114 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



high ground where they would be subject to very little winter- 

 killing, they were retarded for the second season and they never 

 picked up sufficiently to get back to the rest of the good 

 orchards, though they were given very good care. 



Dr. Twitchell : I have perhaps two or three hundred young 

 trees growing. I never see any winter-killing. This row of 

 trees in front of the house — one of them Prof. Hitchings and 

 Mr. Yeaton measured and found the circumference i6^ inches 

 about 8 inches from the ground — tree about 15 feet high, spread 

 20 feet, set in 1901. It may be the largest. Some others have 

 not spread as much as that. Those trees haven't had any special 

 fertilizer since the second year. Of course they are alongside 

 my garden. 



Mr. Bragdon : Those trees of mine that grow the most 

 vigorously winter the best, always. You know the location of 

 my farm is high, so that what growth I get, I get fairly early in 

 the season. Therefore the wood would naturally ripen very 

 well. But it was the trees that grew the best that wintered the 

 best with me, and those that grew the poorest, it seemed, were 

 the ones that died. Perhaps something was wrong with the tree 

 in the start before it was planted. 



Mr. Yeaton : It has been my policy to grow the tree as 

 rapidly as was consistent with ripening the wood, until it came 

 to a bearing age, because we have got to get a large bearing 

 surface, if we are to get a profitable crop of apples from any 

 tree, and with a fair amount of fertilization and cultivation we 

 can get a good growth and still ripen them, and I have felt that 

 it was a business proposition for us to grow them quite rapidly, 

 during the first five years. 



No. 9. Will not the high price of potash teach the farmers 

 that they have been using too much potash? 



Mr. Gardner: It seems to me that is a question that the 

 potato growers might speak on better at this time than any one 

 else. 



Dr. Twitchell : Mr. Emery makes the statement in a recent 

 issue of the Farmer that in many cases where potato growers 

 used their 4-6-10 — had a little left over from 1914 — used their 

 4-6-10 and alongside used their 4-10-4 or 4-8-4, that the yield 

 was about double on the 4-6-10, and I think he closes with 

 something like this statement — I don't want to be quoted as 



