458 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



feet apart. My idea is for us not to try the very intensive European 

 methods. We want to reduce our system to the least possible ex- 

 penditure of labor, and if we attempt too much, none of it v^ould be 

 done well. I want to hold the standard trees as an absolute cer- 

 tainty and them interplant with the dwarfs. I would abandon inter- 

 planting peach, cherry or plum trees, but plant apples with apples 

 only, as then the spraying and culture would be adapted to all of 

 the trees. The danger of interplanting with other trees is when we 

 have to contend with diseases. If we spray apple trees with Bor- 

 deaux mixture, we will run the risk of injurying the foliage of peach, 

 plum and cherry trees, aud I have thrown out entirely this system 

 of interplanting other kinds of trees with apples and use the dwarf 

 trees instead. 



Now the question of pruning comes in as a very important part 

 of this work. So far we are able, we will do our main pruning 

 in March. We cut out the leading branches that are inclined to 

 grow up in the center. We take out the tops of these trees to keep 

 them in low form. We cut back and in and follow annual pruning 

 in March and July to keep the trees in compact form. We want 

 the branches to come out as low as possible, fifteen inches from the 

 ground. We don't want the fruit up where the wind can blow it 

 off. We want our bearing branches strongly developed from above 

 the middle down to about fifteen inches from the ground. It was 

 most interesting to go out and watch these dwarf trees in a storm. 

 While the standards in the same orchard dropped their fruit heavily 

 the dwarf trees scarcely lost an apple. The wind was blowing over 

 the top of them. The thinning on this class of trees is practicable. 

 I have been able to get the trees about fifteen feet high, thinned at 

 a cost of from twelve to fifteen cents a tree. The thinning of the 

 standard tree cost anywhere from thirty-five to forty-seven cents 

 a tree. There is also a great difference in the cost of pruning high 

 and dwarf trees. So that the matter of thinning the fruit and prun- 

 ing the trees is easily solved on trees of this character. You can 

 readily see every imperfect apple and with clippers you can readily 

 cut off the imperfect fruit. The fruit is thus uniform in size and qual- 

 ity and of a suitable grade to go into boxes. In the markets at this 

 time of year at Thiladelphia, New York, Boston or Chicago we will 

 meet the most attractive fruit from the West put up nicely. The 

 eastern fruit grower is hard pressed with western competition. I 

 find it exceedingly difficult to get the fancy trade for eastern grown 

 fruit. I go to the dealers and say to them, "I have Hudson River, 

 Northern Spies and Tompkins County King that I would be very glad 

 to have you try," These men say, "We don't want them. We 

 never know what we are going to get." It is very difficult for any 

 New York grower to attempt to get his fruit taken by the best 

 trade. One of the most difficult things an eastern fruit grower has 

 to do is to get his fruit introduced, and vet we know that our 

 fruit is better in flavor than anything that 'comes from the Pacific 

 Coast. We have the same competition to meet in Europe as in our 

 own markets, so that we will be more and more forced to consider 

 the types of trees, that will produce fancy fruit. Trees about ten 

 years old that have been thinned, one-third of the fruit having been 



