Fruit Pruning, Spraying And Harvesting.

FRUIT GARDENING PRUNING, SPRAYING, HARVESTING: 

• The day has gone, presumably ever, when setting out fruit trees and giving them occasional civilization," furrowing up the estate" formerly in several times, would produce fruit. 
• Apples and pears and peaches have enthralled no favored position against the general irruption of the realm of horticulture by nonentity and fungous adversaries. 
• The fruits have, indeed, suffered further than the utmost plants. 
• nonetheless, there's this encouraging fact that, though the fruits may have been oppressively attacked, the means we now have of fighting fruit-tree adversaries, if completely used, as a rule, are more certain of negotiating their purpose and keeping the adversaries fully at bay, than are analogous munitions in any other line of horticultural work. 
• With fruit trees, as with vegetables and flowers, the most important palladium to be taken against insects and complaints is to, have them in a healthy, thriving, growing condition, It's a part of Nature's law of the survival of the fittest that any backward or weakling tree seems to fall first prey to the despoilment of the destructive forces. 
• For these reasons, the double necessity of maintaining at all times good fertilization and thorough civilization will be seen. 
• In addition to these two factors, careful attention in the matter of pruning is essential in keeping the trees in a healthy, robust condition. 
• As explained in a former chapter, the trees should be started right by pruning the first season to the open-head or vase shape, which furnishes the outside of light and air to all corridors of the tree. 
• Three or four main branches should form the base of the head, care being taken not to have them start from directly contrary points on the box, therefore forming a crotch and leaving the tree liable to unlocking from winds or inordinate crops. 
• However, If the tree is formerly started right. further pruning will give little trouble. 
• Cut out branches that cross, or are likely to rub against each other, or that are too close together; and also any that are broken, decayed, or injured in any way. For trees therefore given proper attention from the launch, a short leap will be the only pruning instrument needed. 
• The case of the old estate is more delicate. 
• Cutting out too numerous of the old, large branches at one time is sure to give a severe shock to the vitality of the tree. 
• A better plan is, first, to cut off, and close, all suckers and all small new-growth branches, except many of the most promising, which may be left to be developed into large branches; and also as these new branches grow on, gradationally to cut out, using a fine- tooth aphorism and painted the exposed shells, and the fat old wood. 
• Apples will need further pruning than the other fruits. 
• Pears and cherries need the least; cutting back the ends of branches enough to keep the trees in good form, with the junking of an occasional branch to let in light and air, is all the pruning they will bear. 
• Of course, trees growing on the rich ground, and well cultivated, will bear more cutting back than those growing under poorer conditions. A further purpose of pruning is to prompt laterally a thinning of the fruit so that what's grown will be larger and more precious, and also that the trees may not become exhausted by many exceptionally heavy crops. 
• On trees that have been neglected and growing sluggishly the dinghy occasionally becomes hard and set. 
• In similar cases, it'll prove salutary to scrape the dinghy and give a marshland applied with an old broom. 
• Color is good for this purpose, but soda pop or lye answers the same purpose and is less disagreeably conspicuous. incising the dinghy of caddies and the largest branches is occasionally resorted to, care being taken to cut through the dinghy only but the similar practice is reprehensible because it leaves ready access to some forms of fungous complaint and borers. Where redundant fine samples of fruit are asked, thinning is rehearsed. 
• It helps also to keep the tree from being overtaxed by inordinate crops. 
• But where pruning is completely done this trouble is generally avoided. 
• Peaches and Japanese catches are especially served by thinning, as they have a great tendency to lick. 
• The spread of fruit conditions, especially rot in the fruit itself, is also to some extent checked. Of fruit-tree adversaries, some large feathers may do great damage in short order-- rabbits and field mice. 
• They may be kept away by mechanical protection, similar to a line, or by heaping the earth up to a height of twelve elevations about the tree box. Or they may be caught with bane baits, similar to boiled grain in which a little Rough on Rats or analogous bane has been mixed. 
• The former system for the small home theater is little trouble, safer for Fido and Tabby, and the most dependable in effect. 
• Insects and scale conditions aren't so fluently managed, and that brings us to the question of scattering and sprays. 
• For large vineyards, the spray must, of course, be applied with the important and precious ministry. 
• For the small fruit theater, an important simpler, and veritably relatively priced outfit may be acquired. 
• The most practical of these is the brass-tank compressed-air- air sprayer, with an extension rod and mist-spray snoot. Or one of the backpack sprayers may be used. Either of these will be of great backing not only with the fruit trees but far and wide in the theater. 
• With care, they will last a good numerous times. 
• Whatever type you get, be sure to get a brass machine; a cheaper one, made of another essence, snappily erodes from contact with the strong venoms used.

APPLE ENEMIES :

• The insects most generally attacking the apple are the codlin moth, roof caterpillar, cankerworm, and borer.