Stream Corner

Trees are pruned in order to regulate their fruit. As far as most fruit trees are concerned the harder you prune them, when young, the more you delay cropping.

In fact, it is a grass which we have used in one of our smaller orchards, with great success. The Americans, in fact, call this method of sod mulching 'Fescue to the Rescue'. This mowing is definitely necessary in the case of cherries and plums, and the the natural mulching apply principally to apples.

A good pruner must always think about every cut before he makes it. As lie wants to learn he makes a mental note of what he thinks is going to happen when he makes a cut, and then he watches carefully the following season to see what actually does happen, and this is the way he learns.

He must learn to prune young wood just above a bud, and to saw back branches so as to leave no 'snag' at all; that is to say, the sawcut must be made right the way back to the other branch, or to just below another branch growing lower down.

It is argued, of course, that chemical fertilizers may be used when `adequate' organic manuring has been carried out first. In my view, however, organic manuring is only adequate when the fruit trees and bushes are able to obtain all their requirements through natural agencies, without any artificial chemical aid, for only then is the soil really fertile. No keen organic grower accepts the premise that organic manuring is intended to feed his plants direct. It seems that the seasonal increase in available plant nutrients is least in those cases where most fertilizers have been used. It it very clear that the addition of inorganic salts automatically repressed the bacterial activity which is one of the main benefits derived from organic manuring.

It cannot be denied that most of the chemical fertilizers used today are, in fact, produced synthetically in factories. They are applied in the form of soluble concentrated salts and thus they produce in the soil conditions which have ho counterpart in nature.