seedling is the proper thing either for budding or root grafting. Unless
you have some experience in such work, it will be cheaper in the end to
buy good nursery trees. The nonbearing of your young trees is probably
due to their youth and vigor.



Bees and Pear Blight.



A few years ago, I planted alfalfa between my pear trees and the trees
bore a very heavy crop that year. Then blight made its appearance, and
it was claimed that the bees carried the blight. I therefore plowed
under the alfalfa and destroyed what few beehives I had. If the theory
that the bees carry the blight from tree to tree is not correct, I will
experiment with alfalfa again this year.

It is true that bees carry pear blight. It is also true that you are not
likely to get many pears without bees to pollinate the blossoms. You
cannot escape the carriage of the pear blight by removing tame bees,
because wild bees are abundant in all parts of the State. The way to
overcome the blight is to pursue it by amputation of diseased branches
continually, so that there may be no contamination for the bees to
carry. You are certainly warranted in continuing your alfalfa growing
without regard to this question, using water enough to keep the alfalfa
growing well without saturating the soil to the injury of the trees or
inducing too much summer growth on them.