STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. II9 



ash, mixing them half and half, and putting on about twenty 

 pounds to the tree, not putting it nearer the body of the tree 

 perhaps than three or four feet, and extending out quite a dis- 

 tance be3'ond the limbs. In 1909 and 1910 I used ashes and 

 bone. In 1909 I put on thirteen tons of Canada hard wood 

 ashes, four tons of bone, and about three-quarters of a ton 

 of nitrate of soda, mixed together and put on with the manure 

 spreader, broadcast over the ground. The north orchard I 

 ploughed again, as I had the two years before. This last year 

 I did not plough it but left it just as it was. 



There is a question in my mind in regard to the cultivation 

 of old orchards like these. It has been agitated here that you 

 get better fruit to cultivate the orchards. I think that is true 

 with young orchards, if you follow the cultivation along. But 

 I have had a little experience that seems to indicate that it does 

 not agree with old orchards. These old trees in the north or- 

 chard I kept cultivated for three years. I ploughed it each 

 spring and kept it harrowed down, and the fruit of that orchard 

 has been very green. It is possible that I fertilized it too heav- 

 ily. The foliage has been very heavy, the leaves in a good many 

 cases being half to two-thirds as large as the palm of your hand 

 and just as thick as they could be. The apples set thick and I 

 ought to have thinned them but the trees were high and hard 

 to get at and we were always busy in the spring. I could not 

 get nearly the value per barrel for those apples, and I don't 

 think I got as many apples to the tree as I did in my south or- 

 chard. The latter orchard I have not cultivated at all, but kept 

 it in grass, and have done all the fertilizing as a top dressing. 



In regard to pruning the trees. After the first year, in which 

 I had got good returns for spraying the south orchard, I hired 

 a man who understood pruning pretty well, and we went to 

 work and did all we could during that winter, up to the time 

 W'e commenced the spring's work, on pruning. After the first 

 spraying for San Jose scale with the power sprayer, I found 

 my trees were too high. We would use a thirty-foot ladder to 

 pick some of the apples from many of those old trees and then 

 we couldn't reach within five or ten feet of the top. In pruning 

 I cut the tops of those trees out, cutting ten, fifteen, and even 

 twenty feet off the top, and I have also cut the side limbs where 

 you could not get near enough to throw the spray into the cen- 



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