bear  the 
weight  of  it.  Hence  we  must  look  on  patiently  while  a 
standard  tree  is  forming  good,  strong  branches,  at  least  for 
a  few  years,  and  in  the  case  of  very  strong  growing  trees, 
like  the  Blenheim  Orange  Apple,  for  at  least  a  dozen  years, 
often  longer.  We  cannot  do  much  with  such  trees  to  re¬ 
strain  vigour  in  the  way  of  summer  pinching,  as  they  are  so 
difficult  of  access,  and  we  must  be  very  careful  how  we  root- 
prune,  as  it  is  necessary  for  the  tree  to  have  good  anchor 
roots  to  withstand  the  force  of  the  wind.  The  most  we  can 
do  with  such  strong-growing  unfruitful  standards  is  to  dig 
a  trench  round  the  tree  as  far  from  the  stem  as  the  spread 
of  the  branches,  and  without  severing  any  strong  horizontal 
roots  if  we  can  help  it,  and  preservinsr  all  the  fibrous  ones, 
go  straight  down  2ft,  and  then  undermine  the  great  block  of 
earth  containing  the  tree  for  6in  or  1ft  all  round,  and  cut 
through  any  strong  roots  we  find,  going  straight  down  into 
the  subsoil.  But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  to  carefully  pre¬ 
serve  the  horizontal  roots,  or  any  whose  direction  is  more 
horizontal  than  vertical,  as  it  is  the  roots  which  are  near  the 
surface  which  conduce  to  fruitfulness,  especially  the  fibrous 
ones,  while  without  the  strong  ones  a  strong  wdnd  may  blow 
the  tree  to  one  side,  from  which  position  it  never  recovers, 
while  heavy  crops  of  fruit  in  subsequent  years  will  bear  it 
down  still  more.  When  standards  get  fifteen  or  twenty  years 
old  it  is  rarely  they  fail  to  produce  good  crops,  and  when  atree 
has  once  borne  a  good. crop  of  fruit,  and  so  got  its  growdfi 
well  balanced,  it  is  not  often  any  more  trouble  by  reason  of 
excessive  vigour.  No  nitrogenous  manure  should  ever  be 
given  to  a  tree  if  it  can  be  avoided  until  this  desirable  con¬ 
dition  has  been  brought  about.  A  dressing  of  basic  slag  in 
the  autumn,  at  the  rate  of  3lb  to  the  twenty  square  yards, 
wdll  often  make  the  growth  more  short  jointed,  and  there¬ 
fore  more  fruitful. 
With  dwarf  trees  the  case  is  different.  Many  writers  of 
books,  as  well  as  of  articles  in  the  gardening  papers,  are 
fond  of  preaching  the  eternal  advice  to  lift  trees,  which 
means  the  complete  loss  of  one  season’s  fruiting,  and  often 
an  enfeebled  tree  for  another  season.  If  the  trees  have  had 
their  growth  properly  regulated  from  the  beginning,  so  that 
no  shoot  has  been  allowed  to  attain  to  undue  strength,  it 
is  doubtful  if  this  drastic  proceeding  of  lifting  is  ever  really 
necessary.  Mr.  S.  T.  Wright,  the  w^ell-known  superinten¬ 
dent  of  the  Chisw  ick  Horticidtural  Gardens,  saj^s  in  his  ex¬ 
cellent  little  manual,  “Fruit  Culture  for  Amateurs,”  that 
he  has  had  many  thousands  of  trees  under  his  care  for  over 
ten  years,  and  that,  by  practising  summer  pinching  and  dis¬ 
budding  in  spring,  he  has  had  splendid  crops  of  fruit,  and  in 
no  single  instance  has  root-pruning  been  necessary  to  check 
exuberant  growth.  This  is  very  strong  testimony,  and 
agrees  wdth  my  own  experience  as  regards  lifting  trees, 
which,  of  course,  necessitates  and  implies  pruning  of  the 
roots,  though  probably  no  one  of  experience  will  go  so  far 
as  to  say  that  he  never  needs  to  root-prune  at  all.  Most 
people’s  experience  with  such  trees  as  Green  Gages  in  the 
form  of  dwarf-trained  or  bush  trees,  or  Apples  like  Bram- 
ley’s  Seedling  and  Blenheim  Orange  as  dwarf  trees,  is  that 
root-pruning  will  hasten  bearing,  and  nurserymen  generally 
tell  us  that  it  is  necessary  wdth  these  particular  sorts  and 
others.  But  we  are  not  dealing  here  wuth  the  rearing  of 
trees,  and  what  may  be  accomplished  by  systematic  summer 
pinching,  but  rather  with  rank-growdng,  unfruitful  trees, 
which  have  got  into  such  a  state  through  neglect  or  wrong 
treatment.  Such  trees  as  dwarf  Apples,  Pears,  and  Plums 
can  generally  be  brought  into  bearing  by  one  or  two  courses 
of  action.  We  may  attend  to  the  roots,  or  to  the  branches. 
'I  he  tree  probably  is  growing  rankly  because  its  roots  have 
gone  down  too  deeply,  and  to  remedy  this  a  trench  should 
be  dug  round  the  tree  just  outside  the  spread  of  the 
branches,  and  all  the  surface  and  principally  horizontal 
roots  preserved  as  far  as  possible,  and  when  the  depth  of 
2ft  has  been  obtained  the  tree  should  be  undei’mined  and 
any  downward  growing  roots  cut  through,  and  pieces  of 
them  taken  out.  Then  the  soil  should  be  rammed  hard 
under  the  free  again  and  the  trench  filled  up,  spreading  the 
roots  out  carefully  as  the  w'ork  proceeds,  and  giving  those 
with  a  downward  tendencj^  a  more  horizontal  direction. 
Any  roots  cut  through  should,  where  possible,  be  smoothed 
off  with  a  knife,  so  that  the  cut  surfaces  have  an  upward 
aspect  rather  than  a  downward,  as  the  new  roots  will  form 
round  the  edges  of  the  cuts  and  have  an  upward  direction  if 
the  cuts  are  face  upwards,  A  year  after  this  process  the 
earth  with  which  the  trench  has  been  filled  will  be  per¬ 
meated  with  fibrous  roots,  especially  near  the  surface,  and 
fruitfulness  will  be  the  almost  certain  result  the  year  follow¬ 
ing.  Any  fruit  buds  which  may  be  on  the  tree  at  the  time 
of  the  root-pruning  will  not  be  prevented  by  the  process 
from  bearing  fruit  the  following  season,  while  during  the 
summer  the  tree  will  become  well  clothed  with  fruit  buds 
for  the  following  year.  The  best  time  to  do  this  is  from  the 
end  of  October  to  December,  the  earlier  the  better. — A.  Petts. 
(To  be  continued.) 
- - 
Vegetable  Culture:  Potatoes. 
What  a  mysterious  tiling  this  Potato  disease  is!  It  came 
many  years  ago,  and  struck  our  fields  and  gardens,  since  when  it 
has  never  disappeared.  Varieties  have  been  introduced  from 
time  to  time  with  certain  disease  resisting  capacities,  efforts 
have  been  made  to  stamp  out  the  evil,  but  still  it  lurks  amongst 
us,  breaking  cut  every  now  and  then,  and  it  is  almost  too  much 
to  hope  that  this  dread  evil  will  ever  be  got  rid  of.  The  scientist 
has  given  growers  a  weapon,  with  which  to  fight  the  foe  in  the 
shape  of  Bordeaux  mixture,  but  feAv  people  ever  use  it.  \ou  may 
write  and  talk  about  the  advantages  of  spraying  as  a  preven¬ 
tive  and  cure,  and  people  will  listen,  but  they  do  no  more,  as.  a 
rule.  I  wonder  how  many  acres  of  Potatoes,  out  of  the  whole 
area  grown  in  the  country,  were  sprayed  last  summer?  Not 
many,  I  think,  if  they  were  counted  up.  Fortunately,  the  dry 
seasons  of  late  have  helped  to  keep  the  Potatoes  free  from 
disease,  and  we  have  not  been  troubled  much  Avith  it,  but  the 
danger  exi.sts,  and  if  it  breaks  out  in  earnest,  per^ps  people  will 
se  as  anxious  to  spray  as  they  are  iioaa'  to  be  vaccinated  since  the 
small-pox  demon  appeared  in  London.  One  can  understand  a 
cottager  not  troubling  about  spraying  because  he  has  no  proper 
