Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 September 1908 — DWARF APPLES. [ARTICLE]

DWARF APPLES.

They Will Be Grown on Account of Their Convenience. G. T. Powell of Columbia county, N. Y., has been conducting some Interesting experiments on the value of dwarf apple trees in business orchards. It is the Idea of Mr. Powell that trees of a low' habit of growth will be required more aud more because of the need of convenience for spraying and harvesting. The scale insects make It almost impossible to thoroughly treat large trees, and the cost of labor makes a saving at harvesting time of great importance. Two styles of dwarf trees are under trial. The so called Paradise is very dwarl’ aud is short lived. The Doucln stock is half dwarf, making trees sixteen to eighteen feet high, and promises good results iu commercial orcharding. The trees are planted two or three Inches below the union of stock aud top. Iu Mr. Powell’s orchard the trees of Paradise stock are set as fillers between those of the larger dwarf kind. The rows iu the orchard are twenty feet apart and the trees ten in a row. The wide spaces between the rows allow plenty of room for cultivation by horsepower, while the trees in the rows will be thinned out as soon as they become crowded. The dwarf trees give fruit iu a few’ years from planting, and the amount gradually increases. The small dwarf kind lasts six to eight years and the semidwarfs for about twenty years. For dw;arf t rees the Spitzenberg, Jonathan and Mclntosh are found successful. They produce fruit of very flue appearance aud quality, suitable for packing in boxes for the choicest trade. For the half dwarfs the Northern Spy, Iloxbury Russet, Twenty Ounce, Astrakhan. Baldwin and Greening are satisfactory. The dwarf trees must receive good culture, with plenty of plant food and earojTv:! cultivation. The soil is plowed and harrowed in f: > spring and is kept iu a cover crop of clover during the summer. Scale and other insects are easily treated in the dwarf orchards. The idea appears so premising to Mr. Powell that he Is pruning his larger trees on the dwarf plan, cutting back the tops of the standard trees in order to cause them to spread out and to remove the high parts of the tree, which make so much difficulty in spraying old trees.

Designing Next Year’s Planting. As your shrubs, perennials and annuals blossom, planting plans for next year may best be devised. When the flowers are in bloom their effect may be noted, and the change to be wrought by new plants may be accurately calculated. That is the time to get out notebook and catalogue, figure out what your flower lieds and shrubbery borders lack and decide what may best supply that lack. If a pink flowering shrub is needed at a certain point, make a note of it in your book; better still, stick up a little stake in the exact spot where the shrub would look best, marking on the stake the specifications, whether the plant should be tall or low growing, the season of flowering, etc. Then when you order your shrubbery for fall planting

your nurseryman can fill your specific cations, and when the plant comes you will know the exact place to plant It. In grouping your plants take pains to make them fit in with the neighboring architecture. The texture of the foliage, the color of the flowers, season of bloom and the rapidity of growth should all be considered carefully. Do not plant shrubs so close together when they are young that when they attain a few years’ grdwth they will be crowded.