New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 517 



an interesting alternation in most of the varieties — one year the 

 variety produced most fruit in sod, the next under tillage. No reason 

 appears for this biennial-bearing habit of varieties in which the off 

 year for sod was the bearing year for tillage. 



COLOR OF FRUIT. 



It needs hardly to be said that the apples from the sodded plats 

 were much more highly colored and therefore much more attrac- 

 tive in appearance than the fruit from the tilled plats. It may be 

 laid down as a universal rule that sod heightens the color of apples 

 in the orchards of New York. Another rule that very generally 

 holds in this State is that the conditions which produce high color 

 are antagonistic to yield of fruit and to growth of tree. The figures 

 presented in Table I are not in accord with this rule as it applies to 

 yield of fruit, but those showing the relative growth of trees, Table 

 II, are in exact accord. 



The correlations between color and quantity and color and growth 

 of tree need further consideration, best given by way of illustration. 

 Every orchardist of experience in this region knows that girdled, 

 wounded, diseased, decrepit, poorly nourished, or somnolent trees 

 bear more highly-colored fruit than healthy, normal trees growing 

 near them. In this day of almost universal tillage in commercial 

 apple orchards in New York, one of the common questions is, How 

 can I check growth and obtain more highly-colored fruit? High 

 color in red apples is as trustworthy an indication of ill-being in a 

 tree as high pulse or high temperature in a human being — so depend- 

 able that its occurrence in any method of growing apples enables 

 us at once to say that is is purchased at the expense of health or 

 vigor of the tree. 



The red of the several varieties under tillage and in sod varied a 

 good deal with the season. The trees in sod ripen their fruit some- 

 what earlier than those under tillage and if in the last part of the 

 season the weather is sunny and propitious for the coloring of apples, 

 the tilled fruits, because they remain a little longer on the trees 

 show less marked difference in color than otherwise. 



The apples on the tilled plats are exceptionally well colored for 

 tilled fruit because, possibly, of altitude, the soil, or of some unknown 

 factor, or some combination of conditions which often gives tilled 

 apples from the Hitchings farm a color and finish rivaling the best 



