A COMMERCIAL OUCHAUD. 215 



natural conditions for apple growing in eastern Nebraska were sur- 

 passed by few sections of the country, and that the chief handicap to profit- 

 able apple orcharding had been neglect. Believing that strictly up-to-date 

 methods of orchard management should be practiced in Nebraska as well 

 as elsewhere to make orcharding pay, and that eastern Nebraska orchards 

 would respond to such treatment equally as well as orchards in other 

 sections of the United States, plans were made to handle the orchard in 

 the most up-to-date manner possible. 



Accordingly the orchard was carefully pruned, reducing the amount of 

 wood to let air and sunlight to all parts of the tree, to reduce the fruiting 

 wood so that all fruit would be properly nourished, to shape the heads so 

 that spraying mixtures could be applied thoroughly to all parts of the tree, 

 and to remove all suckers, water sprouts and weak branches. 



Eight hundred oil burning heaters were purchased and placed among 

 the Ben Davis, Winesap and Jonathans in the older part of the orchard at 

 the rate of fifty heaters per acre. A carload of fuel oil (6,000 gallons) 

 costing 2% cents per gallon laid down at Weeping Water, was placed in a 

 galvanized storage tank just outside the orchard. This tank set in the 

 side of a steep bank, where the oil from the tank wagon could be unloaded 

 into it by gravity by driving the wagon above it, and where the wagon 

 could be again loaded from the storage tank by gravity by driving it on 

 the lower side. A modern, gasoline-power sprayer, a reversible extension 

 disc and other equipment essential to the proper handling of an orchard, 

 were provided. 



The heaters were fired but once last spring. There was but one period 

 after the blossoms opened when the temperature reached freezing. By 12 

 o'clock on the night of May 1 the temperature had dropped to 30 degrees 

 with a slight wind from a little to the north of west. We started the fires, 

 beginning at the northeast corner of the orchard and following the north 

 line of heating pots to the west side, then down the outside row on the 

 west side, and then every other row was lighted north and south, working 

 east from the west side. The reservoir type of heaters was used, and in 

 the rush the first ones lighted on the north and west sides were not care- 

 fully regulated, and on returning to this part of the orchard some time 

 later it was found that the valves had been closed to such an extent that 

 the fires in many had gone out. Frost was forming on the vegetation near 

 the ground and even on the lids of the fire pots where the fires had died 

 out. The thermometers showed a temperature of 27 degrees and the 

 ground was slightly frozen where it was bare. Farther east where the 

 fires burned steadily no frost was apparent, even though this part of the 

 orchard was considerably lower and the movement of air less. 



Until late in the season we were of the opinion that no good resulted 

 from the artificial heat, as trees outside the heated area in this orchard 

 set fruit and almost every apple tree in eastern Nebraska that put out 

 blossoms set and produced fruit. As the fruit began to gain size and color 

 it could be noticed that the trees bordering on the north and west sides of 

 the orchard were carrying a lighter crop, and w^hen the fruit was gathered 



