Dwarf Fruit Trees

Part 1

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DWARF FRUIT TREES

OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

LANDSCAPE GARDENING PLUMS AND PLUM CULTURE FRUIT HARVESTING, STORING, MARKETING SYSTEMATIC POMOLOGY

Two years planted]

DWARF FRUIT TREES

THEIR PROPAGATION, PRUNING, AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT, ADAPTED TO THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

By F. A. WAUGH

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 1906

COPYRIGHT, 1906

BY ORANGE JUDD COMPANY

PREFACE

The commercial interests have so continuously and completely held the horticultural stage in America during the last two decades that it has been impossible for amateur horticulture to get in a word edgewise. Any public speaker or writer has had to talk about several acres at a time or he would not be listened to. He has been obliged to insist that his scheme would pay on a commercial scale before anyone would hear, much less consider, what he had to tell.

But now a change is coming. Different conditions are already upon us. A thousand signs indicate the new era. With hundreds--yes thousands--of men and women now horticulture is an avocation, a pastime. They grow trees largely for the pleasure of it; and their gardens are built amidst surroundings which would make commercial pomology laugh at itself.

And so I undertake to offer the first American fruit book in a quarter century which can boldly declare its independence of the professional element in fruit growing. I am confident that dwarf fruit trees have some commercial possibilities, but they are of far greater importance to the small householder, the owner of the private "estate," the village dweller, the suburbanite and the commuter.

In other words, while I hope that all good people will be interested in dwarf fruit trees and that some of them will share the enthusiasm of which this book is begotten, I do not want anyone to think that I have issued any guaranty, expressed or implied, that dwarf trees will open a paying commercial enterprise. Because the argument that a thing pays has been so long the only recommendation offered for any horticultural scheme, many persons have formed the habit of assuming that every sort of praise stands on this one foundation.

F. A. WAUGH.

Massachusetts Agricultural College, 1906.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE v

I. General Considerations 1

II. Advantages and Disadvantages 8

III. Propagation 22

IV. Pruning 33

V. Special Forms 41

VI. General Management 51

Part 2

VII. Dwarf Apples 63

VIII. Dwarf Pears 76

IX. Dwarf Peaches 83

X. Dwarf Plums 90

XI. Bush Fruits 99

XII. Fruit Trees in Pots 106

XIII. Personalia 112

Index 125

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Dwarf Cherry Tree Frontispiece

FIG. PAGE

1 Dwarf Apple Trees in Western New York 3

2 Trained Cordon Apple Trees 5

3 Bismarck Apple 7

4 Pear Tree Trained as an Espalier 9

5 Bush Apple Tree 11

6 Plums as Upright Cordons 17

7 Paradise Apple Stocks in Early Spring 25

8 The Western Sand Cherry 30

9 Upright Cordon Plum 31

10 Bush Apple 34

11 Bush Apple, Three Years Old, Before Pruning 37

12 Bush Apple, Same Tree, After Pruning 37

13 Cordon Pears Before Pruning 39

14 Cordon Pears After Pruning 39

15 Pears in Double U Form 43

16 Pears in U Form 45

17 Apricots in U Form 47

Part 3

18 Pear in Espalier 48

19 Old Espalier Pears on Farm House Wall 49

20 Horizontal Cordon Apple and Other Dwarf Trees 52

21 Design for a Back Yard Fruit Garden 53

22 Dwarf Fruit Garden 55

23 Fruit Gardening and Landscape Gardening Combined 59

24 A Fruit Garden Containing Many Dwarf Trees 61

25 Dwarf Apples on Prof. L. H. Bailey's Farm, New York 65

26 Upright Cordon Apples 67

27 Horizontal Cordon Apple Trees 71

28 Young Orchard of Dwarf Pear in Western New York 76

29 Dwarf Pear in the Old and Profitable Yeomans Orchard, New York 77

30 Orchard of Dwarf Duchess Pear, Lockport, N. Y. 79

31 Pyramid Pears in a German Orchard 80

32 Dwarf Peach in Nursery 84

33 Espalier Peach, Hartford, Conn. 85

34 Peach in Fan Espalier on Wall--England 87

35 Peach Trees Trained Under Glass 88

36 Plum Trees Trained as Upright Cordons 91

37 Burbank Plums on Upright Cordons Trained to Trellis 95

38 Currants as Fan Espaliers on Trellis 100

39 Gooseberry Fan Espalier 102

40 Tree Form Gooseberry 104

41 A Fruiting Peach in Pot 108

42 A Fig Tree in a Pot 110

43 Dwarf Pear 117

44 Chenango Apples in Prof. L. H. Bailey's Orchard 121

DWARF FRUIT TREES

Part 4

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

A dwarf fruit tree is simply one which does not reach full size. It is not so large as it might be expected to be. It is smaller than a normal tree of the same variety and age.

There are indeed some trees which are normally dwarf, so to speak. They never reach a considerable size. They are smaller than other better known and related species. For example, the species Prunus pumila besseyi is sometimes called the dwarf sand cherry, simply because it is always notably smaller than related species. The Paradise apple is spoken of as a dwarf because it never attains the stature which other apples attain.

But in the technical sense, as the term is used by nurserymen and pomologists, a dwarf tree is one which is made, by some artificial means, to grow smaller than normal trees of the same variety.

These artificial means used for making dwarf trees are chiefly three: (1) propagation on dwarfing stocks, (2) repressive pruning, and (3) training to some prescribed form.

DWARFING STOCKS

The most common and important means of securing dwarf trees is that of propagating them on dwarfing stocks. These are simply such roots as make a slower and weaker growth than the trees from which cions are taken. This will be understood better from a concrete example. The quince tree normally grows slower than the pear, and usually reaches about half the size at maturity. Now pear cions will unite readily with quince roots and will grow in good health for many years. But when a pear tree is thus dependent for daily food on a quince root it fares like Oliver Twist. It never gets enough. It is always starved. It makes considerably less annual growth, and never (or at least seldom) reaches the size which it might have reached if it had been growing on a pear root.

This is, somewhat roughly stated, the whole theory of dwarfing fruit trees by grafting them on slow-growing stocks. The tree top is always under-nourished and thus restrained in its ambitious growth of branches, as seen in Fig. 1.

While the tree is made thus smaller by being grafted on a restraining root, it is not affected in its other characteristics. At least theoretically it is not. It still bears the same kind of fruit and foliage. Bartlett pear trees budded on quince roots yield fruit true to name. The pears are still Bartletts, and can not be told from those grown on an ordinary tree. Sometimes the fruit from dwarf trees seems to be better colored or better flavored than that from standard trees; but such differences are very delicate and usually receive slight thought.

Dwarf fruit trees have not been very largely grown in America, but have been much more widely used in Europe. This statement holds good either for commercial plantations or for private fruit gardens. They are coming into more common use in this country because, in both market orchards and amateur gardens, our pomology is coming to be somewhat more like that of Europe. Our conditions are approaching those of the Old World, even though they will always be very different from those of Europe in horticultural matters.

Dwarf fruit trees are particularly valuable in small gardens; and small gardens are becoming constantly more popular among our urban, and especially our suburban, population. This matter is discussed more fully in another chapter. Fruit of finer quality can be grown on dwarf trees, as a general rule, than can usually be grown on standard trees. Every year there are more people in America who are willing to take any necessary pains to secure fruit of extra quality. This remark applies particularly to amateur fruit growers and to owners of private estates who grow fruit for their own tables, but it is no less true of a certain class of fruit buyers, especially in the richer cities. Although $3 a barrel is still a high price for ordinary good apples, sales of fancy apples at $3 a dozen fruits are by no means infrequent in the city markets every winter.

From Loebner's "Zwergobstbaeume"]

In this respect also we are approaching European conditions. In the markets of the continental capitals in particular fancy fruits are frequently sold at prices which seem almost incredible to an American. Single apples sometimes bring 50 cents to a dollar, and peaches an equal price. Just recently a story has been going the rounds of the newspapers that the caterer for the Czar's table sometimes pays as high as $15 apiece for peaches for the royal table. Hereupon a solemn American editor remarked that if the whole royal family should live upon nothing but peaches it would still be cheaper than carrying on the Japanese war.

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