Orchardists and cultivators of garden-fruit will have need of all
their skill to prepare tender fruit-trees for winter. It is the
misfortune, alike of the English summers, and of ours in the West,
that trees do not properly ripen their wood. But in Great Britain it
is from the want of enough, and in America, from too much summer. Our
long and hot summers give two or three _separate growths_ to
fruit-trees, and the last one is usually in progress at a period so
late that severe frosts and freezings overtake the tree while yet in
an excitable state, pushing new wood, and with a top quite unripened
for severe frosty handling.
The year 1845 furnished a fine type of western summers. The spring
came in very properly, and at so late a period that the usual frosts,
after the expansion of leaves, were avoided. The summer opened warmly
and continued with almost unvarying heat throughout. At the same time
there were frequent and copious rains.
By this statement the average temperature of June was 71°, and the
rain 6-1/ , inches; of July, average noon heat 80°, rain 3¼ inches; of
August, average noon heat 80°, rain 5½ inches. Nights were exceedingly
warm. The day repeatedly opened and closed at 80°. Our thermometer on
the north of our house, in a shady yard, stood for eight and ten days
together between 94° and 100°, twice attaining the latter height.
Under such stimulus our pear, apple and plum-trees, made their first
growth by the first of July. They soon started into a second growth,
which wound up during the last of August and the first of September,
plum-trees entirely shedding their leaves and standing as bare as in
January.
Let orchards be examined when frosts begin to occur, and every
_side-shoot_, _sucker_ or _water-sprout_, cut cleanly out. These
succulent, raw sprouts are the breeding-spots of disease. Cold-blight
invariably manifests itself in them in the most positive form..
Garden trees, choice pears, and stone-fruits, should, in addition to
this operation, if still in growth at the last of September, receive a
fall pruning. From the first to the middle of October, according to
the season, cut off two-thirds of the new growth, or back to strong,
ripe wood. It is well known that the newest buds, near the extremity
of young wood, are the most sensitive and apt to break and grow,
whereas the buds near the base of a branch are dormant. It is the
repose of the older buds which makes fall pruning, if performed with
judgment, so valuable. Because it forces the tree to expend its
energies in ripening its wood instead of making more, and it also
tends to induce fruitfulness by changing leaf-buds to fruit-buds. The
great art of fall pruning is to relieve the tree of its crude wood
_without causing its dormant buds to break_. If performed too early,
or if but the tips of the fine wood are removed, the new buds may
break and side-shoots issue, leaving the tree worse off than before.
Young trees _just coming into bearing_ should have their trunks
protected. That there is a change in the economy of a tree when it
begins to bear is plain; and experience seems to teach that trees are
peculiarly tender at the time of this change, since they are far more
apt to die when coming to fruit, than either before or afterward.
Cherry-trees and pear-trees should have brush, or corn-stalks, or
straw, or matting, as is most convenient, so placed from the ground to
the branches, as to exclude the sun without excluding air. An hour’s
attention may save much regret.