258 State Horticultural Society. 



are younger and have not corns to their full bearing capacity. Ten 

 years from now the apple crop of Missouri will lead all the states, 

 Then Missouri orchards, just planted, will be bearing. At present 

 Missouri has the most trees of the four great apple-growing states, 

 but the fewest apples. 



FIVE YEARS TO RAISE ORCHARD. 



It requires five years and $35 an acre to plant, cultivate and 

 bring to bearing a Missouri orchard. The five pears represents the 

 time necessary not to bring the bearing to its full capacity, but to 

 any yield. The $35 covers the cost of the trees, the planting, the 

 care and cultivation. If, as is usually the case, a crop of corn or 

 other agricultural product is grown in the orchard while the trees 

 are approaching maturity, the returns from the crop will reduce 

 the investment. The estimate is for the large commercial orchards. 



When a Missouri orchard is 10 years old it will bear, in a good 

 fruit year, from three to five barrels to the tree. There are, as a 

 rule, seventy trees to the acre in a Missouri orchard. In some 

 orchards as low as forty trees to the acre are planted. The crop 

 should, under favorable conditions, increase until the tree is 20 

 years old, and will continue a good crop until the tree is 25 or 30 

 years old. The active bearing life of a Missouri apple tree is thirty 

 years, though there are some apple trees in Missouri that are bear- 

 ing fruit after their fiftieth birthday anniversary. "In New York," 

 said Secretary Goodman, "the apple trees are slower developing and 

 last longer. The average life of a Missouri apple tree is as long, 

 however, as that of the New York apple tree." Near the Missouri, 

 Kansas and Texas junction town of McBaine are apple trees on the 

 loose soil of the Missouri river bluffs, which were planted sixty 

 years ago by Ben Conley, that this year bear apples, though they 

 have had of late years little care or cultivation. 



"Apple-growing in Missouri is greatly on the increase," said 

 C. H. Dutcher of Warrensburg, President of the Missouri Horti- 

 culture Society. "Fruit consumption is growing. People are 

 learning to appreciate the value of fruit, and the general prosper- 

 ity is giving them larger means for its purchase. Wonderful is the 

 miracle of the fruit. W^e take sky and sun and soil and atmos- 

 phere and construct the apple. We take the apple and feed it to 

 man, and his eyes brighten with the sky's blue and flash with the 

 sun's light, and red corpuscles dance in his blood and there is new 

 courage in his heart. 



