HORTICULTURE IN CANADA. 105 



ment thougnt fit to deal with and to prove to the fruit-grower, I will 

 call him a farmer, that there is better money in his apple orchard than 

 anything else on his farm. I do not think these orchards had been 

 bringing more than $25 to $30 an acre, and I think the man was paid 

 a big price even then because they had to go over a good many trees to 

 find many bushels of apples and that adds to the cost fast. I do not want 

 you people to think we are all like that, for we are making as great a 

 success in some parts of our country as there is made anywhere else. 

 We have men who have been educated up to this in the last ten years, 

 who are making a handsome thing out of their apple orchards. 1 know 

 a man who probably had 100 acres of land, with 80 acres of apples; 

 as it used to be he got no revenue from it, but now he is getting about 

 $2,000 a year out of his apples. 



Our idea is to educate these non-managers up to the same stage as 

 that other man. Our way has been to send a man supposed to know the 

 business into a certain locality, he has pi-obably six, seven or eight dis- 

 eased orchards given into his charge in the spring, he secures a man to 

 prune the trees, and he stays with him and teaches him how to prune 

 them. I think it is easier to teach a man to spray than it is to teach 

 him to prune. We get our men to spray without any trouble, but to get 

 them to prune is a difficult thing in fact most of them butcher up the 

 trees. 



In orchards thirty -five to forty years old we find there is a trunk 

 and the branches are cleaned up about six or eight feet above the 

 crotch and no top at all. I call that a butchered tree with no fruit within 

 ten to twelve feet of the ground, and others the limbs are bare all the 

 way un, and others are like a fox tail at the top. Now a tree like that, 

 what it should have done to it, T am not teaching you, but I am telling 

 you what we are trying to do in our country, is to force that tree to have 

 bearins- wood. How are we going to do it? We are taking off the top 

 and putting all our work on the branches way far up, and by top- 

 working that tree we force the branches or sprouts to come out lower 

 down on the branch. Every tree can be trained if you only cut it back 

 as you ought to. So we are trying to bring that bearing wood down 

 nearer to the ground as it ought to be. I know there are lots of apple 

 trees that are mighty difficult to prune, almost impossible to spray, and 

 simply impossible to pick the fruit from. You talk about planting and 

 growing things in the moon, and planting potatoes in the moon, they have 

 been doing that in our country. 



All the pruning should be done largely on the outside. What for? 

 To let in the sun; to color your apples. Take up all cross branches 

 further in and the sun will get into your apples far better. Colored 

 apples, unless they are red, are no good at all, and then you will get 

 them of a better size too. In many ways it will pay a man to thin his 

 apples. If it takes time for pruning, it takes that much more time 

 in picking them. Well thinned is half cropped. 



