Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1880-08-25
GirdIing For Fruit.

friends in this state, and look over
their homes and farms and house
holds, could spare the times and
means. l have recently INDUCED
in two such visits. one to friend
Drury's fine farm in this courtyard
eae to friend Spaulding's model and
premium nursery farm, at Riverton
IN Sangamon county, and 1 enjoy
ed it. The judgment with whichAlr.
Spaulding has selected and prepared
his grounds, as well as the we'll
known care and skill and success,
with which everything on the place
is managed indoors and out, most
plainly shows that they are one
right famild in the night place., and
l hope there are multitudes more Of
them in our beautiful state.
Several hundred acres of the best
woodland soil natural to trees has
been selected, and the central parts
Of it thoroughly underdrained, even
where quite dry and sloping, and
covering with the finest and most
perfectly healthy and well grown
fruit trees and nursery stock l have
ever seen, The fruit trees at this
time are sight good for sore eyes.
The first item is some $4,000 bear
ing apple trees with scarce blem
ished or defective tree among them.
and so loaded with such fine fruit
even those not three inches through
that they remind one of the gardens
of Hesperides,except that no hide
Gus Dragon lay at the gate to guard
them; but every one who came was
welcome to his basket full, and the
teams and men were hauling them
10 the watering mouths in the city
as fast as possible.
What magic had produced this
beautiful sight ? That was precis-
ly what l went up to learn, to see
and to know. Good drained soil,
girdling, lime, salt and an army
crops Of 500 young turkeys, perpet-
ually on the march in their different
battallions, and the warbling tight
armed troops skipping and singing
among the branches there tell the
whole story;they were at once cause
and guard Of all, though all these,
the united head, heart and brain OF
the family selected, created and con-
trolled, the proprietor's brain by
common consent, ever being the
leading clement.
Itwas the girdhng in which l
was most interested, for sixty years
ago on my fathers farm in Massa-
cRusetts, 1 girdled fruit trees in the
same way, and l have done it &C.
casionly to truant trees and vines
ever since. So when | read in
Downing's most admirable book that
girdling endangered the life and
health of the tree | knew that there,
great Homer mapped for a moment,
and only repeated what others had
add him mere hereditary dogma,
for in sixty years l never knew a |
branch or a tree killed or injured
by it. My recent way Of doing it
is to take wide-set saw and saw
a circle carefully clean down to the
wood all round the trunk of the
tree. Mr.. Spalding takes out from
a quarter to half an inch in June
with knife, which takes longer,
and l think is no better, if as good. |
I have pear trees and apple trees
now so girdled a year ago, now on
my place loaded with fruit, which |
never bore peck before, though |
some of them were ten or twelve
inches through. But friend Spauld-
ing has literally thousands ofyoung
trees not ten feet high, with all the
branches bending down with the
bestfruit | have ever seen, for among
his $4,000 trees he girdled 5000 |
last year. His experiment is a
thorough demonstration beyond all
doubt, for in some cases whole rows
are girdled, and whole rows skip !
ped, in other cases only every 9TH
e. tree in each row is taken Of the |
same sort of apple planted at the
same time, in.every case the young
girdled trees are loaded with the |
finest fruit, while the ungirdled |
ones in the same row or adjoining
rows have none on them,
But will not trees so treated bear
themselves to death ? Certainly |
they will if not sustained; when they !
have worked up into good fruit, all
the fruit food there is in the soil, be |
it more or less they of course can do |
no more, unless new fruit food is
supplied. Hence young orchard
should never be set where an old
one has been. But the man who
sets the trees may as well use up
that amount of fruit food which is
in the soil while he is alive and can
eat the fruit perhaps, as to set out
the trees and leave it to his grand
children to eat the fruit. l now
have a girdled Lawrence and one
winter Nelis pear full of fruit,
which l have no reason to think
would have borne dozen pairs in
ten years if they had not been GRID
led, and one green Plppin apple a
foot through full of fruit that has
not before borne a peck in ten years