The Apple-Tree Part 3

Apple-trees are held in vigor by plenty of room. For the standard varieties in regular orchards, the recommended distance either way is 40 feet, or 35 x 40 feet. Some varieties may go as close as 30 feet; and in regions (as parts of central and western North America) in which the trees are not expected to attain such great size as in the eastern country, the planting may be even less than this of the upright-growing kinds. The s.p.a.ces between the trees may be utilized for a few years with other crops, even with other fruits, as peaches or berries. Orchardists sometimes plant smaller-growing and early-bearing varieties of apples between the regular trees as "fillers," taking them out as the room is needed. Of course all kinds of double cropping require that extra attention be given to the tilling and fertilizing of the plantation.

The general advice for the growing of strong apple-trees is to give the land good tillage from the first and to withhold other cropping after the trees come into profitable bearing. Clean tillage for the first part of the season and the raising of a cover-crop in the latter part, to be plowed under, is a standard and dependable procedure.

Trees live long in continuous sod and they may thrive, but they may be expected to show gains under tillage. Vast areas of apple plantings are in sod, but this of itself does not demonstrate the desirability of the sod practice. Allowing trees to remain in sod usually leads to neglect.

There is a modification of sod-practice in some parts of the country that gives excellent results, under certain conditions. The gra.s.s is cut and allowed to lie, not being removed for hay. Manure and fertilizer are added as top-dressing, as needed. This method is known as the "sod mulch system." It is not a practice of partial neglect, like the prevailing sod orchards, but a regular designed method of producing results. Its application can hardly be as widespread as clean tillage, on level lands.

It is a common opinion that hillsides and more or less inaccessible slopes should be planted to apples. This may be true in the sense that apples will grow on such areas and that such plantations are better than fallow land. In fact, many such lands are profitable in orchards. When they do not allow of tillage, easy spraying, and economy in harvesting, however, they cannot compete with level orchards.

To maintain the health and energy of the apple-tree, the land should be enriched. This may be accomplished by the application of animal manures, chemical fertilizers, or cover-crops, or preferably by a combination of these means. Not many persons possess sufficient farm manures to supply the general crops and the apple-orchard; but every application the orchard receives is all to the good. Five to ten tons of good stable manure to the acre annually is a good addition for an orchard in bearing. This may be supplemented by cover-crops and bag fertilizers in years in which the manure is not available. Experiments are yet inconclusive on the fertilizing of apple-trees, but it is fair to a.s.sume that on most lands, particularly on old lands, the addition of chemical fertilizer is advantageous. A bearing apple-tree may receive two to eight pounds of nitrate of soda (depending on its size and on soil) applied to the full feeding area of the roots, five to nine pounds of acid phosphate, two or three pounds of muriate of potash; always ask advice.

The pasturing of orchards is often defensible and sometimes even desirable. If the trees are growing too rapidly, they may be "slowed down" by seeding to gra.s.s for a time; and pasturing with hogs, and possibly with sheep, may afford a way of keeping the area in condition and of adding fertilizer. Sheep that do not have access to drinking-water and salt gnaw the trees. Hogs root up the ground and thereby provide a rude kind of tillage. If animals are fed other food in the orchard, the fertilizer increment will be considerable.

In house-lot conditions, the apple-tree usually receives sufficient food if the land is well enriched for garden purposes; but trees in sod should have liberal top-dressings of fertilizer every year and of stable manure every other year.

The apple-tree should have a good supply of moisture. Planted on banks and in hard places about buildings, it may suffer in this respect. The land should be so graded that the rainfall will not run off. In orchard conditions, the moisture is conserved by the addition of humus to the land, and by thorough judicious tillage; and in dry regions it is supplied by irrigation.

The energy of the apple-tree, and its ability to produce, is conserved by holding all diseases and noxious insects in check. The means at the command of the apple-grower are now many. No longer is the man helpless, nor does he need to appeal to the moon or to "atmospheric influences" for reasons. The natural histories of fungi and insects, that do so much damage, are now a part of common understandable knowledge. To acquire at least a working understanding of the commonest of these subjects is in itself a great satisfaction and gives one a sense of dominion. The good books and bulletins are sufficient to keep one well informed. All these organisms are tenants of the apple-tree, and from the naturist's point of view alone they are not to be overlooked.

It is not to be inferred that all apple-trees will yield equally well with equally good treatment. There is difference in trees as there is in cows. We may not know why. But even so, it is our part to do the best we can: this is our privilege.

The tillage and care of plants lessen the struggle for existence. So is the apple-tree protected from the crowds, from contest for moisture and food, from insects, and from the compet.i.tion within itself.

Thereby is it able to express all its possibilities. Even the dormant potentialities may be wakened, and the plant makes a wide departure from its native state. This is not an original state of sin, but a state of repression in which it is held in a world that is full of so many things beside apple-trees. I may till my orchard ever so well, manipulate the trees ever so promptly, yet if the plantation then is allowed to run to neglect the processes of depreciation gain the mastery; the struggle for existence is restored.

To keep one's apple-tree in the pink of perfection is as joyful an enterprise as to do anything else well. It is only the well-conditioned tree that yields its glorious harvest year by year.

VIII

HOW AN APPLE-TREE IS MADE

If the seeds of a Baldwin or Winesap apple are planted, we do not expect to get a Baldwin or Winesap; we shall probably raise a very inferior fruit. The apple has not been bred "true to seed" as has the cabbage and sweet pea. To get the tree "true to name," of the desired variety and with no chance of failure (barring accident), is one of the niceties of horticulture. This is accomplished with great precision and despatch.

The apple-tree is started from the seed. It cannot be grown freely by means of cuttings, as can the grape and currant. In commercial practice the seeds are collected mostly from cider mills or from pomace. The seeds may be washed from the pomace, allowed to dry, and then mixed in sand, charcoal, sawdust or other material to prevent dessication and kept until spring, when they are sown. Or, if the land is not so wet in winter that the seed will drown or be washed out, the seed in the pomace (not separated) may be sown in autumn. The seeds are sown in drills, after the manner of onions or turnips, one to two or even three inches deep. They germinate readily in the cool of spring, and the plants should reach a height of twelve inches and more the first year.

If these plants were grown directly into bearing trees, it is probable that no two trees would produce the same kind of fruit. Some of the fruit might be summer apples, some of it winter apples, some red, yellow or striped, some of it flat, oblong or spherical, most of it sour but perhaps some of it sweet. Probably every kind would be inferior to the parent stock or to standard varieties, although there is a fair chance that a superior kind might originate from a field of such plants.

Therefore, it is not the variety (that is, the top) that is wanted in the raising of these numerous plants, but merely the roots, on which desired varieties may be grown by the clever art of graftage. Yet not even all the roots may be wanted, for the growing plants may differ or vary in their stature and vigor as well as in their fruit. The discriminating grower, therefore, discards the weak and puny treelings at the digging time; or if the weak plants seem still to have promise, they may be allowed to grow another year before they are dug for the grafting.

This digging time is the autumn of the first year, when the plants have grown one season. They are then to be used as "stocks" on which to graft Baldwin, Winesap or other varieties. The growing of these apple stocks is a business by itself. Formerly, most of the stocks used in North America were imported from France, where special skill has been developed in the growing of them and where the requisite labor is available. But now the stocks are grown also in deep rich bottom lands of the Middle West, as in Kansas, where, in the long seasons, a large growth may be attained.

The methods of graftage of the commercial apple-tree are two--by cion-grafting whereby a bit of wood with two or three buds is inserted on the stock, by bud-grafting (budding) whereby a single bud with a bit of bark attached is inserted under the bark of the stock.

Cion-grafting is practiced in winter under cover. The stock is cut off at the crown and the cion spliced on it, or the root may be cut in two or more pieces and each piece receive a cion. The union is made by the whip-graft method (Fig. 16). The cion is tied securely, to keep it in place. The piece-root method is allowable only when the root is long and strong, so that a well-rooted plant results the first year. The cion is a cutting of the last year's growth (as of No. 1, in Fig. 14).

However accomplished, the process is to supply the cion with roots; it is planted in another plant instead of in the ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 16. The whip-graft before tying.]

The cion-grafts are now planted in the nursery row in spring. The cion starts growth rapidly, only one shoot being allowed to remain; this shoot forms the trunk or bole of the future tree. At the end of the first season, the little tree is said to be one year old, although the root is at least two years old; at the end of the second year it is two years old; the tree is sometimes sold as a two-year-old, but usually a year later as a three-year-old having a four-year-old root.

In fact, however, the root and top may be considered, in a way, to be of the same age, particularly if only a piece of the root is employed, for the cion grew on its parent tree the same year the root was growing in the nursery.

The tree grew from the seed but it is no longer a "seedling" or a "natural;" it is now a grafted tree, destined to produce a named recognized variety of apple, maybe York Imperial, maybe Jonathan. We find seedling trees in old fields, in fence-rows, and in woods. These have grown from scattered seeds and have come to fruit without the arts of the propagator. They bear their own tops or heads, rather than the heads that a thrifty horticulturist would have put on them. Now and then such a tree produces superior fruit; then a discriminating pomologist discovers it, names it a new variety, and propagates it as other varieties are propagated. Thus have most of the prized varieties originated, without knowledge on the part of man of the ultimate processes. But now with the acc.u.mulating knowledge of the plant-breeder we hope to be able to foresee and probably to produce varieties of given qualities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 17. A "bud" before tying.]

Bud-grafting is practiced in summer. The young trees, obtained from the grower of apple stocks, are planted regularly in nursery rows in spring, the top having been cut back to the crown so that a strong vigorous shoot will arise. In July and August or September, when this shoot is the size of a lead pencil and larger and the bark will peel (or separate from the wood), a single bud is inserted near the ground (Fig. 17). This bud is deftly cut from the current year's growth of the desired variety; it grows in the axil of a leaf (Fig. 15). The leaf is removed but a small part of the stalk or petiole is retained with the bud to serve as a handle. A boat-shaped or s.h.i.+eld-shaped piece of bark is removed with the bud. This piece, known technically as a "bud," is inserted in an incision on the stock, so that it slips underneath the bark and next the wood, with only the bud itself showing in the slit; it is then tied in place.

The stock on which the bud is inserted has a two-year root, and the root is entire. For this reason, budded trees are usually very large and strong for their age when compared with piece-root trees grown under similar conditions of climate, tillage and soil.

The bud does not grow the year it is inserted in the stock; it is dormant until the following spring, as it would have been had it remained on its parent branch; but soon after it is inserted it attaches itself fast to the stock: it is a bud implanted from one twig to another. The following spring, if the operation is successful, the bud "grows," sending up a strong shoot that makes the trunk of the future tree. The top of the stock is cut away; in the merchantable tree, the bend or place may be seen where the stock and cion meet.

As in the case of cion-grafting, we now have a top of a known variety growing on the root of an unknown kind. The tree is sold at two or three years, counting the age of the top; and of course the tree is no longer called a seedling, and it produces its implanted variety as accurately as does the cion-grafted tree. Equally good trees are produced by both cion-grafting and bud-grafting.

The apple-tree is now "propagated," and is ready for the planting.

Great hopes will be built on it, and the tree will probably do its part to justify them. n.o.body knows how a bud from a Baldwin tree holds the memory of a Baldwin or from a Winesap tree the memory of a Winesap. Neither does anyone know why of two seeds that look alike one will unerringly produce a cabbage and the other a cauliflower. So accustomed are we to these results that we never challenge a twig of apple or a seed of cabbage: we a.s.sume that the twig or the seed "knows." Nor have we yet approached this question in our elaborate studies of plant-breeding. Here is one of the mysteries that baffles the skill of the physiologist and chemist, yet it is a mystery so very common that we know it not, albeit the life on the planet would otherwise be utter confusion.

IX

THE DWARF APPLE-TREE

We have learned that many kinds of apples and apple-trees may come from a batch of seeds. Differences are expressed in the tree as well as in the fruit. In fact, stature is usually one of the characteristics of the variety. Here I open Downing's great book, "The Fruits and Fruit-Trees of America," and find the description of a certain variety beginning: "Tree while young very slow in its growth, but makes a compact well-formed head in the orchard," and another: "Tree vigorous, upright spreading, and productive." We know the small stature and early bearing of the Wagener (wherefore it is often planted in the orchard as a filler), and the great wide-spreading head of the Tompkins King with the apples scattered through the tree.

Now it so happens that in the course of time certain great races of the apple-tree have arisen, we do not know just why or how. There is the race or family of the russets and of the Fameuse. So are there several races very small in stature, remaining perhaps no larger than bushes. If we were to propagate any of the ordinary apples on such diminutive stocks, we should have a "dwarf apple-tree."

The dwarf apple, then, is not a question of variety but of stock. Any variety may be grown as a dwarf by grafting it on a plant that naturally remains small, although some varieties are more adaptable than others to the purpose.

If seeds of the natural diminutive apple-tree are sown, a variety of trees and apples may be expected. The fruits would probably be inferior. Probably the stature would vary between different seedlings.

If we are to get the effect of dwarfness, we must be sure that the stock is itself really dwarf. Therefore, to eliminate variation and also because seeds of natural dwarf apples may not be had in sufficient quant.i.ty, the stocks are propagated by layers rather than by seeds.

The diminutive tree, when well established, is cut off near the ground. Sprouts arise. Some kinds sucker very freely. If earth is mounded up around the sprouts, roots form on them and the sprouts may be removed and treated as if they were seedling stocks. Usually the mounding is not performed until the shoots have made one season's growth. Gooseberries and some other plants are often propagated by mound-layers. In the case of the gooseberry, however, it is desired that the layer reproduce the parent--it may be Downing or Whitesmith--and therefore it is planted without further manipulation.

But in the case of the apple, we do not want the layer to reproduce the parent, for the parent would probably bear an inferior fruit since it does not represent an "improved" or recognized variety; therefore the layer is grafted or budded with the particular variety we desire to grow as a dwarf tree.

Dwarf trees are grown in America, if at all, only in gardens, where extra attention may be given them. Only high-cla.s.s kinds should be attempted on dwarfs, for the quant.i.ty-production of commercial apples must be obtained by less intensive methods on cheaper lands.

Better fruits often are grown on dwarf than on standards, for two reasons: It is usual to propagate only the best varieties on dwarf stock; the little tree must receive extra care in pruning and in every other way. Its bushel of apples must be choice, every one, to make the effort of growing the tree worth the while. Under European conditions where land is high-priced and labor has been relatively cheap, it is possible (and common) to raise apples on dwarfs for market, as it is profitable to terrace the hillsides with human labor; but in North America the conditions are practically the reverse and the dwarf tree cannot compete with the standard orchard tree.

The growing of a dwarf tree is essentially a gardening practice. It requires great skill. The spurs are produced and protected to a nicety. Every fruit may be the separate product of handwork. The fertilizing, mulching, watering, are carefully regulated for every tree. Often the trees are trained on cordons, espaliers, trellises or walls. The individual fruits may be tied up or bagged. All this is very different from the raising of apples by means of tractors and other machinery, gangs of pruners and pickers, broadside extensive methods, with highly organized systems of handling and marketing, in all of which the money-measure is the chief consideration. It is for all these reasons that the growing of a few dwarf apple-trees may afford such intimate satisfaction to a careful man who prizes the result of his skill.

The dwarfs are grown as little trees branching near the ground, headed in at top and side and kept within shape and bounds. If they are of the dwarfest dwarfs and not trained on trellis or wall (as they usually are not in America), the fruit may be gathered by a man standing on the ground, even from old trees. The dwarfs are planted eight to ten feet apart when grown in regular plantation.

Be it said that certain kinds of stocks produce trees only semi-dwarf; and in all cases if the tree is planted so deep that roots strike from the cion, the top will probably outgrow the stock, being supplied in part or even entirely by its own roots.

This brings us to a consideration of some of the kinds of dwarf stocks, or dwarf races of the apple-tree. Be it said, in understanding of the subject, that there are naturally dwarf forms of many plants, and probably all ordinary plants are capable of producing them. Thus there are very compact condensed forms of arbor-vitae, Norway spruce, peach-tree. These have originated as seed sports and are multiplied by cuttings. So are there dwarf tomatoes, dwarf China asters, dwarf sweet peas, all coming more or less true from seeds, for these species (of short generations) have been bred to reproduce their variations. The inquirer must not suppose, therefore, that the races of dwarf apple-trees are an anomally in the vegetable kingdom.