Winter Meeting. 199 



No. I in grade. The orchard expenses, including barrels, boxes, 

 storage, cultivating, etc., were less than $900.00. A neglected or- 

 chard, similarly situated in the same locality, of about the same 

 size and nearly as large, yielded 70 barrels of No. 2 apples, which 

 sold for $1.50 per barrel. Good, up-to-date management has been 

 continued — scientific management, if you please — and a fine crop 

 of fruit was harvested the past season. The owner has informed 

 me that he had 2,558 barrels, 2,300 of which were strictly No. 1 

 to fancy. In a part of this orchard some of the trees yielded as 

 high as 98 per cent of No. 1 grade. A near-by orchard of slightly 

 larger acreage is said to have yielded 480 barrels of No. 1 fruit. T 

 think this fruit is still in storage, and present indications are that 

 the 2,300 barrels will bring a nice little bunch of money. 



While the owner of this orchard was almost the "laughing- 

 stock" of his neighbors when he first began operations in the or- 

 chard, people came 20 and 30 miles to see it the past season. 



At other regions some notable records have come to my at- 

 tention, and no other explanation is plausible than that they re- 

 sulted directly from the careful attention which the orchards have 

 received; for instance, a Winesap orchard which has produced at 

 least nine paying crops in succession ; a Ben Davis orchard which 

 has made equally good returns, and a mixed orchard, but composed 

 largely of York Imperial, which for 10 years has been increasing 

 its yield each season, until this year a late spring frost practically 

 ruined the prospects, which were even more promising prior to the 

 frost than ever before. 



Such examples have many lessons to teach, but they are too 

 obvious to require special mention. Be it said simply, that so far 

 as my observations go, during these past three or four years, when 

 conditions have been unfavorable in many sections, the orchards, 

 in general, which have been given the best care as to cultivation, 

 feeding, pruning, spraying, etc., are the ones that have given the 

 largest proportionate returns. That orchards frequently bear good 

 crops even when neglected, is no argument in favor of such meth- 

 ods. But I believe, on the other hand, that neglect is very largely 

 the foundation of the notion that orchards are short-lived. 



Another practice, common in very many instances that is not 

 in harmony with the nature of things, is the neglect of orchards on 

 the "ofl^ year" that are otherwise given good attention. Fruit 

 growers seem to forget the significance of the fact that the basis 

 of next year's crop of apples is laid in the fruit buds that are 

 formed this jear. If the orchard receives no spraying and leaf 



