HORTICULTURAL INVESTIGATIONS, 
SUMMARIZED BY 
N."0.. BOGFE: 
ORCHARD FRUITS AND GRAPES. 
APPLES: 
At the time when the Station was established there was an old 
apple orchard on the farm. The varieties were the standard sorts, 
695 trees all told. It being deemed best by the management to test 
many of the newer varieties, scions of them were secured and 
grafted into these trees. The original orchard was in good, vigorous 
condition and the scions generally made a good growth. It was, 
however, some years before any fruit was secured. The conse- 
quence was that the orchard was hardly in a condition for general 
experimentation until some eight or ten years after the Station was 
established. At this time much interest was felt by all fruit growers 
in the Russian varieties of apples which had been recently intro- 
duced by the Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Agricultural 
Experiment Station. Great claims were made for these varieties 
as to their hardiness, fine quality, etc. In many instances fruit 
growers planted large orchards of these untested sorts. The re- 
sults were disastrous. While New York was more conservative 
in this respect than many of the newer states, some fruit grow- 
ers here felt that they were missing something if they did not plant 
these Russian sorts which, they were told, were better in quality and 
would be more profitable than varieties already cultivated. In the 
Eleventh Report of the Station the first report was made on these 
varieties and for some years this was a prominent feature of the 
horticultural work and one in which much interest was manifested. 
While some of the varieties were found to have value, many were 
worthless and very few were equal to other varieties under cultiva- 
tion. It was found that these fruits coming from the far north, 
while many of them were winter apples in Russia, were much earlier 
in maturing here. Several of the summer and fall varieties are 
retained and cultivated to a limited extent, but most have been 
[292] 
