CHERRY ORCHARDS AND THEIR CARE
It is patent to the eye of every passer-by that cherry trees are commonly set too thickly in most of the orchards in New York. While close planting is a universal fault, the amount of room differs greatly in different cherry centers, depending mostly upon the custom in the community, though, as all confess, it should depend upon the variety and the soil. The very erroneous notion seems to have prevailed in setting the plantations now reaching maturity that a large return could be skimmed from a small area by close setting, Sour Cherries often being put only twelve feet apart each way and Sweet Cherries, considering their great size, even closer, at sixteen feet. Experienced growers now put such dwarf kinds as the Morellos at from sixteen to eighteen, the Montmorencies and their kind at eighteen to twenty-two; and the large growing Sweet Cherries at from twenty-four to thirty feet.
Cherries are usually planted two years from the bud. Spring is the season for setting, though the hardy Sour sorts might often be set advantageously in late autumn. The losses at setting time are greater with the cherry than with any other fruit, old hands in fruit-growing losing trees as well as beginners. An experiment at the Station shows that these losses are greatly mitigated by a change in the usual method of transplanting. The custom is to shorten-in all branches of transplanted fruit-trees but this, with the cherry in particular, removes the largest and presumably the best nourished buds—certainly those from which would soonest develop the leaves so necessary to sustain the breath of life in the young plant and to give it a start. In the experiment at this Station it was found that, if the top of the young tree was reduced by thinning the branches instead of cutting all back, a much larger proportion of the trees would strike root and live through our parching summers.
Cherry trees in the past have been headed three or four feet above the ground but in new plantations they are now usually started lower—at half of the above distances. Two forms of top are in vogue, the spire-shape and the vase-shape. Sour Cherries are almost universally grown with closed centers but some growers prefer the form of the vase for Sweet varieties, though the majority hold to trees with central trunks and many subsidiary branches. Little pruning is done in cherry orchards after the first two or three years, by which time the sapling has been shaped. Subsequent pruning consists in removing dead, injured or crowded branches and an occasional superfluous one. Heading-in finds little favor with experienced growers. These few statements indicate that the cherry, as now grown, is pruned but little, and that that little must be done very carefully, the pruning knife in the hands of a careless man being, with this fruit, "a sword in the hands of a child."
The general tuning-up in the cultivation of fruits during the past quarter-century has had its influence on cherry culture. Commercial orchards are no longer kept in sod and the clean, purposeful cultivation that has taken the place of grass has doubled the output of cherries, tree for tree, throughout the State, the difference in yield being especially noticeable in seasons when drought lies heavy on the land. Cultivation, as practiced by the best growers, consists of plowing the land in the spring and then frequently stirring the soil until the first of August, at which time a cover-crop is sown. If the soil is light, and therefore hungry and thirsty, the plowing should be done early and the cultivator kept constantly at work until cherry-picking. Cherry orchards often, without apparent cause, have an indefinable air of malaise—look dingy and unhappy—such require almost week-to-week cultivation to tide them over their period of indisposition.
Grain, as well as grass, is discountenanced in cherry orchards, but cultivated truck and farm crops in young plantations, or, under some conditions, small fruits, are looked upon as permissible and often pay for the keep of the young trees until they come into profitable bearing. Cover-crops are in common vogue in cherry orchards in New York and, since with this fruit they can be sown earlier in the season, are used to better advantage than in other orchards to furnish a full supply of humus and to provide nitrogen. Brown-rot, an annual scourge in most cherry orchards, takes less toll from trees cultivated and cover-cropped, these operations covering the mummied fruits and keeping the spores they carry from coming to light and life.
Cherry growers as a rule are not now using fertilizers for their crops. It would seem that this is not doing duty by the land; but it must be remembered that the cherry grows vigorously and that over-feeding may stimulate the growth too much, laying the orchard open not only to unfruitfulness but to winter injury of bud and tree. Among those who use fertilizers there is little accord as to what fertilizing compounds are best or as to what the results have been. There is common agreement, however, that Sour Cherries respond more generally to fertilizers than the Sweet sorts. Until there are carefully carried out fertilizer experiments with this fruit the vexatious problems of fertilization cannot be solved. Nitrate of soda seems to be a great rejuvenator in orchards laid down to grass. Whatever the cause, when leaves lack color and hang limp, this fertilizer is a sovereign tonic. Heavy dressings of stable manure are much used in grassed-over orchards, as they are, also, in such as have had none or but scant crops.