1. We should begin by selecting for pear orchards a warm, light, rich, dry and early soil. This will secure an early growth and ripe wood before winter sets in.
2. So soon as observation has determined what kinds are naturally early growers and early ripeners of wood, such should be selected; as they will be least likely to come under those conditions in which blight occurs.
3. Wherever orchards are already planted; or where a choice in soils cannot be had, the cultivator may know by the last of August or September, whether a fall-growth is to be expected. To prevent it, we suggest immediate root-pruning. This will benefit the tree at any rate, and will probably, by immediately restraining growth, prevent blight.
4. Whenever blight has occurred, we know of no remedy but free and early cutting. In some cases it will remove all diseased matter; in some it will alleviate only; but in bad blight, there is neither in this, nor in anything else that we are aware of, any remedy.
There are two additional subjects, with which we shall close this paper.
1. This blight is not to be confounded with winter-killing. In the winter of either 1837 or 1838, in March a deep snow fell (in the region of Indianapolis) and was immediately followed by brilliant sun. Thousands of nursery-trees perished in consequence, but without putting out leaves, or lingering. It is a familiar fact to orchardists, that severe cold, followed by warm suns, produce a bursting of the bark along the trunk; but usually at the surface of the ground.
2. We call the attention of cultivators to the disease of the peach-tree, called “The Yellows.” We have not spoken of it as the same disease as the blight in the pear and the apple, only because we did not wish to embarrass this subject by too many issues. We will only say, that it is the opinion of the most intelligent cultivators among us, that the yellows are nothing but the development of the blight according to the peculiar habits of the peach-tree. We mention it, that observation may be directed to the facts.
[18] Read before the Indiana Horticultural Society, and communicated by Mr. Beecher to Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture, December, 1844.
[19] Lindley’s Horticulture, p. 81-82.
[20] See Lindley, p. 32.