Re: Is there a fruit-tree bible?

Dear Anthony,
can  you read Italian?
Edagricole publishes, in Italian, many good books on fruit trees (actually
their books on edible crops -vegetables and fruits- are much better than
those about ornamental plants, except for the new series of recent
publication). And you can be quite assured that Italians are normally expert
"contadini", farmers, and even the most ignorant of them knows his tricks.
You can trust what they say about furiting trees, normally. We have this
century old tradition of  agriculture. The very first manual on  the subject
here was written by Vergilius (Georgica: have you read it? It is incredibly
interesting!), not to mention Columella. Of course,  when it comes to other
plants we are absolutely illiterate, and the average contadino simply
refuses the idea of a plant that is not "useful" (edible). But I would not
trust foreign books, written for  fruit trees growing in totally different
conditions and probably for different varieties of plants. I mean, don't
misunderstand me, thay are useful but then you have to adapt  what they say
to your particular conditions. If you plant is one of the old, delicious
varieties grown locally (perhaps Cafona or Reale d'Imola), you can be sure
they will not be mentioned in Brits or American books. 
In my experience you don't prune apricots trees here, except for the first
years when you give it a shape, a structure. Here in Rome and in the South
the traditional shape is the vase: that is, you remove the branches inside
the plant, letting thus the sun and air reach evenly all the outer branches.
Her we don't espallier the fruit trees, because they would outgrow the
frame, unless they are grafted on dwarfing vars portainnesto (what is the
english word? Is this the scion or what you graft in?). Your plant sounds
perhaps too tall, but I would avoid pruning it now, because you mention two
symptoms thay make me suspect a fungus infection: dripping sap and twigs
dying back.  You should manage to control this disease before pruning. Do
you spray at all? Have you ever tried a tea of Equisetum arvensis
(horsetail)? It is a great fungus controller. If I were you, I would remove
and burn the dying twigs and  disinfect the cut with bordeaux mixture. Then
I would spray the Equisetum or the Neem tea. In the fall I would paint the
trunk with a clay and manure paste and  spray some more Equisetum tea. Only
after, perhaps in January,  I would try to prune at all, and create the
vase. You would loose that year's crop, perhaps, but winter pruning is far
better for a plant that is so prone to fungus disease. 
Hope this helps,

Alesandra
At 02:11 AM 5/4/99 +0200, you wrote:
>Every time I look at my 5-metre tall apricot tree starting to bend over
with the weight of the soon to
>be succulent fruit already, I think how lucky I am, but surely my good
fortune can't last. I'm too
>ignorant at the moment to know how to prune it back properly, though I seem
to manage fine on
>non-Prunus plants. Am I right to be in awe of them (a friend who pruned
back his Prunus had no fruit
>for the next five years!) or is this a mystification spread locally by
those "in the know"? Is there
>such a thing as a fruit tree "bible", and will it be of any use in my
Southern Italian orchard?
>By the way, my apricot does have the odd problem with dripping sap, and a
few smaller twigs do
>occasionally die back, and I wouldn't want this to affect the tree as a
whole. As this year is going
>to be a bumper crop, I understand I'd do better to prune it soon
afterwards, so that next year's
>meagre crop (if they always do alternate between good and bad crops) can be
on a perfectly pruned
>tree.
>I look forward to your ideas
>
>
>Anthony
>
>
>
>
****************************************************

Alessandra Vinciguerra
American Academy in Rome
Via Masina,5
00153 Roma
Tel:0039\6\5846.444

puglisi@librs6k.vatlib.it

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