The new horticulture

Dedication

WITH feelings of the deepest appreciation for their invaluable services in behalf of the New Horticulture, I now dedicate this new and revised edition. First, to Farm and Ranch, the only journal in the whole country that nearly twenty years ago opened its columns to what all others considered the visionary "pipe dreams" of a crackbrained enthusiast and declined to publish, thereby affording me opportunity to present these great natural horticultural truths, and save them from perishing from off the face of the earth.

Second, to Thomas L. Brunk, then professor of horticulture at the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College, the very first man to whom I confided them, who at once recognized their inestimable value, and the next year verified a part of them at the Maryland Experiment Station, to which he had been called, and from which he was discharged for wasting his time and issuing a bulletin on such wild vagaries. Disgusted at such blind prejudice, he embarked in another line of business successfully.

Third, to E. W. Kirkpatrick, the nurseryman and publicspirited citizen, whom all Texans love to honor, who was not only equally prompt to see these great truths but at once put them into practice, recommending them also in his catalogue to his customers, and boldly advocating them in public. To those three, the fruit-growers of the world owe a lasting debt of gratitude ; but for them, they would still be in the bondage of that trio of horticultural tyrants, the plow, the cultivator and the pruning knife, who with their prime minister, the little bacterial devil, "brown rot," have from time out of mind levied a tribute upon their earnings that far surpasses in amount the fortune of a Rockefeller.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The New Dispensation ..... i

II. Old Primitive Orchards .... 4

CHAPTER I. The New Dispensation

IN presenting the second part of this volume to the attention of the fruit-growing public, I do it with a feeling cf confidence that the time is ripe for a new dispensation of horticultural truths, and while they may, with their novelty, startle from their sleepy routine many of the high priests who minister around the altars throughout the country, the kindly reception awarded them in this section is an earnest of their general adoption everywhere in the near future. The public now demand the best of fruit, and they want it cheap. The day of high prices has probably gone forever, and it is a doubtful question whether fruit-growing, with the short-lived, unproductive, diseased and insect-ridden trees of to-day, and their uncertain crops, now pays. To practice the most advanced methods (taught by Mr. J. H. Hale, for instance, on peaches, and by others on apples, pears, etc.) requires an expenditure that is often not even covered by the receipts. The amount of extra nurturing, coddling and special petting, sometimes called "intensive handling," in the way of cultivation, pruning, thinning, fertilizing and spraying, to make pay an orchard grown from three- or four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, is appalling ; and when we contrast it with the certain, cheap and easy-going style in which the twenty-year-old Rambo apple tree, mentioned in the last chapter of this volume, brings in the dollars, we may well cry, "Hasten the good time when all fruits can be thus grown!" That is the mission of this gospel of the "New Horticulture" I now advocate, which, though nominally new, is really as old as the morn in spring in the long, long ago, ages before Eve plucked and Adam ate the apple, when the warm sunbeams kissed the dew from the first modestly opening fruit blooms, whenever that was. Its principles, from which we have now wandered

SO far, to our great loss, are identical with those practiced from the beginning by wise Mother Nature. With lavish hand she scattered the seed that fell upon the solid earth, and produced trees after their kind, from which, down through the puzzling maze of ages of evolution and the survival of the fittest, where her original forests stand, she now presents to our admiring gaze majestic evidences of her skill. To illustrate those principles is the main object of this book. Plain as they are, I stumbled over them for years, like the rest of the horticultural world, blind to the patent fact that in all their peculiarities of growth and treatment, both fruit and forest trees are the same. They are both the result of specific conditions and surroundings. No fostering hand of man, with friendly cultivator, spade or plow, was present during the millions of years of their evolution, to kindly aid in their struggles with climatic adversities the sturdy monarchs of the forest, which from the frigid to the torrid zone, in slowly changing cycles of climate, have crowned the rocky hills and mountains and covered the broad valleys with their sheltering boughs. So they have, through succeeding generations, adapted themselves perfectly to their environments by the survival of the fittest, and from age to age found in the firm, unbroken virgin soil, with no disturbance of their surface roots, the conditions best suited to their perfect development. The same law applies to fruit trees as well.

Perhaps, if our horticultural scientists had their way, and through successive generations of like-minded descendants, could but grow fruit trees for a million or so years more, continuously from long-rooted ones, on ground subsoiled and deeply pulverized, they might ultimately, like nature, evolve a race of trees that would prefer and thrive best on such a soil, and fruit perhaps as well as Mr. Pierce's Rambo apple tree, alluded to hereafter, or live as long as the old Seckel or Sudduth pear. But the trees we now have to deal with retain too much of the perversity of their wild parents not to kick at such treatment. The experiments recounted later on, of Mr. Patterson and the squirrels, and the stunted pear trees in my Hitchcock orchard, on a muck bed, with two feet of

THE NEW DISPENSATION. 3

rich surface soil beneath them, prove this beyond all doubt. Seeing, then, that they foolishly reject our efforts in their behalf, why not, as it costs so much less, and the trees produce so much more and finer fruit, indulge them in their long-time preferences. However, before entering my plea for this course, I will in a short digression make some remarks : ist, on the old primitive orchards of our forefathers ; and, also, 2d, give a short account of how I happened to hit upon the great fundamental principle of all entirely succcessful horticulture, that the nearer we can bring a transplanted tree to the form of a seed, the better it will be for the tree, as will be seen by the following recent extract from Farm and Ravcli:

While viewing the path of the recent tornado that swept through the city of Sherman, Texas, destroying scores of precious lives and happy homes, I noticed the effect of the force on tlie trees. Some trees were uprooted, some snapped off above ground, some stripped of limbs and bark and others were twisted into splinters. One large post oak, about two feet in diameter, was splintered and twisted like a huge rope. A large apple orchard was uprooted, and I searched in vain for a tap-root on any of those apple trees. They had the appearance of being planted with long roots and tramped into a small hole, with the point of the roots near the surface where they remained and continued to grow. The soil was rich, sandy loam on deep, rich, moist clay. The forest trees were large and strong, and most of them refused to be uprooted and were snapped off. Had these trees been planted so as to induce the growth of strong taproots, evidently they would have been larger, stronger, healthier and more fruitful. — E. W. Kirkpatrick.

CHAPTER II. Old Primitive Orchards

THERE is no more interesting subject for investigation, nor one that has puzzled observers more completely, than why we are unable now to grow as healthy, long-lived and productive fruit trees as our forefathers. Many and various have been the theories advanced, but the most general one seems to be that in the early settlement of the country the vast forest area had a mysterious and potent influence on climate and tree diseases, and that the gradual clearing of the land has, somehow or other, changed conditions so radically that fruit trees in general, and certain varieties in particular, no longer succeed as they formally did. Where once in the eastern states the apple and the pear attained the giant proportions of forest trees, now, as a rule, they crouch and cower in valley and on hill, their puny, stunted, blighting offspring a pitiful burlesque, in many instances, of their grand old sires.

I came across a statement a few days ago, that in 1721, a small " settlement of forty families near Boston made three thousand barrels of cider, and another New England village of two hundred families made ten thousand barrels." Presumably they reserved fruit enough for all domestic uses, fresh and dried, and this vast amount of cider was simply from the surplus fruit. Remembering that those were days of small family orchards, not of thousands of acres like we now plant, can we anywhere find a parallel in productiveness to-day ? The trees that gave those enormous yields were presumably either seedlings, root grafts or grown from small one-year maiden trees, with few roots when set, except the tap, and those doubtless cut off not far below the surface. The nurseryman, with his large, fine, three and four-year-old, long, fibrous-rooted trees, like those now sold, had not yet

OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS.

appeared upon the stage to captivate those rustic growers with visions of early fruit. And while on its face there may seem to be some show of reason in this theory of climatic change as the cause for all this acknowledged inferiority and decay, yet when examined in the cold light of statistical climatology and actual experience, it crumbles, a baseless fabric, to the ground. The records, from the earliest times, show no material change in average temperature or rainfall between then and now, and we still have, here and there, all over the country, strong, vigorous and productive old seedling trees, like the Sudduth pear in Illinois, and the Arkansas Mammoth Black-Twig apple, which show beyond all doubt that in certain places, and under certain conditions, it is still possible to grow apple and pear trees fit companions to those of long ago, and which tower among the fruit trees of to-day, like Saul among his brethren, head and shoulders above them all. These hale old mementos of by-gone days are living witnesses against the theory of climatic change, for C. M. Stark, of Missouri, in American Garden of January, says: "The original Mammoth Black-Twig apple tree is still standing near Rhea's Mill, in Washington county, Arkansas, and bearing fruit, and at the recent meeting of the State Horticultural Society of that state, at Fayettville, there was an exhibit of apples from this tree labeled, 'M. B.-Twig, from the original tree, sixty-five years old, two feet eight inches in diameter 2^/^ feet above the ground.'" And yet, just across the state line in Kansas, the well-known king of apple growers, Mr. Frank Wellhouse, the owner of 1,200 acres of trees, plants sixteen feet apart in the rows, because in twelve or fifteen years he finds that his long-rooted, well sprayed and cultivated trees, standing on thoroughly prepared ground, cease to pay.

These being some of the facts in the case, what is the true answer to the New York Legislature's call last year for information as to the acknowledged decadence of modern orchards, especially the apple ? It will not do to talk apologetically, in explanation of repeated crop failures, about the great number of fungous enemies, late frosts, dry seasons, chilling winds

6 THE NEW HOUTICULTURE.

and cold, wet weather at blooming time, as if all those conditions did not prevail in the "Auld Lang Syne" as well as now. Hear what Mr. S. F. Alberger, in a recent issue of the Orange Jiidd Farmer, has to say about the conduct now of some of these old-time apple trees : "The apple trees that pay best now in Western New York are from sixty to one hundred years old. I think it is because their branches seldom intersect, and their roots run deep into the soil, and during our customary dry fall weather, supply to the fruit buds not only moisture, but the kind and quality of food necessary to give them the vital power required to perfect the fertilization of the flowers and the setting of the fruit the next spring. I think tlie lack of vital force in the buds is one great fault in our commercial orchards of to-day. In many of these orchards, if the trees are dug up, it will frequently be found that they have no tap-roots at all, but the roots start out at almost right angles, and in some cases are found, at fifteen to twenty feet from the trees, to be only six inches or a foot below the surface. Some of these trees showed decay at the center of the trunk ; in three cases, where the trees had been grafted, it could be seen between the layers of yearly growth from six to twelve years after planting, but the trunks of a twenty-two-year-old seedling and several sevent3'-five-year-old seedlings that were limb-grafted do not indicate any decay. Does the insertion of the graft or scion into tiie crown cause this delay ?"

Verily, Mr. Alberger is hitting very close to the truth, in his diagnosis of the commercial orchards of the present day, grown from large, fibrous and long-rooted trees. But to answer the interrogatory of the New York Legislature more fully as to this well-known decadence, let us go back to the time, several hundred years ago, when there were no orchards in America. When the Mayflower glided alongside of Pl}'- mouth Rock, folded to rest her white wings, that for many a long, weary day and night had breasted the Atlantic's gales, and from her deck the Pilgrims stepped in search of new homes, we know that they brought seeds, including fruits of various kinds, and when settled, from time to time imported

OLD PRIMITIVE ORCHARDS. 7

more. But for many years, in fact generations, compelled, as they were, to battle with the elements and Indians, and clear forests, little attention could have been paid to fruit-growing, except in a small way for individual use, and every one doubtless propagated for himself, by the old and well-known method of root-grafting, or from seed, where the trees were to stand. It is a fair presumption, indeed, that anything like a commercial nursery was then unknown, friends and neighbors performing such kindly offices as budding and grafting for each other without pay. This continued, doubtless, for many generations. In fact, up to the beginning of the present century there were practically no nurseries at all, and the institutions of this description that are so common now all over the country really date back scarcely more than fifty or seventy-five years. But as more and more attention was given to fruit culture, naturally people here and there would grow trees for sale, and many seasons would doubtless have an over-supply. Not wishing to lose them, these would be transplanted once or more, to check growth and keep them from getting too large, and intending purchasers, seeing such big, fine stock, in their desire and haste for immediate bearing, and encouraged by the honest but mistaken nurseryman, would naturally purchase these large trees, in preference to the small ones; and, indeed, if treated right, a two or three-year-old tree, or even one five or six years old is equally as good, and will fruit sooner than a younger one.

But the trouble was, then as now, that right treatment was not understood, and in order to preserve a large part of the handsome tops, which the customers of course desired, the nurseryman naturally advised retaining as much as possible of the long and fibrous roots, the result of transplanting once or more. And thus it gradually came about, that there grew up an aristocracy of root, and when dug and graded in the fall, the value and price of the stock was largely determined, just as it is now, by the size and quantity of the roots. I doubt, indeed, whether there is to-day (April 2, igo6) a nurseryman in the whole country who has not numbers of fine trees of all varieties that by accident have been dug with short roots, for which he will cheerfully take half price. But to return to our immediate forefathers and their doings in the fields of horticulture. Naturally, in very dry seasons or in case of neglected trees, set with large tops, the tangled mass of feeble, fibrous roots would fail to take hold in the soil, and, exhausted by evaporation from the tops, would die. Then at once went up the cry, "More root !" Why not ? Taught to believe that roots were absolutely necessary, naturally the planter would conclude, the more the better, just as is taught in all the books to-day ; and indeed, so firmly is it fixed in the minds of many of our most eminent fruit growers that, though earnestly requested to do so, they will not even plant a single close root-pruned tree as an experiment. This has for several years been my general experience, in trying to inaugurate this all-important reform. And yet it is absolutely the foundation of all permanent success in the orchards of the future. We have now got to a point where a small one-year tree is considered worthless, and it is wellnigh impossible to sell a tree that has not been transplanted once, and oftener twice, to give it plenty of roots, and when such trees are planted, with all their matted fibrous roots, the doom of that orchard is sealed, whether it be with blight and scab in the pear and apple, yellows in the peach, or black-knot and root-tumor in the plum and peach. Such orchards are bound to fail early, become diseased, and die. And so, in tracing the probable course and progress of horticulture in this country from the earliest times down until now, we find that of necessity, commencing with seedlings and root-grafts (practically my method), its whole history has been a descent from health, longevity and productiveness in the beginning, as history and tradition both prove, down to disease, early decay and unfruitfulness at the present time, and in an exact and direct ratio to the increased quantity of roots left on, and age of the trees when set. The older the tree and the more root, the worse for the tree ever afterwards. Just how I happened to discover this important truth will be told in the next chapter.

CHAPTER III. How I Discovered Close Root-Pruning

AS this principle of horticulture is absolutely the most important, without a single exception, in the whole science, and the foundation of all permanent success, it is most astonishing that men have stumbled over it almost daily from the beginning, and never realized its value. The ordinary root-graft has been the most common form of propagation for most fruit trees for time out of mind, and every nurseryman knows what superior trees can be thus grown in a single season. And yet it has never occurred to any one to say : If a small piece of root will make such a fine tree, why will not the same principle apply the second or any other year afterward ? Just how the value of this method did first present itself to me is as follows : Nobody here having any faith in the success of my venture of pear planting, I found it impossible at first to sell but few of the trees I had grown from cuttings, but having hopes that the astonishing vigor and thrift of my orchard would start a demand, I dug the young trees for several years, and transplanted to keep them from getting too large, as they surely would, judging from the way the orchard was doing. So we opened wide furrows and, spreading out the pear tree roots evenly, according to the universal directions, covered them nicely and firmed the ground well. Being an old market-gardener, though a new nurseryman, and a believer in manure, as already shown, I gave the rows of young trees a good dressing of cotton-seed meal, and with fair cultivation, at the end of the year I had no cause for complaint, as they all did well. But even that early I had caught on to the fact that, for some unexplained reason, the cuttings planted at the same time as the rooted trees always averaged much better. Moreover, another great point in their favor was, that when we came to pack the few lO THE NEW HORTICULTURE.

trees i did sell, being green at the business I found a world of trouble to make the clumsy, flat-rooted ones from the young trees agree with one another and lie comfortably in the same bundle. Having been planted with quite long ones, they were entirely lateral-rooted when dug. But the trees grown from cuttings, while they gave us a world of trouble to get out with the regulation amount and length of root, when we came to pack, were regular daisies — roots all long, deep and straight, and as easy to pack as sardines in a box. The third year I had extraordinary luck, and grew about seven thousand trees from cuttings. Having again sold only about two thousand, I found quite a job on my hands late in spring, as we had waited, hoping some purchaser would come along. But he did not, so we had to tackle the transplanting job again, and at the same time look forward to next year's packing of those roots, if sales turned out good. I remember well standing before the row where the trees were all nicely heeled in, with the buds ready to leaf out, and my only help, Frank, a colored boy, at my side, who had just as little fancy as I for the job. After holding a council of war for awhile as to the best and easiest way to get all those roots under ground, and Frank had actually gone down once with the plow and was coming back on the furrow, throwing the dirt out, the idea occurred all at once in the form of a self question. Something seemed to say : "If those trees grew so well with no root at all, what's the matter with cutting them all off, and letting them try it over again?" No sooner thought than settled. Frank was within fifty feet of me coming back, and when he got there I astonished him by saying: "Now go back and throw the furrow together again," and told him of my idea. Without a moment's hesitation that colored boy, Frank Bell, caught on to the whole thing, saying, "Good," and started back on the row. And yet I have been writing and urging fruitgrowers for the last eight years just to try the method, even on a single tree; but so thoroughly had the long-root idea incorporated itself into the mental machinery of most of them, that until the last year or two it has been in vain. I laid the whole subject in a most exhaust-

HOW 1 DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOI-PKUN 1 NO.

ive article before the American Pomological Society five 3'ears ago, at Washington, which, if it was ever read, certainly produced no other result except perhaps to stamp me as a wild and woolly Texas crank!

But to return to my story. We pitched in, and in short order had the whole five thousand trees reduced back to cuttings again, at least in appearance, for we did not stop at any half-way closepruning, like thousands will who try it with fear and doubt.

We both agreed that it was a plain case of no need for root at all, and off they came, as close to the ends as we could cut them, for our intention was simply to stick them back in the rows as cuttings, after reducing the tops to one foot.

And we treated the whole five thousand just that way. If a single tree died, I never saw it, and by fall those rows presented a picture of vigorous and even growth, many trees being eight to ten feet high, like the tree I hold in my hand in the illustration, though the root-pruned tree in the other hand

TRKE IN RIGHT HAND GROWN IN ONE YEAR FROM ONE LIKE THAT IN LEFT HAND.

la THE NEW HORTICULTURE.

has twice as much root as those had. But what shall I say of the great, deep, penetrating roots they had struck ! The tree I hold shows exactly the character of their root system, though it has several large roots broken off in digging from the hard-pan pipe-clay subsoil, and the photograph by no means does justice to the size of the ends of the roots next to the floor, which were from the size of a knitting needle to a wheat-straw, showing plainly they had gone far deeper. In fact, I am confident that could all of that tree's roots have been taken up, the extreme length would have been as great as the top, which had to be bent and broken down for photographing, and measured eleven feet. I wish particularly to emphasize the fact that this tree was grown on stiff, black, waxy soil, broken about four inches deep, having a hard-pan yellow pipe-clay subsoil, that positively defies a spade. And yet we find pages in the books about the absolute necessity for a deeply plowed and subsoiled bed for trees, to enable their roots to take hold, forgetting that hard and soft are relative terms, and ground as hard as a rock to us is as soft as butter to a close root-pruned tree.

But a little more about that lot of trees. By this time people began to talk and investigate, and wild rumors of fabulous Le Conte pear crops and profits over in Georgia found their way over here. That fall I sold nearly every tree I had, and, having found out this easy method of planting, I hastened to spread the glad tidings, as well as to "butcher" the tree roots in digging. Frank had a weather eye for an easy job, and when I said, "Dig with short roots," he was quick to obey, and we hustled them out in a hurry. But when I came to deliver, I found that I had made a big mistake, for talk as eloquently as I would about the virtue of short roots, and with the trees in my hands to demonstrate its truth, I actually had several parties refuse to buy, and had to guarantee nearly all I did sell to grow. This wound up my efforts as a close root-pruned tree propagandist for some time, and while knowing they were worse than useless, to my great disgust, I was compelled to dig with all the roots possible. In fact, so disheartening were my efforts for a number

HOW I DISCOVERED CLOSE ROOT-PRUNING. 1 3

of years that if Prof. T. L. Brunk, then of our Texas A. and M. College, had not, on a visit of several days to my home, urged me so earnestly once more to bring the subject before the public in the Southern Horticultural Journal, of which he was the editor, and also in Farm and Ranch, it might have rested until now. He saw the philosophy of the whole thing at a glance when I pointed it out, and showed him the trees, and afterwards, when connected with the Experiment Station at Washington, he made the very exhaustive experiments, an account of which is elsewhere in this volume. Had not personal and political motives succeeded in ousting him from "Washington shortly afterwards, this most enthusiastic and progressive master of horticulture would, I feel sure, long ago have succeeded in demonstrating, in the public position he held near the capitol, the utility and vast superiority of the close root-pruning over the long-rooted method.

CHAPTER IV. Close Root -Pruning

WITH all our knowledge and progress in the other arts and sciences, there is abundant evidence to prove that in the science and practice of horticulture we have retrograded so far that only last year the legislature of New York passed a bill appropriating funds and authorizing the Commissioner of Agriculture to investigate and determine, if possible, the causes for the widespread decadence of the orchards in western New York, both in the matter of the decreasing health and shortened life of the trees, as well as the inferior quality and diminished yield of fruit. This investigation is now in progress, and is awakening great interest in the east. It is a well-known fact that all over the countr}' the same conditions exist that are complained of in New York. While last year gave a phenomenal yield of fruit everywhere, it is the first for several years, and not like!}'- to occur soon again, and it is certain that the sturdy fruit trees which delighted the eye with their grand proportions, and tickled the palates of our forefathers with their regular and abundant crops of fine fruit, are a thing of the past. Something certainly is wrong when apple trees cease to be profitable at fif teen years of age, and peach trees reach their prime in five and die in ten or less, as they do nearly everywhere in our cultivated orchards, and yet old seedlings in fence corners, chicken yards, old fields and around the back doors are standing up cheerily under the weight of twenty or thirty years ; and Mr. Hale himself drew his inspiration, when he embarked in his successful career of peach growing, from a sixty-year tree that stood in a neglected but friendly fence-row on his ancestral farm. That there are causes for all this, outside of diminished fertility, want of care or fancied change of climate, is certain.