STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 



being $4.50. Tillage includes the labor of putting in the cover 

 crop but not the cost of the seed. For the cover crop seed, in 

 this orchard usually red clover, must be added $2.74 per acre 

 for seed or 2.3 cents per barrel of apples. 



The expense of pruning per year per acre was $3.56 — since 

 there are twenty-seven trees to the acre in this orchard the cost 

 per tree was 13.1 cents. The cost per barrel of apples was three 

 cents. The average price paid for the work was $2 per day of 

 ten hours. 



The average cost per acre for spraying was $11.28; per tree 

 41.8 cents; per barrel of apples 9.6 cents. The spraying was 

 done the first few years with a hand sprayer, then, for several 

 years, with a Niagara gas sprayer, and the last three with a 

 gasoline power outfit having two runs of hose. The first five 

 years Bordeaux mixture and arsenite of lime were used ; the 

 last five, lime and sulphur and arsenate of lead. Now I come 

 to a statement which I would hardly dare make in the presence 

 of the plant pathologists and entomologists. The orchard was 

 sprayed three times per season the first five of the ten seasons. 

 The second five years it was sprayed but twice per season, the 

 first application being the dormant spray made just before 

 buds began to swell ; the second, just as blossoms dropped. This 

 treatment has given an almost perfect crop, wormy and scabby 

 apples being rarities scarcely to be found in the orchard. 



The last of the cost of production charges is that of super- 

 intending the work. The services of the average fruit-grower 

 are worth more than the $2 per day, allowed for actual work, 

 and this deficiency should be made up by a charge for super- 

 intending the work. The Station paid for this service $300 

 per year. This, in my opinion, is a fair price, since there are 

 few competent orchardists who could not superintend a farm 

 enterprise of several times the magnitude of a ten-acre orchard. 

 The charge to be entered against a barrel of apples, then, for 

 superintending is twenty-five cents ; against the acre unit, $30 ; 

 against an apple tree, $1.10. 



Picking, packing, sorting and hauling have been done in 

 diverse ways during the ten years and the items cannot be 

 segregated. But the total cost of these operations has been 

 24.4 cents per barrel. The apples, it should be said, were sorted 

 and packed in the field. The crop was hauled to the Station, 



