22 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



A section 29 miles long and 10 miles wide, comprising the northern 

 three-qnarters of onr county with Lake Ontario for its northern 

 boundary, lias for the past two season produced more apples of winter 

 commercial varieties than any State in the Union, except Missouri. Michi- 

 gan, Virginia and Illinois, Avhile it nearly or quite equals, if not sur- 

 ])assed the latter three. 



As a paternal heritage I have always been more or less interested in 

 fruit growing, but my business was formerly such that it has been only 

 within recent years that I was able to give it any attention, and the 

 status of the fruit growing industry during the early 'OO's was in such a 

 deplorable condition that there was no incentive to go into it as a busi- 

 ness proposition. Since 1900 I have been actively engaged in the prac- 

 tice of medicine. The rides or drives necessitated in the following of my 

 professional work, cover the central part of Orleans and, at least two 

 or three times during a year, I traverse every road in three of the prin- 

 cipal apple growing towns of the county. My daily observations con- 

 firmed the fact that the four great factors for the successful growing 

 of apples were pruning, tillage, spraying and fertilization, and to the 

 greater extent all four factors were carried out the greater the results, 

 and that the most successful of our fruit growers were very thorough 

 in carrying out all of them, and that their successes was in direct y)ropor- 

 tion to the extent and thoroughness in which they had carried out all 

 four. 



My faith in these early observations was unbounded and the disai)i»<iinl- 

 ment would have been very great, indeed, had not the first practical ap- 

 plication of them in 1903 met with success. Since that time hundreds 

 of orchards have been annually visited or observed throughout western 

 New York. Over 3,000 trees have been either jjartially or wholly re- 

 claimed. Let this experience be worth what it may, in my opinion the 

 secret of successful management and reclaiming of orchards was given 

 in a nutshell by Professors Craig and Warren after the most careful 

 study of over one thousand orchards in Wayne and Orleans counties, 

 as follows: 



"Tillage, fertilization, pruning and spraying are the chief factors that 

 enter into good care of an orchard. One or more of these may some- 

 times be omitted or poorly done Avithout any serious results. To some 

 extent tillage may replace fertilization or vice versa. A thrifty orchard 

 may resist the attacks of disease. Some years there are few insects or 

 fungi, so that spraying is not so much needed. A farmer frequently 

 gets good results from some one of these factors and becomes so im- 

 pressed with its importance that he makes a hobby of it to the exclu- 

 sion of all he others. But the most successful apple-grower is the man 

 who keeps a proper balance between all four agencies and does not ex- 

 ])ect good care in one respect to make up for neglect in other ways." 

 To this add ''thinning" and a better or more practical epitome of the 

 subject would be hard to find. 



In order to give weight to what T consider the proper management of 

 orchards and to add assurance that the same is based upon "neither 

 assum]>tion, guesswork nor hy])othesis," I give the results from every 

 Orleans county orchard wdiich has come under my care for a period of 

 five years or over since 1903. Better results have been obtained by many 

 of our fruit growers; by some double those of my own. These orchards 



