STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 1/ 



August, and the food supply for the coming season being 

 elaborated and stored in the new wood, both fruit and branch, 

 during the balance of the season. 



Our practice in spraying has been to give a dormant spray 

 as the leaf buds are opening and until the leaves are probably 

 half an inch in size. We have been using lime-sulphur, i-io, 

 with arsenate of lead, controlling the blister mite as well as 

 the scale. This is followed by a spraying when the buds show 

 pink, and again after the blossoms fall, and sometimes one 

 more. We have usually practiced cultivation, and in the young 

 orchards, have grown crops for the first three or four years, 

 usually rotating the same. The crops used have been corn, 

 beans, peas, which are mowed and sold to the canning factory 

 green, and every three or four years a crop of clover. The land 

 has been manured whenever we could give it, and we have used 

 fertilizers from time to time to maintain the vigorous growth 

 of the trees. We have under-drained the land whenever we 

 deemed it advisable. 



When it comes to harvesting, we have used barrels to the 

 greatest extent, although for the shipment of summer fruit we 

 are using the bushel basket. In the past we used the bushel 

 hamper, but the bushel basket is so much more convenient that 

 it has practically supplanted the hamper. We fill them quite 

 full and use a cushion to insure safe arrival of the fruit. In 

 the past our fruit was all put up over the ordinary running 

 table, or over the cloth table from which it was picked out by 

 hand, but during the past year, owing to the requirements of 

 our law in regard to the sizing of fruit, we have used a grader, 

 and I can confidently assert that the old method is dead. The 

 use of a grader reduces the cost so much that the old hand 

 method is prohibitive; so that out of these requirements which 

 we began to feel were so arduous, we find that much good has 

 come. Graders can be made for $20, and an efficient hand 

 machinery can be had for $40 to $60, so that any individual with 

 two or three cars of apples can own one, and for those with 

 less, we feel that the community packing house is the solution. 

 It is going to lead to the development of much more uniformity 

 in the output of our fruit, and I am confident that the estab- 

 lishment of a packing and grading law is going to work out to 

 be of the greatest possible benefit to both grower and consumer. 

 It standardizes our pack and it will stimulate our business. 



