170 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



orchard planting on the decline, but increases yearly, and it is a 

 fact well known by some of our tree growers, that there are not 

 enough trees of this class of winter apples growing in the state to 

 supply the ordinary demand. In a paper on this subject two 

 years ago, published in our volume IX, I endeavored to show 

 that the export trade of apples fresh and dried was assuming 

 grand proportion. In 1877, over three millions worth were sold, 

 and probably more than double that the last year. I then used 

 these words : " But any possible figures on foreign demand are 

 feeble to express the amount of fruit consumed in American 

 households." This home demand is increasing vastly beyond the 

 ratio of increase of population, and yet do we not waste enormous 

 quantities of fruit in years of abundance ? A full crop finds us 

 with no adequate facilities or preparation for its most economic 

 disposal. This condition of things meets us every year of abun- 

 dance, and it is time the fruit growers of the west were prepared 

 to save the entire crop for its best uses, and the main object of 

 this paper is to show how to utilize the apple. 



The usual processes of picking, handling, storing, drying, can- 

 ning, keeping and marketing the apple are too well known to 

 require words here; suffice to say that as ordinarily practiced they 

 fail of giving best return to the grower. Apples, designed for any 

 but immediate use, should be hand-picked and handled as care- 

 fully as if each were an egg. Both their beauty and keeping 

 quality depend largely upon this care. Decay commences at 

 once with the bruised portion, and no after care can remedy the 

 evil. 



To facilitate hand-picking, the trees should branch low, and be 

 kept somewhat open by judicious summer pruning; thinning the 

 crop thereby will generally give more value to the fruit. A 

 convenient step-ladder should be ready, with plenty of small hand- 

 baskets, and a letter S wire for each to hang to a limb or a belt at 

 the waist of the picker. Another useful tool is a wire hook fast- 

 ened to the end of a light pole, six feet long, to bring limbs within 

 reach of the picker. The best form of step-ladder we have used, 

 is one made of a stout twelve foot pole, split at butt, and rungs 

 or strips put in sixteen to twenty inches apart, in the form of a 



