The Old Time Farm Magazines: Proper Pruning Techniques, Homemade Mustard and Veterinary Advice

Enlarge Image Image Gallery No two trees can be trimmed in just the same way. Learn the proper pruning techniques between peach and apple trees. PHOTO: FOTOLIA/NOBILIOR

This page contains excerpts from issues of Successful Farming dated 1914.

Proper Pruning Practices

The time has now arrived when the pruning shears will be pressed into service, and in order to get the most out of our work we must go about it with system. One year old apple and peach trees should be pruned back to four branches 4 to 6 inches long; one in each direction, and scattered up and down the trunk as much as possible. The second year these branches should be allowed two side branches, clipped off at one-third or one-half their length. The center also should be opened up to form a low headed tree with an open center. The object of the latter is to let the sunshine down among the lower branches to keep them in perfect health, and to color up the fruit. The third and fourth years the trees should be thinned out, cut off flat on top, and the center kept open.

After the trees come into bearing the treatment for peach and apple trees will differ more. Peach trees should be kept flat on top, the centers open, and the one year old twigs, on which the fruit is borne, should be clipped to make them stockier should and to get the fruit in nearer the stout branches. Apple trees should be pruned just enough to keep them thinned out, so the sunlight can get down through, and so the spraying and harvesting can be done thoroughly; also the top should be kept flat as possible without clipping the twigs.

All cuts should be made with a sharp shears, and in cases where a large limb must be sawed off the cut should be made close up to the trunk or main branch, and the surface of the wound painted to preserve the wood.

No two trees can be trimmed in just the same way, so judgment must be used to get the trees as near the ideal as possible.

Homemade Mustard

Let some of our housewives who think the prepared mustard they buy is so good leave some cheap spoon, knife or fork in the mustard dish from one meal to another. The greenish spots that appear around the spoon ought to warn them that this prepared mustard is totally unfit to be taken into the human body.

Any housewife can make much more economical mustard, one that is not only cheaper than the boughten kind, but more palatable and healthful, by taking three teaspoonfuls of ground mustard, adding one egg, one teaspoonful of starch, a pinch of salt, and one-half cup of mild vinegar.