20 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



the series of years $326.00; tbe average aiiuual returns ])er tree |8.15; 

 average aimual net profit per acre lias beeu in round numbers, approxi- 

 mately 1150.00. 



It might be well to mention the fact that the proceeds from the sale 

 of the fruit would have been considerably increased had I not possessed 

 the faculty of, at least a portion of the time, selling on the low market ; 

 that is, selling from the orchard in the fall, when apples in storage sold 

 for high prices in the spring and vice versa. The average i)rice per barrel 

 realized from the sale was |2.47 and that the average price for the culls 

 wasi 23c per bushel. 



The annual average yield of these same orchards for the five years 

 preceding their coming under my care was about 27 barrels per acre — 

 cash returns per acre, including culls, about fCO.OO ; average returns per 

 tree |1.50. 



In these averages the crops of 1912 and 1913 were not computed, as 

 only orchards No. 1 and No. 3 are the only ones remaining in my pos- 

 session. My 1912 crop was sold however at |2.25 per barrel ; culls at 10c 

 per bushel. 1913 crop at |3.35 per barrel, and culls at 30c per bushel. 



We discovered our original Oswego county orchard in October (])re- 

 sumably the 12th), 1907, and during he last week of the following Ai)ril 

 began reclamation of one of the toughest propositions in that line ever 

 tackled — a wilderness of brush and neglect — a genuine abandoned fann, 

 and that too in the famous western New York fruit belt, with soil and 

 natural conditions equal to the best. We have since revived over 2,000 

 old Oswego county apple trees. Our work has invariably met with the 

 same success, proportionately at least, as that in Orleans county. 



We will briefly mention two of our Oswego county proj^ositions : 



Orchard "D" contains 230 trees about 45 years old, set 40 feet apart, 

 of the following varieties: 115 Greenings, 95 Baldwins, 10 Kings, 10 

 Koxbury Russet. Soil stony, gravelly, clay loam. This orchard was 

 l)reviously used for pasture and had produced little or no fruit during 

 the preceding five years — actual crop for 1910 was less than 50 bushels 

 of cider apples: the previous owner for 18 years assured me that about 

 once in seven years the orchard had a fair crop, except the west half, 

 which never produced any fruit. After purchasing, a local fruit grower 

 and produce dealer encouragingly infonned me, "that apples could be 

 more quicklj' grown on fence stakes." This orchard was perhaps below 

 the average of over 50 acres of neglected ones within a radius of one- 

 half mile. From previous experience, however, it looked like a good 

 proposition two or three years hence at least, if properly handled. 



The trees while containing much dead brush were actually growing an 

 inch or two of new wood annually. It came into my possession Novem- 

 ber 1st, 1910; was ploughed during that month, but froze up solid be- 

 fore the furrows could either be rolled or leveled Avith a drag — was man- 

 ured thoroughly with 500 lbs. of well rotted stable manure per tree dur- 

 ing the winter and spring of 1910 and 1911 — an additional 200 lbs. of 

 Wool Waste Fertilizer was applied per tree in the spring of 1911. 



During the month of December, 1910, it was severely pruned, and per- 

 haps for the following six or seven months this pruning was even more 

 severely criticized. While this pruning was very conservative from a 

 standpoint of thoroughness and the future good of the orchard, I was con- 

 fidentially advised a number of times that the orchard had been damaged 



