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Show HORTICULTURAL NOTES. Manure the orchard and fruit garden. gar-den. One of the best methods for growing better apples is to prune your orchard. Slow decay is just what proves best for a supply of potash, phosphorus and lime for the trees. The value of the currant as a nutritive nu-tritive and health food is almost without with-out equal. The production of apples is 42.5 per cent, of a full crop, compared with 43.4 per cent, in 1908. Unless a tree is given a great deal of attention by pruning it often becomes be-comes very crooked and unsymmet-rical. unsymmet-rical. A young peach tree needs vigorous pruning, but a bearing tree in good soil needs little, except to remove dead and surplus branches. The object of pruning is to shorten short-en the new growth, leaving approximately approxi-mately the amount of fruiting wood which the vine can safely carry. Nursery wires may , be choking young trees planted last spring. They should be carefully examined and such vines removed before growth starts. An operation of orchard culture which is rarely practiced in the home orchard, but very essential to the development de-velopment of good formed trees, is pruning. The old orchard that has trees 12 to 15 years old and older, and already in bearing, will be benefited by heavy applications of stable litter or other fertilizer. Secretary Wilson says that the most practical way to fight plant disease is to use nature's method and secure jr breed up disease-resistant or immune im-mune plants. Though orchids , frequently bring prices that make the poor man stagger, stag-ger, the highest price for a single flower was given for a tulip in Amsterdam Am-sterdam by an enthusiast, who paid $250,000 for it. ' The gardener who deliberately picks out the cheapest grade of seeds invites crop failure. There is a certain cer-tain percentage of inferior stuff in all garden seeds, which can only produce inferior plants, and for best results this should all be taken out. Only the best is good enough. |