426 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



If possible have them planted the same day they are dug, or 

 as soon after as is possible, and cut all broken roots smooth be- 

 fore planting. In the fall of the year following I top work all of 

 my trees by setting buds of the kinds I want. I top work them for 

 this reason: you can go into almost any orchard in Western New 

 York and find a fireat difference in the apples of the same variety. 

 You may find six or eight different types. Take the Greening, you 

 will find a flat Greening, you will find a round Greening, you will 

 find a red checked Greening, etc. You can select just the kind you 

 have a fancy for from the trees in your own orchard that you 

 know to be a good variety. We have a Rhode Island Greening that 

 when mature is large in size and a good winter apple, solid and firm 

 with a red blush, and those are the Greenings which I prefer. I 

 should have stated when recommending budding, that it might pos- 

 sibly be safer to wait two or three years and then graft. It is very 

 hard to get the bud started in our country. We have the bud 

 moth, which destroy the buds. You will find where you slit the 

 bark for the bud, it makes a place where the egg can be laid, and 

 the first bud the moth comes to when it hatches in the spring, is 

 almost certain to be the one that you don't want him to get. 



I select trees from the nurseries that have a central stem and 

 set three buds in each tree. I find that the best plan is to have the 

 treer. all gone over two or three times early in the spring, when the 

 buds start, and the moth pinched off and I have learned that if you 

 take a pin while you are going over the tree and push under the 

 bark where it was slit for the insertion of the bud, you will fetch 

 them out, or destroy the egg. After the buds are started about 

 three inches, you cut off the top of the limp just above the best bud 

 and remove the other buds. 



Set all three buds in the centre limb of the tree, on the last 

 year's wood, so the bud that is left to make the tree will be straight 

 and as nearly straight above the main stem of the tree as possible 

 After the bud has made its year's growth you can go and head the 

 tree back just where you see fit and the limbs that the top is made 

 from, have grown solid. I have known orchards that were not top 

 worked to spread right open, and so it is with the bud, it doesn't set 

 quite so firm as the'natural growth from the natural bud. You get 

 all the top from that one stem. 



Now in budding the orchard I have adopted the plan of not 

 budding more than one consecutive row of the same kind of apple. 

 If I want three or four kinds of apples I would bud them in alter- 

 nate rows. Prof. Waite made a study of this years ago, and he 

 was convinced that it made a difference in apples and pears as to 

 the cross fertilization in the row. You get it in that way and you 

 have an entire row of the same kind of apples across the field 

 which is no disadvantage in picking time. We follow up the culti 

 vation of the orchard for ten or twelve years, and we prefer to 

 have some cultivated crop like corn, beans, potatoes or cabbage, and 

 in each of these crops we fertilize very heavily and get as much 

 growth in the first ten or twelve years as possible. We do not get 

 much of a crop of apples until they are ten or twelve years old, 

 and from Northern Spy not before they are sixteen or eighteen 



