46 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



more trouble to keep them off tlie ground than to get them up. My 

 young apple trees are headed two and one-half feet and I do not want 

 them placed any nearer than that. With ])eaches that is another propo- 

 sition. 



A Member — How about the Greening apjjlo — they always come down 

 — how can they be kept up? 



Answer — But the Rhode Island Greening will hold its fruit up, with 

 only occasionally an exception to the rule. The Northern Spy will come 

 to bearing in fourteen years and from that time on it will meet you 

 over half Avay. On the old homestead there is a Northern Spy sixty-eight 

 years old and it is just in its prime. I count it worth |300. I can pick 

 one-third of that fruit standing on the ground and all of it with a twenty- 

 four-foot ladder. It looks as though it would last for many years to 

 come. 



A Member — I was mighty glad this year to have some of my trees close 

 to the ground. I was not able to thin them properly and they had to 

 get to the ground some way. The limbs clear up on the top had to come, 

 downi while those near the ground that lay on the ground were all right. 

 I had rather have a few bushels on the ground than break the limbs. 



A Member — "You pays your money and takes your choice." I never 

 saw any two orchards pruned just alike. I have no quarrel with the one 

 where his trees are grown to the ground, neither with the one who has 

 to use a twenty-four-foot ladder to gather the fruit. I am perfectly 

 willing that they grow the fruit where they want to. But in all these 

 operations you must have a hired man to contend Avith. Sometimes he 

 does as you want him to, but three or four times to that once, he don't. 

 They are usually just about as heedless with the Avhiffletrees and har- 

 ness as those fellows with a saw. If they run up against a limb and 

 break it down it is all the same. Do and say what you may, the majority 

 of them wnll do you in one way or another. But when we get one that 

 is careful, that really takes an interest in the Avork, that you feel you 

 can trust to do as he is told, he is such a rare jcAvel that you will retain 

 him at almost any cost. 



As a matter of interest in our heavier ground Ave are obliged to get 

 the limbs up somewhere so that the teams do not brush too hard on them, 

 and as a concession to the hired man, for I have heard some hired men 

 say, "I Avant to see your orchard before I make a bargain." 



Another thing is the distance apart that you keep the limbs. If you 

 are going to grow these highly colored a])ples you must do it by allow- 

 ing the sunshine to reach them. It is the light very largely that gives 

 the high colored fruit. Fruit does not properly- class as No. 1 unless 

 it is high colored. Apples grown in the shade are less highly colored, 

 so if you Avant fruit that will rank at the top, you must keep your trees 

 pretty well thinned out. On the other hand, too much thinning, espec- 

 ially in some localities, is liable to give you sun scald. This must be 

 looked after and considered Avhen doing your trimming. 



A Member^ — Twenty years ago there was an old fruit tree agent I 

 knew that advocated the idea that if you start a trunk doAvn about twelve 

 inches from the ground, that the limbs from that point will grow up- 

 right and these trimmed up will make them all stand upright and will 

 carry a load — better than on a tall tree. With Ioav trunks one can 

 work closer to his trees than on the old orchards where the trunks are 

 trimmed up high and Avhere the limbs are out. 



