Appendix. 241 



APPLE CULTURE. 



By G. R. Castner. ■ 



In the spring of 1894 I landed in Hood River, on the 29th day of 

 March, having seen the apples on display at the Columbian World's 

 Fair at Chicago in the fall of 1893. I quit railroad work and came to 

 Oregon to engage in fruit growing. After looking about the valley for 

 two weeks I decided on my present location, there being six aci-es of 

 clay loam that had been lately cleared, having had one crop of corn, 

 followed the same fall by a crop of winter barley, leaving the ground 

 in perfect shape for setting trees. I made my selection of trees as 

 follows: Three hundred and forty Newtowns, fifty Spitzenbergs. fifty 

 Ben Davis, eleven King of Thompkins County, and a few other home 

 varieties. The trees arrived and I set them the last week in April, and 

 have learned since that they were watched closely by my neighbors, as: 

 they expected to see me lose a great portion of them by setting so late, 

 but strange to say, I did not lose one, and found only one at bearing 

 time not true to name. I used care in setting, digging the holes nearly 

 three feet across and two feet deep, carrying a large tobacco pail of 

 water and dipping the roots of every tree before setting. I set them 

 twenty-two feet apart each way, but now wish I had made them twenty- 

 five feet. I planted corn between the rows for five years, raising plenty 

 of corn to fatten hogs and feed stock; since then I have grown nothing 

 in the orchard, but practiced clean cultivation. The trees were good 

 yearling trees, and I headed them down to three feet, having set them 

 about three inches deeper than they were set in the nursery. The fol- 

 lowing winter we had quite a deep snow, and many of the lower limbs 

 were stripped by snow settling, so I was obliged to make the head of the 

 tree from branches that were left near the top. I would prefer to com- 

 mence head about twenty inches or two feet from the ground. I 

 headed back all trees the second year, but since then have pruned to 

 balance trees against the wind only and to take out crosses. I had 

 some fruit the fourth year, more the fifth, and the sixth year had a 

 good crop, and have had an increase each year since, selling the New- 

 towns last year for about $1,600. 



In setting the orchard I set the Newtowns on the west, the Spitzen- 

 bergs next, and the Ben Davis next. In the winter of 1896-7 I lost 

 twenty-eight Newtowns from the November freeze, and replaced them 

 with Baldwins and Spitzenbergs, and since then I have replaced until 

 I have only 306 of the original Newtown setting left; of this number 

 220 bear each year, those bearing heavily the previous year resting the 

 succeeding year, and vice versa. The Spitzenbergs have never bonie 

 heavily, as the location is somewhat exposed to the wind, and my ex- 



HOR.— 16 



