Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1875 — Labeling Orchard Trees. [ARTICLE]

Labeling Orchard Trees.

In nine cases out of ten the farmer who plants an orchard will find no little difficulty in distinguishing varieties of fruit after the labels attached, one to each bundle of varieties, have become illegible, which, being marked in pencil upon a strip of wood, they soon do. Upon planting an orchard, whether of pip or stone fruits, or a vineyard, or even a plantation of berries, a diagram on paper should be made, showing accurately the location of each row and the varieties therein. The way to do this will easily suggest itself. If the trees are lost from hard winters, or any other cause, and are replaced by other varieties, corresponding alterations should be made in the map. We found, years ago, this plan to w T ork well. Now, if to this you add a good, durable. legible and conspicuous label to each tree, vine, bush or shrub, not only yourself and your family will soon become familiar with varieties, but a little observation will enable anyone soon to distinguish very many of them at sight by the peculiarities of wood or growth. One of the difficulties in this direction is that if the labels are put on with twine, a single season rots it, and the label is lost. If put on with wire, sooner, or later it girdles-the limb to which it if attached.

Various plans for marking have been adopted from time to time, many of them patented, and none of them are especially valuable. Among the latest labelskty have seen are very small ones of zimf, stamped with any name desired. These are, of course, as lasting as the metal itself, but they are inconspicuous, and, we think, preposterously high in price. By fastening at one end a strip of red flannel, or other light cloth, either by punching and wiring, or, better, by leaving a strip long enough so it might be turned over and the cloth fastened in the fold of metal; by painting, or by the various other ways that will easily suggest themselves, it would be an improvement. The word various is used because we wish to cover the whole ground, so that the average inventor may not steal the idea and rush down to the place where a patent is given to anything that carries the fee with it So this combination of metal and cloth, paint, etc. insures both durability and conspicuousness. If the other end of the label be pierced, and a wire attached, ending in a loop at the other end, through which a tack or very small brad tnay be put, and driven into th€ tree; or, better again, if something like a glazier’s point, pierced for the wire, be used, which may be easily driven into the smallest limb, or fastened in any way except around the branch, we have very nearly perfection in this direction. We want again to cover the ground against plant patents, and thus you may have a label be-» yond which little need be desired; as least we found it six years ago,, except we used labels marked with indelible ink on strong white cloth, which were troublesome to write, and not all that coaid be desired in other respects. When at the nursery of Arthur Bryant, Jr., near Princeton, 111., last fall, we saw a system of labels in use there that

we considered invaluable. For • the ground stakes about inches long were prepared, we think, ’with some composition of gas tar, etc* so far as they entered the ground. The top was then soaked in oil and stenciled with common lampblack. The tree-labels were slips of wood large enoftgh to take a fair-sized letter; they were soaked in oil and then stenciled like the Btakes. They were attached to trees by being looped to a limb with strong twine soaked like the labels in oil. Thus looped on, of course there could be no danger of girdling a limb or of damage thereto by strangulation. The question of imperishable: wooden labels and how to make them so has long occupied scientific investigators. An excellent, cheap and simple plan is given in the London Garden for rendering wooden labels imperishable by a partial petrifaction artificially. After the labels are made they are soaked in a strong solution of sulphate of iron, then thoroughly dried and afterward soaked in strong lime-water—the clear solution—not milk of lime. In this they must remain until the lime-water has thoroughly permeated the pores of the wood. This insoluble sulphate of lime will be forced throughout the pores of the wood, preventing the absorption of water and consequent decay. Twine for tying plants may be treated in a similar manner—Chicago Tribune.