Clickbank

Hedges are extremely useful to the fruit grower for three reasons: (1) they give protection against high winds, (2) they keep out marauding boys, and (3) they should be strong enough to prevent the inroads of grazing animals.

Choose a knife very carefully indeed. It must be made of the best steel, and be set at the right angle. It should have a slightly curved blade and be made by a firm with a first-class reputation like Saynor’s. Most people today prefer a knife which closes because then it can easily be pocketed.

Pruning can help the grower to regulate to a certain extent the quantity and quality of the fruit to be borne. If there are too many branches and too many fruit spurs there may be quantity without size or quality.

There are varieties of strawberries which are self-sterile, Tardive de Leopold and Deutsch Evern being two typical examples. If it is thought advisable to plant such self-sterile kinds, then it would be necessary to interplant with a suitable pollinator, and I have found that one row in six is sufficient to ensure that the pollination is perfect.

The ‘pillar’ system is intended to be an attempt to bring orchard planning more into line with modern techniques and to cut the laborious work to a minimum. At the same time, it achieves a more regular production of higher quality fruit.

When marketed in baskets raspberries are always best sold in 1 lb. shallow punnets with a handle to them. They squash very if they are packed into the deeper punnets that are used for strawberries.

Trees planted in an already established orchard are curiously enough slow to make headway, and therefore in such cases I always advise grubbing.

The only case, perhaps, in which one can say that the exception proves the rule, is where the trees are stunted owing to starvation. Here it is best to do all the pruning the first season and sometimes it is necessary in addition to prune back the poor weakly branches down to a young shoot growing in the right direction. In such cases, many of the spurs will have to be cut out also.

When it comes to the question of mechanical aids, the door is thrown wide open for the purchase of dozens of machines whose makers claim that they will do this or that. In the small garden, of course, the great bulk of the work will be done by hand.