Dwarf Fruit Trees Part 8

Many persons have a strong prejudice in favor of the concrete. On general principles they object to generalities. They choose rather the specific case. Personal experience, they say, means more to them than theory, even though the theory be the sublimation of all experience. For the benefit of such people I am going to set down an account of some of my own attempts at growing dwarf fruit trees, and to that I will add brief opinions and experiences of some friends of mine.

The first dwarf fruit tree that I ever saw, so far as I remember, was in the grounds of the Kansas State Agricultural College when I was a student there. This tree was an apple, on Paradise stock, and at two years after planting it bore six or eight very fine Yellow Transparent apples. It was one of several dwarf apples planted by Professor E. A.

Popenoe, but the other trees did not much attract my attention. This particular specimen had a straight, clean trunk of about thirty inches, after the absurd style of heading dwarf apples practised in most American nurseries. But the crown was full and symmetrical, and the fruit was incomparable. That particular tree has always been a sort of ideal and inspiration to me.

Later, when I planted an orchard in Oklahoma, I put in some dwarf trees, particularly pears, but I did not stay there long enough to see what came of them.

The next fruit garden in which I became interested was in Vermont. This had in it some dwarf pear trees, dwarf apples and dwarf plums, and my own personal experience had fairly begun. The dwarf apples proved to be an almost complete failure, for reasons which I can not now satisfactorily explain. A few years later I planted a few dwarf apple trees in another Vermont garden, where they did reasonably well. But, at any rate, the whole undertaking was unsatisfactory, for it did not give me a vital understanding of the trees. I never got onto terms of real personal goodfellows.h.i.+p with them; and until a gardener does that his work is some sort of a failure.

The dwarf pears did somewhat better. They seemed to understand their business, and they kept about it without much attention from me. I never cared much for pears, anyway.

But the plums were the brilliant success, at least with reference to my own interior personal experience. Every plum tree meant something to me.

A stub of a root and two scrawny plum branches would at any time arouse my imagination like the circus posters' appeal to a boy. In this Vermont garden which I adopted when it was about four years old, there were various plum trees, mostly of domestica varieties, growing on Americana roots. They had come from the Iowa State College, where they had been educated that way. They had been given those Americana roots, not primarily to dwarf them, but to insure them against damage from the cold winters. The tops had not been cut back, and the whole treatment was just such as would have been applied to standards. Later I saw the bad results of this treatment, for several of the trees blew over in high winds. From subsequent experience I feel sure that if they had been headed low at first, if they had been kept closely headed back and otherwise handled like real dwarfs, they would have lived to a greater age and would have made everybody happier.

At this time also I began, on a somewhat comprehensive plan, the propagation of plums on all sorts of stocks, including Americana, Wayland seedlings, Miner root cuttings and sand cherry, all more or less efficient dwarfing stocks. By this time I was into it head over ears, as far as the plums were concerned.

This having been the largest chapter in my personal pomological experience, I suppose it ought to form the largest portion of this chapter in the book; but my plum work and my experiments in propagation have been so often and so fully reported elsewhere that it would be a vain repet.i.tion to go over them again now. They are all written down in the proper places where they may be consulted by the enthusiastic or ill-advised student.

And then I came to Ma.s.sachusetts; and here the first project, almost, to which my hand was turned was the installation of a garden of dwarf fruit trees. From the following memorandum of the trees growing in this garden any reader may surmise the enjoyment I have found in it. There is one row of dwarf plum trees set six feet apart and trained, rather unsatisfactorily, into bush form. The trees were many of them too large when they came from France, and, though I cut them back severely, they did not form such low bushy heads as my ideal species. They are on St.

Julien roots, which serve the purposes in hand fairly well. Though the trees had a hard trip across the water only one out of forty-six has died in three years. Unfortunately these trees have not yet borne fruit,--not one of them. Next year many of them will bear. Earlier fruitage can certainly be secured on sand cherry stocks and under other methods of training.

Besides the bush plums, the garden contains a row of upright cordons.

Most of these were not propagated on dwarf stocks at all, and were not expected to suffer any such drastic training as I have put upon them.

They were taken from the college nursery and from the nurseries of several of my correspondents, just wherever I could find the varieties I wanted, and without reference to the stocks on which they were growing.

A few are on Americana stocks, several are on peach roots (of all things), and probably a majority are growing on the usual Myrobalan roots. These trees are planted two feet apart in the row and are tied up to a trellis of chicken wire. There are about thirty varieties in the row, numbering most of the different botanical types more frequently cultivated in North America. Many of the varieties are totally and very obviously unsuited to this method of treatment, and presently I will replace them with more amenable varieties. But many of the varieties have fruited, especially the j.a.panese kinds, and some of them, like Burbank, have proved most unexpectedly docile. Altogether this row of unsuitably propagated and unsuitably selected varieties of plum trees has been one of the most interesting, instructive and entertaining elements in my dwarf fruit garden.

Next there comes a trellis bearing some espaliers, including plums, pears, apples, peaches and cherries; but these have been recently planted, and as yet they have done nothing worth relating.

There is one row of twenty-three dwarf pears, mostly trained in pyramid form. These have not done well, but the reason is not far to seek. The soil is light and full of gravel, and quite unsuited to pear or quince.

Pears never thrive on it. Several of the trees are bearing a crop this year, but some of the trees are also dead, and the whole row looks like the finish of a bargain sale on the remnant ribbon counter.

The row of upright cordon pears is a trifle better, but that is only an accident, I think. The varieties which are growing there seem to be rather better adapted to withstand the unpropitious surroundings. These trees also are bearing.

When we come to the two rows of horizontal cordon apples, though, the real fun has begun. Nearly all these trees are in bearing, and a few of them have borne every year since they were planted out. They are set only three feet apart in the row, which is not enough; and they suffered terribly the first year from a midsummer attack of aphides; and the pruning was neglected to allow them to recover from that scourge, so that the form was somewhat injured; but they have never ceased to be a joy to me and a wonderment to visitors. They are mostly of European varieties, but Bismarck is the showiest and most fruitful one in the collection, though far from the best to eat.

Then there are standard gooseberries and currants, of which there is little to be said. They haven't been there long, but they are at home and are going to stay. Next year I am going to put in some gooseberries and currants in espalier form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 43--DWARF PEAR IN PYRAMID FORM

Two years planted; author's garden]

Very few persons know what a medlar is. For the benefit of the ignorant and to increase the kaleidoscopic effect on my fruit garden, I have some medlar trees,--Hollandische Monstrose,--which I bought of Louis Spath, Baumschulenweg, Berlin.

A wire trellis, built much like a grape trellis, only higher, carries the row of upright cordon apples. Some of these bore fruit the first year they were planted, and there has been a fair sprinkling of fruit every year since then. This has been one of the most satisfactory lots in the make-up.

There are two rows containing forty-six bush-form apples on paradise roots set six feet apart. Some of these have borne every year since planting out, many of them showing a good crop this year. Again Bismarck is the most fruitful, but the least pleasing to eat. Alexander has made a good record, and this year Calville d'Automne shows a very pretty crop. It is customary with visitors, especially those already interested in fruit-growing and those of a practical turn of mind, to depart with the judgment that "all those other schemes are curious and interesting, but the bush form apple trees look the most like business." I think so too. In fact my experience with dwarf apples might be summarized by saying, "bush trees for business, cordons for fun."

One row of peach trees on St. Julien plum roots set fruit buds in abundance the first year, but they were killed by the freeze of the following winter. The second year the experience was the same, except that the tops froze with the fruit buds. New tops were grown at once, however, and the following year nearly every tree bore a small crop of fruit. Dwarf peach trees are worth while.

This garden has also a row of cherry trees, including Morello, Richmond and Montmorency; but these trees were set the second year of the garden making and have borne only a small crop of sample cherries.

The last planting in this garden consists of one row of nectarines, twenty-two trees.

This little garden, containing considerably less than a quarter of an acre of land, has now growing upon it 548 fruit trees of the kinds named. And I am not yet done planting. There are various other things that I want to put in,--quinces, apricots, and perhaps raspberries, dewberries, and other bush fruits. In fact, I should like to make it a "Paradise" like good old Gerarde's or Dodoens', in which all the fruits "good for food or physic" might be brought together and represented in a little s.p.a.ce.

It would be quite wrong to close this experience meeting without giving the observations and quoting the opinions of some other and better men.

Patrick Barry, in his delightful "Fruit Garden," recorded his belief that dwarf fruit trees were well worth while. "The apple," said he, "worked on the Paradise, makes a beautiful little dwarf bush. We know of nothing more interesting in the fruit garden than a row or little square of these miniature fruit trees. They begin to bear the third year from the bud, and the same variety is always larger and finer on them than on standards." Speaking of pears, he said: "On the quince stock the trees bear much earlier, are more prolific, more manageable, and consequently preferable for small gardens."

The late Mr. E. G. Lodeman, who wrote the most comprehensive American monograph on dwarf apples, concluded his essay rather pessimistically in these words: "From all the evidence which I have been able to collect, therefore, I cannot advise the planting of dwarf apple trees for commercial rewards, but it seems to me, nevertheless, that they are worth experimenting with for this purpose." Mr. Lodeman recorded and endorsed the common opinion "that apples grown on dwarf trees are handsomer and of better quality than those grown upon standards"; but he did not seem to consider that fact of much importance.

Those who are acquainted at the Lazy Club in Cornell University, and especially those who know Bailiwick, have heard of Professor L. H.

Bailey's dwarf apples. (Fig. 44.) These were planted six or eight years ago, and most of them are now in bearing. There are a good many different varieties, nearly all French. My understanding of the scheme is that it was as much as half intended to be a commercial venture; but up to the present time little else but confusion and fun have been gathered with the fruit from those dwarf apple trees. When last I asked the proprietor for his experience with dwarf apples he said that he was having a lot of experience, only he didn't know what it was.

Dwarf pears have been planted frequently, especially in Western New York and Michigan. I asked Professor S. A. Beach for his observations of them, to which he replied: "With regard to dwarf pears I will say that the variety which is most generally grown in commercial orchards is Bartlett. Almost without exception this is grown as a standard. Other important commercial varieties are Seckel, Bosc and Winter Nelis. All these are generally grown as standards. The variety commonly grown as dwarf is Angouleme. A few fruit growers of my acquaintance are making some money from orchards of dwarf Angouleme. The other varieties which are often propagated on dwarf stock as Clairgeau, Anjou and so forth, are seldom profitable. In fact I have heard it stated that outside of Ellw.a.n.ger and Barry's orchard there is not a profitable orchard of Anjou in this State. From these statements I wish you to derive the conclusion that in New York State under present conditions there is little encouragement for planting dwarf pears commercially."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44--IN PROFESSOR BAILEY'S ORCHARD

Chenango apple on Doucin stocks, interplanted between standard trees]

Mr. E. W. Wood, for many years chairman of the fruit committee of the Ma.s.sachusetts Horticultural Society, says that "under the right conditions the dwarf pear tree is a necessity for commercial pear growing. The growers in Revere and Cambridge would feel they could not get along without the dwarf trees. Putting the pear on the quince stock does not change the wants of the roots of the latter, and it is no use setting them on a light, dry soil, as the roots being confined to a small area of unsuitable soil, will make a feeble growth and finally die outright; or, if in an exposed situation, blow over. Most all the varieties may be grown as dwarfs. The Angouleme and Clairgeau, both good market varieties, cannot be successfully grown in any other way."

Recently Mr. M. B. Waite has written me the letter quoted below, giving some conclusions from his experience with dwarf pears in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. He says:

"I planted out 1,000 dwarf pear trees nine years ago. They were largely d.u.c.h.ess (Angouleme), but there are some Manning, Howell, Anjou, Louise Bonne and Lawrence. I have not been entirely satisfied with the results.

We have not had the proper quant.i.ty of fruit. There has been some fruit every year since the fourth year, and two years ago there was quite a good crop, but nothing to compare with the yield per acre of Kieffer, LeConte and Garber, for instance. Of course, these are higher-priced fruit and large yields are not required for good returns. Only the d.u.c.h.ess and Manning, however, have produced sufficient to pay at all, and the orchard has not as yet really paid financially. We have a nice crop this year, however, more than the total yield up to this season, and perhaps from now on we may win out. My dwarf pears are on a soil too dry and sandy for the best results, and I think we are at Was.h.i.+ngton pretty near the southern limit, at least at low alt.i.tudes. In the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina they can be grown further southward. They require a moist, preferably clay-loam soil even in their naturally favored districts, such as New England, New York and Michigan, but such a soil is still more desirable when rather too far south for their normal range. They require high culture, manuring and fertilizing, and thorough pruning and spraying in any locality, and these requirements are still more exacting in Maryland. A slight neglect in cultivation, pruning or spraying in one season results in a ma.s.s of blooms the next spring, but little or no fruit set. Of course, this extra attention which has to be devoted to dwarf pears as compared with Oriental pears, peaches, apples, etc., to be profitable should result in larger yields, but does not usually do so in this lat.i.tude. On the other hand, we may say in favor of the dwarf pear that the quince root is a healthy, reliable root for the pear tree; that the trees attain their seasonal growth early, and therefore are not as susceptible to pear blight as standard pears. Furthermore, they are more easily sprayed, pruned, and otherwise handled than the high standard trees."

My friend, Mr. J. W. Kerr, of the Eastern Sh.o.r.e of Maryland, who owns one of the oldest and most picturesque orchards of dwarf pears I ever saw, says that Angouleme (d.u.c.h.ess) is the only variety that pays for growing in that form.

Thus the experience of many men in many parts of America sums up as we began. The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be about this: Dwarf fruit trees have not yet played any prominent role in American commercial horticulture; but they have been profitable in a few special cases, and the probability seems strong almost to the point of certainty that, with the development, refinement and specialization of our commercial fruit growing, a wider field of usefulness will be opened for dwarf trees. In the realm of amateur fruit growing, on the other hand,--a realm now daily widening,--dwarf fruit trees are of capital importance. The owners and renters of small grounds, the cultivators of little gardens--the great majority of American home-makers, in fact,--will find in them an unfailing source of pleasure, inspiration, and even of profit.