F.XPliRIMl'XT STATION WORK WITH AITLF.S. 



By ('. B. Smith, 

 IToiiirnltiinil Kdilor, Office of Experiment Stationsf. 



Farm pro])lems are not solved in a day. Often they are not alike two 

 years in succession or in two contiguou^i localities. But they come up 

 witli each recurring season and the experiment stations are asked to 

 solve them. The stations, located under widelv varving climutic and soil 

 conditions, undertake their solution. Fi'om time to time bulletins and 

 rej)()rts are published showing the results obtained. These may cover 

 but one phase of the subject as studied at one or more stations. Other 

 stations in other States may be called upon to study different phases of 

 the same problem. Thus data accumulate. A singh' l)ulletin may 

 show but little progress. If one read that alone, it might seem that 

 the advance in agricultural knowledge was slow and fraomentary. 

 It is not, however, by considering the individual results secured at one 

 station in one year that the amount of work accomplished or the pres- 

 ent status of a farm pi()])lem can be ascertained, but b\' study of the 

 combined results secured at all the stations for a series of years. When 

 all the results secured over a long period of time at all the stations are 

 brought together, it is often surprising to find how large a number of 

 problems have been worked out. This is especially true of all our 

 more common field crops and orchard fruits. To illustrate this and 

 to show just what the nature of the work is that has })een done and 

 the advance that has been attained in a particular line, it is proposed 

 to assem])le tlu' results thus far secured at the stations with the one 

 crop — apples. 



No fruit is so laigely grown in America as the apple. The number 

 of apple trees and the yield of apples in bushels far exceeds that of 

 all other fruits combined, including citrus fruits and grapes. It is not 

 strange, therefore, that since the establishment of the agricultural 

 experiment stations throughout the countr}- more than 1T<» bulletins 

 and reports should have been issued on the culture of apples. A large 

 iunnl)er of these publications report the results of exix'iimental work 

 to show the effects in orchards of clean cultivation, sod, cover crops, 

 f(>rtilizers, root pruning at ti'ansplanting, ditrerent-length root grafts, 

 crossing, girdling, thinning, har\esting, storing, cold storage, com])0- 

 sition, utilization, and otln'r problems. It is work along these lines 



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