274 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



. us to the question of cold-storage houses. You can not find an ice-house 

 in Chicago that can get eggs or apples or butter, on account of the fact 

 that they are not perfectly reliable in their temperature, while the 

 chemical houses as they are called, are the successful ones. A variation 

 of a degree to a degree and a half will affect the aj^paratus, and such 

 change will close or open the flow for that particular room, regulated 

 by the thermostat, and these houses are keeping apples successfully. 

 They go in and come out sound after a long period. There is no method 

 that is equal to this, because the apples are placed in a room that is set 

 at thirty-five degrees regulated by the thermostat. You know it will 

 never be below thirty-four degrees nor above thirty-six, and it will stand 

 there the year around. Something w^as said about the expense of cold 

 storage. Some of the best houses in Chicago are stowing at ten cents per 

 barrel the first month and five cents for each additional month. The 

 trouble has been, this year, to get room — it was all contracted for early. 



Mr. Willard: I would like to ask Mr. Sherwood if he attributes his 

 success in having continuous apple crops to his culture or to his spray- 

 ing? 



Mr. Sherwood: I attribute it to both. I think that it is impossible to 

 have successful apple culture in western Michigan without spraying and 

 without thorough culture, and clean culture, and fertilizing. I have 

 done that in my orchards, and have given a thorough fertilizing with 

 barnyard manure and mulching and turning under and pasturing 

 with sheep, and am now pasturing with hogs, which I think is the best 

 method we have; it is the most satisfactory. I attribute my success to 

 it. I am young in the business, comparatively, and my experience has 

 been based on observation and comparison. There is an orchard right 

 next to my orchard. Mine has borne four crops and that has borne one — 

 the same soil, practically the same, the same trees, and set the same dis- 

 tance apart, trimmed alike; but that orchard was in sod and hadn't had 

 the cultivation and the spraying that mine had. I think that we can not 

 emphasize spraying too much. 



Mr. Bos: Then I understand you prune just as much? Mr. Sherwood: 

 Yes, sir, thoroughly. 



