The Apple in Oregon: Part I. 11 



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lands, care must be exercised to the end that shallow soils may be avoided. Streaks, 

 patches, or larger areas of these lands are occasionally underlaid at a depth of a 

 few feet by strata of impervious rock. Such sites are wholly unfit for orchards. 

 Only a close and thoughtful inspection of hill land tracts will enable one to avoid 

 setting trees on soil too shallow for the successful growth of long-lived and fruit- 

 ful trees. 



Many excellent small orchards are to be found upon the river bottom lands 

 in all parts of the Willamette Valley. While these latter sites are well suited to 

 the growth of the apple tree, it is probable that better returns, horticulturally, 

 may be obtained by the cultivation upon such sites of the smaller fruits and the 

 choicer vegetables, especially when nearby markets are reasonably good. The lat- 

 ter crops cannot be grown upon the higher lands with the same degree of success 

 as attend their culture upon the river bottoms, while with the apple there is no 

 apparent difference save, perhaps, in the degree of earliness with which the trees 

 begin to bear profitable crops. 



Generally speaking, orchards upon bottom lands will begin to bear from one 

 to three years later than those upon the higher lands. There are well known in- 

 stances in which trees planted upon river bottom land, as a result of an abundance 

 of water, have extended their vegetative period three to four years beyond the 

 normal period for the same varieties when grown upon correspondingly good u\)- 

 land sites. The economics of horticulture would appear to point toward the up- 

 lands as affording the more promising sites for the apple orchard, since the value 

 of such lands will not increase as fast as that of the more restricted tracts of 

 suitable river bottom soils. 



During recent years a trouble that has caused much uneasiness among or- 

 chardists in timbered sections is the appearance of a fungus that causes the loss 

 of many trees. Usually death results after the tree has reached bearing age. 

 The foe attacks the tree under cover of the soil, and no indications of its presence 

 appears until it has such a firm hold upon the tree that its loss cannot be pre- 

 vented. Timbered land is generally infested with several so-called toadstool fungi, 

 which live upon the native tree growth. The forms that infest the native oak. 

 and possibly other trees, when deprived of their host plants through the clearing 

 of the land, have the power of adapting themselves to other trees, as those of our 

 common orchard fruits. These fungous plants appear to be able to live in the soil 

 for some length of time after the host trees have been removed, even to the stump. 

 If young trees are set out on such land they are liable to attack, and, if attacked, 

 there is, so far as present knowledge goes, no hope for the tree. It will live a few 

 years, varying with the vigor of the fungus, but throughout this time it leads a 

 precarious life, making little, if any, returns to the cultivator. 



Until the life history of these plants is better known and some preventive 

 against their ravages has been discovered, new land should be avoided in the set- 

 ting out of an orchard. Land that has been under croppage less than five years, 

 especially if previously timbered with oak, should be deemed unfit, or at least dis- 

 trusted, for orchard planting, except a previous examination showed the absence 

 of these tree-inhabiting fungi upon the native timber. 



Drain<if/c — Having settled the matter of soil, the next important point is the 

 drainage of the site. If possible, by all means select a site that is naturally well 

 drained. It should be so drained that both an excess of water and cold air cnn 

 readily escape to a lower level. While the apple very much dislikes a wet, soggy 

 soil, it equally dislikes .a site upon which cold air may stagnate. Cold air seeks 

 the lowest levels. It frequently carries with it the frost waves that kill blossoms 

 in the spring, or immature wood in the autumn. The force of this point is readil.v 

 impressed upon the minds of all those who drive over the gently undulating sec- 

 tions of our valley after nightfall in the spring or early autumn months. Every 

 hollow, especially if it be one without a pronounced outlet to lower levels, fills 

 up with cold air, and as one passes from the crest to the bottom and up the op- 

 posite side, the change from the cold air of the bottom to the warmer strata above 



HOR.- 



