355 577 The New Horticulture 377 COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE DAVIS, CALIFORNIA At n / 1 L ; ( THE NEW HORTICULTURE 1 H. M. STRINGFELLOW THE NEW HORTICULTURE BY //. M STRINGFELLOU/ GALVESTON, TEXAS PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR 1896 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE DAVIS COPYRIGHTED BY H. M. STRINGFEI V L,OW 1806 )t. flMeasant iprtnterv; iade by J. Horace McFarland Company Harrisburg, Pa. PREFACE. ^AEVERAL months ago I contributed to Farm and \^ Ranch, Dallas, Texas, the fruit-growers' organ for the Southwest, four articles on the best form of tree for transplanting, as well as the best preparation of the ground and after-treatment of the orchard. To these was added an inquiry into the causes and prevention of pear and apple blight. Having received quite a number of requests to em- body the whole in print, I concluded to do so, and to add in a narrative sort of way some pages from my own personal experience of thirty years in fruit and vegetable growing, the whole of which seems to contain enough new points of interest to justify the title of "The New Horticulture," and to warrant laying them before my fellow fruit-growers. While directly applicable, in some of the details and varie- ties, to the far South only, many of the suggestions are of general interest all over the country. There is no doubt that some of them will meet with decided opposition, but I feel confident that a fair trial will in the end prove me right in the main. My object has been to show that some of the principles of hor- ticulture to-day are wrong, and also to suggest a more natural, cheaper and better way to grow good fruit than the laborious and expensive methods now in use. While in the analysis of manures and de- struction of insects we have made good progress, 6871.8 PREFACE. horticulture has not kept up in the procession with the other arts and sciences, and a little radical shak- ing up will at least start a spirit of inquiry and experiment. And now, before entering upon my task, I wish to disclaim any pretensions to a set treatise in reg- ular form. In view of the general information and the great number of excellent works on the subject, it occurred to me that it would be more interesting to embody the facts, endorsements of them, and my own observations, in the form of a rambling sort of personal history, and to do that it has been most convenient to use very often the personal pronoun in the first person, for which I hope my readers will excuse me. H. M. S. GALVESTON, TEXAS, August /, 1896. CONTENTS. Part L CHAPTER I. PAGE How I BECAME A HORTICULTURIST 13 CHAPTER II. EARLY EXPERIENCES AND SEED-BEDS 16 CHAPTER III. FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL 21 CHAPTER IV. WINTER AND EARLY SPRING CULTIVATION 31 CHAPTER V. CABBAGE 35 CHAPTER VI. CAULIFLOWER 38 CHAPTER VII. THE TOMATO 41 CHAPTER VIII. THE ONION 46 CHAPTER IX. MELONS AND CUCUMBERS 49 8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. CHAPTER X. PAGE THE POTATO 53 CHAPTER XI. CELERY 56 CHAPTER XII. LETTUCE 57 CHAPTER XIII. ASPARAGUS 58 CHAPTER XIV. Cow PEAS AND OTHER VEGETABLES .... ..62 Part II. CHAPTER I. THE NEW DISPENSATION 67 CHAPTER II. OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS 70 CHAPTER III. How I DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING 75 CHAPTER IV. CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING 80 CHAPTER V. ROOT PRUNING How DEMONSTRATED AT WASHINGTON. . ,90 CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER VI. PAGE RIGHT AND WRONG CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING .............. 100 CHAPTER VII. BEST TIME AND DEPTH TO PLANT ..................... 103 CHAPTER VIII. DEEP PREPARATION WRONG ................... , ....... 106 CHAPTER IX. CULTIVATION ......................................... in CHAPTER X. BLIGHT ............. . ................ ................ 120 CHAPTER XL BLIGHT .................................. . ........... 131 CHAPTER XII. GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES .................. 141 CHAPTER XIII. PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS .......................... . . 146 CHAPTER XIV. WINTER BUDDING ........ CHAPTER XV. GRAFTING CHAPTER XVI. FRUIT -CHANGED BY POLLINATION . CHAPTER XVII. HYBRIDISM BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING 10 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. CHAPTER XVIII. PAGE DWARFING TREES ON THEIR OWN ROOTS 166 CHAPTER XIX. WHY TREES IN BOTTOMS NEVER DROWN AERATION 169 CHAPTER XX. WRAPPING FRUIT 173 CHAPTER XXI. GRAPES 176 CHAPTER XXII. THE APPLE 181 CHAPTER XXIII. THE PEAR 189 CHAPTER XXIV. THE PLUM 192 CHAPTER XXV. THE PEACH 197 CHAPTER XXVI. APRICOTS, FIGS, JAPAN PERSIMMONS AND NUTS 199 CHAPTER XXVII. THE STRAWBERRY AND OTHER BERRIES 202 CHAPTER XXVIII. CONCLUSION. ..,..,.. 209 APPENDIX. MORE LIGHT FROM EXPERIENCE 214 PART I THE NEW HORTICULTURE. CHAPTER I. How I became a Horticulturist. IN looking back over the past, nothing strikes one more forcibly than the fact that most of us are literally crea- tures of circumstance. The most trivial incidents often break in upon our plans, changing the whole course of our lives. Never was there a more complete illustration of this truth than the apparent accident which drew my atten- tion to horticulture, and finally resulted in developing a most intense interest, where before there was complete indiffer- ence. It is an old saying, that the boy is father of the man, but in many cases, nothing could be farther from the truth. I am sure I can, and doubtless many of my readers can, recall instances among their friends, where the future man or wo- man has turned out to be absolutely no kin at all to the boy or girl, in all the peculiarities and traits that went to form the future character. My own is a case in point, for as a boy, and in fact up to a certain day in April, 1866, when a young man, I had not the remotest idea that an ardent love for every form of horti- culture was slumbering within, which needed but the slightest spark to kindle. I cannot recall that the sight of any orchard, garden or flower, in my whole previous life, ever excited the slightest desire in me to own or grow one like it, or in any way to work the ground, my whole attention being entirely devoted to trading in cotton and real estate, until the morn- ing alluded to in April. Being an ideal spring day, a party of us concluded to spend a few hours fishing from the wharf here in Galveston, and, seeing a rusty-looking old chap near 14 THE NEW HORTICULTURE by me drawing out some fine specimens, while I had no suc- cess at all, with legs dangling over the wharf's edge I inched along towards him to try and share his luck. The old man took it very kindly, and gave me a pleasant "good morning," from which we soon got well acquainted, and it needed but little questioning to draw him out. While proud of his skill as a fisherman, by which he then made his living, he soon let me know that he was originally cut out for better things than that. He told how, many years before, on the classic banks of the Rhine, in a snug little vine-clad home, his eyes first saw the light of day, and how as a boy, and then man, he had helped to terrace the rocky hills, and carry the earth from below in baskets on his back, to make the beds where grew the grapes that made the sparkling wines of the Rhine. At first I was much more interested in fish than grapes, for while I did know they grew on vines, I certainly knew no more, but as the old fellow rambled on, he finally jumped in his narrative clear over the ocean and landed at Bolivar Point, across Galveston Bay, where he went on to tell how he just missed a fortune in grape-growing by a mere scratch. It seemed that after a life-time of wandering he had saved up a little money, and bargained for a few acres of land, but need- ing his cash to buy his vines, had paid nothing on it. The vines were planted and growing finely in the spring of '61, when, alas for the old man's fortune, the war came on. The big Yankee ships steamed up and down the coast, and finally into the harbor, and anchored quite near the Point. Now, while the old fellow was greatly interested in the grape, it was not the kind they cultivate aboard a man-of-war, so he aban- doned the place and moved to Houston. When the war ended, however, he returned to look at his vineyard, but the fence was all down and the cattle had trampled his poor vines to death. Disheartened, and having no money to buy more, he had moved over to Galveston Island shortly before, and so it happened we met on that bright April morning. While this is the outline, he filled in with many interesting incidents, and none more so than the fabulous profits that could be made on grapes. I do not remember now the vines he put to HOW I BECAME A HORTICULTURIST. 15 the acre, or the pounds to a vine, or the price per pound, all on paper, like many another fruit crop, but I do know that before he got through with his wild, enthusiastic ha- rangue he had me so excited over grape-growing that I was prepared to throw cotton and real estate to the winds and grow grapes galore. And thus while fishing for trout with shrimps, I was caught myself, with a bait of grapes. Little did the old man think that day that, like the Apostles of old, he had turned out a ''fisher of men." And what, indeed, are we all but fishermen, wandering along the stream of life with rods in hand, and hooks baited for each other ? Whether it be stocks or bonds, cotton or corn, money or love, we all have baits out for somebody, in which the hooks are as carefully concealed as those in the shrimp, and, whether by accident or design, somebody is always being caught. Well, the time had passed quickly, though the fishing was bad, and, after thanking the old man for his pleasant chat, I bade him good-bye, and never saw him again. In our journey from the cradle to the grave, our paths crossed but a single time, and yet in those few hours he had completely changed the whole course and future of my life. On my way home, I stopped in the different book stores to hunt for lore on the grape, and bought the only two books they had. These were soon at my fingers' ends, and not sat- isfied with learning something about grapes, a desire sprang up to know something about all other fruit/s and flowers as well, and everything I could find was read. While now com- pletely infatuated with horticulture (and it is wonderful how completely it does capture some people), it is doubtful whether I would ever have made it a business, unless unfortunate spec- ulations in cotton and real estate, just prior to the storm and yellow fever epidemic of '67, had decided the question for me. Those events left me with no bank account against which to draw, so I concluded at once to follow my inclinations, and draw on the sand banks of Galveston Island. Just how those banks will honor a draft, if properly indorsed with manure and industry, I leave the old vegetable dealers and residents of the city, who used to visit my home in the West End, to say. CHAPTER II. Early Experiences and Seed-beds. I WILL now give a few details of my first experiences in gardening for profit, and will ever look back to those early days as the very happiest of my life. Imagination, with her undipped wings, ever bore me up, and hopes flut- tered around as thick as moths over a cabbage patch. Not }^et had I sounded all the mysterious depths of vegetable arithmetic, or proved by the double rule of three that if one lettuce plant will bring two cents, it does not necessarily fol- low that 43,500 on an acre at one foot apart will bring $870. The doubtful propriety of counting chickens before they are hatched, with the consequent inconveniences often resulting therefrom, had not yet impressed itself fully on my confiding mind. To me the world was a vast stomach of unlimited capacity, and my mission to help fill it, by the aid of a natural and considerate disposition on the part of all vegetables to assist, with a minimum of effort on my part. Soothed and sustained by these pleasant anticipations, and in blissful ignorance of the festive bug of high and low degree, as well as the hilarious moth, ever intent on combin- ing business with pleasure, as she flits from plant to plant, I set out in my first attempt on two and a-half acres of nearly pure sand, in the suburbs of the city of Galveston. This area was increased in a few years to five acres, on which I soon had a fine little orange grove coming on, as well as a small vineyard behind the friendly shelter of oleander and salt cedar trees, which kept off the blighting salt winds. Here, by continuous and heavy fertilizing and tireless work, stimulated by intense love for it, I managed, with the high prices then and for many years prevailing, to make a very satisfactory success of market-gardening, even though my bright anticipations were never realized. Starting absolutely (16) EARLY EXPERIENCES AND SEED-BEDS. IJ ignorant of every branch of horticulture, and yet with an ardent love for it, I have always believed that the fair success I have made was more due to that ignorance than anything else. In those days there were very few market-gardeners on Galveston Island, and those here were exceedingly jealous of each other, so when I started out and went around for a little friendly information on various points, I found them literally a lot of know-nothings. This turned out to be the very stimulus needed to throw me on my own resources, and compelled me to inaugurate a thorough system of experiments for myself. So, getting a very large blank-book, as every- thing was to be learned, I made it a daily rule for fifteen years to make full notes of the weather, and enter a complete statement of all the garden operations performed each day, which turned out to be a most delightful and instructive task, for in a few years I could strike an average, and know just when and how each operation should be performed, and prob- able results. Taking Henderson's Market-Gardening as my guide, with proper allowances for climate, I shall ever feel under obliga- tions for the valuable information contained therein, espe- cially his earnest advice as to a free, in fact almost extrava- gant, use of manure. After thirty years in the garden and orchard, I attribute whatever measure of success has crowned rny efforts more to an apparently reckless style of fertilizing than all else combined. Manure means both water and culti- vation, for I have often seen excellent crops made, even in grass and weeds, on very rich ground, while clean culture on that only half fertilized gave a practical failure. Food in pro- per proportions, not a glut of any one element, but a fairly complete manure, and in abundance, is the one absolute essential for the highest success, in the garden as well as the orchard. Thirty years ago ttyis necessity for a complete ferti- lizer was not recognized, and especially the need for potash, for while its use on onions was generally recommended, the idea seemed to be prevalent that somehow it suited that crop better than any other. But while, as I have said, I will always thank Henderson for his injunctions about manuring, he gave 2 HORT. l8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. another direction that, as far as I know, is still given in the books, for which I owe him a most serious grudge. The first edition of his work, "Gardening for Profit," advised that no matter how long-stemmed (or legged, as we call it) a plant may be, to set it down to the bud, and gives apparently a very good reason, for the North; viz., to protect the stem from freezing and splitting open. Yet I am confident that no single piece of general advice ever given has caused and still continues to cause so much loss of plants as that. While I can only speak from actual experience here, I am sure, under general conditions, it must be the same elsewhere. For sev- eral years I regularly had to grow, for the fall crop of cab- bage and cauliflower, just three times as many plants as I needed, for fear of accidents, until I found out the trouble. For several seasons the plants were set as directed, with the greatest care, and yet in summer and fall, if the stems hap- pened to be a little long, let a heavy shower fall just after they were planted, or if set during rain and the plants were at all sappy and tender, or even if set after a good rain and down to the bud, invariably a large proportion would damp- off. In the face of such a positive direction to set to the bud, I racked my brain to find out the cause, and have to admit that, after all, it came by pure chance. We had, one morning early in September, a splendid rain, and being cloudy all day, we rushed out about twelve-thou- sand plants after dinner, and kept it up until dark, and when we knocked off, I happened to have left over a few plants in my hand. I stopped at the end of a row, and stooping down, made shallow holes with the end of my finger, and barely in- serted the roots as deep as they stood before, leaving the en- tire stems out. That night another fine rain fell, none too much, that I could see, and yet, in three days, more than half my plants had damped off at the ground, while every one of that handful started off to grow. I saw at a glance the cause of all my past trouble. Simply burying the tender stems under the ground. While this is so fatal here in summer and fall, deep planting is equally unde- sirable in cool weather, especially in spring, when time is EARLY EXPERIENCES AND SEED-BEDS. IQ money. No kind of plants thus set, when the ground is cold, will strike root quickly, or make much growth until new roots are emitted near the warm surface. I have re- peatedly proved a difference of ten days, and several times much more, in favor of those planted just a shade deeper than they stood before, and then in a few days either drawing up the earth or laying the stem flat, if long, and covering with surface-soil. But take him all in all, Peter Henderson may well be called the father of modern market-gardening in this country, and few men ever achieve such signal and well- deserved success in the business as he. And now, as a successful seed-bed is the foundation of all profitable market-gardening, I present a form I hit upori from necessity, in 1869, which, though adopted now by many gardeners in this section, I have never seen described in any book. I found that the green and bud-worms, grasshoppers, crickets and flea-beetles were so bad on my cabbage plants that, failing with sprinkling the plants with foreign substanceg SEED-BED, WITH MOSQUITO-NET COVERING. to kill or drive them off (poisoning being unknown then), it struck me that prevention was better than cure. So I made my seed-beds the second summer like common coldframes, without the ends, as shown in accompanying illustration : Set up on edge two 10 or 1 2-inch planks as long as the bed is to be, and about 5 feet apart. Nail small strips from one to the other, at intervals of about 2 feet, and at each end 2O THE NEW HORTICULTURE. next to the ground, nail a piece of i x 3-inch plank, to which the ends of the mosquito-bar are to be tacked. Stretch a bar over the frame after the seeds are sown and covered. The shade afforded by the mosquito-bar is just what the young cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, or other seed requires in summer, though, if at the South, and more is desired, a light sprinkling of hay, free from weed seeds, for a few days, will be sufficient. Water can be applied from the sprinkler on and through the bar, which is not to be removed, except once for hand weeding, when the plants are half-grown. This should always be done in the morning or at mid-day, when the moths are at rest, never late in the evening. This form of bed and covering will answer perfectly for all kinds of flower or vegetable seeds to be planted in warm weather or when glass is not required, and if carefully done, will afford perfect protection and give nice, clean plants when the time comes to set. See that the mosquito-bar fits close all around, and is free from even a small hole, for the ingenuity and per- ception of moths is simply wonderful, and they will find the smallest opening, if one be left. As, next to good, healthy plants, rich ground is of the utmost importance, I will discuss the subject of fertilizers in the following chapter. CHAPTER III. Fertilisers Cotton-seed Meal . WHILE cotton-seed meal is the cheapest and one of the best fertilizers for new soils, or those not too much exhausted of their potash and phosphoric acid, many people have bad luck with it from a want of knowledge as to how to apply it. The trouble has been that it is either used in the hill or drill, fresh, with the seed, or else planting is done too soon after applying it to the ground. It should always be evenly scattered and well mixed with the soil at least a month ahead, for it not only heats at first, but also breeds thousands of little maggots in cool weather, that bore into seeds of every kind when they sprout, and often into the stems of cabbage and other tender plants. In hot summer and early fall weather, decomposition occurs so quickly that this never occurs. In a month, however, all fermentation is over, the maggots are dead, and then cotton-seed meal is the very best and cheapest of all manures for new land in the coast country. It costs about $18 per ton, while bone meal is $28 to $30, and a ton of it will, the first season, produce more of a crop than two tons of the bone meal. The latter is a most excellent fertilizer, and either raw, or, better still, in the form of super-phosphate, will, in the course of a few years, when the soil has been partially exhausted of its soluble phosphoric acid by crops, furnish the best supply of that element. Bone meal is usually too coarse to allow of more than a very small per centage becoming available as plant food the first season, and it is poor economy to bury so valuable a fertilizer a year or two before it can be used by plants. Cotton-seed meal contains about 8 per cent, of ammonia, i^ per cent, each of potash and phosphoric acid, and as our lands are well supplied at first with the two latter, even these (21) 22 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. small percentages will furnish, for most crops, all the mineral elements needed for some years. For berries and tomatoes, more potash will brighten the color and make firmer the fruit of the first, and render that of the latter less liable to rot. For these two the New Orleans complete fertilizer, with some potash, and its nitrogen in the form of nitrate of soda, gave me excellent results, but for a cheap and valuable all-round manure for general crops and fruit trees, cotton-seed meal heads the list for new lands. That ammonia is the element of all others most needed in this section was plainly demonstrated by the snow last winter. While the mineral constituents are fixed in the earth, nitro- gen in the form of ammonia is continually escaping into the air by the action of fermentation and decay, and constantly being returned to the soil in rain and snow. We all know that no watering wili make plants grow like rain, and the snow is a still more effective ammonia catcher. The differ- ence between rain and snow in this respect is that the former, while it brings down ammonia, also in heavy downpours not only carries off most of it in floods, but actually washes out much of this very soluble element from the soil itself. Every- one has noticed how, after excessive rains, even on the best drained ground, plants seem to stand still. But that snow came last winter after a three months' drouth, and was slowly absorbed by the earth, depositing an equivalent of thousands of tons of cotton-seed meal, and resulted in crops of all kinds, even on fresh broken sod, that fairly astonished all the older settlers. We must not delude ourselves into the belief that a repetition of such a yield is likely to occur the coming season on ground poorly prepared. Better trust to thorough stirring and cultivation, with a judicious application of fertil- izers for the most valuable crops, than another snowfall from the clerk of the \veather ! But while ammonia is most required at first, there comes the time, in a few years, when lands from which continuous crops have been taken will require an addition of more of the mineral elements also. No analysis will tell this as effectively as the plants themselves. In fact, the great difficulty of FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL. 23 determining the exact amount of plant food in a soluble or available condition for immediate use, renders all soil analy- ses of little practical value, as compared with actual experi- ments that can be made by everyone for himself in a single season. Whenever the tomato runs to vine and makes little fruit, it is a plain call for phosphoric acid, or if the fruit rots at the blossom end, it shows that potash is wanted. If the strawberry leaves begin to spot considerably, and the lower ones to dry up, or cabbages when half grown burn around the edges and also dry up or shed their lower leaves, and particu- larly when the plants assume a pale, yellowish green tinged with red, after rain or cold, and fail to head well, unless there is some local cause, such as bad drainage, it may be set down as certain that potash is required. When this element is present in abundance, cabbage leaves are always of a rich, dark green. But there is no plant that indicates a poverty of potash in the soil like the watermelon. The saying, "new ground for watermelons," is as old as the hills. What I have now to say pertains to all soils, but is particularly applicable to the sandy land of Bolivar Point and Galveston Island. As is well known, these are much lighter than the mainland, and have no clay subsoil, and, consequently, little potash. The main spring crop for money on these warm, early soils is the watermelon, and the growers are in tribulation over the gradual deterioration for several years, and almost fail- ure last summer, of all the melons on old lands, although well manured in the hill with rich compost. The trouble is what may be called the "die back." The plants generally start well and make a good growth for awhile, but when the melons begin to set, or perhaps are half-grown, a shoot on one side will wither away and die. Then another will go, and if the whole hill does not die out the vines make poor growth, the melons are small and of very poor quality, and the roots are alive with a minute little wriggler, known as the "eel worm." While I never saw a sample of the Bolivar worm, I recognized in the descriptions of him and his work, an old acquaintance that I made the third year of 24 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. my gardening experience on Galveston Island, though I never knew him by that name. When, in 1868, I first went into the gardening business, I had but five acres at the corner of Forty-fifth street and Ave- nue N, and knew absolutely nothing about the business. In those good old days of little gold but lots of greenbacks, nothing sold like melons, cabbage and cauliflower. Anything less than $10 per dozen for good lots of either, if moderately early, was not thought of, and when a few years later the price dropped to $4 and 5 per dozen, we all cried out that we were positively being robbed. Arming myself with Hen- derson's ''Gardening for Profit," I determined to grow noth- ing but melons in spring, and cabbage and cauliflower in the fall, at least as long as I could. In May, 1868, I turned my first acre, breaking that year only one block of two and a-half acres. After plowing and harrowing several times, the ques- tion arose as to the best manure for my first venture. I had studied Henderson until I knew him by heart, and while he had excellent words for pure bone flour (not coarse meal), his recommendation of 1,200 pounds per acre of the genuine, old-time, 12 per cent, ammonia and 25 per cent, phosphoric acid Peruvian guano, struck my fancy most. When a boy I had seen spring up, almost as if by magic, most wonderful crops of wheat from the worn-out fields of old Virginia, when only a few hundred pounds per acre were applied, and my expectations were on tiptoe to see what 1,200 pounds would do. So, without further debate, I ordered my seed from Henderson, and the $100 gold per ton Chinca Island Peruvian guano, the supply of which gave out years ago, from Mapes, of New York. In August I measured off an acre that was well prepared, scattered 1,200 pounds as evenly as I could, harrowed it in, having already sowed my cabbage seed. Shortly after a splendid rain fell, and taking advantage of it, about the first of September I set this acre down with cabbage. Nearly every plant lived, and though the green worms were bad, the season was so favorable, and the growth so rapid, that little damage was done, and in November I began to market a crop FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL. 25 that I never saw equaled but once, and that was in 1876, of which more anon. Only the man who has a genuine love for gardening can appreciate my feelings when I went out, on clear, calm morn- ings, to watch the first rays of the sun gleam down the long rows of great plants, with their ten and fifteen-pound heads, as regular as pig tracks down a lane, and nestling in a wilder- ness of rich, dark leaves, silvered over with the sparkling dew. That I had the "world by the tail and a down-hill pull," I felt sure, and I did for a few years, only to find out later on that the pull was the other way, and I couldn't let go. Well, the cabbage was cleared off at the biggest kind of prices, and the whole block planted down in spring to the old-time red-seed and white-rind "island" melon, and as an experiment, for I began experimenting then, and have never quit to this day, I manured the balance of the 2^/2 acres with barnyard manure in the hills only. While this turned out to be a first-class experiment, it cost heavily, as the yield in size and number of melons on the cabbage ground far exceeded that on the other. This was due to the great amount of fruit-producing element, phosphoric acid, left over from the guano on the former. As we all know, that element, potash and nitrogen, commonly known in the form of ammo- nia, are the three main constituents of plants, and the only elements of plant food it ever becomes really necessary to supply. While lime also enters largely into their composi- tion, it is found so abundant in all soils except pure sand that its use, except on ground made over-rich for years with barnyard manure, is unnecessary. As a corrective of what is known as humic acid in such soils, it is very valuable, and, with an application of hardwood ashes, would regenerate the flower and vegetable gardens of Galveston City and Island, many of which have been dosed to death with animal ma- nures. While this digression may seem to have no connection with the eel worm, it has, most intimately, and, to bring it out more clearly, a few further remarks in the same line are nec- essary. While ammonia, potash and phosphoric acid, with 26 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. lime, form the bulk of plants as a whole, the three former, to a large extent, play distinct parts in their development, and an abundance of all is absolutely necessary to healthy foliage and full crops of fruit. The office of ammonia is chiefly to make growth, phosphoric acid to make fruit, while potash heightens the color and quality of the fruit, and contributes most largely to the general health of all plants. Just in pro- portion as one or the other of these elements is lacking in soils, will there be a deficiency in the corresponding particu- lar. Everyone has noticed that a heavy dressing of stable manure, with its ammonia, will make tomatoes, for instance, run all to vine, and continued applications ''burn" anything it is put around. Now, at the time I write of, I did not know all this, and especially the office of and need of potash. Nor, in fact, did anybody else know it. Peter Henderson and every farmer knew that the continued use of guano would "burn," barn- yard manure in excess produce club-root, bone meal fail in its effect if used continuously, stable manure cease to produce healthy crops if applied in succession on the same ground, and so on, but the only distinct recognition of the value of potash as a fertilizer thirty years ago was for onions. All the writers on gardening invariably noted that onions could be grown year after year successfully on the same ground, and farther on the remark always followed : "Ashes are a special manure for onions." But to the balance of my story. Year after year, in continu- ally increasing quantities, I applied first one and then another of the above manures, except potash, including nitrate of soda, all abounding in ammonia and phosphoric acid, but, with the exception of a small amount in stable manure, entirely deficient in potash. Beginning with the third year, my cabbage and cauliflower commenced to spot and shed their lower leaves when half grown, split open and rot in the stems, the tomatoes went mostly to vine, and the fruit rotted badly at the blossom end, the melons set less fruit and failed to grow large, and the vines took the "die back" and eel worm, an almost microscopic little creature that infests both FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL. 27 melon and egg-plant roots in great numbers when grown on ground deficient in potash, as Galveston Island and Bolivar sandy soil necessarily become after several crops have been taken off. On clay soils a year or so of rest, and the plowing in of peas or grass, will turn loose more potash, but on pure sandy soils there is little more on hand. So, there I was, with a good home, then increased to five acres, and pleasant surroundings, but my ground "played out." This state of things culminated in 1875, and I was thinking seriously of hunting some new ground, when one morning, in passing a powder house, situated near my back fence, I saw the door open, and looking in found old Colonel McKeen, then in business on the Strand and agent for a northern powder company. With him were several gentle- men, who were discussing the best method of getting rid of the large lot of damaged powder in the house. The high water of that year had wet some, and the dampness injured all of it considerably, and Colonel McKeen was just saying that the best thing to do was to dump the whole lot into the gulf. Knowing the composition of powder, and that 75 per cent, was pure nitrate of potash, the most expensive and valu- able of fertilizers, I offered at once to save them the drayage, if they would give it to me. While evidently wondering what I intended to do with it, they gladly accepted my offer, and turned me over the keys and about five tons of blasting and gunpowder. I had it hauled away at once, and on knocking in the heads of the kegs found most of it apparently as good as ever. We prepared about four acres, and in a few days, to the astonishment of my neighbors, I was sowing powder at the rate of i% tons per acre, the costliest, from a money stand- point, and probably the most excessive application as a fer- tilizer ever made on ground. Each ton of powder contained about 800 pounds of ammonia and 700 pounds of pure pot- ash, and as cotton-seed meal has but 160 pounds of ammonia and 30 pounds of potash to the ton, it will be seen what a waste it was. However, as it cost nothing, and was danger- ous to keep, I put it all on. 28 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. After harrowing in well, the ground was thrown up into 3-foot ridges, and in August the four acres were set with cab- bage and cauliflower, at the rate of 7,000 to the acre, giving a total of 28,000 plants. The growth was extraordinary, and not a spotted leaf or diseased plant in the whole lot, from first to last. I never before or since saw such heads, and many of the older members of the Cotton Exchange will remember, that when they occupied the old building on Strand, near Twenty-first, I exhibited on their floors, for sev- eral weeks, in half-barrels, three giant cauliflowers and three cabbages, taken up with balls of earth, the smallest head of which, when stripped of the outer leaves, weighed 17 pounds, and several, both of the cauliflower and cabbage, weighed 20 pounds, and were as large as a half-bushel measure. The winter was very mild, and the whole crop was sold on the grounds, netting considerably over $6,000, after which the four acres were planted to melons, and the crop was equally fine, and not a sick plant, where the eel worm and "die back" were plentiful before. Here, then, was the secret of "played out" and diseased soil. Simply a want of that great tonic of the vegetable sys- tem, potash. I had for years been applying heavy doses of ammonia and phosphoric acid, while the sandy soil had been drained of its potash, resulting in diminished and diseased crops. From then until 1883, when I left the island, I invariably applied the muriate of potash at first, and after the oil mill was established, cotton-seed hull ashes, which I got then, load for load of sand, and though cabbage was planted regu- larly every year, and twice a spring and fall crop were grown on the same ground, I was never troubled with diseased cab- bage or melons again. Just how potash works I cannot say. Whether it actually destroys the bacteria of fungous diseases, and such minute pests as the eel worm, which is exceeding small, or whether it simply gives health and vigor to the plants themselves, strengthening and hardening the tissues of both leaves and roots, and thus enabling them to resist attack, I leave for FERTILIZERS COTTON-SEED MEAL. 2Q others to determine. The result is what we want, and I am satisfied that if the island and Bolivar growers, and others with old soil, will use potash freely, such trouble will not occur again, here or elsewhere. If hull ashes, containing 30 per cent, potash, and about 8 per cent, phosphoric acid, could be obtained pure, there is no better supply, but the mills now have such ready sale for the hulls that they find it does not longer pay to burn them, and when they do, it is often in conjunction with coal. Bu, both the muriate and sulphate of potash can be obtained from the German Kali Works, 93 Nassau street, New York, who also publish a valuable pamphlet on their use, and send it free on application. Just how little of either will do I cannot say, as I always applied the ashes freely, but as 50 per cent, of both muriate and sulphate is pure potash, about 300 or 400 pounds per acre ought to answer. Experiments on a small scale should be made with from 200 to 500 pounds. The muriate is mostly used at the North, but our agricultural and mechanical station, if I remember aright, found the sulphate to give the best results. It should always be broadcasted as evenly as possible, and well mixed with the soil. Both the hull ashes and the chemicals should be used with great care in the hills with seed. The safe plan would be to scatter broadcast. Use no animal manure or compost for melons where plants have shown disease before, but as a starter, a few handfuls of bone meal, or the New Orleans fertilizer, now being used largely on the mainland with fine success for tomatoes and berries, should be worked into the hills, if un- able to fertilize the whole, ground. And now, in closing my remarks on fertilizers, I would call attention to the fact that while top-dressing seems to be gen- erally recommended at the North, and may be useful there, this practice ruined several crops of vegetables and straw- berries for me before I found out the danger of it here. All fertilizers should be applied before the crops are planted, and thoroughly mixed with the soil, especially in spring and early summer. I would much rather trust to poor soil than resort to this method at those seasons. For cabbage and 30 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. cauliflower in fall, it is admissible, if those greedy crops show the need of it, but it is almost certain ruin to a strawberry crop in this section. It invariably induces the roots to come to the surface, and any extreme of either wet or dry will bring out what is commonly known as ''rust." Of course, these remarks apply to annual crops only, and not to orchards, which should be fertilized on the surface about the time growth starts in spring, and not in the fall. CHAPTER IV. Winter and Early Spring Cultivation. THE general directions for cultivating all crops are to stir the soil repeatedly, which, while excellent advice under certain conditions and at certain times, is very bad advice at others. We all know the benefits from such treat- ment in hot weather, when the little clods and loose soil shade and keep the earth cool, as well as break the capillary attrac- tion and retain the moisture. But there are times and places where this is just what we do not want. All through the lower Gulf states, where winter gardening is practiced, the very opposite from the above is the proper treatment, and thousands of dollars are wasted annually at that season in worse than useless cultivation. What is sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander, and winter cultivation not only very greatly reduces the temperature of the earth itself, but after heavy rains the stirred soil, acting like a sponge, retains more water than is needed, thus reducing the temperature and checking growth. The toper's theory of drinking whis- key in summer to keep cool, and in winter to keep warm, will not work in this case. The truth is, the same results follow cultivation, both in summer and winter, and the effect in each is to shade the ground and prevent the absorption of heat by the surface during the day, as well as to increase radiation from freshly stirred ground at night. Every one knows that smooth, firm ground will heat up much more quickly and intensely in sum- mer, and should be stirred ; but in winter at the South, and early spring both South and North, as heat is absolutely nec- essary to plant growth, and the ground is damp and cold, the proper thing then is to leave the surface smooth and firm until later on, when the earth warms up. If some one ob- jects that plants left thus can get no air to the roots, the (30 32 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. answer is that air is in no way necessary or beneficial to the roots of plants or trees, this being another of the ancient fal- lacies handed down from the past. Nothing is more injurious to roots than air. Exposed to it, they always suffer at once. I can say from extensive and repeated practice, that in cool fall, winter and early spring weather, the less the soil is stirred about growing plants the better. Hand picking of weeds around young melons, cucumbers or other early crops while small will pay well, or if hoed, simply scrape the surface as lightly as possible. If any one doubts these facts, let him work a small space deeply in early spring, and the next sunny day sink a thermometer into it, and then place it in a hole dug to the same depth on clean, smooth ground along-side. It is surprising how much warmer the latter will be, and warmth means growth. After a heavy rain the difference will be much more marked, when, as noted above, deep, loose soil retains water and chills the ground. As illustrating the value of letting well enough alone, a clipping from a neighboring paper, the Alvin Sun, published on the I4th of February, 1896, is appended : "T. M. Savel brought to our office this week a head of cabbage that measured in circumference 58 inches, and weighed 18^ pounds. It has been growing in the patch all the winter, and the ground was well fertilized with barnyard manure ; but, strange to say, was never stirred around it, or the rest of the patch, but once, when young; and he has lots more nearly as large." The knowledge of this truth about cultivation in cool weather has been worth a great deal of money to me in the past, as I was thus often able to surprise my first, last and all- the-time-cultivating neighbors by bringing in the first early truck. I learnt it, however, as we do most things of value, by a severe experience, which I will now give. Soon after I began gardening I had, one spring, a splen- did stand of cucumbers and cantaloupes with the third leaf nicely out. Being very busy, the ground had not been stirred around them, though the beds were clean. A smart Aleck came along and insisted that it was a shame to neglect such a beautiful patch (and they really were fine, the ground being very rich); so to do the proper thing, I concluded to work WINTER AND EARLY SPRING CULTIVATION. 33 them myself, for fear my hired man would not do them full justice. Arming myself with a pronged hoe, I went at it with a will, and by night had all but one row nicely forked up quite deeply. While it nearly broke my heart to think that the poor little plants in that last row had to go neglected another night, still it could not be helped, as it was actually too dark to work any longer. But about daylight a heavy soaking rain fell for two hours, and I lay there thinking how those plants would grow, and felt more sorry than ever for those poor little fellows in the packed ground, who got no working. The sun shone out warm and clear in the morning, but a cold north wind came up later, and that night the ther- mometer went to thirty-eight degrees, but no frost. The next day was bright and warm, but instead of growing off rapidly, as I expected they would, the last one of the worked plants, after turning a sickly yellow for a few days, laid down and died, while not one of the unworked row was damaged at all. The result was, that I finally made more clear money from that one row than all the balance that had to be replanted. The reason was plain. The deep, loose soil held the cold water like a sponge around the roots, giving chilly feet, while the warm sunshine made their heads too hot. That is good for neither man nor plant, and from that day to this I never worked another heat-loving plant deeply again in early spring, and have, moreover, just finished, this i4th day of February, marketing the last of a crop of very fine lettuce on very rich ground, that has never had an hour's work since it was planted, in December. I append, as bearing on the subject in connection with trees, as well as vegetables, an extract from Farm and Ranch, by Mr. H. B. Hillyer, a thoughtful and progressive horticul- turist of this state, who makes these remarks in a friendly criticism of an article by me : ***** "But friend Stringfellow's articles have set us all to thinking, and the oldest will do well to read and ponder them. Farmers have long known that if you plow to-day a few rows or less in a corn field, and at night a frost comes on, the corn well plowed will every stalk be killed, while the unplowed will escape unhurt, and often does, especially if deeply planted. 3 HO*RT. 34 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. "But how about an orchard? My soil is light, black prairie, partly covered with live oak and mesquite. My orchard proper is young. This is its third year, and hence I am cultivating three rows of potatoes or corn in the middles. This leaves the trees on the middle of an eight-foot bed that has not been plowed. The past two weeks we had two frosts, thermometer barely to thirty-two degrees. I have thirty varieties of peaches in my orchard. Excepting some Alexanders next to the cow lot, the fruit is entirely destroyed ; apri- cots also. 44 In one of my chicken yards, which has never been cultivated, I have five peach trees and plum trees, all in full bloom. I never saw heavier crops of fruit, and but little damage by frost. If we have no more frost I will have to unload the trees to fully one-half. Moreover, these same trees last year bore heavy crops, despite the cold weather, that destroyed almost the entire fruit crop of all this section. In my yard I have five peach trees, one Prunus Simoni, one quince, three pear trees and several plums not at all injured by the frost. These all bore heavily last year except the pear and quince, which are too young yet to bear, and are again full. Two neigh- bors had plowed their orchards and lost all their fruit ; one neighbor had not plowed, and his fruit is but little injured. " Is not this an object lesson well worthy of our serious study ? From it I would deduce the following rule for cultivation : Never put a plow into the orchard until all danger of frost is over. 4 'Now, don't understand me to say that frost or freeze cannot destroy the fruit on non- cultivated trees, but only that an orchard freshly plowed is far more susceptible to freeze and frost than un- plowed soil. My orchard was plowed at least three weeks before the frost, for the Irish potatoes were just beginning to come up. 44 Live, study, learn !" The true cause of the plowed trees losing their fruit was the loss of a large quantity of their surface feeding-roots, up- on which the setting and development of the fruit largely depend. CHAPTER V. Cabbage. is a most important crop everywhere, and in the Gulf States the seed for the early fall crop should be sown in July, in a frame, under a mosquito-bar, as described elsewhere. After the seeds are planted, the mos- quito-bar must be stretched very carefully, so as to leave no possible opening for the moths to creep in, which they will surely do if given half a chance. Shade the bed with hay.or some covering on top the bar until the plants come up, when most of it must be removed, leaving just enough to afford a light shade until the third leaf is out, after which it may all be removed. The bed should be watered right through the bar once every day or so, until the plants get strong, and this can be done with perfect safety any time of the day, even at noon, though the general but erroneous idea is, that water at such times will scald the plants. We know that rain often falls when the sun is shining, or comes out hot a few minutes after it, and no harm results. An ounce of seed will produce about two thousand plants, but it is well to provide seed enough, in case of failure, and a new seed-bed should be sown in about two weeks, for fear of accidents. The plants can always be sold, if not needed. The ground should be heavily fertilized and well prepared at least a month ahead, throwing it up in quite high ridges, which will retain the moisture and allow of knocking off the tops when ready to plant. I will again repeat, that in all the level gulf-coast country everything should be planted well up, for excessive rains are liable to come at any time, and that means absolute ruin on flat, level ground. The plants can be set as soon as large enough. If dry at the time of plant- ing set them shallow, .pressing the earth down firmly, so as to leave a depression into which about a pint of water can be (35) 36 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. poured, but by no means fill the hole up with soil for several days, until the plants take root, after which the earth can be drawn in and around the stems, and damping-off be thus obvi- ated. Cultivate well during October, but after a good rain that month, let the ground alone, so that the surface roots can form and help push the plants along during the many cool days of fall, as noted elsewhere on winter cultivation. If the green worms appear, and they surely will, go over the plants, when the dew is on them, with a powder bellows with flour and just enough Paris green to color it. If sifted just before using, the flour will scatter much more readily. This application will kill the worms, and does no harm, for all the first leaves of every cabbage are gone long before the head appears ; besides, the rain will soon wash it off. This dose may have to be repeated, though usually one good appli- cation is sufficient for plants on rich ground and no other should be used for cabbage and the plants will grow rapidly ahead of the worms after cool weather sets in. If, when headed in November and December, the heads show signs of bursting, go over and pull gently all such plants until the strong roots crack, and let them settle back, when growth will be checked and the head only get the harder. Seed for the winter crop should be sown in October and set in November, and if we miss a heavy freeze, as we' have this year, and often do, these plants will make the largest heads in the year. For spring planting, sow in December, in cold-frames, to be protected by glass or oiled cloth, and set the last of January, on well prepared ridges thrown up at least a month before, so that the ground will be clean and free from cut-worms. If seeds are sown here in spring, there is rarely a market for the product, as the gardeners farther up in the interior plant at that time, and a glut usually fol- lows. Before leaving this subject, I must call attention to a very erroneous notion which many growers entertain, and that is, that if the central, original bud of the plant is eaten out by a worm or other insect, that plant will not head, a side shoot being useless for that purpose. Thousands of plants are annually pulled up after getting a good start, and others CABBAGE. 37 put in their places, by growers ignorant of the fact that one bud is just as good and sure to head as another, if all but one shoot is rubbed off. As to varieties, of course locality and soil will decide this largely, but the extra early kinds are of no value in the far South, as the market is well supplied in early fall with north- ern cabbage. The old Pettier' s Brunswick was my favorite for years. It makes a very large, hard, flat head, but is not quite as hardy for January weather as the common Flat Dutch and Drumhead varieties of selected strains. The Fottler and Early Summer are excellent for spring, though the latter is hardly large enough for a market cabbage. The Winnigstadt and other pointed kinds are not popular at the South, and do not stand the heat in spring as well as the flat kinds. CHAPTER VI. Cauliflower. SOUTH TEXAS, especially near the coast, is admirably adapted to this vegetable as a fall crop, but it is entirely useless to undertake its growth here in spring. No mat- ter how good the seed or rich the ground, the flowers will be loose and open, and of small size. The cauliflower likes a gradually decreasing temperature, as in the fall. It should be sowed at the same time and treated exactly like cabbage in every respect, and is quite as easy to grow, except that if the center bud or heart is destroyed by any insect, the plant rarely sends up a new one, though occasionally from near the ground, a new sprout will start, but so late that it pays bet- ter to pull it up and replant. The most important point for success, next to very rich ground, is the right variety of seed. When Henderson first introduced his Snowball cauliflower, now so well and favorably known, I paid him $10 per ounce for several years, and made big money by it, for the heads were by far the finest in the market, and brought fancy prices. As showing the intrinsic value of first-class cauliflower seed, the Henderson Snowball is still held by that firm at $4 per ounce, and is cheaper, really, at that than most of the cauli- flower seed would be as a gift. There is no early variety equal to it, but there is a large amount of so-called Snowball seed that is of no value at all. After setting out as directed for cabbage, the plants should be well cultivated until half grown and the weather begins to get cool, after which the ground should not be again dis- turbed. I state this as an absolute fact, after years of experi- ments. While cabbage can be preserved through the winter at the north and put upon the market as demand requires, it is not so with cauliflower. After heading, it is impossible to store the crop away long for future use, consequently there (38) CAULIFLOWER. 39 should always be a good winter demand for this vegetable up there, and there is no good reason why the coast country of Texas should not ship in car-load lots to northern cities at a fair profit, after their crops are gone. The cauliflower will stand uninjured a temperature of twenty-five degrees, and younger plants, not yet showing the flower, a little lower. When the flower is three or four inches in diameter, several of the surrounding leaves should be broken down over it to exclude the light, which turns its creamy color to a dull yellow. The ground can scarcely be made too rich for this crop, and should always contain a full supply of potash and salt. The latter is a special addition for both cauliflower and cab- bage, and should never be omitted, for though it does not seem to stimulate growth at all, it is for certain plants a won- derful tonic, so to speak. It gives to both the above-men- tioned ones a rich, dark green color, and also very greatly thickens the leaves and enables them to stand much more cold. Cultivating, as I did for many years, ground that was occasionally partly overflowed by the gulf, I had full oppor- tunity to study its effects, and know that salt will render these plants more hardy as well as healthy. While not a full sub- stitute with them for potash, it acts very much like it. It will pay well to apply 1,000 pounds per acre for these crops, while beets, carrots, ruta-bagas and kohl-rabi are also greatly ben- efited by its presence in the ground. Tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, corn, squash and lettuce have no use at all for it. In applying, mix well with the soil some time before planting, or it can be top-dressed without damage, after the plants get well off to growing, and with equally as good effects if rain falls to carry it in. In growing cauliflower plants, make a frame with mos- quito-bar, as for cabbage, but as the seeds are so costly, in- stead of raking in, it is better to sow in very shallow drills, or else broadcast rather thinly, to give stout plants, and after watering, cover lightly by hand with fine soil, and shade. The seed will not stand quite as deep covering and come well as cabbage. In this section from the first to the last of July 40 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. is the proper time to sow the seed for the fall crop, but those who are willing to gamble with the clerk of the weather, can continue to plant through August and September, and often win, as was the case this season. However, for the later plantings, the Italian Autumn Giant variety, sold by Frot- scher, of New Orleans, is more hardy, though the flowers are not so handsome. I have had heads of that variety in Feb- ruary and March that weighed fifteen to twenty pounds, as for instance, those exhibited at the Cotton Exchange in this city. I again repeat, plant this crop on a good, high ridge in all level locations. CHAPTER VII. The Tomato. WHILE the general belief is that the tomato does best on only moderately manured land, this depends en- tirely on what kind of manure is used. My expe- rience has been that ground can hardly be made too rich in phosphoric acid and potash, though undoubtedly a surplus of ammonia will cause the vines to grow too rank and fruit sparingly, as well as make the tomatoes rot at the blossom end. And now, a few points to beginners about growing the plants. While hotbeds are necessary farther north, here a coldframe is all that is needed. Nothing is gained by sow- ing the seed before January ist to I5th, as it is always very risky to set out in the open ground before the loth to the 2oth of March, and the ground is usually too cold to stimulate growth if set before. Make a well pulverized, rich bed, about one foot above the surface, on well drained ground, and large enough to hold a plank frame of 1x6- inch stuff 3x6 feet, or the proper size to fit the sash. A frame of that size will easily hold 3,000 plants from the seeds, which should be sown quite thickly, then watered well and covered thinly and evenly by sprinkling soil over them. Put on the sash, and keep down until the seeds are up nicely, when the back should be raised slightly every sunny day, to give air. Now make up a larger bed and frame at once, to hold what plants it is intended to set outside for the crop, and be sure to have it on clean ground, free of cut- worms. Old barnyard manure is excellent to fertilize with, though fine bone meal is also good. But use no cotton-seed meal unless applied a month before. Having raked fine and smooth, lay off rows both ways with a long, straight-edged strip pressed on the soil, and let them be about four or five inches apart each way. This will afford room enough, if sash (40 42 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. are scarce, provided the plants have the buds nipped out when five or six inches high, which should always be done to make them stocky. Afterwards, as they grow larger, it is well to clip off some of the older leaves, which will give more air and room. After the lines are drawn, set a plant at each intersection, and be sure to have the rows straight and at equal distances apart, so when the plants are nearly ready to go out, a large case or butcher knife can be drawn deeply from one side of the frame to the other each way between the rows. This is to be done a week before planting in the open ground, and a good watering given just after. The effect of this will be to start a multitude of fine, hair roots in the squares whereon stand the plants. In three days run the knife again, and in a few days more the front board of the frame can be taken out and a sharp spade run under the plants about three inches deep, when they will come up with nice, firm balls of earth, and hardly know they were moved. In preparing the ground for the crop, it should always be plowed in the fall, if possible, and kept clean through the winter in this warm climate, where the cut-worm moths are often active even then, and are sure to lay their eggs near the young weeds and grass if the ground is foul. Then in Janu- ary scatter about 600 pounds of cotton-seed hull ashes, 30 per cent, potash, and the same quantity of ammoniated super- phosphate, broadcast, per acre. This should be plowed in, throwing the ground up into five-feet beds, with a deep furrow between. Along in the bottoms and on the sides of the fur- rows a second dressing of the phosphate must be scattered, and then the beds plowed back as deeply as possible on these furrows, and a light harrow passed once over each bed to smooth it down. The ground is now ready for the plants, which should be set about the middle of March, three feet apart in the rows and but little deeper than before. Water- ing is not necessary for plants grown as directed, at the time of planting, unless the ground is very dry, which will never be the case if prepared ahead, as advised. But if the weather continues dry, a moderate watering a week after planting, with five pounds nitrate of soda to fifty gallons of water, will THE TOMATO. 43 start a rapid growth. When the plants begin to bloom, run around them lightly with, the plow, throwing the entire bed up a second time, leaving a high, warm ridge, perfectly drained, upon which the fruit can lie without rotting. One hoeing around the plants, and one or two cultivatings, will make the crop, running the plow or sweep in the furrows after each one to open it out clean. And here, as elsewhere through this book, I must urge all growers in the level coast country of Texas to plant all crops on well raised beds or ridges. While on high, rolling land flat culture may do, I believe that for early spring planting all through this coast country, the ridge system is the safest and best. While the general impression is that plants on a level will stand drouth the best, I have found scarcely any differ- ence on rich ground, even in dry spells, but if heavy rains occur, flat planting simply means ruin. The hot sun on a saturated, loose, flat soil, even for a few hours, will furnish the conditions for the development of rust or burning, as well as rot in the fruit. On high, broad beds, as herein advised, staking of the plants is not necessary, as the surface quickly dries off after rains, and very few of the tomatoes that rest upon the ground will rot. I made a fair trial of growing to a single stake and stem, with pinching back of laterals, but growth here is so rapid and strong on rich ground, that the method involves too much labor, nor is there any material advantage in earliness. I omitted to say that after the plants are set out, if the stems are a little long it is a good plan to peg them down, all one way, with two cross sticks, to prevent damage from whipping winds. This is excellent for egg- plants, also, which and sweet peppers should be grown from the seed and treated in the frames just as the tomatoes were. If a freeze seems inevitable after the plants are set out, take a spade full of pulverized surface soil and gently slide it on the plants from the bottom of the stem up, pressing the plants down, and if too large to cover entirely, and the exposed tops are killed, cut them off at once, remove the covering of earth, and the plants will quickly renew themselves. The only insect that troubles tomatoes in this section is 44 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. the Spanish fly or blister beetle, the boll worm, so destructive in Mississippi and elsewhere, not yet having done serious damage. About the last of May, the time the Spanish fly may be looked for, it is well to go over the patch early every morning, as they invariably fly at night, and always settle in a bunch over a few plants at first. They can then be easily driven into the furrows and covered with earth by the spade and tramped ; or, if two teaspoonfuls of Paris green are well stirred in a bucket of water and sprayed over the few affected plants, most of the flies will eat and die. As to picking, packing, etc., it is hardly necessary to say more than that it always pays to put good, sound fruit of uni- form size and ripeness in the same box, and except very early, ship only first-class fruit. I will now close my remarks on the tomato with an account of a most remarkable instance of the effects of electricity on vegetable life, a parallel to which I have never heard or read of. As the electricity could not have acted directly on the tomato plants, seeing that those on the opposite side of a fence were unhurt, there is only one solution, viz., the almost instantaneous generation of millions of bacteria in the sap and leaves of the plants, somewhat similar to blight in the pear. The effect of such an excessive application of ammonia to the soil, and so little phosphoric acid and potash in pro- portion, was evidently to produce a peculiar sensitive, per- haps attenuated, so to say, state of the sap, upon which the electricity acted as a disorganizer, by furnishing the proper conditions for the rapid development of the tomato bacteria, just as a sudden lowering of the temperature in the winter, when the sap happens to be in motion, affords the most fa- vorable conditions for those of the pear. But to the facts. A few years after embarking in the business, and the first time I ever used cotton seed as a fertilizer, having bought ten tons of damaged whole seed very cheap, and ignorant of the true principles of fertilizing, I undertook to grow an acre of tomatoes, to which I had applied three tons of whole seed and plowed them in well. The plants made a most phenom- enal growth, running and climbing all over each other, more THE TOMATO. 45 like vines than bushes, until they formed a tangled mass sev- eral feet deep, to my astonishment and disgust. I do not remember of gathering as much as a dozen bushels of fruit from the whole acre, the plants bloomingly profusely, but dropping them as fast as they formed. About the time the few that did set began to ripen, the severest thunder storm I ever witnessed passed over Galveston Island, several houses near by being struck, and two persons killed a short distance away, by the lightning. The whole air was filled for a short time with a sulphurous smell, and after a tremendous down-pour of an hour, a yellow deposit greatly resembling sulphur appeared in many places on the ground. The tomato patch was just in front of my house, and as soon as the rain ceased, though the lightning was still vivid, I opened the door and looked out. I was at once struck with the peculiar and slightly ashy hue that the plants all had, and walked over for a closer examination. To my amazement, while I stood there looking intently at the leaves, I saw them slowly turning to a dark gray, and gradually twist and curl until the whole ground was visible, when before the storm, it was totally hidden by the luxuriant mass of green. This transformation occupied about a quarter of an hour, at the end of which time it was complete. The next day the sun came out hot, and by night every plant was dead, and the stems brown. But the strangest thing was, that immediately adjoining my patch, and just over a fence, my father-in-law also had half an acre of tomatoes, the ground having been fertilized the year before, but not at all that season. The vines had made an ordinary, healthy growth, were loaded with fruit, and showed not a sign of damage. Is it not probable that a great deal of the rust, blight and fungoid disease that attack farm and field crops, as well as fruits and vegetables, is due to intensified electrical con- ditions? CHAPTER VIII. The Onion. THE cultivation of this popular vegetable differs consider- ably in the various sections of the country, and I will only undertake to describe the methods best adapted to the gulf coast country, extending around to Florida. As for everything else, it is well to apply manure freely for onions, and especially the elements of phosphoric acid and potash, for it is a crop that requires a good deal of painstaking labor, and it will not do to run the risk of failure. T*ens of thou- sands of bushels are annually grown around New Orleans, where they mature, as they do here, at the best time to strike a good northern market in spring. The variety used there almost exclusively is the Creole, which has been grown time out of mind, and has proved the best there as well as here. Both the Red and White Bermuda are good, but do not keep or ship near as well as the Creole. The Prize Taker has also given very fine onions this season, and is well worthy of further trial. The seeds are best sown in this section from the ist of October to the I5th of November, in well manured beds, which should be made up some time ahead, and raked over several times after showers, to kill the weed seeds. If much ground is to be planted, it is best to prepare a large bed. The seeds should be sown rather shallow, and covered by hand with soil, which, after being watered well, must be shaded with moss from the woods or clean old hay, free from weed seeds. In four or five days they will come up, when the covering must be removed at once. Nothing more is neces- sary, except to keep clean until the plants are large enough to be set out. The ground, as well as the seed-bed, should have been prepared a month or so ahead, for it happens oc- casionally that heavy rains occur in the fall, and it is impos- sible to prepare the land. This, in fact, applies to all fall and (46) THE ONION. 47 winter crops where land is at all level, and I will again re- peat, that it is best, by far, to plant all crops, at this season especially, on good, high beds and ridges. Never risk any- thing flat, for growth has to be made during the short, cool winter days, and the plants require all the heat they can get. Onion beds here are generally made about four feet wide, and the rows across the beds about one foot apart, as this is most convenient for setting from each side. The plants are set when about the size of a quill, and should have half the tops sheared off before digging, and all the roots cut back to one-half inch or less. A crop thus treated, especially if the sets are rather large, will do far better than when planted with long roots. About four inches apart in the rows is a good distance. By this method of onion growing, a world of work in weeding and thinning is saved, for two acres can be set and worked, where one could be grown from seed and thinned. Just who originated this method of growing onions in the Gulf States, nobody can now remember, as it has been the common, in fact the only, plan since long before the war. In January, 1863, I remember well seeing five acres thus planted in this county, at Lamarque, which made an immense crop, for which, rumor had it, the owner received $5,000, as there were no onions in this country at that time. And yet, in the face of this well-known fact in the South, an author of New York a few years ago came out with his new discovery in onion growing, and has published a pamphlet, with these directions as new, that have been practiced here for thirty years to my certain knowledge ! As to cultivation of the onion, as long as the ground is clean, the less the better in winter. The onion makes roots close to the top of the ground as it grows larger, and deep working is very injurious. As noted elsewhere, a clean, smooth surface in winter absorbs far more heat than one that is cultivated, and heat is the all-important thing. I saw to-day, the 24th of February, while on a visit to Hitch- cock, a most beautiful and vigorous field of onions, that have never had a moment's work since shortly after they were 48 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. set out last fall. Of course, it will be hard to make the ma- jority of my readers in other sections swallow this doctrine just yet, but if they will only give it a fair trial in the South during winter, and in early spring at the North, they will find it true. This whole method of transplanting onions, it must be remembered, is only adapted to winter culture here, our climate being entirely too hot to make a success of it in spring, though it seems to be perfectly successful at that sea- son everywhere at the North. For those who have extra clean ground, however, and are willing to give extra pains and work, I am bound to say the old plan, from seed, will nearly always make much the earliest and largest onions, and sev- eral good growers here are adopting it. By sowing moder- ately thin with a seed drill, on very rich soil, there is no doubt that fully double the number of bushels can be grown on the same area as by the transplanting method, for on such soils I have seen onions develop to full market size, when they were so close as to look as if they were piled upon one an- other. Every one should try a small planting, at least, from seed, as the onion is a sure money crop here. For the interior of Texas, where the winters are consider- ably colder than on the coast, I know of several growers who make large crops of fine onions every year by sowing the seed thickly in rows about a foot apart, in March or early in April, in rather poor soil. When the tops die down then pull up and hang in a cool, dry place in sacks, or spread out under a house, but keep dry. Prepare and manure the ground thoroughly in September, and plant the sets in October, as directed above for plants here, and about the first of May the crop will mature fine, large onions. The Silver King thus treated will grow to a very large size, and perhaps the Prize Taker would give equally good results. This method could be practiced with equal success with the Creole variety here, I presume, unless the plants should shoot to seed in. spring more readily. CHAPTER IX. Melons and Cucumbers. AS thousands of acres are annually devoted to these plants, and as the profits largely depend on the earli- ness of the crop, any method by which an increased earliness can be economically secured is well worthy the at- tention of growers. While the common plan of boxes and glass answers well, boxes are not only clumsy to handle and pack away every year, but the cost of material, labor and handling is quite an item. Many years ago, realizing these facts, I hit upon a plan that answers much better than the wooden box. The glass, once bought, if carefully handled, will last a long time. The accompaning cut, page 50, shows how it is done. A 10x12 glass is large enough, and a pattern box 4 inches deep and 7x9 inches, is made of dressed lumber, the smooth side being out, to prevent soil from adhering. This has neither top or bottom, and after ridges about three feet wide have been thrown up at the proper distances, and smoothed off ready for the seed, the frame is placed on the center, the damp soil drawn up around it to the top and well pressed by hand, leaving a hollow hill four inches deep and about four inches wide on top all around from the edge of the box to where it slopes down. After firming well on top with a smooth piece of plank, so that the hill will not settle or run after heavy rains, lift the frame out and the ground is ready for the seeds, which are to be planted rather shallow in the bottom. A pane of 10 x 12 glass is then laid over the hole, resting on the surface of the hole or future hill. By gently pressing the glass down the air can be entirely exclu- ded, and seed can be thus planted long before the usual time. They come up very quickly, and incur no danger from cut- worms or other insects, or from a freeze, as the natural warmth of the earth will always carry melon or cucumber 4 HORT. 5 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. Box Frame, reedy for use. Melon Box, with glass cover. EARTH OR MKLON BOX. See page 49. MELONS AND CUCUMBERS. 5! plants through any cold spell, even one that would kill plants in a box with glass on it, for it can never be made air-tight, like the earth box. After the seeds come up, the glass should be drawn down half way in good weather, until the third leaf is out, to prevent running up ; then thin out to a stand, to prevent crowding. In all cold, chilly and rainy weather keep the glass down tight, and never leave a crack at night. When all danger is over and the vines crowd the hole, level down and stick the pane of glass slanting over the plants on the north side. This will entirely break any ordinary frost. As to the proper fertilizing for melons, I have alluded to it, and especially the need for potash, in my powder article on cabbage. Bone meal, or a good complete fertilizer, will give, with plenty of potash, a much sweeter and better netted cantalope than barnyard manure or cotton-seed meal, and mature the crop earlier. I have never seen any mention made of the fact that a free use of ammonia will cause canta- lopes to become smooth and net poorly, but it is a fact that it does have that effect, as well as to make the quality very much inferior, and also causes them to split open more easily at the blossom end. I have time and again tested the effect of pinching the ends to increase earliness and produc- tiveness, but with no adequate advantage. While the watermelon is not liable to rot on the under side in wet seasons, thousands of cantalopes are lost from this cause, even in seasons of ordinary moisture. It is always best, when the fruit is about half grown or larger, to go over and pick the melons out of the little nests they make them- selves by settling after rain, and place them on the firm ground nearby, but always with the same side exposed to the sun, as the skin quickly blisters in hot weather if the tender under side is turned up. The great enemies of melons and cucumbers are lice, and they are so difficult to kill, and spread so rapidly, that the best plan by all odds is to keep a sharp lookout, and remove promptly every affected plant. Whale- oil soap, as well as the kerosene emulsion, will kill them while the plants are young, but I never knew them to fail to come back later on the same plant. Prompt removal is by 52 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. far the safer plan. For market, especially distant ones, it will not pay to grow large cantalopes. The small, solid, well- netted ones sell for as much and weigh far less. Remember that it is useless to try to grow good crops of either canta- lopes or watermelons year after year on the same ground, unless potash in some form is liberally supplied each crop, and a good supply of vegetable matter turned under. Potash is the element in new ground that makes it so well adapted to melons, and it must be supplied, and if freely, then melons can be grown year after year with perfect success, the oft- quoted and common notion to the contrary notwithstanding. CHAPTER X. The Potato. OINCE the introduction of the Triumph potato, with its peculiarity of making a good fail crop from home-grown spring seed, the Irish potato is likely to come more prominently to the front as a money crop in the far South. One drawback heretofore has been, that it required a consid- erable outlay for the seed every year. Now, experience shows that we can grow our own seed in the fall, and when planted in spring, even the smallest sized tubers will yield more potatoes by far than the old northern varieties. While I am a crank on potash for most things, I am bound to admit that additional applications of it have shown no appreciable effect on Irish potatoes here. Evidently the coast country of Texas has potash enough to satisfy this crop for some years. The very best yield I ever had was from my orchard ground at Hitchcock the first year, to which one ton per acre of cot- ton-seed meal was applied broadcast in November, the ground plowed a second time in February, and planted about the ifth. That was a remarkable yield, and not a very good season either, as it turned out very dry toward the end. But, as elsewhere remarked, manure is water and tillage, for very rich ground will nearly always make a good crop with little of either. As to the best time to plant, it is all a gamble. This season the early January settings came through all right. Last year they were killed and rotted. If we grow our own seed, however, every one should risk a barrel or two early, on good, high ground, and as the tops push through, draw the soil up several times to keep them well under. Then, if a freeze does come, and the patch is gone over promptly the next morning, and the plants are cut off an inch under the surface, they will quickly come again. If left, however, (53) 54 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. the frosted sap will rot the stems down to the sets, and often the set itself. The Triumph outyields all other potatoes here, and every one should grow at least enough for his own use. The only trouble with fall planting is the risk of drouth. The seed should be laid away thinly in a cool place to sprout, and by August will be ready if the ground is in good order. They should go into the ground in August, and the man who has a good windmill and well is sure of a crop. There is not the slightest doubt that the Michel strawberry, treated as de- scribed elsewhere, and the Triumph potato in the fall, would both yield an absolutely certain and highly remunerative crop to any one who will furnish a reasonable supply of water for irrigation. As a preventive to scab, one ounce of corrosive sublimate dissolved in about five gallons of water, and the potatoes immersed for two hours, is recommended, though I have never tried it. The culture of the sweet potato is so well known that little need be said except as to fertilizing and the potato worm. While ordinary soil will make a fair crop, no vege- table appreciates rich ground more highly. During my last year at Hitchcock I opened three experimental furrows, and used equal quantities of cotton-seed hull ashes and cotton- seed meal and the New Orleans ammoniated phosphate, put- ting each by itself in the bottoms of the furrows, and stirring well with a bull tongue, after which high ridges were bedded up on them. This is all-important for the sweet potato; no matter how dry the weather, ridge up high, for the feeding roots run very deep. The result of the above experiment was to prove that potash and phosphoric acid are the special fer- tilizers for sweet potatoes, the row with the hull ashes, con- taining 8 per cent, phosphoric acid and 30 per cent, potash, not only producing the most but the largest tubers, though both the other fertilizers gave an excellent yield. The meal on new land is hard to beat. Next, as a preventive to the worm that bores into the potatoes when grown, the best plan is to set the vines quite deep, and after every rain sprinkle a little air-slacked lime ovej each hill, immediately around the stem of the vines where they enter the ground. All moths THE POTATO. 55 have a dread of lime, and will not lay their eggs near it, and, as is well known, this moth lays hers just at the surface, the young worms afterwards boring into and down through the stems to the tubers below. But while the worm does a great deal of injury, the growers themselves are responsible for much more every year by not digging their crops in the month of October, which is usually dry. Dug that month, potatoes will keep better than after the vines are killed by frost, and all risk of rotting from the heavy, cold rains of November is avoided. The present crop was almost entirely lost in the ground from rot, caused by the heavy rains of that month. As the method of banking is so well known, if is not neces- sary to allude to it here. CHAPTER XL Celery. IN mild seasons like the present, celery can be grown to as great perfection in the coast country of Texas and the Gulf States as anywhere in the world, and to-day, the 25th of February, the Galveston News was presented with a lot that measured 34 inches in length, perfectly bleached and of most excellent quality. Its culture here is just as elsewhere, only the seed should be 'well shaded if sown in Au- gust, when some persons plant, though September is a better month, and from then on to December seed may be sown, and will make finely in spring. It will greatly facilitate the com- ing up of the earlier plantings if the seeds are soaked in water a few hours, and then put up in a cloth with a few handfuls of soil, to sprout for a week. The late sowings must be made in coldframes, and carefully protected in severe weather, which sometimes occurs here, and does serious dam- age to mature crops also. The latter can be perfectly pro- tected by going to the small expense of 8 or lo-inch planks, to be laid flat on top of the rows in case of a freeze, after the plants have had their last hilling. However, the young and half-grown ones, where exposed, even if cut down to the ground, will shoot out quickly again, and make fine celery in the end. In earthing up, it is necessary to be careful, and never handle the plants when they are wet with dew or rain, else they are likely to take the rust, which is about the only enemy the crop has here. Of course, rich ground is just as important for this as other crops. Close planting each way is not suited here, as it would require flat culture, and the plants could not be protected from the cold, as can that grown in rows by the old method. Settings may be made all through the fall and winter, and prices are always good for this crop, as it stands shipping well. (56) CHAPTER XII. Lettuce. vegetable can be grown in great perfection here in ! the fall, and many seasons all through the winter and spring. But it is almost useless to sow the seed before the first of September for fall planting, as the green worms are very troublesome on a crop set out earlier, and the plants are almost sure to run to seed before heading. The seed for earliest sowing should be mixed with a little earth and tied up in a rag to sprout, after being well dampened. As soon as signs of sprouting show, scatter soil and seed over the bed and water in with a sprinkler, after which cover lightly with fine soil and put down the mosquito-bar over the frame, which should be made just as for cabbage. However, as the ants often carry off lettuce seed very rapidly, it is well to sow a few handfuls of fine grits, sifted bran or meal, as a bait, over the bed, before putting on the bar. Be sure to make it fit very close all around, for if there is the slightest open- ing, the moths will find it and get in. Seed can be sown all through the fall in the gulf coast country, but when planted in December and January, it should be well protected in case of a freeze. The most profitable crop is the one thus treated and planted out the last of January for the upper country markets, and even for points beyond Texas. The best pre- ventive against the green worm in fall, I omitted to state, is air-slaked lime, dusted occasionally over the plants after set- ting in the field. This worm, however, disappears after November. The old Royal Cabbage lettuce is about the best variety. (57) CHAPTER XIII. Asparagus. WHILE this is one of the most important and profitable crops at the North, it has been greatly neglected by southern truckers. But I believe it is destined in the near future to be the principal vegetable grown for shipping from the far South during the season of its maturity, seeing that it comes in just with the early strawberry crop, and con- tinues right along with it in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. The great value of asparagus to this whole strawberry section is that it can be utilized to divide car loads with the berries, and thus prevent throwing a whole car load of the latter on any one market at the same time. While not so popular at the South as in the North, yet our home markets have never yet been even half-way supplied, and there is no reasonable fear that there will for many years be a glut of this delicious vegetable anywhere. That it can be successfully grown here has been fully demonstated time and again, and a really excellent article has been on the market in Galveston the present season, while it is well-known that the common wild asparagus grows everywhere in South Texas with the per- sistency and vigor of a weed. The only fault so far found with this vegetable, as grown in the gulf coast region, is its failure to develop shoots of the thickness and size they attain farther north. This probably comes more from a lack of plenty of salt and a sufficient quantity of manure, as well as deep, loose soil, than anything else. While I have never grown any, I have taken the trouble to look into the subject with care, and will sum up my conclusions from the experience of others. In France, where they grow it to great perfection, the earth is scraped away every fall from the crowns, in order to expose them to freezing, while in America, at the North, the almost universal custom is to protect them by a heavy (53) ASPARAGUS. 59 mulch of manure, both claiming that their respective methods make the largest stalks ; and it must be remembered with this crop that both its eating and market value increase very rapidly with the size and beauty of the individual shoots. The French plant the roots about two feet apart each way, and rather shallow, on deeply dug and very rich ground. They then manure heavily and repeatedly, to furnish a loose surface soil, to force an abnormally large, quick growth. Americans recommend planting the crowns six inches deep to escape drought, and both parties are very particular to advise the old fallacy of spreading out the roots. This may be one of the causes of its failure to make as large shoots here as elsewhere, for it has enormous roots, and if all have been spread out as directed, there is little wonder if the plants lacked vigor enough to develop strong, thick stems. By all means root-prune this plant very closely, for it is a difficult thing to kill if you try ; but it must have deep, strong roots and plenty of moisture to sustain the forced growth that is demanded of it. Both nations agree that any good garden soil will do, but it must be light and loamy on top for at least six or eight inches, to allow the shoots to push readily through, and also to facilitate breaking off from the crowns. It is claimed that cutting injures other young shoots often, and also leaves a short stump, from which smaller sprouts spring and exhaust the plant. In gathering, the loose soil is gently drawn away and the shoot selected, bent over and broken squarely off from the crown. The hole is filled with a move- ment of the hand, and so on over the patch. Many, how- ever, still adhere to the old plan of cutting. Both nations are fully agreed on the importance of perfect drainage, the crop maturing, as it does so early, while the ground is cold ; therefore well drained soil is a necessity for rapid growth. Both also agree on a deep, rich plant-bed, down below the crown. On high, well drained upland, it would be best, they say, to plow very deep, manure heavily, and apply at least three tons of salt per acre, in addition to other manures. It must be remembered that this is a saline plant, and per- fectly at home along the sea coast marshes. As to distance, 00 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. as noted above, in France they set from two to three feet apart each way. In California and other parts of this coun- try, they prefer to make the rows from four to six feet apart and plant about sixteen inches in the rows, thus leaving room enough to cultivate other crops between for a year or two, un- til the plants require all the ground. The surface is kept level during the summer, but just before growth starts in spring a good-sized ridge or mound of soft earth is thrown or drawn up over the crowns to furnish the necessary depth of loose soil for bleaching the shoots, which is to be drawn down level again after the crop is marketed. If it be proposed to save time, one or two-year-old plants can be bought, the Conover Colossal and the newer Palmetto seeming to be the favorite kinds, the latter claiming to be somewhat the earlier variety. If one is willing to wait, four pounds of seed will grow plants enough for an acre, and the plants are easily raised. As for the immediate level coast country between Galveston and Houston, I would recommend, in addition to the above suggestions, that beds twelve feet wide be thrown up finally, with wide and deep furrows or paths between, and see that these open into a free outlet for perfect drainage. It will be necessary to complete the work with the spade, so as to make the beds sufficiently high. There is no danger of hurting an asparagus plant seriously with drouth, for its roots will easily penetrate to permanent moisture. The nearness of that to the surface here makes ours a natural asparagus country. The beds will then hold two rows at six feet apart, with plants sixteen inches in the rows, and should be planted not deeper than five inches below the surface, in a shallow furrow, to be left open until they become well established and growing freely, when the ground should be leveled. Perhaps if the twelve-feet bed is full high and well drained, they might be set the five inches depth on the level at once, though the growth would be slower at first. The distance of six feet between the rows will afford abundant earth for placing loosely over the crowns every spring for bleaching. It would be an excellent plan to pre- pare the ground for strawberries, thoroughly fertilizing and ASPARAGUS. 6l mulching the entire beds in the summer, and set with straw- berries in September, leaving the two asparagus lines or rows vacant until winter or spring, when convenient to plant them. This would necessitate the application of salt, the first year or two, only on the asparagus rows, or until they required the whole ground. The vegetable crop could by this plan be brought to marketing condition at little or no extra expense, for full crops of berries could be grown. After the asparagus came into full bearing the expense would be very light, as the tops shade the ground all the summer, and could be mowed off every fall and thrown for bedding in the cow lot to make manure. I omitted to say, that the heavy mulching of the berries the first two years would render the whole surface of the beds light and loose, for after-covering of the aspara- gus crowns. This plant is exceedingly long-lived, and the beds would last almost a life-time with proper after care and fertilizing, especially the latter, for it seems to be a perfect gourmand after food. I hope the gulf-coast growers especially will in- vestigate this subject fully, for I am sure it is one of the keys to the future prosperity of this immediate section. The demand seems unlimited for a good article, and it is such a perfect shipper just pack in boxes, as for beans the product being sold everywhere by weight, and at 10 cents per pound, the minimum price I have seen quoted anywhere. It has no enemies, and is never hurt by frost. Reduce, then, the berry acreage very largely, and devote some of it to this vegetable, and with a moderate supply also of lettuce, radishes, beets, etc. There would then be no necessity for shipping straight cars of berries, and dozens of towns would be able to handle a well-mixed car, where one can now use a car of any one article straight. CHAPTER XIV. Cow Peas and other Vegetables. EGG-PLANTS and sweet peppers should be treated just as tomatoes, and like them, must, in this section, be protected from the ravages of the Spanish fly by Paris green, Uii'T'tJ ' \ .-'_..' r M t - 1 rr * v *' \ ; , A itc 1. Snap beans are also a good crop generally, both spring and fall, but as the rabbits are very fond of their leaves, the vines must be lightly sprayed with water that has had a small quantity of coal or gas tar mixed with it, and then strained out. A rab- bit will touch nothing that has a trace of that smell about it. It is almost useless here to sow beans before the first of March, if then, as the spring winds whip the vines to pieces. Green peas are nearly always hardy through the winter, espe- cially if not in bearing when a freeze comes. Their main enemy is the black-bird, who is particularly fond of them, and must be driven off with a gun. Beets, carrots, spinach and other vegetables are so well understood that comment is not necessary. A book treating of crops for the South and soil improve- ment would be incomplete without a full mention of that wonderful plant, the southern cow pea. An experience of many years' use has convinced me and all who have tried it of its great value. Every waste place on the farm or in the garden which needs enriching should every season be covered with its luxuriant foliage and penetrated by its deep, far-reach- ing roots. The old idea was to plow the vines under green, and I practised it for several years, but soon found out that it was a much better plan to let them mature and die on the ground, and then turn them under in the fall. Such treat- ment will nearly always cure the dead or alkali spots, as well as those where plants turn yellow, that occur at intervals, particularly in the coast country of Texas. The penetrating (62; COW PEAS AND OTHER VEGETABLES. 63 power of a cow pea root is astonishing, and they will so com- pletely break up and fill such spots with the decaying vege- table matter of their roots, as well as leaves, and shade them from the sun, that if a good growth of vines can only be had the spots will disappear entirely. It will stand any amount of drouth and heat, and can be planted any time after the ground gets warm, all along through the season, if rain enough falls to bring up the seed. In many parts of the South the roots of the cow pea are affected with what are known as nematode galls or knots, which in fact are so com- mon in all soils deficient in potash, that the general opinion seems to be that they are a natural condition of the plant, and aid in some way in storing up nitrogen. But this is cer- tainly a mistaken idea, as far as the naturalness of galls on cow pea roots in good land is concerned. I have grown cow peas for the vegetable matter, on land well supplied with potash, for over thirty years in this section, and have never seen a nematode gall on a single plant, nor do I believe that they ever will be seen on new land, or where the soil is well supplied with potash. The conditions for their development are excessive moisture on a soil deficient" in potash, and as all old soils are in that fix from exhaustion, especially in the southern states, these nematode galls are almost universal, and have come to be considered a natural development of the plant. But as I said above, this is a mistake, as any one can prove by planting them where potash has been applied. The nematode galls are simply a disease, but may be a beneficial one, for aught I know. PART II 5 HORT. CHAPTER I. The New Dispensation. IN presenting the second part of this volume to the atten- tion of the fruit-growing public, I do it with a feeling of confidence that the time is ripe for a new dispensation of horticultural truths, and while they may, with their novelty, startle from their sleepy routine. many of the high priests who minister around the altars throughout the country, the kindly reception awarded them in this section is an earnest of their general adoption everywhere in the near future. The public now demand the best of fruit, and they want it cheap. The day of high prices has probably gone forever, and it is a doubtful question whether fruit-growing, with the short-lived, unproductive, diseased and insect-ridden trees of to-day, and their uncertain crops, now pays. To practice the most ad- vanced methods (taught by Mr. J. H. Hale, for instance, on peaches, and by others on apples, pears, etc.) requires an expenditure that is often not even covered by the receipts. The amount of nurturing, or "doping," as the turfmen call it on their horses, in the way of cultivation, pruning, thin- ning, fertilizing and spraying, to make pay an orchard grown from three or four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, is appalling, and when we contrast it with the certain, cheap and easy-going style in which the twenty-year-old Rambo apple tree, mentioned in the last chapter of this volume, brings in the dollars, we may well cry, "Hasten the good time when all fruits can be thus grown !" That is the mis- sion of this gospel of the "New Horticulture" I now advo- cate, which, though nominally new, is really as old as the morn in spring in the long, long ago, ages before Eve plucked and Adam ate the apple, when the warm sunbeams kissed the dew from the first modestly opening fruit blooms, whenever that was. Its principles, from which we have now wandered (67) 68 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. so far, to our great loss, are identical with those practiced from the beginning by wise Mother Nature. With lavish hand she scattered the seed that fell upon the solid earth, and produced trees after their kind, from which, down through the puzzling maze of ages of evolution and the survival of the fittest, where her original forests stand, she now presents to our admiring gaze majestic evidences of her skill. To illus- trate those principles is the main object of this book. Plain as they are, I stumbled over them for years, like the rest of the horticultural world, blind to the patent fact that in all their peculiarities of growth and treatment, both fruit and forest trees are the same. They are both the result of specific conditions and surroundings. No fostering hand of man, with friendly cultivator, spade or plow, was present during the millions of years of their evolution, to kindly aid in their struggles with climatic adversities the sturdy monarchs of the forest, which from the frigid to the torrid zone, in slowly changing cycles of climate, have crowned the rocky hills and mountains and covered the broad valleys with their sheltering boughs. So they have, through succeeding generations, adapted themselves perfectly to their environments by the survival of the fittest, and from age to age found in the firm, unbroken virgin soil, with no disturbance of their surface roots, the conditions best suited to their perfect development. The same law applies to fruit trees as well. Perhaps, if our horticultural scientists had their way, and through successive generations of like-minded descendants, could but grow fruit trees for a million or so years more, con- tinuously from long-rooted ones, on ground subsoiled and deeply pulverized, they might ultimately, like nature, evolve a race of trees that would prefer and thrive best on such a soil, and fruit perhaps as well as Mr. Pierce's Rambo apple tree, alluded to hereafter, or live as long as the old Seckel.^r h pear. But the trees we now have to deal with retain too much of the perversity of their wild parents not to kick at such treatment. The experiments recounted later on, of Mr. Patterson and the sjquirrels, and the stunted pear trees in my Hitchcock orchard, on a muck bed, with two feet of THE NEW DISPENSATION. 69 rich surface soil beneath them, prove this beyond all doubt. Seeing, then, that they foolishly reject our efforts in their be- half, why not, as it costs so much less, and the trees produce so much more and finer fruit, indulge them in their long-time preferences. However, before entering my plea for this course, I will in a short digression make some remarks : ist, on the old primitive orchards of our forefathers ; and, also, 2d, give a short account of how I happened to hit upon the great fundamental principle of all entirely succcessful horti- culture, that the nearer we can bring a transplanted tree to the form of a seed, the better it will be for the tree, as will be seen by the following recent extract from Farm and Ranch: While viewing the path of the recent tornado that swept through the city of Sherman, Texas, destroying scores of precious lives and happy homes, I noticed the effect of the force on the trees. Some trees were uprooted, some snapped off above ground, some stripped of limbs and bark and others were twisted into splinters. One large post oak, about two feet in diameter, was splintered and twisted like a huge rope. A large apple orchard was uprooted, and I searched in vain for a tap-root on any of those apple trees. They had the appearance of being planted with long roots and tramped into a small hole, with the point of the roots near the surface where they remained and continued to grow. The soil was rich, sandy loam on deep, rich, moist clay. The forest trees were large and strong, and most of them refused to be uprooted and were snapped off. Had these trees been planted so as to induce the growth of strong tap- roots, evidently they would have been larger, stronger, healthier and more fruitful. E. W. KIRKPATRICK. CHAPTER II. Old Primitive Orchards. THERE is no more interesting subject for investigation, nor one that has puzzled observers more completely, than why we are unable now to grow as healthy, long- lived and productive fruit trees as our forefathers. Many and various have been the theories advanced, but the most general one seems to be that in the early settlement of the country the vast forest area had a mysterious and potent in- fluence on climate and tree diseases, and that the gradual clearing of the land has, somehow or other, changed condi- tions so radically that fruit trees in general, and certain varieties in particular, no longer succeed as they formally did. Where once in the eastern states the apple and the pear attained the giant proportions of forest trees, now, as a rule, they crouch and cower in valley and on hill, their puny, stunted, blighting offspring a pitiful burlesque, in many instances, of their grand old sires. I came across a statement a few days ago, that in 1721, a small ''settlement of forty families near Boston made three thousand barrels of cider, and another New England village of two hundred families made ten thousand barrels." Pre- sumably they reserved fruit enough for all domestic uses, fresh and dried, and this vast amount of cider was simply from the surplus fruit. Remembering that those were days of small family orchards, not of thousands of acres like we now plant, can we anywhere find a parallel in productiveness to-day ? The trees that gave those enormous yields were presumably either seedlings, root grafts or grown from small one-year maiden trees, with few roots when set, except the tap, and those doubtless cut off not far below the surface. The nurseryman, with his large, fine, three and four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, like those now sold, had not yet OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS. 71 appeared upon the stage to captivate those rustic growers with visions of early fruit. And while on its face there may seem to be some show of reason in this theory of climatic change as the cause for all this acknowledged inferiority and decay, yet when examined in the cold light of statistical climatology and actual experience, it crumbles, a baseless fabric, to the ground. The records, from the earliest times, show no material change in average temperature or rainfall between then and now, and we still have, here and there, all over the country, strong, vigorous and productive old seed- ling trees, like the Sudduth pear in Illinois, and the Arkansas Mammoth Black-Twig apple, which show beyond all doubt that in certain places, and under certain conditions, it is still possible to grow apple and pear trees fit companions to those of long ago, and which tower among the fruit trees of to-day, like Saul among his brethren, head and shoulders above them all. These hale old mementos of by-gone days are living witnesses against the theory of climatic change, for C. M. Stark, of Missouri, in American Garden of January, says : "The original Mammoth Black-Twig apple tree is still stand- ing near Rhea's Mill, in Washington county, Arkansas, and bearing fruit, and at the recent meeting of the State Horti- cultural Society of that state, at Fayettville, there was an ex- hibit of apples from this tree labeled, 'M. B.-Twig, from the original tree, sixty-five years old, two feet eight inches in diameter 2^ feet above the ground." And yet, just across the state line in Kansas, the well-known king of apple grow- ers, Mr. Frank Wellhouse, the owner of 1,200 acres of trees, plants sixteen feet apart in the rows, because in twelve or fifteen years he finds that his long-rooted, well sprayed and cultivated trees, standing on thoroughly prepared ground, cease to pay. These being some of the facts in the case, what is the true answer to the New York Legislature's call last year for infor- mation as to the acknowledged decadence of modern orchards, especially the apple ? It will not do to talk apologetically, in explanation of repeated crop failures, about the great number of fungous enemies, late frosts, dry seasons, chilling winds 72 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. and cold, wet weather at blooming time, as if all those con- ditions did not prevail in the "Auld Lang Syne" as well as now. Hear what Mr. S. F. Alberger, in a recent issue of the Orange Judd Farmer, has to say about the conduct now of some of these old-time apple trees : ''The apple trees that pay best now in Western New York are from sixty to one hundred years old. I think it is because their branches sel- dom intersect, and their roots run deep into the soil, and dur- ing our customary dry fall weather, supply to the fruit buds not only moisture, but the kind and quality of food neces- sary to give them the vital power required to perfect the fer- tilization of the flowers and the setting of the fruit the next spring. I think the lack of vital force in the buds is one great fault in our commercial orchards of to-day. In many of these orchards, if the trees are dug up, it will frequently be found that they have no tap-roots at all, but the roots start out at almost right angles, and in some cases are found, at fifteen to twenty feet from the trees, to be only six inches or a foot below the surface. Some of these trees showed decay at the center of the trunk ; in three cases, where the trees had been grafted, it could be seen between the layers of yearly growth from six to twelve years after planting, but the trunks of a twenty-two-year-old seedling and several seventy-five-year-old seedlings that were limb-grafted do not indicate any decay. Does the insertion of the graft or scion into the crown cause this delay ?" Verily, Mr. Alberger is hitting very 'close to the truth, in his diagnosis of the commercial orchards of the present day, grown from large, fibrous and long-rooted trees. But to an- swer the interrogatory of the New York Legislature more fully as to this well-known decadence, let us go back to the time, several hundred years ago, when there were no orchards in America. When the Mayflower glided alongside of Ply- mouth Rock, folded to rest her white wings, that for many a long, weary day and night had breasted the Atlantic's gales, and from her deck the Pilgrims stepped in search of new homes, we know that they brought seeds, including fruits of various kinds, and when settled, from time to time imported OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS. 73 more. But for many years, in fact generations, compelled, as they were, to battle with the elements and Indians, and clear forests, little attention could have been paid to fruit- growing, except in a small way for individual use, and every one doubtless propagated for himself, by the old and well- known method of root-grafting, or from seed, where the trees were to stand. It is a fair presumption, indeed, that anything like a commercial nursery was then unknown, friends and neighbors performing such kindly offices as budding and graft- ing for each other without pay. This continued, doubtless, for many generations. In fact, up to the beginning of the present century there were practically no nurseries at all, and the institutions of this description that are so common now all over the country really date back scarcely more than fifty or seventy-five years. But as more and more attention was given to fruit culture, naturally people here and there would grow trees for sale, and many seasons would doubtless have an over-supply. Not wishing to lose them, these would be transplanted once or more, to check growth and keep them from getting too large, and intending purchasers, seeing such big, fine stock, in their desire and haste for immediate bear- ing, and encouraged by the honest but mistaken nurseryman, would naturally purchase these large trees, in preference to the small ones ; and, indeed, if treated right, a two or three- year-old tree, or even one five or six years old is equally as good, and will fruit sooner than a younger one. But the trouble was, then as now, that right treatment was not under- stood, and in order to preserve a large part of the handsome tops, which the customers of course desired, the nurseryman naturally advised retaining as much as possible of the long and fibrous roots, the result of transplanting once or more. And thus it gradually came about, that there grew up an aris- tocracy of root, and when dug and graded in the fall, the value and price of the stock was largely determined, just as it is now, by the size and quantity of the roots. I doubt, indeed, whether there is to-day (February 8, 1896) a nurseryman in the whole country who has not numbers of fine trees of all varieties that by accident have been dug 74 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. with short roots, for which he will cheerfully take half price. But to return to our immediate forefathers and their doings in the fields of horticulture. Naturally, in very dry seasons or in case of neglected trees, set with large tops, the tangled mass of feeble, fibrous roots would fail to take hold in the soil, and, exhausted by evaporation from the tops, would die. Then at once went up the cry, "More root !" Why not? Taught to believe that roots were absolutely necessary, nat- urally the planter would conclude, the more the better, just as is taught in all the books to-day ; and indeed, so firmly is it fixed in the minds of many of our most eminent fruit grow- ers that, though earnestly requested to do so, they will not even plant a single close root-pruned tree as an experiment. This has for several years been my general experience, in try- ing to inaugurate this all-important reform. And yet it is absolutely the foundation of all permanent success in the orchards of the future. We have now got to a point where a small one-year tree is considered worthless, and it is well- nigh impossible to sell a tree that has not been transplanted once, and oftener twice, to give it plenty of roots, and when such trees are planted, with all their matted fibrous roots, the doom of that orchard is sealed, whether it be with blight and scab in the pear and apple, yellows in the peach, or black- knot and root-tumor in the plum and peach. Such orchards are bound to fail early, become diseased, and die. And so, in tracing the probable course and progress of horticulture in this country from the earliest times down until now, we find that of necessity, commencing with seedlings and root-grafts (practically my method), its whole history has been a descent from health, longevity and productiveness in the beginning, as history and tradition both prove, down to disease, early decay and unfruitfulness at the present time, and in an exact and direct ratio to the increased quantity of roots left on, and age of the trees when set. The older the tree and the more root, the worse for the tree ever afterwards. Just how I happened to discover this important truth will be told in the next chapter. CHAPTER III. How I Discovered Close Root -Pruning. AS this principle of horticulture is absolutely the most important, without a single exception, in the whole science, and the foundation of all permanent success, it is most astonishing that men have stumbled over it almost daily from the beginning, and never realized its value. The ordinary root-graft has been the most common form of prop- agation for most fruit trees for time out of mind, and every nurseryman knows what superior trees can be thus grown in a single season. And yet it has never occurred to any one to say : If a small piece of root will make such a fine tree, why will not the same principle apply the second or any other year afterward ? Just how the value of this method did first present itself to me is as follows : Nobody here having any faith in the success of my venture of pear planting, I found it impossible at first to sell but few of the trees I had grown from cuttings, but having hopes that the astonishing vigor and thrift of my orchard would start a demand, I dug the young trees for several years, and transplanted to keep them from getting too large, as they surely would, judging from the way the orchard was doing. So we opened wide furrows and, spreading out the pear tree roots evenly, according to the universal directions, covered them nicely and firmed the ground well. Being an old market-gardener, though a new nurseryman, and a believer in manure, as already shown, I gave the rows of young trees a good dressing of cotton-seed meal, and with fair cultivation, at the end of the year I had no cause for complaint, as they all did well. But even that early I had caught on to the fact that, for some unexplained reason, the cuttings planted at the same time as the rooted trees always averaged much better. Moreover, another great point in their favor was, that when we came to pack the few (75) 76 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. trees 1 did sell, being green at the business I found a world of trouble to make the clumsy, flat-rooted ones from the young trees agree with one another and lie comfortably in the same bundle. Having been planted with quite long ones, they were entirely lateral-rooted when dug. But the trees grown from cuttings, while they gave us a world of trouble to get out with the regulation amount and length of root, when we came to pack, were regular daisies roots all long, deep and straight, and as easy to pack as sardines in a box. The third year I had extraordinary luck, and grew about seven thousand trees from cuttings. Having again sold only about two thousand, I found quite a job on my hands late in spring, as we had waited, hoping some purchaser would come along. But he did not, so we had to tackle the transplanting job again, and at the same time look forward to next year's pack- ing of those roots, if sales turned out good. I remember well standing before the row where the trees were all nicely heeled in, with the buds ready to leaf out, and my only help, Frank, a colored boy, at my side, who had just as little fancy as I for the job. After holding a council of war for awhile as to the best and easiest way to get all those roots under ground, and Frank had actually gone down once with the plow and was coming back on the furrow, throwing the dirt out, the idea occurred all at once in the form of a self question. Some- thing seemed to say : " If those trees grew so well with no root at all, what's the matter with cutting them all off, and letting them try it over again ? " No sooner thought than settled. Frank was within fifty feet of me coming back, and when he got there I astonished him by saying: "Now go back and throw the furrow together again," and told him of my idea. Without a moment's hesitation that colored boy, Frank Bell, caught on to the whole thing, saying, "Good," and started back on the row. And yet I have been writing and urging fruit-growers for the last eight years just to try the method, even on a single tree; but so thoroughly had the long-root idea incorporated itself into the mental machinery of most of them, that until the last year or two it has been in vain. I laid the whole subject in a most exhaust- HOW I DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 77 ive article before the American Pomological Society five years ago, at Washington, which, if it was ever read, certainly pro- duced no other result except perhaps to stamp me as a wild and woolly Texas crank! But to return to my story. We pitched in, and in short order had the whole __ ______ five thousand trees reduced back to cut- tings again, at least in appearance, for we did not stop at any half-way close- pruning, like thou- sands will who try it with fear and doubt. We both agreed that it was a plain case of no need for root at all, and off they came, as close to the ends as we could cut them, for our inten- A tion was simply to stick them back in the rows as cuttings, after reducing the tops to one foot. And we treated the whole five thousand just that way. If a single tree died, I never saw it, and by fall those rows pre- sented a picture of vigorous and even growth, many trees being eight to ten feet high, like the tree 1 hold in my hand in the illustration, though the root-pruned tree in the other hand TREE IN RI^HT HAND GROWN IN ONE YEAR FROM ONE LIKE THAT IN LEFT HAND. 78 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. has twice as much root as those had. But what shall I say of the great, deep, penetrating roots they had struck ! The tree I hold shows exactly the character of their root system, though it has several large roots broken off in digging from the hard-pan pipe-clay subsoil, and the photograph by no means does justice to the size of the ends of the roots next to the floor, which were from the size of a knitting needle to a wheat-straw, showing plainly they had gone far deeper. In fact, I am confident that could all of that tree's roots have been taken up, the extreme length would have been as great as the top, which had to be bent and broken down for photo- graphing, and measured eleven feet. I wish particularly to emphasize the fact that this tree was grown on stiff, black, waxy soil, broken about four inches deep, having a hard-pan yellow pipe-clay subsoil, that positively defies a spade. And yet we find pages in the books about the absolute necessity for a deeply plowed and subsoiled bed for trees, to enable their roots to take hold, forgetting that hard and soft are relative terms, and ground as hard as a rock to us is as soft as butter to a close root-pruned tree. But a little more about that lot of trees. By this time people began to talk and investigate, and wild rumors of fab- ulous Le Conte pear crops and profits over in Georgia found their way over here. That fall I sold nearly every tree I had, and, having found out this easy method of planting, I hastened to spread the glad tidings, as well as to ''butcher" the tree roots in digging. Frank had a weather eye for an easy job, and when I said, "Dig with short roots," he was quick to obey, and we hustled them out in a hurry. But when I came to deliver, I found that I had made a big mis- take, for talk as eloquently as I would about the virtue of short roots, and with the trees in my hands to demonstrate its truth, I actually had several parties refuse to buy, and had to guarantee nearly all I did sell to grow. This wound up my efforts as a close root-pruned tree propagandist for some time, and while knowing they were worse than useless, to my great disgust, I was compelled to dig with all the roots pos- sible. In fact, so disheartening were my efforts for a number HOW I DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 79 of years that if Prof. T. L. Brunk, then of our Texas A. and M. College, had not, on a visit of several days to my home, urged me so earnestly once more to bring the subject before the public in the Southern Horticultural Journal, of which he was the editor, and also in Farm and Ranch, it might have rested until now. He saw the philosophy of the whole thing at a glance when I pointed it out, and showed him the trees, and afterwards, when connected with the Experiment Station at Washington, he made the very exhaustive experiments, an account of which is elsewhere in this volume. Had not per- sonal and political motives succeeded in ousting him from Washington shortly afterwards, this most enthusiastic and progressive master of horticulture would, I feel sure, long ago have succeeded in demonstrating, in the public position he held near the capitol, the utility and vast superiority of the close root-pruning over the long-rooted method. CHAPTER IV. Close Root -Pruning. WITH all our knowledge and progress in the other arts and sciences, there is abundant evidence to prove that in the science and practice of horticulture we have retrograded so far that only last year the legislature of New York passed a bill appropriating funds and authorizing the Commissioner of Agriculture to investigate and determine, if possible, the causes for the widespread decadence of the orchards in western New York, both in the matter of the de- creasing health and shortened life of the trees, as well as the inferior quality and diminished yield of fruit. This investi- gation is now in progress, and is awakening great interest in the east. It is a well-known fact that all over the country the same conditions exist that are complained of in New York. While last year gave a phenomenal yield of fruit every- where, it is the first for several years, and not likely to occur soon again, and it is certain that the sturdy fruit trees which delighted the eye with their grand proportions, and tickled the palates of our forefathers with their regular and abundant crops of fine fruit, are a thing of the past. Something cer- tainly is wrong when apple trees cease to be profitable at fif- teen years of age, and peach trees reach their prime in five and die in ten or less, as they do nearly everywhere in our culti- vated orchards, and yet old seedlings in fence corners, chicken yards, old fields and around the back doors are standing up cheerily under the weight of twenty or thirty years ; and Mr. Hale himself drew his inspiration, when he embarked in his successful career of peach growing, from a sixty-year tree that stood in a neglected but friendly fence-row on his ances- tral farm. That there are causes for all this, outside of diminished fertility, want of care or fancied qhange of climate, is certain. (80) CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 8 1 I will now enumerate the four probable causes which, from a series of observations and experiments for many years, I am sure are at the bottom of the trouble, and in so doing, will confine myself strictly to facts, which anyone can verify for himself. 1. I claim that the best form of tree for planting is exactly the opposite of that recommended by all authorities from time immemorial, inasmuch as the latter departs far- thest from nature's method of seed, which experience of the past proves to be the best, and to which I claim my method is superior. The close root-pruned tree, as shown in the accompanying cut (page 87), struck several strong penetra- ting tap-roots, instead of one, like a seedling, and sent them much deeper, fully ten feet in a single season. 2. I claim that deep preparation of the ground, as now recommended, is equally far from the truth and nature's method of a firm, unbroken soil, inasmuch as such deeply pulverized ground, after excessive rains, even though well drained, will for several days become a bog, to drown and scald the young rootlets in summer and freeze them to death in winter at the North. 3. That all cultivation of trees after several years, when the feeding roots hunt the surface, is wrong per se, inas- much as all trees depend upon these surface roots for the proper development of the fruit, both as to size and quality, and any cultivation must necessarily be destructive to them. Of course, when first planted, the middles can be utilized for several years without serious injury, for growing crops be- tween if desired ; but from the very start, except a space around each tree large enough to prevent damage from the mowing blade, frequent and close mowing through the grow- ing season, leaving the clippings on the ground, is the best plan for all close root-pruned trees, with annual fertilizing to perfect the crop. But please take notice that I do not rec- ommend this treatment for poor, handicapped, three and four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, if planted as they come from the nursery. 4. That all fall, winter and spring pruning, until after 6 HORT. 82 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. the trees are in full growth, is contrary to nature and common sense, in that it, as well as fall, winter and early spring stirring of the ground tends to break our trees' rest and start a premature motion of the sap. These four fundamental principles of successful horticul- ture are in perfect accordance with nature and experience, as demonstrated by all forest trees, as well as old chance seed- lings of all fruits everywhere, and constitute the "New Hor- ticulture" I now advocate. To these four points, and my internal theory of all species of tree bacteria, and the causes of their development in the forms of yellows, blight, root- tumor, scab, black-knot, etc., I invite the earnest attention of fruit-growers everywhere, and a full, exhaustive, friendly crit- icism. I am wedded to no theory, or bound by no prejudice, but simply follow where I think truth points her finger. As to my theory of inherent bacteria, whether it be right or wrong, it is a matter of small moment, provided I have shown that a close root-pruned tree, if treated rationally, will never afford the conditions for the development of any of those bacterial diseases, and in this I think I have succeeded. And now to the first cause, which I claim to be a radically wrong form of tree when set. THE REVOLUTION IN TREE PLANTING. It is about eight years since I first announced in Farm and Ranch that the theory and practice of tree planting, as handed down from time immemorial, was wrong, and that, instead of the more roots a tree has when reset the better, the very opposite was true. I then gave a full history of how I happened to hit upon this truth, as well as a detailed account of various ex- periments upon a great many kinds of fruit and shade trees, that demonstrated beyond all doubt the truth of my state- ment. I also adduced many isolated facts from the experi- ence of others going to corroborate my own. So absurd did the idea of cutting off all the roots of a tree seem even to very many prominent horticulturists, that though I then wrote to quite a number all over the country, the invariable answer was : " While such treatment may suc- ceed with you, it would be out of the question here." The CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 83 fact is, we inherit our opinions and ideas just as well as the peculiarities of our bodies, and so true is this that the con- trary of their beliefs is positively unthinkable to many men. An instance of this came to me in a letter from one of our most progressive Texas nurserymen. He wrote: "I have been practicing close root-pruning with perfect success for some years, and yet my father, who is seventy years old, and sees the good results every year, won' t admit them, but persists in saying that ' if the roots were not necessary they wouldn't be put there.' " So firmly, indeed, has this long-root fallacy become imbedded in the human mind by ages of practice, that even a man of Chas. Downing's eminence in horticulture declares in his great work that the " ideal transplanting" would be to take up a tree with its roots entire. That this would be absolutely the very worst form, anyone can easily demonstrate for himself. Let him take, for instance, two peach or other tree seeds, and plant a few inches apart in, say a ten-inch pot of good, rich soil. At the end of next year, let him take them out and carefully shake off all the soil from the roots, and plant side by side in the open ground. Let him spread out in a large hole all the roots of one tree, according to the inherited regulation method, and cut back all on the other to about one inch, and the top to one foot, just enough to allow of its being stuck down about six inches, like a cutting. Treat alike, and in two years the root-pruned tree will be many times larger than the other. And right here I wish to say, very particularly, that the great superior- ity of close root-pruning is not always so apparent the first year, the tree giving more attention to striking deep roots than making top. Even for several years, we all know that trees as ordinarily set do well, but this is due to the fact that a large amount of root is removed even then. But a com- parison with these will prove that when the strain of fruit- bearing comes, the close-pruned tree, with its roots deep and strong, out of reach of the plow, winter's cold and summer's heat and drouth, will stand up for many years, giving good crops, long after the other, with its lateral and surface sys- tem, has broken down and died. How else are we to 84 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. account for the early decadence of our latter-day orchards ? The planter, in his haste for fruit, demands big trees, with plenty of roots and top, to support which, and to make them live, the nurseryman often transplants several times. This gives a mass of fibrous roots, which will undoubtedly, if the season is good, make the trees live, but practically dwarfs them and destroys their future usefulness. While Samson lost his strength by cutting off his hair, a tree is forever weakened by leaving its "hair" roots on when set, for it seems then compelled to re-establish itself by emitting new fibrous roots entirely from these. This results in a perma- nently lateral and surface system. Sink a spade around such a tree a year, or even two, after planting, and a slight pull will lift it from the ground, but a short root-pruned tree will resist any effort. The whole theory of the latter method is simply copying nature. She starts her trees from seed with neither tops or roots, and universal experience has shown that these, and trees grown from cuttings (which are prac- tically seed), if never moved, are the strongest, healthiest, longest-lived and most productive. The advantages I claim for this method over the all-important one of giving far better trees are : 1. An enormous saving to the nurseryman in digging his stock, which now must be taken up with roots a foot or more long. 2. An equally great saving in packing. Instead of great bales of tops, roots, moss, bagging and rope, and the labor of putting up the same, or large boxes containing thou- sands of pounds of the same useless dead weight, a thousand root- and top-pruned trees could be packed in a medium-sized tight box, with a layer of wet moss in the bottom to main- tain a moist atmosphere, and shipped with perfect safety around the world. 3. The saving to the buyer will be even greater. As an instance, several years ago I ordered five thousand grape vines from California, and wrote specific directions for root and top-pruning, as well as packing, and offered to pay for the extra pruning, the box to be sent by express. The nur- CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 85 seryman, setting me down for a crank or fool, packed the vines, top, roots and all, in three immense bales, weighing 1,300 pounds, for which he got a special rate, and yet they cost me sixty-seven dollars charges. I pruned and packed them in a single bale weighing 227 pounds, shipping them 250 miles, after which they were set by being simply stuck down into shallow, pulverized ground and tramped, the whole operation taking but two days. Every vine grew, and the next summer, the third year, I expect to ship grapes by the car load. It would be hard to estimate how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are annually paid by planters to rail- roads, in charges on worse than useless tops, roots and packing. 4. Thousands of dollars will be saved in the plant- ing. Instead of large holes, and spreading out of roots, working in the soil by hand, etc., as now practiced, the planter will prepare his ground, stretch a strong line, with tags tied at the right intervals, make a small hole with a dibble a couple of inches in diameter, stick the trees down the proper distance, and when a row is done turn back and tramp thoroughly. This is very important. 5. Another most important advantage is, that by this method we reduce to a minimum the danger of spreading all kinds of diseases and insect pests, such as eel-worm, root tumor, scales, root-lice, etc. These are mostly found on the tops or long roots. 6. It enables the planter to set extra-large trees, which the nurseryman now has to throw away, and thus obtain fruit much sooner. I will now repeat directions for root-pruning. Hold the tree top down, and cut all roots back to about an inch, slop- ing the cuts so that when the tree is set the cut surface is downwards. Experience has shown that the roots are gene- rally emitted perpendicularly to the plane, or surface of the cut. This final pruning should be done shortly before plant- ing, so as to present a fresh surface for the callus to form on. If trees are to be kept some time, or shipped by a nursery- man, about two inches of root should be left, the planter to 86 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. cut back as directed when the tree is set. About a foot of top should be left. More or less makes no difference. If the tree is well staked, three feet may be left without diminishing the growth much. I have had six-foot trees, well staked, to grow finely, but to avoid staking and to secure a new, straight body, it is best to cut back short. Let all shoots grow until a foot or so long, when the straightest and best one should be left and all others rubbed off. I could give the experience and endorsement of quite a number of orchard- ists who have practiced this method with uniform success, but it is necessary to mention only one. Without waiting for the slow demonstration of experience, he at once put it in practice on his great nine hundred-acre peach orchard of one hundred thousand trees, which he was about to plant in Georgia. I wrote him recently as to how it turned out. Here is the reply : Dear Sir: I am glad to state that the close root-pruning, which was practiced when planting our entire orchard of one hundred thou- sand trees at Fort Valley, Georgia, proved to be the most successful operation we ever practiced, less than one-half of one per cent, of the trees failing to grow, and all making the most vigorous and even growth I have ever seen in any orchard in America. The orchard is now three years old, and gave us an enormous crop of fruit this past season. I am thoroughly in favor of this system of root-pruning. Yours very truly, J. H. HALE. And now, in conclusion, in view of the fact that my indi- vidual efforts for eight years have amounted to practically nothing, the question is, how to bring about, in the general handling of trees, this radical but needed reform. I see but two ways. The first through the medium of the nurseryman and his catalogue, and the second through the bulletins of the experiment stations. Quite a number of nurserymen, some of them the most extensive in the Union, have written me that they are now practicing this method exclusively, and with perfect success, in all their nursery transplanting operations, but they dare not advise the people to adopt it, for fear of being accused of trying to induce them to kill their trees, so as to sell them more next season. Now, let all of them make mention of the subject in their future catalogues. Next, let the state experi- CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. TREE GROWN FROM A ROOT-PRUNED ONE, AT END OF FIRST YEAR. TREE GROWN FROM A LONG-ROOTED ONE, AT END OF FIRST YEAR. 88 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. merit stations make exhaustive trials on all kinds of trees, vines and small fruits, planting some with mere stubs of roots, half an inch, and others with five, ten, fifteen and twenty-inch length, setting enough of each to allow of taking up some every year to demonstrate at once that beyond a length of one inch, the quantity and size of the new roots is invariably in an inverse ratio to the amount of old roots left on. The more and longer the old, the more lateral and weaker the new ones. Let them subject trees of different ages and lengths of tops, up to four or five years or more, to the same treatment, and the result will be the same. The older close root-pruned, even with four-foot tops, will, if staked, quickly re-establish themselves on strong, deep, new roots and make fine trees, while the same age long-rooted ones will become permanently surface-rooted and dwarfed forever. But it is much better to cut back the tops to one foot, and form an entirely new head, as from a seed. In planting an orchard of any fruit after this method, I would most earnestly advise, even on ground thought to be rich, that each tree be well top-dressed, AFTER BEING SET, with cotton-seed meal, well rotted barnyard manure, or other fer- tilizer, except fresh stable manure. But neve r put manure of any kind, except plain bone meal, in the hole or around the base of a close root-pruned tree, and see then that it is well mixed with the soil. This fertilizing will force a strong initial growth, and thus induce the trees to strike many and deep, perpen- dicular roots, and if correctly root-pruned, as shown by the tree I hold in my left hand in the cut, few or no lateral roots will be emitted for several years, the trees confining their at- tention entirely, by instinct, to anchoring themselves deep in the moist earth, thus enabling them to resist any drouth, and face unmoved the fiercest storms. No wind can shake or loosen the hold of a close root-pruned tree, no matter how high the future head, or long the trunk. Such trees will make, as they did for Mr. Hale, a perfectly uniform growth, and if propagated from bearing trees, as all should be, will all come into beari-ng at the same time, and mature to full size, with- out thinning, crops that would paralyze trees planted with CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 89 long roots. Of course, removing some of the smaller fruit would somewhat increase the size of the balance, but all will be large, and thinning might be necessary only to keep the limbs from breaking. Give full distance between the rows of all close root-pruned fruit trees, and run them north and south, if practicable. Trees propagated from settled bearing ones will fruit full the third year for peaches, apricots and plums, and the fourth or fifth year for pears and apples, and it will be' economy to plant in the rows of the latter fruits an extra tree between, to fruit for five or ten years, until those intended to make the permanent orchard require the space. Air and sunshine are necessities for bright, clean, high-col- ored fruit, and shade breeds fungi, except on grapes, which often thrive in it. I append the following note of comment on the above article by that prince of careful, painstaking originators, whose name is known and honored wherever fruit is grown, Mr. Luther Burbank, to whom I sent a copy last winter : SANTA ROSA, January S, 1896. H. M. STRINGFELLOW. Dear Sir Thanks for your courtesy in sending me your very val- uable and thought-suggesting essay. From my own past experience, I believe you are right. I have used for years a one-inch root and five-inch scion for root-grafting, and, strange to say, in an experi- ment ten years ago to test the matter, I used one- inch roots with five-inch scions, and from the same lot of roots and scions some three-inch roots and three-inch scions. In the long rows thus under test, I could see no difference (apple and pear) in the stand, but in the case of the pears, the shorter roots produced the largest and best trees. Apples were nearly alike. I usually cut back very heavily, but so far have not practiced such heroic treatment as you suggest. But as I said before, think you are right, and shall test it here. If it be true, what a grand result your studies have led up to, and in any case can result only in good ! Sincerely yours, LUTHER BURBANK. As corroborative of the great fundamental truth of close root-pruning, thus imitating nature's method of seed, I will next introduce the exhaustive experiments made and pub- lished some years ago by Prof. T. L. Brunk. CHAPTER V. Root Pruning How Demonstrated at Washington. A SYSTEM .OF TREATMENT AT TRANSPLANTING WHICH DISPROVES OLD THEORIES. BY THOS. L. BRUNK, Former Professor of Botany and Horticulture, Maryland Agricultural College and Experiment Station, Mayfair, Cook County, 111. IT has long been the belief that in removing a tree from the nursery, the ideal operation would be to save every root and rootlet intact, that the shock of transplanting may be reduced to the minimum. Downing states: "A transplanter should never forget that it is by the delicate and tender points or extremities of the root that trees take up their food, and that the chance of complete success is les- sened by every one of these points that is bruised and de- stroyed. If we could remove trees with every fiber entire, as we do a plant in a pot, they would scarcely show any sign of their change of position. In most cases, especially in that of trees taken from nurseries, this is, by the operation of removal, nearly impossible. But, although we may not hope to get every root entire, we may, with proper care, pre- serve by far the larger portion of them, and more particu- larly the small and delicate fibers." Thomas says : "If a tree could be removed with all its roots, including the numerous thread-like radicals and all the spongelets, and placed compactly in the soil, precisely as it stood before, it would surfer no check in growth. The nearer we can approach this condition, therefore, the greater will be our success." American Fruit Culturist, p. 59. Numerous citations could be made similar to the above ; in fact, I do not find that any of our highest authorities vary from the ideas expressed in them. They all advocate trans- (90) ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. QI planting a tree with as many roots attached as it is practica- ble to remove with it. It would seem at first that there is overwhelming evidence against any other course of reasoning that may be applied to this subject. The roots are the absorbing organs, which take up from the food-stored soil all the water and the larger part of the mineral and solid foods which enter into the composition of a tree. It seems irre- futable that if any of the absorbing area is removed, the tree is thereb) 7 shortened in its food supply in the same direct pro- portion. It must be admitted that this is true if done during the growing season, when the "sap " (protoplasm} of a tree is in a state of activity ; but is it the case during the period of rest, when the "sap" is in a thickened, inactive, non-trans- ferable condition ? It is the conditions a plant takes on dur- ing its inactive stage that do not seem to have been consid- ered by our older writers on practical horticulture. Plant physiologists have understood these conditions well, and have shown that "sap" does not "go down to the roots" in fall and return to the parts above ground in spring, as is so commonly believed. They tell us (and common observation proves it) that the "sap" toward fall gradually thickens and ripens as growth above lessens, till finally it becomes com- pletely immobile ; but during this inactive stage it does not lose its power to return to active life when the warmth of spring returns. In this stage of a woody plant, parts of it may be removed that may become new individuals if placed under proper con- ditions of heat and moisture. Most of our fruit trees may be propagated from either cuttings of shoots or of the roots. If a piece of tree (cutting) will grow without roots, what must that argue as to the condition and nature of the sap within such cuttings ? Microscopic sections of such cuttings show that the young wood cells are stored full of starch and other concentrated food materials. When spring comes, with plenty of heat and moisture, this stored food is transformed into these simpler and more easily transferred food materials which a plant can use in growth. This requires but a small amount of water, which is 92 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. readily absorbed through the bark of young shoots and through the thin walled cells at the cut end. This starts growth and activity. But before growth can proceed to any appreciable extent, the cutting must make provision for a specialized absorbing surface in the soil. This is done by throwing out at first a set of delicate multiplying cells from the layer of young, growing and dividing cells just beneath the bark at the lower end. This white ring of protruding cells is known technically as the ''callus." Nurserymen usually assist cuttings to form this callus early in the season, and before placing them in the nursery row, so that root growth may be sure to precede leaf growth, as leaf growth before the initial steps of root formation take place usually proves fatal to the cutting. From this callus the young rootlets proceed rapidly, and as they operate in an area so near the cutting, it is led with less effort and more rapidly by a few roots than it could be by a greater number located farther away. Moreover, it is learned from a rooted cutting, that it forms a set of roots that take a direction in the soil similar to those of a seedling of the same variety ; or, in other words, forms its roots, both of direction and penetration into the soil, and in a uniform radiation about the trunk, compatible with its nature and habits of growth. Some authorities state that a cutting makes a "duck- footed" set of roots. Observation over a wide field of cut- tings, and of latitude and climate in which they have been grown, to my mind thoroughly disproves any such statement. I have seen Le Conte pear cuttings grown upon the heaviest clay subsoils of the coast region, near Galveston, Texas, that had sent down vertical roots, penetrating the soil over four feet the first season. Some tests, made in a small way with nursery trees and stock, gave results conclusive enough to show that an important subject had been undertaken, and that it would justify a test on a larger scale. In April, 1890, 170 Reeves Favorite peach trees, budded on Japan stock, ninety-five Ben Davis and ninety-five Red Astrachan apple trees all budded, maiden trees were procured for this test. ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. 93 One-third of each of these kinds were root and top-pruned, leaving only prongs of roots one to three inches long ; one- third were pruned so that the roots were from five to seven inches long, and the remaining third were not root-pruned, except that the ends of badly mutilated roots were removed. The tops were in every case removed, leaving the apples about 2^ feet long, peaches twenty inches, and pears about sixteen inches. No selection was made from the total num- ber of trees for each lot, except that the poorest rooted ones, when otherwise of the same vigor, were selected to be pruned, thus giving a seeming advantage to the unpruned trees. The pear trees were cut at a point about sixteen inches from the root, and with special reference to five or six good buds to be used as the basis of future limb growth. The trees were all set side by side in a uniform soil, about six inches deep, in a common plow furrow. Those that were root-pruned were set with three or four times the speed of those with a mass of roots, to be carefully placed and arranged as they were in the nursery. They all received fair culture, such as would be given by any orchardist, with a com- mon Iron Age cultivator. Notes were taken several times during the growing season, and at intervals a few of each set were taken up and the growth and character of the roots noted. Photography was freely used to record ,the features of growth. By July ii the unpruned peach trees had made consider- ably more growth than the root-pruned trees. The apples and pears showed at that time only slight differences of growth in favor of the unpruned trees. The first few months the root-pruned trees do not start a very rapid growth, but by fall overtake or exceed the growth of the un-root-pruned. We did not lose a single tree from any of the sets. By fall the unpruned peach trees had made a little more growth than the root-pruned, but they were not of as even a growth as the root-pruned. In case of the pears, the root-pruned were far more uni- form in growth, and anyone could see that they had outgrown those that started the season with a full set of roots. 94 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. The apples showed about the same growth in both cases ; no one could have told which was which by fall without the map. The examinations of the roots during the summer de- veloped some interesting facts. The first thing noticed on removing the trees from the soil was that the old roots had retained all their malformations, twistings and the horizontal position they had acquired some way in the nursery or in packing. At least they were just the same as they would have been if cut by the most careful planters. The several figures bring out this feature very forcibly. Nearly all the young feeding roots grew from the tip ends of the old roots, leaving them bare, even when over a foot long. Only an occasional new lateral root was found. This threw all the absorbing surface some distance from the trunk. Plant phy- siology gives us a general law which states that the farther sap has to travel, and the more devious its path of transfer from the root absorbents (root hairs) to the leaves, the less the growth and vigor of that plant in a given period of time. Sap is retarded in its circulation, and wood formation cannot go on as rapidly as in cases where the sap travels short, direct paths. In all young trees, wood is the first and indispensible product of growth to form a proper basis for future fruitful- ness. After a tree is well developed and supplied with strong, stocky branches, it is then time to retard the sap flow and cause fruit buds to form. In the root-pruned trees, the young rootlets sprang as readily from the large circle of cambium at the ends of the short root stubs as from the ends of the longer roots. They came out, too, in greater numbers than on the old roots on unpruned trees, the ratio being about ten to three. These young roots clustered close about the trunk of the tree, mak- ing the least possible distance for the sap to travel. It seemed evident, also, that new roots developed much faster where the sap traveled short distances. The cut ends by fall had in most cases completely healed over, leaving no place for rot to start. Another very important feature in the growth of young rootlets noted, is that those on the unpruned roots took ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. 95 about the same direction of growth in the soil as the old root was placed when planted. If horizontal, the young roots grew off horizontally ; if inclined downward at an angle, the young roots assumed about the same angle. In the root- pruned trees the young roots had very little to guide their growth, leaving them to take such angles as are found in seedling roots of the same variety. In other words, they were put into such a condition by a removal of nearly all the roots back to the collar, that they could take on a new root system compatible with their nature, needs and seedling habits of growth. By the old method, an unnatural system of roots are forced upon a tree. This system of roots is usu- ally irregular, one-sided and poorly directed in its growth. Such trees are usually surface-rooted, having but few, if any, deep, penetrating roots, with which to supply the tree with an abundance of water. Drouth and deep freezing are agents that act upon and shorten the lives of such trees. The newly formed roots on the root-pruned peach trees were found to penetrate the soil at an average angle of about forty degrees. Those on unpruned trees were horizontal and surface-feeding. The pear was about the same as the peach, with perhaps more that penetrated deeper from the root- pruned trees. The Ben Davis apple followed its old record of holding its roots rather close to the surface. The next season other kinds of trees, and more of peaches and apples, were added to the experiment, to note the effects of a different season and to give a wider range to the tests. Wild Goose and Marianna plums on Marianna roots, Black Tartarian cherry on Mazzard roots, Mahaleb cherry, Norway spruce, hemlock, Lawson cypress, altheas, privet and red cedar were added to the list. By June 23 the peach and apple trees root-pruned the same as those of last season- succeeded about the same as those planted last year. This season had not been as wet as last, and we had just passed through a fairly severe drouth. The root-pruned plums are outgrowing the unpruned. The Black Tartarian cherry trees are not doing as well. Two have died, and others are not thriving. This may be due, however, to the wetness of the g6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. location and the tendency of the soil to bake just where they stand. Those top-pruned and roots left intact are thriving best. The Mahaleb trees are doing well. The Norway spruce trees show but little signs of living under the treatment. Only one out of three is living, but it has made a fair growth. Those with roots left on are growing freely. The hemlocks fared even worse than the Norway spruce. Two out of three are yet living, but have not grown any, and dry weather will likely kill them. Of the Lawson cypress, one is living, but has made very little growth. It will probably live. Those, however, not pruned at all are doing very well. Two have made no new growth. There is very little difference between the two sets of California privet. Both have thrown out shoots from four to eight inches long, those with unpruned roots slightly in the lead. The root- pruned altheas are starting slowly, but none have died or will- likely die. The red cedar {Juniperus Virginiana] shows no difference between the two sets. All these trees were set April 16, 1892. [Entirely too late. H. M. s.] This season shows that the root-pruned peach trees set out last year are equal in growth and size to those unpruned. The apple trees are equal in size, and the root-pruned pears are larger than their checks. Some of the trees planted last year that were taken up during the fall and winter to be photographed and examined were root-pruned and set out again last April. They have thus far made a growth equal to and even greater than a few that were not root-pruned. This shows the successful growth of a two-year. old root-pruned tree. This is about the extent of the evidence thus far gathered from the tests I have made. As the trees acquire age, they will show, no doubt, other facts that cannot be presented now, except as observed in orchards in other parts of the United States, where the root-pruned trees excel. For further evidence on this important and even revolu- tionary system, I will cite some trials that point very emphati- cally to the merits of this system. The honor of first discovering the practicability of this ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. 97 method of treating trees, and of recently bringing the system prominently before the public, is due to Mr. H. M. String- fellow, of Hitchcock, Texas, near Galveston. Mr. Stringfel- low is a well-informed gentleman, a college graduate, a care- ful and close observer of nature, and is an enthusiastic, sagacious fruit-grower and nurseryman on the coast plains of Texas. Fourteen years ago he planted a Le Conte and Kieffer pear orchard, which was pronounced by about sixty members of the American Horticultural Society who passed through it in February, 1890, to be the finest orchard of the kind they had seen, and probably the finest in America, for its uniformity of growth and the utility and beauty of its training. From the first of this orchard enterprise, Mr. Stringfellow began a study of tree growth, and made many tests which proved to him that our old methods of trans- planting and training were very erroneous, and he concluded that the nearer we can approach to a seedling when our trees are set, the longer lived, healthier and more productive they will be. His tests were all made in the coast regions of Texas, where pear trees grow freely from cuttings ; and, in fact, cut- tings of most trees grow easily. But the evidence of others shows that root-pruning succeeds in various parts of our country. Samuel Edwards, of North Peoria, 111., gives an account in the Fruit- Growers' Journal, of a lot of three-year-old assorted trees he bought from a Rochester (N. Y.) nursery- man, and which were so delayed on the road and so frozen that the roots were badly damaged. He cut off the tops to about two feet and the roots close to the bodies, and set them out as an experiment. He says they all grew finely, making handsome, fruitful trees. O. E. Hine, of Vienna, Va., told me that several years ago he received a number of two-year old silver maple trees, with badly mutilated roots. He cut away most of the roots, reduced the tops and planted them. They have proved to be fine, thrifty trees. A. W. Harrison, of Alexandria, Va. , tells me that when 7 HORT. 98 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. living at Montclair, N. J., he transplanted a number of elm trees from the forest to his land. He pruned away nearly all the roots and all the top except a straight pole about eight feet high. These trees are living to-day, and are fine models of vigor and beauty. C. W. Campbell says in the Florida Dispatch and Fruit Grower of December 31, 1891: ''For a month during our dryest weather I had been transplanting orange trees, and will here say that I followed the plan of cutting the roots short and cutting back the top so severely as to leave but little of it. As a result, I have never had so good success. Out of five hundred trees, I will not lose one, though I never planted when it seemed so unfavorable as last October. In 'February, 1886, to save as much top as possible, I dug the roots as long as I could possibly get them, and out of five hundred I don't believe there are fifty living to-day, and they have never made a good growth." J. H. Hale, of South Glastonbury, Conn., writes me thus : "You will recollect talking with me at the Pomological Meet- ing in Washington last September in regard to root-pruning of peach trees at time of planting. Perhaps it will interest you to know that in planting an orchard of more than one hundred thousand trees at Fort Valley, Ga., the past winter, we root-pruned the whole of them ; and now our orchard superintendent reports that they are making a wonderful new growth, and so far, not a missing tree can be found in the whole hundred thousand." M. B. Sturgus, of Hanover, Jefferson County, Ind. (southern part, in Ohio Valley), tells me that he planted an orchard of peach trees, and the roots of a large part of the trees were so poor and mutilated that he cut them back severely. After a year's growth, the root-pruned, to a tree, were much finer than those not root-pruned. I have heard of other smaller tests that resulted the same as those cited above. It is needless, however, to multiply instances where root-pruning at the time of transplanting has been successfully tried. The best and most conclusive evidence is that resulting from a personal trial, and that at ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. 99 least every grower of trees should make. It should be stated that it is best to set root-pruned trees in the spring, as they are more apt to be heaved than other trees if planted in the fall. In the South they can be set in November to advantage, as they will callus at once and form roots somewhat during the late fall and winter. With all this empirical evidence from the various sections of our country, and my own experiments, I believe I am safe in stating that this method of treating trees is destined to supplant old methods to a large extent, and with a larger range of species and varieties than has yet been tried, and that it has a number of important advantages over old methods which will give a new stimulus to fruit growing, and result in a new system of training and after-treatment of orchards. NOTE. See chapter on "Best Time and Depth to Plant Close Root- pruned Trees," for remarks on Prof. Brunk's article. CHAPTER VI. Right and Wrong Close Root-Pruning. I WISH particularly to call attention to the fact that the chief object in close root-pruning is to concentrate all the vital energy of the newly set tree on a limited root- surface, and compel it to strike several strong, perpendicular tap-roots, and while doing this, not to allow its attention to be diverted to forming side or lateral roots at the same time. By examining the accompanying illustration, Fig. i, it will be seen that all seedling and transplanted trees should be cut back close below the collar, and just under the first good side roots, and not leave any length of the main or tap-root, with side roots cut back, as in Fig. 2. Such trees will invariably at once strike a great many lateral and surface roots also, while the properly root-pruned tree will, the first season, con- fine itself almost entirely to making strong, deep ones, with perhaps less top, though the second year will always remedy that. If the trees should be too large to root-prune with the shears or knife, saw off the tops to fifteen or eighteen inches, lay the tree on its side, and saw off all the roots squarely just below the crown or collar. Trim the sawed edges with a knife to make them callus more quickly. As stated else- where, large trees can be treated thus, as six-year-old pear and grape vines at Hitchcock are now fruiting, that have renewed their strength like young trees, it being a general law of nature that once a tree, especially an old one, is taken from the ground, the old roots are an encumbrance, and its former strength, vigor and health can only be renewed by compelling it to re-establish itself, as before, on an entirely new system. And now, in answer to many inquiries as to the size of trees which may be successfully transplanted. If closely root-pruned, there is scarcely any limit. While universal (100) RIGHT AND WRONG CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 101 experience has shown, beyond all doubt, that fruit trees and grape vines over three or four years of age, if set with long and fibrous roots, are inferior to smaller ones, the rule by no means holds good with close root-pruned trees, for a very RIGHT CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. WRONG CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. valuable and important point in close root-pruning is, that it can be utilized to make living fence posts for newly enclosed farms, fields or orchards. A china, cotton-wood, willow, hackberry or sycamore, and, I presume other forest trees of IO2 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. large size, even six inches or more in diameter, can be dug, all the roots cut back close to the body and tops to five or six feet, and planted quite deep, just like a fence post, well ram- med, and wire stretched, and every one of the trees named will grow off quickly and make nice heads by fall, and large trees the second season. Every orchard should have such a windbreak around and through it at wide intervals. Not an evergreen one, to keep off the cold, but a deciduous one, to break the force of summer and fall winds, that every year lash thousands of bushels of half grown and also ripe fruit from the trees. I lost in a single storm, some years ago, over two thousand bushels of pears, blown down in an hour amd buried in the mud. The cottonwood is by far the best of all trees here for such a windbreak, as it grows very tall, and will stand any storm, if grown from cuttings or root-pruned trees. If care be taken to select cuttings from male trees, the nuisance of seed and cotton will be avoided. I had at Hitchcock two ten-acre orchards of Garber and Le Conte pears, that were both bisected each way with cottonwood when the pear trees were set, thus cutting each ten-acre lot into four blocks of 2% acres, surrounded now on all sides with tall trees, that let in the breezes for comfort, but com- pletely break the force of driving summer winds, that would blow off the fruit. In fact, to plant an orchard without proper protection is pure gambling, as the Missouri and Arkansas growers found out last fall. Car load after car load of windfall Ben Davis and other apples were shipped here last October, that had been whipped off by a strong wind storm that swept those states. While the roots of such a windbreak would be objectionable on vegetable ground, they do no harm at all to fruit trees, if occasionally fertilized, as is clearly shown in my orchards. CHAPTER VII. Best Time and Depth to Plant. I AM afraid that many persons will make the mistake of planting their close root-pruned trees too deep on level ground, under the erroneous impression that, having so little root, such a tree will find it difficult to establish and sustain itself at first. If they will but reflect that the root-graft and the cutting, which will strike, have no such trouble, and that nature plants her seeds upon the bare sur- face of the firm ground, and trusts to the wind, with leaves and dust, and the rain, to splash a thin covering around or over them, they must see that a strong, close root-pruned young tree, with far more vital energy than a seed, cannot fail to take care of itself, if set five or six inches deep in soil at all moist and well firmed. Of course, if it be dry that depth, the trees must be watered when set. But this applies to sections of the country favored with a reasonably regular rainfall, and more particularly to level and only slightly roll- ing ground. On elevated uplands and hills, the depth should be increased a little, and all through the dryer, hilly half of our state, comprising West and Northwest Texas, a depth of one foot would be none too much. Of course, this would require a total length of eighteen to twenty-four inches of tree when set. That deep planting is best all through the latter portions of the state, with its rocky, limestone subsoils, was clearly demonstrated by Wm. Cook, of Lampasas, one of the most successful and observing fruit-growers I ever met. I camped for a month near his orchard, in the suburbs of Lampasas, fifteen years ago, and was told by him that the finest, longest-lived and most productive trees of all kinds he ever grew were planted two feet deep, right up on the rocky hillside and top, and that he had practically drilled the holes out of the almost solid limestone soft rock. A little top soil (103) 104 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. was put into the bottoms, trees were set two feet deep, the holes rilled two-thirds with surface soil, and a bucket of water to each hole, the weather having been dry for a long time. After the ground had settled, the holes were filled level and well firmed with the foot. The trees, of all kinds, not only all grew, but no drouth afterwards even seemed to affect them. The roots had necessarily been cut back quite short, though he new nothing of the virtue of the method. Of course, such treatment would be ruinous on level or moder- ately rolling ground with a clay subsoil. No amount of rain can ever water-log the rocky, porous subsoils of West Texas hills, and trees of all kinds should be planted at least twelve inches deep or deeper, all through that section. The rich val- leys should be avoided for fruit, not only because of occa- sional excessive rains, that for a few days render them a bog, but worse still, because such locations are so subject to late spring frosts as to render crops too uncertain. And now, as to the best time for planting close root- pruned trees in the southern states. If asked the very best month, I would say December. The young trees to be moved have then gone completely to rest, and while the ground is still warm enough to encourage root action, the air is not sufficiently warm to stimulate a new growth of leaves after planting, which often happens to trees moved in Novem- ber, especially if from a more northern latitude. Still, Jan- uary is nearly as good a month, and all through February and March, up to the very starting of the leaves, if the soil is moist, such trees may be planted with perfect success. But they will not grow off as rapidly, or make as great a total growth that season, as those planted earlier. At the North and in the Middle States, as Prof. T. L. Brunk remarks else- where in his article, if trees with so little root to hold them down are set in the fall, especially on deeply pulverized soil (a worse than useless preparation), there might be danger of heaving from the action of frost. But that heaving could easily be obviated by banking the earth up entirely over the one-foot tops, thus protecting them the first season from the cold, and mice and rabbits as well. The advent of hot BEST TIME AND DEPTH TO PLANT. 105 weather is so sudden there that I would earnestly recommend the fall for planting close root-pruned trees all over the Mid- dle and Northern States. By spring new roots several inches long will have been struck, and a much stronger growth secured the first season. As will be seen from Prof. Brunk's experiments in Maryland, his trees were all planted, both fruit and evergreen, on the i6th of April, 1892. That was entirely too late to get the best result the first season. More- over, something must have been wrong with the trees or con- ditions, when the althea failed to start and do well, for it grows almost anywhere like a weed, from a cutting even. As to the Norway spruce, hemlock and Lawson cypress, I know nothing, having never seen them. But I do know that the oranges both sour, sweet and trifoliate, will all grow off with the greatest vigor from close top and root-pruned trees, and thousands of orange trees are being thus treated in Florida the present season. They may also be thus planted all through June, July and August with perfect success, if an additional inch and a few fibrous roots are left on. Last summer I never lost a single one of fifteen hundred young trifoliata, planted from seed in February and transplanted into nursery rows in June, when about six inches high. By fall some of them were three feet high, all having been root and top-pruned when set, and firmly tramped. However, with these and other evergreens each one can experiment for himself, as soil may have something to do with results. HAVING now discussed fully the first cause viz., long roots of the general decadence and unfruitfulness of latter- day apple and pear orchards, and given a summary of my ex- perience as to the best methods of treating and planting close root-pruned trees, I will in the next chapter go on with the investigation. CHAPTER VIII. Deep Preparation Wrong. AND now to the second cause of deteriorated orchards, which I claim to be the deep plowing and pulverizing before planting, either of the whole orchard or of sev- eral feet where the tree is to stand, in the shape of large holes. It is, indeed, true that such preparation is necessary for long, fibrous-rooted trees, such as our nurserymen now furnish by once or twice transplanting, for such trees invari- ably re-establish themselves on fibrous roots from the old ones, being unable to penetrate a firm surface or subsoil. More- over, such a loose, well pulverized hole, or entire plant-bed, will undoubtedly enable such trees to take hold and make an excellent growth, and bear well for some years ; but such preparation is entirely artificial, opposed to nature, and infallibly lays the foundation for permature decay and death. In furnishing the trees described a loose, porous seed-bed, we induce, in fact compel, them to confine themselves almost entirely to it. I saw a most remarkable example of this several years ago, near Seguin, in this state. A most painstaking fruit-grower had prepared a peach orchard after this fashion, the trees being trimmed high to allow of cultiva- tion, and the fourth and fifth year gathered crops of excellent fruit. In the summer of the sixth a terrible rain and wind storm swept over that section and laid every single one of those peach trees flat on the ground, with their roots in the air. I wish every fruit grower could have seen this orchard, with its surface and lateral root system scarcely one foot in depth, having had no hold on the subsoil, excepting through its fibrous roots. Doubtless many have had such an experi- ence. But suppose these trees had not fallen? Is it not a fair presumption that their roots, standing for several days in almost liquid mud, under a July sun, would have been injured ? (106) DEEP PREPARATION WRONG. 107 But suppose such an excessive rain had fallen at the North, and the thermometer had dropped below zero, freezing this one foot of slush and roots as solid as a rock ? Is there any wonder that trees exposed to such conditions for a few years, and, as a rule, allowed to overbear, should soon yield inferior crops, and die young ? While the peach would surfer most, no tree can stand such treatment uninjured. So much for reason and experience against a deeply- stirred surface soil. Now, let us turn to nature. As I said before, she plants her trees with neither tops or roots, on the surface of the firm, unbroken soil, and whether it be an apple or an oak, in the valleys or on the hills, she grows a tree unequalled by all the care and skill of man. Who subsoiled and pulverized for the giant red-woods of California, the towering pines of Ore- gon and the South, the monster sycamores and cottonwoods of the Middle States, or dug wide holes and spread out their roots, carefully fingering in the top soil, for the grand old hickories, walnuts, elms and oaks that once crowned New England's rock-ribbed hills? True, these are forest trees; but how about the old original Seckel pear, the old apple tree that shaded Roger Williams' grave, and hundreds of ancient seedlings, of both fruits, that gave bounteous yield to three and four generations of the Pilgrims' sons ? So much for nature's testimony in favor of a firm, unbroken soil. But while all those trees were seedlings, I claim that the close root-pruned tree is far better than a seedling. The life force of a seed, while capable, ultimately, of the grand devel- opments I have named, is primarily very weak. Who would suspect that the great Charter Oak lay wrapped in the tiny acorn, which probably made scarcely a foot of growth the first year, or that the embryo sycamores and cottonwoods that tower in the river bottoms of the Middle States once floated down, almost as light as the air itself, and the first year made but a few inches of growth? And yet a close root- pruned cottonwood tree or a cutting will, in this section, often grow ten feet high the first year. The potentiality of life in the root-pruned tree is many times greater than in the seed, and it has the additional advantage of striking several deep IO8 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. tap-roots instead of one, at the same time sending them much deeper than a seedling will. I have repeatedly dug Le Conte pear trees thus treated in spring, and by fall found four feet of almost perpendicular roots, and then left them still going down. (See the pear tree I hold in my right hand, else- where. ) I once dug, on the 3rd of July, a spring-set tree, and broke the roots at three feet below the surface, and this on unbroken prairie sod, with a so-called hard-pan subsoil, into which a post hole could not be dug except with a ground auger ! The grass was killed with a hoe and the ground kept clean with the same, and top-dressed well with cotton-seed meal raked in. The top measured four feet when dug. The penetrating power of tree roots is almost incredible. Nobody here, on Galveston Island, where ground cisterns are often used, will dare to plant a willow or china tree anywhere near one. I saw an instance where a willow had driven its roots through a twelve-inch brick and mortar wall and filled up the interior almost entirely. I could fill this entire chapter with instances of the wonderful penetrating power of root-pruned trees, to which the firmest soil seems to oppose not the slightest obstruction, but will cite only one- a Herbemont grape vine at Hitchcock, grown from a cutting, where it stood for six years, and of large size. I cut the roots to one- inch stubs and top to twelve inches, after planting about six inches deep the second time, in as small a hole as I could make, in ground never broken, at my back door. It was top- dressed with bone and ashes, after ramming as tight as a post. It grew two six-feet canes the first year, bore full the sec- Vond, covered a thirty-feet trellis the third, and now rambles half over a large cottonwood tree, and has borne annually immense crops of grapes, with never a spraying or a sign of disease, while all the cultivated Herbemonts in the neighbor- hood rot nearly every year. It has had liberal dressings of bone and ashes for eight years, and been cultivated entirely with the hoe. As still further demonstrating the superiority of nature's method of a firm, unbroken soil for seedling and close root- pruned trees, I will say that a part of my Kieffer orchard at DEEP PREPARATION WRONG. TOQ Hitchcock, embracing about one-quarter of an acre, was originally a pond, which I had filled up fully two feet with good surface soil before the trees were set. I expected to see an extraordinary growth on this spot, and was greatly surprised, at the end of two years, to find them steadily fall- ing behind the balance, that stood on ground broken only four or five inches. To remedy this, to me, then, most mys- terious condition of things, I yearly applied an increased quantity of fertilizer to this spot, but without avail, and now, at the end of fourteen years, it is plainly discernible by the inferior size of the trees that stand upon it. I will now close this part of my subject with a letter recently received from Mr. C. B. Patterson, of Payne's Depot, Scott County, Ky. MR. H. M. STRINGFELLOW. Dear Sir Having read with great interest your article in Texas Farm and Ranch on the subject of " A Deep Preparation of the Ground for Trees Wrong," please allow me to thank you for a per- fectly clear explanation of a mystery in horticulture that greatly puzzled my old father, now dead, as well as myself, and all my neighbors who know the fact. The old man was always a great lover of trees, and as the black walnut is a natural growth here, wherever the squirrels hid the nuts in fall, around in the scattering woods, that stood on his virgin pasture soil, as they often c!id, he would fence in the young groves in spots where the trees came up, to protect them from the stock. In a few years, tall, vigorous, handsome walnut groves rewarded his care, with no other attention, for the young trees seemed to laugh at the blue-grass sod. But wishing to extend these plantings to a place neglected by the squirrels when they hid their winter store, my father one day announced his intention of -beating them as a tree grower, and accordingly fenced off several acres, which he had plowed and harrowed several times, and most thoroughly prepared. When all was ready the places were checked off, and, like the squirrels, he planted the nuts. They came up nicely, and had the best of attention for several years, when he turned them over to the grass as the squirrels' trees were. But all to no purpose, for from the very first, in spite of all his care, he never could make his trees grow like theirs, and died in total ignorance as to how or why they beat him. This was twenty years or more ago, and the trees are still standing here, to show for themselves, not more than half as high or large as those planted by the squirrels on the unbroken virgin sod. It affords me great pleasure to furnish you this living and unanswerable proof of the correctness of your position, that for tree seed, and, I presume, your close root-pruned trees, which you claim to be even superior to seed, a firm, unbroken HO THE NEW HORTICULTURE. soil, like nature chooses, is better than any preparation man can make. I will further add that about ten years ago I turned out a part of a cultivated field adjoining that woodland pasture, and the squirrels have tried their hands on it also, but with no better luck than my father, for the trees are just as scrubby and inferior to those alongside in the woods, as were his, and we call them "cornfield" walnuts, to designate their inferiority. Yours very truly, C. B. PATTERSON. A few days after receiving this letter, I came across the following, in the New York Sun, which was so strongly cor- roborative that I cut it out : The finest shipment of walnut for 1895 came from Texas, but as a rule Indiana walnut is the best. Kentucky has more than any other state, but it does not average as high as in Indiana. The largest walnut mill in the world is in Chicago, and it uses about three thousand car loads a year. Fifty dollars per thousand is about the average price for the best grade of walnut, and this is all natural forest groivth, what is known as "cornfield" walnut being hard, irregu- lar, and has more or less windshakes. Figured walnut is very costly, and is used for veneering. One man in West Virginia owns a figured tree which cost him one thousand dollars, for which he has refused three thousand, and asks four thousand, there being over six thousand feet of lumber in it. With all this indisputable evidence of the vast superiority of the firm, solid seed-bed, on which nature plants her trees, is it possible to resist the conclusion that, while poor, long, fibrous-rooted trees need soft ground and to be "fed with a spoon," the sturdy seedling and close root-pruned tree de- light to overcome the resistance of unbroken ground ? CHAPTER IX. Cultivation. THE following remarks are intended to be of general application all over the country, but in regard to the peach, I would especially commend them to our coast country fruit-growers. If asked the very best location and treatment for a peach orchard here, I would answer most em- phatically, one broken just as shallow as possible, and with root-pruned trees, planted in as small holes as possible, and rammed tight. Or, better still, the unbroken prairie sod, the grass being killed for a foot or so where the trees are to stand, and the whole ground "cultivated " with a mowing machine often enough to keep the grass down to within four or five inches at the outside, and better less. Root-pruned trees on fairly well drained ground, thus treated and fertilized moder- ately, will live for many years and bear fine crops of large fruit, while those on deeply stirred soil and annually plowed will invariably die inside of six years ; at least those set with long roots will, and very likely the root-pruned also, for the peach cannot stand a loose surfaced, saturated soil in this level country. Having shown, first, that a long and fibrous-rooted is a radically wrong form of tree for planting ; and secondly, that large holes and a deeply pulverized soil, in which such trees are ordinarily set, and which they fill in a few years with the bulk of their roots, are receptacles for holding the semi-stag- nant water, often for days, even on well-drained ground, dur- ing and after continued heavy rains, followed by scalding sun- shine in summer and also intense cold in winter at the North, I will now take up the third probable cause of the early de- cline and death of many latter-day orchards, especially the peach, and that is, the annual more or less deep plowing to which nearly all are subjected, all over the country. (in) U2 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. The almost universal practice is to plow at least once a year, and then cultivate more or less deeply until midsummer. While the trees are young and vigorous, and for the first few years of bearing, all such orchards give their best results ; but when once in full bearing, no surface-rooted trees, especially the peach, such as I am now describing, can stand the drain of a continual cutting of their roots and live long, or give fruit of marketable size unless heavily fertilized every year, and at least four-fifths of the crop removed by hand, early in the season. This is the system hitherto adopted by the suc- cessful peach grower, Mr. Hale, with his orchards grown from long-rooted trees, and by which method he manages to make them profitable for ten or twelve years. Having never tested it myself on close root-pruned trees, I am very curious to see how it is going to work on that immense orchard in Georgia, planted after my method and on ground hitherto skimmed over a few inches deep for corn and cotton, according to the usual southern style. For the benefit of those who never read of it, I will say that Mr. Hale, when the cotton was off, without any hole digging or additional plowing, simply in- serted a spade about six inches deep where the trees were to stand, and, pushing the handle back just far enough to allow of the little one-inch rooted trees being stuck down behind it, withdrew the spade and pressed the soil back firmly with the foot. Of course, the short roots must have rested flat on the so-called hard-pan or subsoil, that from creation's dawn was never broken. From what I have read, he is now subsoiling the middles, intends to plow every winter, and cultivate clean until midsummer, apply free dressings of bone and potash annually, and thin out the fruit severely by hand. I will watch the results with a great deal of interest. Ground be- comes boggy, after excessive rains, only just so deep as it has been stirred, and it will become so after such rains for many years, thus greatly increasing the danger of injury to the roots as the trees on subsoiled ground get older, as well as rendering it almost impossible to drive wagons over it, if a prolonged wet spell should occur when the fruit is ripe. But to proceed with the surface roots of fruit trees, the CULTIVATION. 113 intimate relation between which and the fruit itself has been greatly overlooked. Every careful observer must have noticed that in orchards, even from long-rooted trees, while young and growing, the fine, delicate little feeding roots do not hunt the immediate surface like they do when the trees begin to bear. While the trees have nothing to do but to grow, these roots seem content to forage around six inches or more under the surface, and for this reason, plowing and deep cultivation during that period seems to do no harm, though cultivation deeper than necessary for killing grass and weeds is of no actual benefit to the root-pruned trees, nor in fact to any other, and may, on ground not perfectly drained, as noted above, do harm, after excessive rains. I have often wondered just what the relation was between each leaf and fruit and the root, and whether the former were not dependent to a certain extent on the good offices of certain individual roots on the surface. That in a general way the perfect development of the fruit does depend largely on these surface roots can easily be shown, by selecting a row of trees, for instance, in an apple orchard that has stood several years in sod. Plow one row five or six inches deep in spring, and cultivate and mow the others, never letting the grass get over four inches high. Fertilize neither, and unless apple trees act differently from peach and pear trees here, the fruit on the mowed land will be much the finest. As a further test, apply equal quantities of a good fertilizer to certain trees on the sod and cultivated ground, and the difference in favor of the sod will be surpris- ing. But, returning to the exact relation between the leaves and roots, the diagram on page 114 clearly shows that to a certain extent and in a general way there is such a correspond- ing relation. The diagram represents a bed or section in the Galveston City Park, through which I pass every day on my way down town. Having no particular use for the scrapings from the paved streets, the superintendent concluded to fertil- ize as well as raise the grade of the whole park about one foot. This bed was selected as the starting point, and load after load, largely composed of pulverized horse manure, was dumped and evenly spread about one foot deep and nicely 8 HORT. THE NEW HORTICULTURE. raked off. A start was then made on the section adjoining on the left, but before it was completed a very heavy rain fell, thoroughly saturating the mass and wetting the sod ground below. In forty-eight hours, and before work was begun again, every leaf on the liveoak trees in the center began to turn brown, and in a week were as dry and dead as if they had been parched. Two cedar trees that stood about four feet from the edge were affected similarly, one losing all the foliage and the other about half. But the point to be noticed is that the two large liveoaks standing at the immediate angle of the two manured plots lost their leaves in a triangular This diagram represents a section of the Galveston City Park. The squares represent trees i, i, the large liveoaks ; 2, 2, liveoaks ; 3, 3, the cedars mentioned in the text the shaded portions representing living foliage, aud the unshaded dead. shape, just above and corresponding to the shape of the ma- nured ground below, while all the balance of the foliage on both trees over the unmanured ground is still fresh and green, though two months have gone by. An examination of the ground will be made next spring to see the effect on the roots, but so far the young twigs seem to be unhurt. A fair pre- sumption is that only the fine hair roots were hurt or killed by the ammonia, but the question is, if those had been fruit trees about to bloom in spring, would not the destruction of five or six inches of the surface feeding-roots by the plow instead of by the manure, have so weakened their vitality as to cause a CULTIVATION. 115 failure of the fruit to set, or a subsequent shedding if the sea- son was bad ? Furthermore, suppose a severe drouth fol- lowed, as often does, would not the loss of those roots not only interfere greatly with the development of the crop that remained, but seriously impair the vitality of the trees them- selves ? In thousands of orchards over the country this pro- cess is kept up for years, tearing up the roots from spring till summer, then leaving the trees the balance of the season for replacing them, only to repeat the operation of destruction the next spring. After adopting a form of tree that induces or compels it to root shallow, allowing it to bear all it will, and furnishing it no extra supply of food, is there any wonder, after all this, supplemented by an annual ripping up of the roots them- selves, that orchards grow prematurely old ? Of course, I am now writing of the general run of orchards, to which there are thousands of honorable exceptions all over the country, both cultivated and in grass, where careful pruning and thinning of fruit, as well as a free use of manure and shallow cultivation, have attained the best results for a time; but the fact still stands that the profitable bearing period of all fruit trees has been steadily shortening of late years, and I feel confident that this is largely due to the three causes now given, aggravated by two others yet to be treated. I will now briefly allude to a few other benefits from plant- ing close root-pruned trees of all kinds on ground plowed as shallow as possible, or better, in virgin sod, if practicable, and mowing or cultivating shallow immediately around the trees from the day they are set, and a few years later putting the whole ground down to some kind of grass, whatever may be best for different sections, mowing close, at least until the fruit is gone, and-top dressing annually with some form of potash and phosphoric acid. Here Bermuda grass would head the list. I know of peach trees standing where they came up in this city, in a compact Bermuda sod, that has been closely cut with a lawn-mower for twelve years, that are to-day pictures of health and vigor. They have been moder- ately pruned, have never failed of a heavy crop, have never Il6 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. been thinned, and yet fruit is always large and fine. From time to time the lawn has been manured. Trees of this age that were set with long roots and plowed regularly afterward can nowhere be shown in this whole section. In fact, six years is the utmost limit, in this level country, of the latter treatment, and the fruit is far inferior. One great advantage of the above general system for all fruit trees is that no tree trunk will ever sun-scald. This comes entirely from the inability of a tree grown from long roots and annually plowed, to supply a free enough flow of sap, during hot and very dry weather, to prevent stagnation and scald on the side exposed to the afternoon sun. A close- pruned tree, with its deeply penetrating roots, will never fail to do this. A second advantage is that fruit grown on trees standing in firm soil, undisturbed, will in rainy seasons be of far better eating and shipping qualities than that from trees whose roots are gorged with water, in a deep, loose soil, no matter though well drained. This I know to be a fact. A third advantage will be a great increase in the hardiness of all fruit trees in northern latitudes. I am confident all varieties, especially the peach, can be grown with perfect success where now they winter-kill every year. A fourth advantage is a firm roadway for hauling out the fruit in wet weather. A fifth and final advantage is economy. Far superior f ruit, and at a cost of twenty-five cents on the dollar, as compared with old methods and long-rooted trees. As going to show that these principles are true, and that there is an increasing feeling of doubt and dissatisfaction with present methods and their results as exemplified in the orchards of to-day, grown, as all of them are, from long-rooted trees, several years old when set, I will close this part of my subject with a quotation from the April issue of Green's Fruit Grower, published at Rochester, in the center of the great fruit-growing district of Western New York. Mr. P. C. Reynolds, a regular contributor, and evidently a horticul- CULTIVATION. I 17 turist of long and wide experience, writing of their present unproductive apple orchards, says : "In my earliest recollection, little thought was given to the cul- ture of the orchard for the orchard's sake. So long as profitable crops could be grown among the trees, the orchard was cultivated. When cropping ceased to be profitable, cultivation ceased, or if any was done, it was done by the snouts of swine. And yet I can hardly recall a season, during the first twenty-five years of my life, that apples were not abundant. Some seasons, certain favorite varieties, like Early Harvest, Sweet Bough, Fall Pippin, etc., bore heavier crops than in others, but they were rarely entirely barren. "The older members of the Western New York Horticultural Society will remember how often this subject came up before the society from twenty to twenty-five years ago. Patrick Barry, John J. Thomas, Elisha Moody, J. S. Woodward, S. D. Willard, and many other gentlemen, eminently successful fruit-growers, urged the im- portance of thorough cultivation and, after the trees should become so large as to require all the ground, making the growing of annual crops unprofitable and inconvenient, they would continue culture for the benefit of trees and fruit. On the other hand, Dr. E. Ware Sylvester, Henry E. Hooker, Godfrey Zimmerman, James A. Root, and a few others, insisted that after apple trees have reached bear- ing age, as much, or more, fruit could be produced by seeding down to grass as by cultivation, provided no grass was removed from the orchard, but was mowed and left upon the ground as mulch, or pas- tured by hogs or sheep. The mooted question was never definitely settled by the society, but comes up frequently of late years. Both parties have been able to instance many proofs of their side of the controversy. From many years of observation among orchardists, and from my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that fruitfulness depends more upon several other conditions than upon cultivation, after the trees have arrived at bearing age. "Now, I would lend all possible encouragement for the feeding- roots of apple trees to ramify and forage freely in this surface soil, near enough the surface to be benefited by the heat of the sun and the vivifying effects of the atmosphere and its fructifying gases. I would be very careful not to drive those roots to the cold, inert, sterile subsoil, beyond the reach of the benign influences of that atmosphere of heat and gases that permeates the surface soil, where myriads of living organisms, in the humus, carry on the work of nitrification. Subsequent cultivation would be carried on with the purpose of avoiding the disturbance of the roots in their best feeding ground, and keeping the soil pulverized and mellow beyond the roots, for their future occupancy. I would leave, every year, a considerable space around every tree beyond that covered by the branches, to be filled by the season's growth of the roots, upon which I would plant nothing, for it is very poor policy to place the roots of annuals in competition with the roots of the trees for the plant-food and moist- ure of the soil. Hence, every year, the space around the trees, upon which no annual would be planted, would broaden until but Il8 THE NEW HOR'lICULTURE. narrow stripes between the rows of trees would be deeply plowed. Probably the soil above the roots could then be most economically kept mellow by means of a cultivator, or of some of the most effec- tive of modern harrows. When the time arrives that the roots of the trees nearly fill the soil, and the land should be entirely devoted to the trees and fruit, and the growing of temporary crops ceases, the question presents itself : 'Should the surface be still cultivated, or should it be seeded down ? ' If seeded to grass, I am quite positive that no grass, in any form, should be removed from the orchard ; it should be mowed frequently, and left as a mulch upon the ground, or it should be pastured closely with sheep or swine. Which of these species of animals it would be advisable to keep upon the orchard would depend largely upon the fruit-grower's ability to handle the animals with most profit. Most men would probably do better with swine than sheep. There has been less decline in the price of pork, for several years, than in the price of wool. If sheep were kept, mutton sheep are preferable. Mr. Woodward and many others claim that sheep are better gleaners of fallen apples and the insects they contain than swine. "Another question of momentous importance in connection with this subject is : ' Which would best conserve the moisture in the soil, a mellow surface or a surface covered with grass ? ' Experience would unhesitatingly say, a mellow surface. Yet, if the grass were mowed before it blossomed, and left spread upon the ground, as a mowing-machine leaves it, before the advent of the dry season, the mulch would afford nearly as much protection to the roots, perhaps quite as much, as a mulch of mellow soil. I really question whether it makes a great deal of difference in the productiveness of orchards, after they have come into bearing, and their roots pretty much fill the soil, whether the surface is kept mellow by frequent cultivation, or is seeded to grass and kept mulched, or pastured with sheep or swine, provided the trees are liberally supplied with plant food. Ac- cording to my observation for several years, since attention was called to this question, the most productive old orchards have been in sod. Whether the sod was an efficient cause of that productive- ness, or some other causes were dominant, I am unable to say." H. B. Hillyer, of Belton, Texas, closes a letter on the subject of "Cultivation of Orchards" as follows : "But is cultivation of a bearing orchard necessary? May not Mr. Stringfellow be right? I am leaning to that opinion. I have a beautiful orchard, thirty varieties of peaches, twenty of plums, twenty of grapes, twelve of pears, four of apples, five of figs, five of apricots, two of nectarines, two of blackberries. My orchard is cultivated nicely. I have some twelve or fourteen peach trees in my yard and chicken run. These have never been cultivated, but have been sur- face manured. Last year, on account of severe cold, fruit in all of this section was almost a failure, was an entire failure in my culti- vated orchard, while the trees in my yard and chicken run made good crops, some of them as much as four or five bushels. This season CULTIVATION. I 19 we had two white frosts, most of the Japan plums were killed, all the apricots are killed, and at least three-fourths of the fruit in the culti- vated orchard is killed and some trees have no fruit at all, and some hardy varieties have a fair crop, while all the peach trees in my uncul- tivated yards are full as they can bear of fruit. This experience of two years has at least convinced me never again to plow an orchard until all danger of frost is over. "My garden is very rich; is spaded every year with a prong spade. Dirt is not turned over, to avoid injury to the roots as much as possible. These trees have been carefully pruned ; have been shy bearers of fine fruit ; are five years old and are badly sun scalded will barely live another year. "A negro man near me had an orchard a few years ago that he annually planted in corn or cotton ; the trees are all dead, but along his fence he put out some trees twenty-five years ago. They have grown in weeds that never have been plowed or hoed or mown down. These trees are still free from sun scald and bearing good crops of fine fruit. ' ' What does all this mean ? " CHAPTER X. flight. HAVING discussed three of the causes that are at the bottom of the general complaint of declining orchards everywhere throughout the eastern half of the United States, we now come to the fourth ; that is, disease. In human physiology, the last few years of scientific research have developed the most wonderful discoveries. Mysteries that were dark, and problems hidden for ages, are now made as clear as day by the germ theory of disease in the human system. And not only are diseases accounted for and explained on this theory and by actual observations under the microscope, but also the commonest functions of our bodies, such as digestion, and other useful fermentations, as those of yeast, wine, beer, the nitrification of the soil, are all due to the incubation and multiplication of millions of those myste- rious little spores, germs, microbes, bacilli, bacteria, etc., good, bad and indifferent, that swarm everywhere in the earth, the air, our bodies, and everything on the earth. These facts are, of course, known and admitted everywhere, and science has been and is now devoting all its energies to the discovery of the laws and conditions which regulate and govern these infinitesimal creatures in their propagation and relation to disease in the human system. But, while the majority of scientists have turned their attention to man and his bacterial friends and enemies, Professors Burrill, Galloway and others are giving their best endeavors to the study and elucidation of the subject in connection with the diseases of plants, especially the various forms of blight of the apple and pear, and the yellows in the peach. That these diseases, as well as root-rot and black-knot of the peach and plum, are due to the presence in the sap of minute organisms known as bacteria, seems clearly established, and that probably epidemics, as (120) BLIGHT. 121 well as local attacks on trees, occur from a vastly increased generation of them, brought about by certain favorable con- ditions. Herein lies the whole problem of bacterial life, both in man, trees and everything. It is simply a question in both of conditions. For instance, if yeast be mixed with dough and placed in a temperature below freezing, the mass will not rise; nor if placed at once in a heated stove will it rise. Both are wrong conditions. Now, let scientists find out for us just what are the conditions under which these bacteria multiply so enormously in the sap of trees as to cause the phenomena we call blight, yellows, etc. With a view to aid in solving this problem, I present some observations from my own ex- perience, as well as a few suggestions on the subject. There are two main points to be considered : i. Where do the bacteria of blight, for instance, come from? 2. What are the conditions most favorable for their propagation in numbers sufficient to produce the effect called blight ? There are but three possible answers to the first question. Leaving out the one-time accepted theory of spontaneous generation, which science has demonstrated to be false, air sterilized by heat and kept from contact with the atmosphere showing no signs of bacterial life so long as thus excluded, the bacteria of blight come either from the soil, from the air, or they are indigenous to the sap itself, of course in numbers ordinarily harmless. That they are taken up by the tree from the soil has no advocates that I am aware of, the generally accepted theory being that they are strictly external to the tree, and make their attack from the outside. Witness the statement that blight spreads, that the fruit spurs and tender shoots are most liable to attack, and directions to cut back the affected parts. Of course, the latter would do no good if the bacteria were already in the sap of the tree. That they are thus in- digenous to and in the sap of every pear and apple tree now, and always have been, is the only possible hypothesis which will explain all the phenomena of blight. For instance, an apparently healthy pear tree may be planted miles away from any other tree, and yet when the proper conditions arise, which I will presently explain, it will show blight. Are we 122 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. to suppose, on the external theory, that the whole atmosphere is alive with the bacteria of blight ? Again, as a rule, blight develops worst on the most vigorous, healthy trees, in clean, cultivated ground? How shall we account for this, when all experience with man, animals and trees, under the attacks of insect pests, goes to show that the strongest and most vigor- ous always best resist injurious attacks ? Again, why, if the bacteria of blight are in the air and attack from the outside, does any tree escape ? All are equally exposed, and the weakly tree should certainly succumb as readily as the strong. But the hypothesis that these bacteria are in and a part of all pear and apple trees in limited numbers, and, under certain normal conditions play, perhaps, a specific, useful part in the life and development of the trees, will cover and explain all the phenomena of blight. A contrary supposition demands the belief in an actual creation one hundred years or so ago, when this disease first appeared, else why were pear and apple trees never attacked before ? Simply because the con- ditions for their development in destructive numbers had never been furnished. That the eastern half of the United States, say from Kansas and Texas to Canada, with its ex- tremes of wet and dry, heat and cold, often in rapid succes- sion, present ideal conditions for all bacterial diseases of trees, there is no doubt, and if there is a region in the world where they could originate it would be there. I have often wished that we knew the exact history of the trees upon which blight originally appeared in New England, from the time they were planted until the disease broke out. I think, however, it would read somewhat thus : The ground was deeply plowed, well pulverized and ma- nured, or naturally rich, and the trees when set were about three years old, well provided with long as well as fibrous roots, which were nicely spread out in large holes. They were then well cultivated and cared for, especially in the way of a good plowing every year, until they came into bearing, the first light crops being very fine, and when loaded down with their first very heavy crop, all of which the owner left on, the season turned out very dry. Being largely surface- BLIGHT. 123 rooted, they made practically no wood growth, having all they could do to mature the fruit. The owner, seeing the strain put upon them, concluded to relieve them the next year, and pruned heavily during the fall or early winter. The weather subsequently was very mild and open, and having practically rested during summer from severe drouth and their heavy load, and stimulated by the removal of a large part of the tops, the sap began to move freely. Then came a stinging freeze, perhaps just after a heavy rain, freezing the roots as well as tops, completely checking the moving sap for a month or two. That was not a late spring but a late winter freeze, producing a stagnation, so to speak, of the sap. Had that freeze occurred after growth had started well no harm might have occurred, as motion would have been resumed at once, but standing for a month or more the sap, to use a common expression, "soured." Now, there, in that sap, was the ideal condition in which the hitherto harmless blight bacteria love to revel, run riot, fondle one another, perhaps, in amorous dalliance, and mul- tiply by billions. The owner was surprised to see how slow the leaves were in putting out, the blossoms, if any, having opened profusely and dropped before a shade of green ap- peared. When the time came for some of the young pears to drop from each cluster, they largely refused to do so, but dried up on the fruit spurs, and turned black. There, before a leaf or shoot had shown a sign, was the blight, and those fruit spurs, the tender, vital points of its first development ; just as the bacilli of consumption, lurking through heredity for years in the system of an apparently healthy man, if favoring conditions of development are given, such as ex- treme overheating, followed by sudden change to wet or cold, will concentrate upon their favorite point, the lungs, and multiply rapidly into millions. The former were the condi- tions for blight, the latter for consumption. Had the trees or man not furnished them, both might have lived, and died from other causes. I will now furnish proofs that will show beyond all reason- able doubt proofs which can be verified by observation and 124 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. experiment that blight is entirely a matter of conditions of temperature, moisture and pruning. Also, that all its vary- ing phases, as well as hitherto unexplained phenomena, can be completely accounted for under the hypothesis of a natural, or at least present, existence of the germs in limited num- bers in the sap of all pear trees, which, under certain given conditions, are capable of multiplying beyond conception, resulting in what we call "blight." I will show plainly how, from analogies drawn from the known actions of such organ- isms in the human system, that bacteria, having once effected a lodgment or developed in the sap, corresponding to the blood in us, of those pear trees in New England, all other pear trees in the country must almost necessarily now have some of the bacteria in their sap. I will also make it clear why this dreaded disease has never prevailed in California, or but twice to a very limited extent in the whole coast country of Texas, though pear trees of the old varieties, unproductive but healthy, have been growing here for twenty-five years. I think I can also satisfy everyone that the conditions of blight are so completely under our control that pear orchards may be planted from henceforth which, like the old original (the January number of the Horticultural Visitor, Kirmundy, 111., contains a photograph of this tree) seedling Sudduth pear tree, now standing near Springfield, 111., ten feet in circum- ference of trunk, fifty-five feet high and seventy-five years old, will long outlive the planter. This grand old pear tree, in perfect health, still bearing enormous crops, a landmark for all the surrounding country, is a towering monument to the infinite superiority of nature and her methods. While man, with his science and his plows, his hoes and his cultivators, has ripped and torn and scratched the surface of the ground ; has dug his big holes and spread the roots most carefully by hand, a single tiny seed was dropped upon the firm but kindly bosom of the earth, and there to-day stands in silent majesty this evidence of her skill. Where, now, are the cultivated, pruned and fertilized pear orchards of that state and the whole country, upon which untold money and weary days of labor have been wasted, as well as bright hopes wrecked in those BLIGHT. 125 seventy-five long years ? But now to my theory of blight, its cause and prevention, and in certain cases perhaps its cure. It is well-known that long before bacilli or bacteria were ever heard of, eminent medical authority had declared that few, if any, human beings were perfectly healthy, a close examination always revealing some weak point in every one. If by healthy we mean blood absolutely free from the bacilli or germs of disease, then we may, in view of the wonderful revelations of bacteriology, assert with the utmost confidence, that there is not such a human being on the earth. With all the various germs of malaria floating in the atmosphere, and those of every variety of epidemic that at one time or another has scourged humanity, taken into the blood through the lungs ; the bacilli of typhoid and other malignant fevers intro- duced into the system through milk and water, and once- there, though never developed in numbers sufficient to pro- duce specific attacks, still there, for not only our lives, but, through heredity the lives of our descendants to the remotest generation, is it credible that there exists to-day a single absolutely healthy being ? In the blood of every person who has at any time visited a consumptive friend lurks the dreaded bacilli of that scourge of the human race, and so with all other diseases. That in so few instances they show it by an active outburst is simply due to a want of the proper conditions for the rapid and infinite multiplication of the germs. Thus we see that we are carrying around in our blood chained tigers, so to speak, ready at any moment to devour us, if we slip their chains by furnishing the conditions for an abnormal development. But while all this is true of man, science tells us that it is partially true of plants also. But thus far science has failed to determine their relation to plants, or define their exact meth- ods of attack and development in the sap or blood of the tree. The general, if not universal hypothesis is, as stated above, that the bacteria are in the air primarily, and when plants or trees furnish the proper conditions, the phenomena which we call blight, for instance, occurs from an external attack. But reasoning from analogy, is this necessarily so? It is plain 126 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. that there is a most marked similarity between the diseases of man and trees. We have the quick and fatal work of the cholera germs duplicated in the blight; the slow, insidious method of consumption in the yellows, while the black-knot and root-rot furnish an excellent counterpart to the various forms of scrofula. Now, then, admitting that the germs are already in the human blood, if we can show how a like condition probably exists in the sap of all trees, the problem of blight, yellows, black-knot and root-rot will be solved, provided we can show how the conditions for their development can be prevented. However, I do not mean to say that, while the bacteria are already in the sap, they may not also be in the atmosphere, and in epidemics of blight or yellows, for instance, very greatly aggravate the attack. Now, then, for the proof that all pear trees, for instance, are probably infected with the bacteria of blight. It will be no valid objection to say that if so, the microscope would show it, for the quantity of sap exposed beneath a powerful instrument is so exceedingly small that while the bacteria in the sap of a badly diseased tree might be seen, they could easily exist in that of an apparently healthy tree in numbers that would escape detection. Remember, then, that when the first outbreaks of blight occurred at several points in New England and the eastern states, and admitting, for argument's sake, that the attacks were strictly external, fruit culture there, as a science, was far in advance of the balance of the country, nurseries much larger, as well as more numerous, and orchards more exten- sive, we see how easily and rapidly the bacteria of blight must have spread. Every breeze bore them by millions, not only in the air, but in the pollen of infected trees, to other trees in bloom, or dropped them on surfaces cut or wounded by the hoe or plow. Every insect and bee carried them for miles around. The busy woodpecker and sapsucker took them on their bills from diseased trees and drilled them into healthy ones, whence buds and cuttings carried them to the nurseries. Once there, dissemination, of course, took a wider range, until BLIGHT. 127 in a few years the whole East was infected. To prove how rapidly this can be accomplished, I need only refer to the recent introduction of the San Jos scale into New Jersey, and elsewhere throughout the country. If a slow traveling fly and insect could so quickly be scattered far and wide, what shall we say or how limit the spread of the subtle bacteria ? Of course, I am presuming that, once in the sap of a tree, they remained there, often in numbers, perhaps, too limited, or from want of proper conditions for development, unable to produce the blight. The eastern states, the nursery grounds at that time for the whole country, once thoroughly infected, we see how almost of necessity the bacteria were rapidly scattered in nursery stock from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the Lakes to the Gulf^of Mexico. That this infection did actually occur all over the eastern half of our country is proved by continuous developments of blight, from time to time, in different localities throughout this whole region, fol- lowing rapidly after its original appearance in the East. While, then, the presumption of the present existence of these bacteria in all pear trees is a fair one, it is a known fact that they do pervade the sap of all pear trees on which the external evidences of blight have manifested themselves, fruit growers having been repeatedly warned to cleanse their knives and shears thoroughly after pruning diseased trees. Now, then, admitting, as the authorities on this subject do, that the sap of all such trees does contain the bacteria, the presump- tion is that they remain there in greater or less numbers, and the burden of proof is on them to show the contrary. We come, now, to the vital question : What are the actual causes of, or rather conditions for, the visible mani- festations of blight ? I stated in another place that tempera- ture, moisture, and pruning in certain cases were at the bottom of it, and foreshadowed in my supposed history of its original appearance a theory, and the only one that will com- pletely account for all the phenomena. And right here I have to make an assertion, positively true, but quite as revo- lutionary as that regarding the best form of a tree for plant- ing, which is, that the universal statement that the "best 128 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. time to prune a tree is when it is at rest" is exactly the opposite of the truth, the best time to prune being when the sap is in motion. As pointed out all along, there is a close analogy between man and trees in the matter of diseases, and the same is equally true as to their physical growth and development. They both have alternate periods of activity and rest, the lat- ter following as an apparent necessity from the former. Man's rest is the half or a portion of every day, and to wake him up every night at eleven or twelve o'clock and repeat it several times before day, on the score of hygiene, would be considered queer treatment. A tree's rest is the half or a portion of every year, and that is the very treatment we adopt for our trees. No sooner have the leaves fallen and the trees settled themselves for a comfortable winter's rest, than many owners, having leisure at that time, and to save work in spring, come along with their manure, perhaps, or else plow the ground, thus making soluble plant food that would have lain dormant until spring. However dormant trees may appear, if with our variable climate a prolonged warm spell occurs, and particularly if the owner prunes considerably at: this same time of leisure, the equilibrium between the tops- and roots being destroyed, there must be more or less motion of the sap to repair the damage. This plowing, pruning and cultivating during the winter and early spring are our methods- of breaking the rest of our trees, and so effectual are they that the blooms and leaves often start long before they would had the trees been let alone. But there is a condition, in this va- riable climate of ours, that greatly increases the danger of this winter movement of the sap, and that is a prolonged drouth the preceding spring and summer, which is the almost infal- lible condition precedent of blight the next year, if followed by a late winter or early spring freeze. Remember, now, that rest in trees can be produced by ex- cessive heat and drouth, as well as excessive cold, for I have seen orange trees curl and shed their leaves under such con- ditions in July, and become more dormant than usual in midwinter here. If pear trees are forced to rest in summer BLIGHT. 129 from such conditions, and all surface-rooted ones from long- rooted trees are necessarily compelled to rest, especially if carrying a heavy crop, then, stimulated by the plowing, fertil- izing and winter pruning described, if a mild spell occurs any time in winter, a movement of the sap is sure to take place. It may not show itself in leaves or blooms, for it does not in the grape; but the movement will be there, and if that motion be checked by a freeze, and the sap stagnate or sour, so to> speak, for a month or more before growth starts again, then 1 blight is certain to occur. We have furnished, then, the con- ditions for an abnormal development and propagation by mil- lions of the bacteria, and I pointed out above the course of that development. The blooms first show it, next the fruit spurs, then after warm rains and muggy weather later on, the tender shoots blacken and droop, and the disease spreads to the limbs around the base of the fruit spurs. Now, then, for some of the unexplained phenomena of blight. 1. Why do the most vigorous trees in well cultivated ground surfer oftener than the weakly ones alongside, or in grass? Because, given the conditions for blight described,, the vigorous tree will certainly be most susceptible to the stimulating treatment named, and in addition, the owner is- sure, in his desire to produce a more uniform appearance of the orchard, to cut back the long canes on it very severely,, while the weakly tree often, in fact generally, escapes the knife altogether. I years ago treated trees just that way myself, and know that the sap in a heavily pruned, vigorous young tree will be in full flow or motion in a warm spell in- winter, when the other is still quite dormant, and fails to fur- nish the conditions for the bacterial development within. The germs were in the sap of the weaker one also, but, the proper conditions not being furnished, failed to develop, just as in every cholera or yellow fever epidemic, certain persons- escape those diseases, and yet in food, water and air the germs must have gotten into their blood, if not there before. Science has yet to determine the exact conditions in man and trees that govern their development. 2. Why has blight never appeared in California? First, 9 HORT. I^O THE NEW HORTICULTURE. because trees are irrigated there, and, consequently, always make a normal summer growth ; they never rest entirely at that season. Secondly, because they are never exposed to the proper extremes of temperature in winter, the climate be- ing cool, moist and uniform during that period, and the trees, having performed their work throughout the long summer, are content to rest. Having been brought mostly from the east, the pear trees must necessarily have the blight bacteria in their sap, but the extremes of heat, drouth, floods and cold are lacking for their development. Now, lastly, why did blight break out in my pear orchard in 1894, after years of bearing, and when a case was never known in this section before ? But as the experience of this orchard furnishes an absolute demonstration of my hypothe- sis that blight bacteria exist at all times in all pear trees, in perhaps a modified form and subject to certain conditions, which, being given, they are capable of rapid as well as almost infinite multiplication, I will defer the discussion of it until the next chapter, when some experiments in pruning at different times from spring until summer will also be given, which go to show beyond all doubt that the proper, and, in fact, the only time when any tree should be pruned is, though contrary to general teaching, when the sap is in motion. CHAPTER XI. Blight. I WILL now give final and conclusive evidence in favor of the internal theory of blight, from an experience with that disease in my well known pear orchard at Hitch- cock, in 1894. Up to that spring, not a case of blight had ever been known in the coast country of Texas, and as this orchard had borne heavy crops for five years none was expected. It contained 1,250 Le Conte and 250 Kieffer, standing on thirteen acres of ground, 500 eight, 500 nine and 500 ten years old, and while all had been heavily fertilized every year, the 500 oldest received per acre one ton of cotton- seed meal, and 500 pounds of the hull ashes, containing 30 per cent, potash and 8 per cent, phosphoric acid, annually for five years. The trees bloomed like a snow bank in the spring of 1893, and set an enormous crop. I knew that the pears should be thinned, but having had heavy crops of fine fruit before without it, concluded to break all records and let them alone. No cotton-seed meal was applied that or the preceding year, but a double quantity of the hull ashes. The ground had been in grass and mowed several times for two years, but knowing that the trees had big work ahead, ignorantly thinking to help them, the whole orchard was lightly plowed in March and kept absolutely clean until July. This was an easy task, for after May no more rain fell for nearly three months. It may well be imagined what a strain this put upon the trees, but, ever hoping rain would come, they were let alone. The 250 oldest Le Conte were ten years of age, and the heavy fertilizing had produced a growth that was phenomenal. Many of them measured about fourteen inches in diameter one foot above ground, were thirty to thirty-four feet high, the limbs lapping across twenty- five-feet rows, and a single tree gave twenty-seven 5o-pound (131) 132 THE NEW HORTICUL'JURE. boxes of pears. The eight and nine-year trees had received less than a third as much fertilizer, and were just as small in proportion, but still fine trees. The total yield was over nine thousand bushels actually shipped, and good judges estimated that fully two thousand bushels were knocked down and bruised in gathering. These facts will be testified to by J. C. Glover, station agent at Hitchcock, who shipped the fruit. The summer continued dry, with light showers, until October, when good rains fell, and in November, being in the nursery business at that time, I set twenty men to work, and by the first day of January had largely over one million cuttings in the ground, all from those trees, and had cut out heavily besides, to prevent a repetition of such a crop next year. The fall and winter were very mild, and having rested so completely all through the summer, by the iyth of Janu- ary a few stray blossoms were showing, and shoots every- where were pushing from the cut ends of the canes and limbs, a very unusual thing. On that day the thermometer fell to eighteen degrees, completely checking all growth. About the first of March, instead of leafing out and blooming as usual, the trees were perfectly dormant, and remained so until April. In the meantime, having determined to experiment most thoroughly with Bordeaux mixture for prevention of what is known here as " bitter rot," which attacks Kieffer pears, more or less, every year while ripening, I selected three Kieffer and also three Le Conte adjoining, and before a bud opened sprayed them well. This was repeated at short intervals the whole season, and especially after rains, though the spray adhered well even then. In fact, those six trees were literally blue-washed from spring until fall. Though suspecting nothing, having had absolutely no experience with blight, I noticed the peculiarity about the failure of the blossoms to drop promptly, but thought nothing of it, until immediately after a heavy rain in May, followed by calm, hot weather, when in a few days everywhere the fruit spurs began to blacken and the tender tips of the shoots to droop. In a few weeks the whole orchard showed more or less signs of blight, BLIGHT. 133 not a single tree escaping, though on many the evidence was light, and confined to the fruit spurs alone. In spite of it all, however, they bore a moderate crop, and not a tree died. This was due entirely to the fact that the natural water level here is only from four to five feet below the surface, and consequently the sap kept in motion more during the pre- ceding drouthy summer than if the water had been twenty or more feet below. This explains clearly why blight has never prevailed be- fore here, as it has not in California, where irrigation does the same for their trees in summer. Four hundred six-year- old Garber pear trees alongside of this orchard showed no signs of the disease, nor did another Le Conte orchard of one thousand trees, six years old, which I owned, about six hundred yards distant, having been neither pruned nor plowed. Moreover, two trees the same age, and set when my oldest were, which I gave to a neighbor who helped me plant, both having borne heavy crops, but neither pruned or plowed, also escaped entirely. The six sprayed trees blighted quite as badly as any, and the Kieffer pears showed equal signs of rot. Now, then, on the external theory, why did those six trees blight, though completely covered with the most effec- tive known germicide the whole season, and, as the bacteria could not have come from the gulf, how did it happen that in their journey from the blighting districts to the north of us, they passed over a great number of pear trees fourteen miles above me at Alvin and other points, without attacking a single tree ? There is but one intelligent explanation. No other trees bore as heavily as mine the year before, nor did any other man commence to prune as early as I did, or do it as severely. The preceding drouth and heavy crop, with early and severe pruning, aided by the freeze of January 17, pro- duced the conditions in my trees favorable to a greatly in- creased multiplication of the germs already in the trees, and the result was what is known as blight. And in passing, I will say here that thousands of dollars have been wasted in useless going over and cutting out the affected shoots as they appear. I tried it most thoroughly on a few trees, and found 134 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. by fall that there was no difference at all in the actual amount of pruning done, or in the appearance of the trees alongside that received but one pruning the next winter, another evi- dence that the disease is internal and beyond the control of the knife. This theory, also, accounts fully for the well known fact that blight does not prevail every season, because the proper conditions of moisture, or rather, lack of it, and temperature, are not forthcoming, and without these, blight is just as im- possible as it is to make dough "rise" in an icebox. But on the external hypothesis, where in these non-blighting seasons do the bacteria go ? Having now given a reasonable explan- ation of all the phenomena of blight, it only remains for those intending to plant pear or apple trees hereafter to fol- low nature, in order to grow them just as free from blight as her old seedlings are, in fact, even more so, for a close root- pruned tree will drive its several tap-roots much deeper into the moist subsoil than any seedling will. Plow shallow after- wards for a few years, giving liberal supplies of food on poor ground, and then let the grass grow, keeping it well mowed through the growing season. While such trees, if not fertil- ized or cultivated before growth starts, will stand light winter pruning while young, perhaps, everywhere, and heavy prun- ing here, still after bearing a knife should never be applied until the leaves are out. A tree can be literally cut to pieces after that, and while active growth continues, with perfect impunity. I have several times cut both peach and pear to the ground, and they sprang up with increased vigor, and everybody knows that the grape is best grafted at that time. And, by the way, I am satisfied, both from experience and ob- servation, that fall and early winter plowing and pruning of grape vines that have been planted with roots spread out lat- erally are the potent, probably the sole, causes of subsequent rot in the fruit. The old root-pruned Herbemont at Hitch- cock, before mentioned, that bears annually such enormous crops, free from all disease, is strong evidence of this. No tree or plant will become so completely surface-rooted from long roots as the vine, and none penetrate more deeply from BLIGHT. 135 close root and top-pruning. While I have often pruned single vines after the buds were swollen, and once when break- ing, and had the sap to flow freely from the cuts for several days, I never saw the slightest damage from it. Perhaps this very flow may be a relief to the vine, the sap of which seems to move in spring with more intense activity than that of any other plant. Perhaps thus pent up by the dry surfaces from winter pruning the vines may become gorged or congested, thereby furnishing the proper conditions for subsequent rot in the fruit, especially if a late freeze has occurred. Here is a wide field for experiment, especially with close root-pruned vines. If pruning can be delayed, as I am sure it can, as well with vines as trees, until growth actually starts in spring, it is plain that a crop of fruit will never be lost, as the terminal buds start first, while those that are to furnish the fruit are more backward and no risk is ever run of knock- ing off the shoots in pruning, or, being killed by frost. How- ever this may be with the grape, it will readily be seen that by deferring pruning of fruit trees until the fruit has set, in fact, become well developed, we do away almost entirely with all necessity for thinning. By removing parts of all the bear- ing shoots and spurs the crop can be reduced as desired, re- sulting in a marked and surprising increase of development in the remaining fruit in a few days. This I have proved time and again. And now, having shown the causes of blight and the meth- ods for its absolute prevention in all pear orchards planted hereafter, provided these methods be adopted, the question naturally arises, What is to be done to prevent blight in orchards already surface-rooted from planting long-rooted trees ? The answer is plain. Put them down at once and for all time to grass, to preserve every root for an emergency of severe drouth. Often light summer showers will stimulate growth in such trees where a dry bed of three or four inches of loose soil would not be wet through. Keep the grass closely mowed the whole season, and top-dress annually with free, applications of some complete fertilizer or barnyard manure, to obtain a healthy growth until the trees begin to 336 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. bear. After that apply potash freely, also, to give health to the trees, as well as color and quality to the fruit. And here come into play the surface-roots of trees, between which and the size as well as quality of the fruit there is a most intimate relation. I am confident that the well known deficiency of quality in nearly all California fruit is due entirely to the fact that, under their system of cultivation, no surface roots are ever allowed to form. In the east it is well known that dry seasons make good shipping, high-flavored fruit, and yet there, where they have perfection in climate and water under control, we find poor quality. Their method is to keep the plow and cultivator going practically the whole growing sea- son, compelling the trees to form what may be called surface roots six inches below the ground. This is entirely artificial and contrary to nature, for while all young trees root primarily as deep as they can, a bearing tree has sense enough to know that its cookshop is on the surface, where air, heat and rain prepare its food, and having something to do besides grow, it avails itself of every means to obtain that food. If allowed, it quickly fills the whole surface with its hungry little feeders. Cut them as often as you will, if given the slightest chance back they come again. There is where the value of a firm, closely mowed surface comes in. The sod protects these tender rootlets from the summer heat and cold of winter, and yet if kept mowed, being allowed no evaporating surface, takes but little food and moisture from them, nor will it hold surplus water after excessive rains, like loose soil, to scald .and drown them out. And here I would call particular attention to the fact that the sod is not really the compact ground it appears to be, as is evidenced by the fact that after heavy rains the water is much more rapidly absorbed by grass land than clean com- pacted ground. The pores, so to speak, of such are run together and somewhat closed, but the grass roots keep the soil lighter, and by their decay from time to time afford minute natural avenues of absorption, which allow the water to find its way into and through the soil. Adopt, then, the lawn system for a pear tree now grow- BLIGHT. 137 ing, and annual fertilizing after growth starts, never putting a knife to them until after the leaves are out in spring. If water can be had in addition, that ought to furnish absolute immunity from blight, for it is simply a question of healthy, uniform, continuous motion of the sap during the preceding growing season. The sap must not be allowed to thicken prematurely and go to rest. Of course, every one knows that it does not rise or fall, as we commonly express it, but keeps in motion for a stated period and then rests. Where water cannot be applied freely in severe spring or early sum- mer drouth, the next best thing for such trees is to remove a large part of the fruit and prune heavily. This will stimulate a movement of the sap. The universal exemption of old seed- ling pear trees everywhere, and, with the exception given, the general exemption of this whole coast country, where the water is at no time lower than four or five feet from the sur- face, proves that a continuous movement of the sap in sum- mer has a great deal to do with the absence of blight the following season. Whether clean culture or sod be adopted, pear trees should not go completely to rest during the natural growing period. And now, in closing the discussion of this important sub- ject, for a clearer understanding of it and the relation of the external and internal origin theory to the facts in the case, I will recapitulate and give a condensed statement of the most important of them, so that my readers can clearly see that my internal theory perfectly covers and explains, while the external theory of attack is at variance with them all. 1. Blight attacks isolated trees, miles away from all other pear trees. I saw a large bearing Le Conte away up in the mountains, near Eureka Springs, Ark., thus situated, with three large dead, blighted limbs in the center, from an attack the year before, but from indifference on the part of the owner, never cut out. Is the whole air filled with blight? 2. Though all authorities affirm that such dead wood is the nidus or harbor for the bacteria, there those three limbs stood, right among the green leaves, and not a sign of blight that season. 138 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. 3. Weakly growing trees escape, while the vigorous and strong are often attacked and killed alongside. This is con- trary to general experience and all analogy in resisting disease. 4. The attacks are often sporadic, some bearing and some young trees near by being affected, while others escape. 5. Trees whose limbs and leaves were coated continu- ously with sulphate of copper, the best known germicide, from spring till fall, blighted just as badly as those not treated. 6. Continued cutting out has no preventive effect, nor does it cause apparently healthy shoots on blighting trees, or those near by that are cut back, to become diseased at the cut ends, where sap is exposed to external attack. 7. Blight was never known in Galveston county during thirty years of pear culture until it appeared in my twelve- year old orchard in 1894. How did it happen that the bac- teria, when borne on the breeze or by insects, if thus brought from the interior blighting districts of the state, passed through all the pear orchards, many of them in bearing, at Alvin and Arcadia, without stopping, and settled in my orchard, within a few miles of the Gulf of Mexico, and fur- thest removed from the point of infection? 8. A careful inquiry showed that the growing season pre- ceding a bad blighting one was always dry everywhere, thus checking normal growth and forcing a long period of un- natural rest, and that heavily loaded trees, having rested most completely, were most susceptible to premature motion of the sap during warm weather in the following winter. 9. A bad blighting season is invariably preceded by a late winter or early spring freeze which is preceded by unseasonably warm weather. 10. California, with its equable winter climate, and irriga- tion to keep up continuous motion of the sap during the growing season, has little or no blight. 11. While it has been claimed that healthy pear trees BLIGHT. 139 could be inoculated with blight, facts now strongly prove that any supposed inoculation must have been simply a local irritation that could not have resulted in blight. On the ist of June I steeped blighted leaves, wood and bark in water, leaving, them four days, until the liquid became dark red. This was inserted freely into cuts made as for budding, and the young pear shoots dipped into it. The experiments were made on a three-year-old Bartlett, a five-year-old Idaho and an eight-year-old bearing Le Conte. At this time, six weeks after, there is not the slightest sign of blight on any of the trees. At my request, Mr. E. W. Kirkpatrick, of McKinney, in North Texas, and Mr. S. K. Wheeler, of Arcadia, in South Texas, also vainly attempted to inoculate healthy trees with blighted sap and bark, not a single case showing the slightest effect. This demonstrates absolutely that this disease is of internal origin, and results only when trees are subjected to the aforementioned conditions. While I have suggested in this chapter a preventive treatment for trees now growing, it may be of doubtful value. No surface-rooted trees, like those in nearly all pear orchards elsewhere, can keep the sap in free motion during a severe drouth, especially if bearing a crop of fruit. Even though not pruned or stimulated out of season, much would depend on the character of the winter and spring. Having now shown from the foregoing incontrovertible facts that the bacterial disease of blight is of internal origin, and the result of certain conditions, the question naturally arises, May not other forms of bacterial tree diseases, such as yellows, black-knot, root tumor, etc., be of similar origin? Reasoning from analogy, we would naturally come to the same conclusion, nor will any other theory cover the cases. All such diseases must be the result of inherent weakness aggra- vated by favoring conditions, and none will deny that the more vigorous we can make our trees the less liable they will be to attack. On this principle I have demonstrated that the viru- lent root tumor of the South can be entirely cured by planting affected trees in very small holes, after cutting off the roots very closely and fertilizing them well. One thousand plum trees thus treated four years ago were examined recently, and 140 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. found to be entirely healthy, and my experience is corrobo- rated by the following testimony : EDITOR FRUIT-GROWERS' JOURNAL : Your journal has been very interesting for the last few months. I will give you my experience with Stringfellow root-pruning. In '93 I planted peach seed in a corn field and budded all that came up the following summer and fall. In '94 I planted about 125 trees where peach seeds failed to grow. I pruned the roots very close because they were diseased, and cut down tops to from one to one and a half feet. After two years' growth the 125 trees are as large as the trees two years from bud. All that I plant in the future I will prune roots short. LEAVENWORTH, IND. CHAS. SACKSTEDER. EDITOR FARM AND RANCH : I planted an orchard of peach, plum and almonds fifteen years ago, and was with my boys until about half the trees were set. Ground is alluvial, with hard clay subsoil. Trees were two years old. Was careful to have holes dug large, so as to allow of roots being all spread out. The digging was very hard. Being called away, the boys set the last half, and "played off " on me. They dug small holes, cut off the roots and hid them, and to-day the best trees by far in the orchard are the root-pruned ones. Most of the long- rooted ones have died, and the balance got the root-rot. I ruined part of my orchard four years ago by deep plowing and breaking the roots. BURNET, TEXAS. J. J. M. SMITH. CHAPTER XII. Growing Trees from Bearing Ones. WHILE here and there over the country a few nursery- men recognize the advantage of propagating their stock from bTearing trees, and advertise the fact in their catalogues, the great majority of propagators and buyers pay no attention at all to this important subject. There is not the slightest doubt that a tree grown either from a cut- ting, as the Le Conte and Kieffer are here, taken from a bear- ing tree, or one propagated by budding or grafting from such bearing tree, will fruit three or four years, often six or seven, before one grown from a young tree that has for a number of generations been grown from young ones that have never fruited. I drew attention to this important point five years ago in our local papers, and proved it beyond all doubt, by my own experience and that of quite a number of growers elsewhere. Since then I have been watching and experiment- ing in this line, and find that the fruit-bearing principle is carried just as fully by the bud as by the graft and cutting. Four years ago I gave a friend a seedling from a Kieffer pear tree, which bloomed the third year and bore the fourth. The second year of that seedling's life I took some buds from it and top-budded a young Garber pear tree in an orchard of three hundred of that variety and, just like the parent tree, the growth from those buds bloomed the third year, and bore fruit the fourth, though not a single Garber out of the whole lot showed even a blossom. Here is absolute demonstration of the fact that even the bud from a bearing tree will carry the early fruiting capacity in it. Again, a year ago in the spring, I took buds from an old, bearing orange tree, and put them into nine Trifoliata orange trees only two years old, here in Galveston, and now, March 6th, eight out of the nine, having made a good growth last season, are coming into full (MO 142 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. bloom, though I do not expect them to set the fruit. Ordi- narily an orange from seed or from a young non-bearing tree takes eight or nine years to bear. Still another instance stands near my home in Galveston. J. C. Trube has two vigorous young Le Conte pear trees, now four years old. They bore quite a number of pears the second and third years, were full the fourth, and are now again white with blos- soms. Another friend, C. C. Petitt, told me recently that Le Conte pear trees I sold him sevei^ years ago, which he planted at Dickinson, have bloomed but sparingly, but that others I sold him two years ago are white with blooms. The first lot were taken from my orchard before a large part of it began to bear, or before I knew anything of these facts, but the last, now in bloom, were propagated from the bearing trees. But it is useless to multiply instances which have been furnished me regarding the various fruits, all pointing the same way. While a single remove, or even a second one, from a bearing tree might not affect the time of bearing much, trees grown repeatedly and for years from young trees in nursery rows will certainly be much later in coming into bearing. This accounts fully for the fact that there are a great number of pear trees in this section now six, seven and eight years old that have borne little or no fruit, and pear as well as apple trees all over the country which have behaved the same way. The pear and apple are particularly affected thus, and, being naturally slow to bear, no cions or buds for propagation should ever be taken from young trees in nursery rows, or from other than healthy trees, that have come into full bearing. It is a great injustice to purchasers to thus keep them waiting for fruit years after the time when trees should bear. Every pear or apple tree grown from a settled bearing tree will bear full the fourth or fifth year at farthest. I will close this subject with several quotations, the first from an unnamed correspondent of The Rural New- Yorker, the second from Prof. L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and the others bv the parties whose names are signed, all going to GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 143 show the vast importance of propagating from the healthiest and most productive bearing trees, and never from trees in nursery, except new varieties, bearing wood of which cannot be had. TWENTY-TWO years ago I set an orchard of 180 trees one hun- dred Baldwin, forty Rhode Island Greening, and forty Northern Spy, the three most profitable apples, as I thought, to be set at that time. After the orchard had been set 'five or six years, I concluded to change the tops of the Northern Spy to Baldwin, as the Northern Spy did not do very well about here at that time. Having a few older Baldwin trees which were bearing fine crops of fruit, 1 selected scions from them, and soon had the tops changed. The result was that these trees commenced bearing five or six years sooner, have always borne double the quantity, and of better quality, than the trees that were budded to Baldwin at the nursery, and set at the same time, under the same conditions. While all are now fine, healthy trees, those that were budded to Baldwin at the uursery make the most wood growth, and the branches are longer and more reedy. I have also noticed that, while these trees seemed to have as much bloom, they would not perfect more than half as much fruit as those with the changed tops. Who will tell the reason of this ? The Rural New- Yorker. IT is probable that many trees fail to bear because propagated from unproductive trees. We know that no two trees in any orchard are alike, either in the amount of fruit which they bear or in their vigor and habit of growth. Some are uniformly productive, and some are uniformly unproductive. We know, too, that scions or buds tend to reproduce the character of the tree from which they are taken. A gardener would never think of taking cuttings from a rose bush or chrysanthemum or carnation which does not bear flowers. Why should a fruit-grower take scions from a tree which he knows to be unprofitable ? The indiscriminate cutting of scions is too clumsy and inexact a practice for these days, when we are trying to introduce scientific methods into our farming. I am convinced that some trees cannot be made to bear by any amount of treatment. They are not the bearing kind. It is not every mare which will breed or every hen which will lay a hatfull of eggs. In my own practice, I am buying the best nursery-grown stock of apples (mostly Spy), and am top-grafting them with scions from trees which please me, and which I know to have been productive during many years. Time will discover if the effort is worth the while, but unless all analogies fail the outcome must be to my profit. L. H. BAILEY. MY DEAR SIR I have your letter of the seventh on my return from the North, and beg to say I have read with great interest Mr. H. M. Stringfellow's letter in the Alvin Sun, which was enclosed in your letter. 144 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. I have fought Mr. S.'s battle here in California. I know he is right. I have seen the same practice which he narrates applied to the olive, and only six berries were produced from an orchard of over thirteen hundred trees, after the most diligent and careful cultivation for six years, while cuttings which I planted at the same time (taken from old bearing trees) all bore fruit the third year. One tree bore eleven gallons the fourth year, and I have had trees bear twenty-three gallons the fifth year and a barrel the sixth year. The difference be- tween an orchard of thirteen hundred trees bearing six olives the sixth year and a single tree of the same age bearing a barrel, thirty-one gallons, of fruit, is worth noticing, and demands investigation. And yet, right here in Southern California, with all these facts before them, there are nurserymen who still persist in planting cuttings from trees which are now forty or fifty years old, which trees never pro- duced a hatfull of olives, which trees should bear one hundred gal- lons at a crop. I never plant a cutting from any tree which has not produced fruit, and I am perfectly willing to take cuttings from the oldest bear- ing tree in the country. I am ready to guarantee every tree I sell to bear fruit if planted here. I will guarantee 75 per cent, to bear the third year and every tree to bear the fourth year. Very truly, FRANK A. KIMBALL. IT OFTEN happens that when apple trees or an apple orchard has arrived at bearing age, from ten to fifteen years (according to va- riety) (?), while making a good growth of wood every year, they may fail to form fruit buds and bear fruit. In many instances trees have reached the age of twenty years or more, healthy, vigorous trees, that have not produced fruit enough to pay for the first cost of tree and transportation. Now there are a good many who would be glad to know if there are any means by which such trees can be made to bear. It is a well known law of vegetation that a rapid-growing tree or plant is inclined to make wood buds rather than fruit buds, and that sap has a strong tendency to flow into terminal buds rather than into side buds. It is a prevailing opinion of experienced horticultur- ists that any check of growth has the effect to promote the growth of fruit buds reproductive organs. I have known instances where flourishing young orchards, that had always been under cultivation, and formed no fruit buds but annually a rank growth of wood, have been seeded down to grass, and fruitfulness followed in two or three years. The owners believed that the sod checked the too rampant growth of wood and induced the growth of fruit buds. Possibly they were right. Again, pear growers are well aware that, to make rapid growing pear trees fruitful, it is necessary to shorten-in every year's growth to promote the formation of fruit buds. This fact is so well known as to be unquestioned by well informed pear growers. Why may not the same methods be applied to apple trees ? I know that it would be a tedious operation to go all over the top of a large apple tree and shorten-in the previous year's growth, but, if it would cause a barren tree to become fruitful, it would be labor well ex- GROWING TREES FROM BEARING ONES. 145 pended. I am well aware that many other causes have conspired, of late years, to prevent apple trees with an abundance of fruit buds from producing and maturing fruits such as cold ; protracted rains when in blossom, preventing pollenation ; severe frosts while in bloom or afterwards ; fungus on young fruit, or on fruit steins or on the leaves ; but, when no bloom appears and no fruit buds are found, it is in vain that we look for fruit. The shortening-in process would not be necessary every year. If practical once or twice, it miht throw the trees into fruitfulness, and then the check upon growth caused by bearing fruit might promote the formation of fruit buds. P. C. REYNOLDS, in Green's Fruit- Grower. The unfruitfulness Mr. Reynolds here alludes to is plainly the result of propagating from non-bearing or unproductive trees. Instead of the " many other causes" why trees with an abundance of fruit buds fail to bear, if he had laid the trouble to the annual destruction of their surface roots by the plow and cultivator, upon which roots all trees depend for the setting of their fruit, he would have hit the nail on the head. Every fruit-grower can find evidence of this around him, and the experience of others elsewhere in this book con- firms it. While it is a fact that evaporation is less from a cultivated surface than one in a close-mowed sod, a fair test with a seedling or a root-pruned tree will demonstrate in every case that this loss of moisture is far over-balanced by the service rendered the tree by its unbroken surface roots. The superiority of all forest, shade and nut trees, as well as seedling fruit trees, in uncultivated ground proves this. But here let me again impress upon my readers that in all I have to say about non-cultivation and close mowing around fruit trees, reference is made solely to those grown from seed where they stand, or to close root-pruned ones. While it will cause surface-rooted trees to frequently shed their fruit, and will ultimately shorten their lives, cultivation for them is a neces- sary evil. 10 HORT. CHAPTER XIII. Propagation by Cuttings. WHILE a great variety of other trees and plants grow well from cuttings at the North, here, in South Texas, we find the conditions so favorable that the Le Conte, Garber and Kieffer pears also grow more or less freely from cuttings. But having from the beginning kept up my habit of experimenting, some years ago, after losing most of our cutting crops several times, either from too much or too little rain in the winter, I concluded to try early fall planting. So, beginning about the first of August, I stripped the leaves from the young pear canes as soon as cut off, and every Saturday planted one hundred cuttings. I kept this up until December, and found, to my surprise, that of those set between the i5th of September and the I5th of October, if the ground was reasonably moist, or if well watered, fully 90 per cent, grew, and for the last three years I practised this method with perfect success. I have had them to grow six inches before cold weather, if the fall was seasonable. The philosophy of it is, that at that time the wood is mature and the ground still warm, while the gradually decreasing tem- perature gives a cool atmosphere or head. In fact, in early fall the earth is a natural hotbed, and grape cuttings, as well as pear and many other trees, will also root well. I see no reason why the same conditions should not prevail about the first of August at the North. I will now give a method for the rapid making of cuttings and scions, which will prove very valuable to nurserymen. Figure i in the cut (page 147), represents the end of the handle of the machine, with a thin, sharp cutting blade at 7, all made in one piece and with the end of the blade fastened by a bolt, on which it works, to a standard (3), which is made of ^6 -inch thick and 2-inch wide sheet iron. Figure 2 repre- (146) PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 147 sents a similar but double standard, bolted together at top and bottom, just wide enough apart to allow the handle of the knife to work easily between. Figure 4 represents a piece of 2X lo-inch plank, with a similar piece on the opposite side, between which the double standard (2) is bolted. These two sides meet closely beneath the knife blade, so as to fur- nish a support for it when pressed through the bundle of cut- tings, which are to be inserted at 9, in the curve. There is an iron stop at 8, between the double standards, just low enough to allow the blade to enter the crack at 9 about In order to regulate the length of cuttings, a piece CUTTING MACHINE. of i x i4>plank one foot long must be nailed on edge against and to the base along at 10 and opposite the knife, against which the feeder pushes the ends of the cutting wood. Eight inches is long enough for any cutting. Have the blade made of good steel, thin and smooth, and keep it sharp. To operate to the best advantage, four men are required, though two can work it. But, with one man on a stool at the handle, another to assort the wood, so as to have the buds all the same way and ends together, a third to receive and feed, and a fourth to hold the ends about to be cut, and when cut lay carefully in flat baskets or boxes with hoop handles, this machine will make more cuttings in a day than twenty men, and of as good quality. Any slight bruising of the edges or sides of the cuttings does no damage, as anyone can prove by making a small lot with a sharp hatchet ; they will 148 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. grow just as readily as if made with the sharpest knife. I have used, for years, a pair of No. 4 sliding pruning shears for cuttings, simply bolting the handle with the curved jaw down flat on the 2-inch plank ; but last year, on retiring from busi- ness, I told my friend, F. W. Malley, who was just starting, of this method, and suggested that he rig up something larger, and the machine here represented is the result of his ingenuity. There is no patent on it, and we present it to all who choose to make and use it. In planting, always set cuttings perpendicular, and not slanting, as is often directed, under a mistaken idea that they root better thus. There is no difference in the rooting, but a slanting cutting makes a crooked and unsalable tree. All cuttings should also be made with a square cross cut, as they strike better that way, and make a much more evenly-bal- anced system of roots, than from a sloping cut. A large pile of cutting wood should be collected before going to work, and it will greatly facilitate matters if, in picking or gathering it up in the orchard, all the buds or ends are kept one way. While on the subject of bruising roots or ends of cuttings, to prove that all the injunctions about making smooth cuts of either is humbug, one only has to dig a tree with the spade and heel it in a few weeks, to see that roots strike from the rough cut ends just as freely as if made with a sharp knife. The main point in growing cuttings in the early fall is to plant a little deeper than in winter or spring. Eight inches is about the best length of cuttings, and six inches put under the ground for early fall planting, but in winter and spring thousands of cuttings are annually lost from being planted too deep. It is always best to plant on a good ridge every- where in winter, for the ground is dryer and warms up more quickly, and three or four inches is deep enough, and, if the ground remains very wet, a cutting inserted only two inches will nearly always grow. If the ground is a little dry it is a good plan to pass over and press firmly, next to the rows, with the foot. I did it always, unless the soil was too wet. Now, in view of what is said elsewhere on pruning pear PROPAGATION BY CUTTINGS. 149 trees, of course judgment must be used in the quantity of pruning done to each tree. While no amount here in Sep- tember or early in October will do any harm to bearing trees, it will be safer to let them alone after that time, though it is hard to hurt young pear trees in this section with pruning at any time, as the water is so near the surface, and the dow of sap is never entirely suspended in summer. I have pruned severely at all times, and never saw any damage except after that heavy crop, dry summer and severe early winter prun- ing, in '93. At the North, however, where blight is so much more prevalent, I would never prune a pear or apple tree until the leaves were all out in spring. The Cape Jessamine is also largely grown here from cuttings, and under proper conditions the cuttings root with scarcely a failure. June is the best month to plant, or just after the spring bloom is gone. Make the cuttings about eight inches long, leaving one or two leaves on the upper end of each. Bury in shal- low trenches, running east and west, and incline a 12-inch plank over the trench, supported on slanting stubs driven into the ground. This will keep the evening sun ofi and should be left until fall, when every one will be rooted il :he ground has been kept moist all the time. They can be ouned quite thickly and still root well, after which set in nursery rows, removing nearly all the root, and they will make tine bushes the next season. Roses can also be rooted very readily the same way, and doubtless many other evergreen plants. The Cape Jessamine will also root with great cer- tainty if the leaves are all stripped off and the cuttings made about six inches long, and planted the last of February or in March. CHAPTER XIV. Winter Budding. WHILE summer budding is one of the most common forms of tree propagation, a friend of mine, a most progressive horticulturist, James Hancock, of Bee- ville, Texas, has been for some time practicing a different method with perfect success in winter and early spring, before the sap begins to move or the bark will separate from the wood. I also tried this method in February and later with perfect success. He advises cutting off a little of the wood with bark from the stock, though I tried some with bark alone and all took. The accompanying cut (see next page) will illus- trate how it is done. Insert the knife into the limb or stock, just as if a bud was to be cut and draw it downward an inch or less, pressing the cut bark back a little to keep it open. (See Fig. 2, on limb.) The bud is then slipped down next to the cut surface to the bottom. It is best to make the bud fully as long or a little longer than the cut on the limb, and let the up- per end lap a little. The flap is then pressed back, and tied firmly, as in budding, completely covering the bud itself. Of course, the leaf stalk must be cut off close, just at the bud, so the flap will fit tight. Buds can be put in thus all winter, and especially in early spring, and not one in a hundred will fail. This method is especially valuable for budding large trees and limbs, instead of top-grafting, which is far more work, and less certain to succeed. An orchard can be cut back and very quickly changed into another variety of fruit at any point above the ground desired, provided the bark on the limbs is smooth enough to bud. The past spring, just before the leaves pushed, but when the buds were swollen, I saw five hundred four-year-old peach trees thus treated by top-budding without a single fail- ure. Five and six buds were quickly put into the main limbs (150) WINTER BUDDING. WINTER BUDDING. 152 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. on each tree, which were at once cut back to within a foot of the buds. These buds have now (May 5) made shoots three feet long. . Whether this is absolutely necessary to arrest the movement of the sap, Mr. Hancock has never tested by leav- ing the limb entire, but as there is practically no movement in winter it would seem not. There would be no objection to cutting back in a cold climate, except dying off of limbs so cut in case of a freeze after the sap began to move from such severe pruning. Of course, after the buds have started well, the limbs should be sawed off with a sloping cut close above the buds, though the bud in the cut was not so treated. Enough shoots of the stock should be allowed to grow below to keep the tree healthy, which could be cut away later in the season or the following year. This method may be very valu- able to the orange growers of Florida in the ordinary propa- gation of trees, as budding by the common method often fails. It will also be exceedingly valuable for turning large trees of pecans and other nuts into the finer kinds, and must entirely supersede all orchard top-grafting, which, from the liability of the scion to dry out, is a very uncertain as well as trouble- some process, while this is quick, easy and certain. More- over, why could it not be used by nurserymen for budding during winter stocks that could not be dormant budded in the fall before? Or perhaps after the bark ceases to slip in the fall the work could be continued by this method then. Mr. Hancock has not found it as convenient or successful during the ordinary budding season as the common method, nor has he ever tried it during the winter before February here, but has had uniform success. At the North, perhaps just when the buds begin to swell would be an excellent time, and for the next month. CHAPTER XV. Grafting* WHILE all the various forms of ordinary grafting are well understood, and need no description, there is a form practiced by my friend, E. W. Kirkpatrick, of McKinney, Texas, an old nurseryman and fruit-grower, that is so simple and uniformly successful with all kinds of trees and vines, that it deserves to be more widely known. SCION AND STOCK COMBINED. As seen from the illustration, if the stock to be grafted is growing in the ground, cut off the top as for saddle grafting, but with one of the sloping cuts about twice as long as the other, as shown. Then make an incision into the side of the scion, which should be five or six inches long, about one-third (i53) THE NEW HORTICULTURE. of the length from the top, and, inserting the lower end of the scion, sharpened as shown, into the ground, fit the cut place on to the stock, placing the long side of the cut surface of the stock next to the scion. Bring the edges together on one side, press the scion down firmly, and no tying will be necessary, but bank the moist earth well over the union, and pack. The scion then becomes practically a cutting as well as a graft, and generally takes root from the lower end, as well as unites with the stock. This method is equally suited for house grafting, if tied to keep the stock and scion together until planted. Another method, particularly well adapted to the vine, and a modification of cleft grafting, that rarely fails of success on the grape, done either in winter, spring, or after the vine is in full growth, provided the scions have been kept dormant. Select a smooth place on the vine near or just under the ground, and make a downward sloping cut, one-third or one- half through the stock, according to size, as shown in the illustration. A well-ripened scion with one or two buds is then cut as for cleft grafting, except that the cuts, are made sloping, so as to bring one side of the scion to an edge, which is to be inserted in the side cut of the stock, so as to bring the face or broad side of the scion flush and even with one edge of the cut in the stock. A few wraps of strong string will bring the surfaces on small stocks closer together, but large stocks will bind the scion tight enough. Cover the whole SIDE GRAFTING. scion with moist earth until growth starts, when the top should be cut away. I omitted to say that from the middle of September to the middle of October here, perhaps August at the North, is an excellent time to graft all kinds of trees, with scarcely a failure. CHAPTER XVI. Fruit Changed by Pollination. THE almost universally accepted idea is, that the charac- teristics of fruit are never affected or changed by polli- nation the same season. And yet there is nothing more certain than that the contrary is true, and I intend to demon- strate it this season to competent witnesses. I will now give several instances. The first will be an arbor of six Niagara and six Lindley grape vines here in Galveston, owned by Col. S. T. Fontaine. The vines are four years old, and bore a very heavy crop last year, all of which was white except a few stray pink bunches, but not a single genuine Lindley-colored bunch. The Lindley bore the first year and the Niagara did not, and every grape was of the natural red color, but when dominated by the Niagara pollen, the second year, all but a few were white. The second instance of this came under my observation for several years in the yard of N. N. John, of this city, where the Niagara again dominated and changed the Jefferson to white. The third instance was on my own grounds at Hitchcock, where a black grape, the Holmes, grafted on Golden Chasselas, with a shoot of the latter allowed to grow and fruit also, was dominated by the Chas- selas, and the fruit of the Holmes turned to a pale pink. A fourth instance is the following, clipped from a recent issue of The Rural New- Yorker : "Some years ago D. S. Marvin, of Watertown, N. Y., set out a Brighton layer, from a dry clay knoll, among some Delawares, where the soil was made moist by slop water. This vine no longer bears Brighton grapes, but the fruit is red, ripening a week later than Brighton. The skin is thicker, and these grapes now keep as well as Catawbas, not deteriorating after picking, like the Brighton, but re- maining firm, with much sprightliness and substance. The leaf is stronger and thicker and the notches less coarse." But the grape is not the only fruit thus affected. There (i55) 156 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. stands in Mr. Joe Marcos' yard, on firm, unbroken soil, a seedling tree that for several years bore freestone peaches, which I know to be a fact, having eaten of them. A second seedling came up near by a few years later, and when it bore it proved to be a cling. Ever since then its pollen has domi- nated, and both trees have borne clingstone fruit. Another instance is an orange tree that stands in Capt. W. Dugat's yard, in Beeville, Texas, which bore for some years a very thin-skinned orange with few seeds. Later on a sour orange close by began to bear, the fruit being very thick-skinned and full of seeds. The skin of the first became coarse, also, and the number of seeds increased, while the flavor deteriorated greatly. A final instance is from a letter of inquiry printed in the April issue of Green's Fruit- Grower : MR. CHAS. A. GREEN : I have one grape trellis 208 feet long, and a few vines of Brighton, Green Mountain, Wyoming Red and Moyer; perhaps two of each variety, the larger number of Moore's Early and Diamond ; there are two vines of F. B. Hayes ; these two do not ripen quite as early as what we have called the Diamond. The Diamond, on the side of my house, is greenish white, with a very slight golden color. The Diamonds on the trellis are a dark amber or light maroon in color, about the same color of your Moyer grape a little lighter in color. The vines on the house grow about the same, and appear to be the same in wood and leaf. Is it caused by the grapes mixing with the Moore's Early when in bloom ? I have three apple trees ; two of them are Talman Sweets, one is Hubbardston Non-Such. The Hubbardston is planted half way between and the limbs interlace. This year the Hubbardston cannot be told from one of the Talman Sweets. One of the Sweets is large and flattish in form. The other is round and slightly conical. I have shown the apples to some of my friends one to J. P. Went- worth, of the City Council. When you cut the Sweets they turn a yellowish color. The other, the Hubbardston, is sound, and tastes more like the Hubbardstqn. From the outside we could not tell them apart. Even the line on one side is there. Is it caused by the pollen getting mixed ? I have one or two apples of the Talman and Hub- bard in my cellar. Now, what I want most is, to know what the grapes are. Are they Diamonds or Brightens ? I bought them for Diamonds. Respectfully yours, H. A. CHANNELL, Maine. Reply : While I cannot say positively in regard to your individual case, I am certain that varieties of fruits are changed in appearance, size and quality by the influences of surrounding blossoms. Where an Early Harvest apple tree threw its branches into the tree of a FRUIT CHANGED BY POLLINATION. 157 winter apple tree I have seen Early Harvest apples growing on branches of the winter apple, which were not grafted there. There are many strange things in nature, which are not as yet understood by any one. C. A. GREEN. While this action of pollen is rare, still it does happen, and it would be well to look out for such effects in planting orchards where varieties of the apples named are used. Especially should care be taken to keep the Lindley and Jef- ferson away from the Niagara grape vine, if it be desired to maintain the red color. Of course, some of our latter-day authorities, rooted and grounded in the wisdom of the past, will scout these facts, and show just as conclusively by argu- ment that the thing cannot be true, as they did about my close root-pruning method, five or six years ago. CHAPTER XVII. Hybridism by Grafting and budding. WHILE it is known that hybrids have been formed by grafting as well as by crossing through the pollen, it is 'considered so rare that very little attention has been paid to the subject, and the general opinion among a large majority of fruit-growers is that such a thing is impos- sible. Chas. Downing, on page 4, paragraph 4, of his work on fruits, makes the following interesting remarks on the subject : " But there is still another reason for this habit, so perplexing to the novice, who, having tasted a luscious fruit, plants, watches, and rears its seedling, to find it, perhaps, wholly different in most respects. This is the influence of grafting. Among the great number of seedling fruits produced in the United States, there is found occasionally a variety, perhaps a plum or a peach, which will nearly always reproduce itself from seed. From some fortunate circumstances in its origin, unknown to us, this sort, in becoming im- proved, still retains strongly this habit of the natural or wild form, and the seeds produce the same. We can call to mind several examples of this : fine fruit trees whose seeds have established the reputation in the neighborhood of fidelity to the sort. But when a g>aft is taken from one of these trees, and placed upon another stock, this grafted tree is found to lose its singular power of pro- ducing the same by seed. The stock exercises some as yet unex- plained power in dissolving the strong natural habit of the variety, and becomes, like its fellows, subject to the laws of its artificial life." In a marginal note the editor comments on the above, and clearly expresses the general belief of to-day, that the stock has no effect on the seed of fruit grown on the scions. He says : "The doctrine here advanced has, perhaps, no foundation in fact, nor has there been any test made that, to our knowledge, would controvert it. Observation of many years, however, leads to the belief that the mere engrafting a variety upon another stock in no way affects its habit or capacity for reproducing itself just the same as it would if retained upon its parent root." The uniformly negative opinion as to graft or bud hybrid- (158) HYBRIDISM BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 159 ism has, doubtless, arisen from the great difficulty, in fact impossibility heretofore, of obtaining definite proofs of such hybridism in the resulting products between individuals of the same species. The different varieties of apples, pears, peaches and plums have leaves resembling each other suffi- ciently closely to prevent any cross from a stock and scion showing with marked distinctness in the product of the seed. But in the instance I will presently offer, we have two kinds of the same species so entirely distinct in every point that when grafted, or rather top-budded, one upon the other, and the seed of the scion planted, we are able to detect in the product the distinct peculiarities of both so plainly that the conclusion as to a genuine hybridism seems irresistible. And why, indeed, should there be such incredulity or doubt as to not only the possibility of such a result, but even the probability of an actual cross in every case of trees grown from seed taken from grafted or budded trees of the same species ? Remembering that the stock is the actual provider and dispenser of all the plant-food received by the scion, and that general experience has shown that certain stocks do give additional vigor to other weakly growers, as a Delaware grafted on a Niagara grape vine, and also add size to the berry, as always results from such a union, I see no physio- logical reason for doubting that the stock must, of necessity, stamp some of its characteristics on the seed also. It is freely admitted that vigor, longevity and productiveness, as well as size of fruit, can be imparted by the stock to the scion ; and yet, when asked to go to the logical conclusion, and add, "affect the seed also," a prompt negative is given. . May not the overlooking of this important fact be the reason why, considering the vast number of seedlings of every kind that have been grown and tested, the number of meritorious varieties of recent years that are equal to the older sorts is so small? The really valuable varieties can almost be counted on the two hands. Now, why this great scarcity of improved kinds from so many millions of seeds? Is there any reason- able explanation, except that we start out with a "degen- erate" as one of the parents of our seed? For instance, in l6o THE NEW HORTICULTURE. our efforts to originate new varieties, do we not select our seed from perhaps a Bartlett pear, an Elberta peach, or a Baldwin apple, grafted or budded on some common, scrub seedling stock, and then are greatly surprised to find the children inferior to the parents? I will now give a plain case of stock and scion hybridism which is of peculiar interest, because it furnishes an almost perfect demonstration of this most important principle, which, if true in this instance, ought to hold equally good with all other fruits. About seven years ago, in rny first experiments with the Satsuma orange, I found that a temperature of eighteen degrees killed it to the ground, though it had been falsely claimed to have stood a temperature of twelve degrees in California. Having about five hundred Trifoliata stocks, which I had planted for budding before I found this out, and finding the Satsuma too tender when grafted low down in the ground, the idea occurred to me that, as the Trifoliata was perfectly hardy, a deciduous orange, and went to rest more completely and remained so later than the Satsuma, if the buds were inserted about two feet above ground, perhaps the tops would be unable to stimulate a movement of the sap in the body so early as if budded near the ground. If it could not, then the Satsuma would be more hardy than when grafted low down ; for the whole question of the hardiness of orange trees in winter here is the condition of the sap. So, acting on this notion, I top-budded the whole lot except four, which I budded as low down as possible for trial. The buds all made a good growth the next season, but in the following January, quite a severe freeze occurred, and in a few days the: four low-budded trees showed severe damage, and in a week were all dead, while not a shoot on the top-budded trees was hurt. Overjoyed at this, the whole lot was taken up care- fully with small balls of earth, and set out in a grove to fruit, where they remained, grew finely for four years, until killed, and bore quite a number of oranges. When the fruit was ripe, being too few to sell, we ate them, and nearly all had seed, some oranges having as many as three, though it is well known that the fruit from low-grafted trees is practically HYBRIDISM BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING. l6l seedless. Here, then, was a decided change and influence of the stock on the Satsuma, both in hardiness and the putting of seed into the fruit, where few were ever seen before. While I had paid no attention to this subject, these facts sug- gested the probability of obtaining a genuine hybrid thus, so some of the seeds were saved and planted. When they were up a foot or so high, I had a visit from a scientific and prom- inent fruit grower of Texas, and on taking him, with great pride, to see my pets, and explaining the facts, he laughed heartily at my enthusiasm, and said the whole idea of their being hybrids was absurd. I then pointed out, that while alt were plainly sweet oranges, from the peculiarities of the leaves, yet nearly all were more or less thorny, some as much so as the Trifoliata, while the Satsuma has no thorns at all. Moreover, a sign of the Trifoliata leaf was plainly visible on several trees. But all to no purpose ; and in answer to my direct question, What sort of fruit I would get, he replied confidently, "Satsuma." Having sold my place shortly after, these seedlings were moved, and last year stood a tem- perature of ten degrees, all other sweet orange trees being killed, and I feel confident, unless the trees happened to be in a peculiarly dormant condition, that they will prove hardy here, and perhaps over the whole lower part of Texas, show- ing plainly that they are true hybrids of the Satsuma and the entirely hardy Trifoliata. Just what the fruit will be, of course, nothing can be known yet, but there is no reason why some of the oranges will not be sweet. Of course, if they are, and they continue to prove hardy, it will work a revolu- tion in orange growing ; for by the same method hybrids can be obtained between any of the finer and larger sweet oranges and the Trifoliata, and thus many new and hardy varieties can be grown with perfect success all through the Gulf States generally; and by repeated crosses on Trifoliata the hardiness in the end can be increased, until varieties may be originated that will stand the climate even of the whole South. The accompanying illustrations (see page 163) will demon- strate the truth of all I claim. The first shows a branch of II HORT. l62 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. the thorny and very seedy Trifoliata stock, on which, two feet above the ground, was budded the thornless and seedless Sat- suma, shown alongside. The result was to put seed into the fruit of nearly every Satsuma orange, as well as to increase the hardiness of that variety, thus top-budded. The seeds, when planted, produced apparently sweet orange trees, as far as can be judged from the leaves. While some of the twenty-seven trees are entirely thornless like the Satsuma, others have thorns of varying lengths, from very short to very long, as shown in the second illustration (which is a photograph of four shoots from among the twenty-seven seedlings); and one tree, No. i, actually intermits its thorns, just as grape vines do their tendrils, there being three inter- missions, as shown at the bottom, middle and top, and two thorns between. Moreover, those twenty-seven seedlings have stood a temperature without injury of ten degrees, a degree of cold that no common orange has ever survived. I wish to call particular attention to the leaves designated with a ring, showing plain markings, in their round and split ends, of the Trifoliata leaf, and especially to the small leaf of the hybrid marked 5, which is identical in shape with a part of a leaf of the Trifoliata also marked 5. Of course, the most interesting and conclusive part of this experiment has yet to come, in the shape of the fruit. Whether some of these seedlings will take after one parent and some the other, or whether all will be moderately sour and require another cross, for instance with the seedless Navel, is an important question. But, applying this principle to all other kinds of fruits, why may it not be equally true also? I now have experiments under way to find out whether any fruit tree put upon its own roots, like the Trifoliata, by the method of Japan or saddle grafting, shown elsewhere, and then cutting away the stock after the cion has struck root on itself, will not reproduce itself to a great extent from seed at first, and perfectly in a few years, when planted apart from other trees of the same species. How far the principle of heredity will affect the fruit, or how long, remains to be seen. I think we may reasonably conclude that an Elberta peach, HYBRIDIZING BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 163 3 4 BRANCHES I-'ROM FOUR CK TWENTY-SEVEN HYBRID SEEDLINGS. SEE PAGES J6o-l62. 164 THE NEW HORTICULTURE. for instance, on its own roots as a stock, and top-budded with another valuable variety, will give better fruit from the seed than if that variety had been grown on an inferior seed- ling stock. This opens a new and wide field for experiment and im- provement, especially of our earlier varieties, on the point of size. Of course, experiments must be conducted at a reason- able distance from the pollen of other trees, or selected branches protected from foreign pollination, when a true hybrid is desired. If this principle of graft and bud hybrid- ism be true, and the facts point strongly that way, it will afford for the ordinary fruit-grower an easy and certain method of experimenting with all kinds of fruit, and will add greatly to his interest in horticulture, as well as result in new and improved varieties. My efforts are now being directed not only toward originating hardy sweet oranges, but also larger and finer peaches than will now bear well this far South. With that view I have now growing for stock, on their own roots, the Elberta, Mamie Ross, Sneed and Triumph, none of which are productive here, and have top- budded them with Waldo, Angel and Imperial, all of the oriental type, and exceedingly productive and of excellent quality, though the fruit is almost too small for market. As the latter bloom long before the former Persian varieties, it has been impossible heretofore to cross them by the pollen. The same difficulty lies with the Trifoliata and common sweet oranges, the latter*all blooming first. I herewith append a statement from Mr. E. P. Stiles, editor of the Horticultural Gleaner, published at Austin, which bears on this subject : Dear Sir I have a very fine seedling peach, which I have been fruiting for many years, using until lately common seedlings indis- criminately for stocks. I have noticed a very great variation in the conduct of this peach on different stocks, both in vigor and produc- tiveness, as well as size and appearance of the fruit. By chance I propagated several trees on Mountain Rose seedlings, and found them so superior on that stock that I am now using it exclusively, and find that it continues to maintain its superiority. This difference in the fruit is not due to any local causes, tests having been made to determine that point. Referring to the subject of graft hybrids, on which you are experimenting, I must say that I can see no reason HYBRIDISM BY GRAFTING AND BUDDING. 165 why the Mountain Rose should not affect the seed of my peach as well as other points. Truly, E. P. STILES. I will now conclude this subject with a short letter from Prof. W. F. Massey, of the North Carolina Experiment Sta- tion, to whom I sent leaves and copies of the accompanying photographs (see page 163), with the simple statement chat the four branches were from trees grown from Satsuma oranges, and that I believed they were hybrids of that orange and the Trifoliata. Wishing him to be totally unbiassed in his judgment, I did not state just how they were grown, and asked his opinion on the bare facts. I knew that he had been experimenting with both of these oranges, and felt sure that he would give me a clear and impartial opinion, which he did, and which goes far to confirm me in my own view : N. C. AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, Horticultural Division, RALEIGH, N. C.,/##