I was now prepared to face the food problem, for I had more than 17,000 bushels of grain to supplement the amount the farm would produce, and to tide me along until cheap grain should come again, or until my land should produce enough for my needs.  The supply in hand plus that which I could reasonably expect to raise, would certainly provide for three years to come, and this is farther than the average farmer looks into the future.  But I claim to be more enterprising than an average farmer, and determined to keep my eyes open and to take advantage of any favorable opportunity to strengthen my position.

In the meantime it was necessary to force my trees, and to secure more help for the farm work.  To push fruit trees to the limit of healthy growth is practical and wise.  They can accomplish as much in growth and development in three years, when judiciously stimulated, as in five or six years of the “lick-and-a-promise” kind of care which they usually receive.

A tree must be fed first for growth and afterward for fruit, just as a pig is managed, if one wishes quick returns.  To plant a tree and leave it to the tenderness of nature, with only occasional attention, is to make the heart sick, for it is certain to prove a case of hope deferred.  In the fulness of time the tree and “happy-go-lucky” nature will prove themselves equal to the development of fruit; but they will be slow in doing it.  It is quite as well for the tree, and greatly to the advantage of the horticulturist, to cut two or three years out of this unprofitable time.  All that is necessary to accomplish this is:  to keep the ground loose for a space around the tree somewhat larger than the spread of its branches; to apply fertilizers rich in nitrogen; to keep the whole of the cultivated space mulched with good barn-yard manure, increasing the thickness of the mulch with coarse stuff in the fall, so as to lengthen the season of root activity; and to draw the mulch aside about St. Patrick’s Day, that the sun’s rays may warm the earth as early as possible.  Moderate pruning, nipping back of exuberant branches, and two sprayings of the foliage with Bordeaux mixture, to keep fungus enemies in check, comprise all the care required by the growing tree.  This treatment will condense the ordinary growth of five years into three, and the tree will be all the better for the forcing.

As soon as fruit spurs and buds begin to show themselves, the treatment should be modified, but not remitted.  Less nitrogen and more phosphoric acid and potash are to be used, and the mulch should not be removed in the early spring.  The objects now are, to stimulate the fruit buds and to retard activity in the roots until the danger from late frosts is past.  As a result of this kind of treatment, many varieties of apple trees will give moderate crops when the roots are seven, and the trunks are six years old.  Fruit buds showed in abundance on many of my trees in the fall of 1897, especially on the Duchess and the Yellow Transparent, and I looked for a small apple harvest that year.