14 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



before the buds really open; that the Russets and the Spys, especially 

 the Spys, are closed right up tiglit and when the Greenings are ready 

 the Spys are not. If you wait until the Spys are ready the Greenings 

 are in bloom. Another objection I find is the low-headed trees. The 

 first man in Western New York who ever set low-headed trees was Willis 

 Mann, He went to California several years ago and got that idea 

 and came back and set out some low-headed trees 20x22, mixing his 

 varieties, and he is having trouble over this point. His orchard is now 

 getting to the point where he has to go through diagonally, so that he 

 will soon have to get thenii out. Now these trees load right down with 

 fruit, and he has to go around through the trees to pick these apples, 

 and he cannot go through without knocking off the. Baldwins. While 

 if they were all Baldwins, Greenings or Spys he goes in and carries his 

 package a couple of rows, picks his fruit and takes it out. 



Then there is another point — a strong point. These different varie- 

 ties very often need different cultivation. You cannot handle a Spy 

 tree as you can handle a Greening or Baldwin or another variety. I 

 am fully convinced that if we are going to be successful fruit growers 

 we must keep absolute control over the growth of our trees. They must 

 have a natural growth to be successful and a Spy will sometimes grow 

 right away from the Greening and you cannot hold it down, while if 

 you had it in a block by itself 30U could hold it down. 



Now we come up to the question of making these trees bear. I will 

 tell you my experience. I know it is said that I make Baldwins bear 

 both years, but I am like every other fruit grower — I fall do^\^l in getting 

 mv work done as I would like it manv times. Now the way these things 

 come about, we have been trying all these years to get the Baldwin to 

 bearing the odd year. It is full of apples one year and not even a bloom 

 the next year, and we tried everything. We tried cutting the limbs and 

 many other ways, but didn't succeed. I even sent an apple to a chemist 

 and had a chemist examine the flesh of the apple, to know what we have 

 to put on the soil to grow themi. The chemist tells us that apple is 

 nearly all water — 95 or 9G per cent water, just a trace of potash in the 

 flesh, but the seeds are high in potash and phosphoric acid. It does not 

 exhaust our soil or strain our trees to pump water out of the soil to 

 make the flesh of that apple, but what does exhaust our soil and strain 

 our trees is to pump potash and i)hosphoric acid to make the seeds that 

 grow that apple. Therefore, the larger apples you grow the less seeds 

 you grow, the less you exhaust your soil and the less you strain your 

 tree. There was a Baldwin tree right beside my garden that had a 

 limb six inches in diameter, but I had to cut it off'. Tliere was a bushel 

 of apples on it, and in order to try out thinning these apples I thinned 

 it myself early in July, the rest of the tree not being thinned until the 

 last of August or 1st of September. Greatly to our surprise, the next 

 year that limb had a crop of apples on it again, and the rest of the tree 

 nothing. I have a Seek-no-further tree that stands right by my tool shed 

 that has been bearing on the even years and nothing on the odd year. 

 I stood right by that tree and had the man pull these apples off as I 

 told him in July. When I got the fruit in the fall I had eight buhels 

 of medium size. The next year, to my surprise, I got six bushels of 

 great, big Seek-no-furthers, The next year we thinned them again and 

 we got eight bushels; the fourth year we got six bushels again. Then 

 we got that tree so it came out just about even. I have 100 trees in 



