The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1875-11-11
RenOvating Fruit.Trees.

IL an address on the subject of pruning
fruit-trees Prof. H. H. McAfee remarked
that, as the chief end of the tree seems to
be production, and as in every case such
reproduction is an eXhausting process
tending to destroy the life of the parent, it
follows that with perennial plants like
our fruit-trees, which bear crop after crop
of seeds, the exhaustion of an over-crop
may be fatal, or nearly so, unless a con
slant repair goes on through vigorous
growth. The biennial bearers are gener-
ally great troopers when they do bear, and
so in alternate years suffer exhaustion
through over-fruitage and then recover by
growth while barren of fruit. Such trees
need pruning the year, after they are
loaded with fruit-in spring, after bloom
ing-sO that the fruit will be thinned TO
such an extent that a good, thrifty growth
will take place. In this way better fruit
will be grown and often the habit of bear
ing alternate years will be broken up. so
that fruit will be produced every year.
But if the OvercrOp has been borne and the
tree is already exhausted it should be
headed the next year that its recovery
may be more thorough. In all these
cases where We interfere and remOv part
OF the growth points, so that vigor may be
added to those remaining, the inexperi-
enced hand is apt to overdO his work.
Care must be used and good judgment,
too, and only experience can teach just
what proportion of growth points are to be
removed. 1t is seldom, however, that
over onethird of the buds need removing
in these cases, but the greater the eXhaus-
ton the severer may be the pruning.
When a tree is starved, and for that
reason is making but little annual
| growth, the first thing to do is to feed it
with the food ingredient that the soil may
lack; but we may assist it back to a
! normal condition of thrift and health by
reducing the number Of its growth points
by disbudding or by heading in" before
growth is fairly started in the spring. So,
too, when a tree is robbed by other and
greedier roots invading its soil as when
bluegrass sod catches the moisture, and
the food-gases which come in from above
ground and keep them from the tree roots;
or, as when the greedy proprietor demands
from the orchard a crop of small grain; or,
as when lusticr, %hungrier roots of other
trees, like the willow and poplars, sap the
stock of food from the soil. The first
thing to do is to choke off the robber. then
enrich the soil and then in spring reduce
the number of growth-points so that all
left can put forth thrifty leaves and make
strong growth. If severe ~droughts have
prematurely checked growth, and then the
rains come aid growth is resumed, it is
usually best to interfere and stop part of
the points of extension by pinching as
soon as they start. Or, when the trying
winter has come, with its cold and dry
winds, so hard that many or most buds are
weakened and the fluid of the tree-the
sap-has been actually altered from its
normal condition by too great evaporation
and too great and too equally sudden
changes of temperature, we should inter
fere when growth is about to begin for the
season, and, by removing part of the buds,
turn the whole of the trees energies to
fewer points, to the end that the physio-
logical action may be more perfect and
stronger.-N. Y. Herald.