No. 6. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 565 



fore very long. While this bulletin will not enable us to make our 

 selection of varieties with absolute certainty, it will aid us very ma- 

 terially and 1 am sure any young man can avoid making as costly 

 mistakes as I made in my first plantings. 



It was a great disappointment to me to have Mr. Wilder taken 

 from Pennsylvania just at a time when he could do us so much 

 good. We had hoped that he might spend another year giving field 

 demonstrations to our people of soil testing and soil comparison so 

 that we could use his bulletins understandingh'. When he talked to 

 me about the kind of soil, for instance, that the Baldwin apple de 

 lighted in I was convinced that he knew what he was talking about, 

 but it was not at ail clear to me that 1 could identify that soil, but 

 when he took me to one of my orchards where really good Baldwins 

 giew, bored doAvn into the soil three feet and took a sample which 

 he carried to another block where the apples were not nearly a^o 

 good, showed me the two samples and by sight and touch explained 

 the difference I felt that he was giving me something that I could 

 understand. It is ilie field Avork of the expert that counts. It is 

 the field work, the demonstration work thai we need in this State 

 to put us properly on our feet. It is the personal touch of the dem- 

 onstrators right out in the orchard that brings results. 



So manj^ boxed apples have been shipped into our mar'cets dur- 

 ing the past few years from Oregon and Washington that our people 

 have been educated up to the point where they demand and expect 

 absolute perfection and if we expect to meet this demand we either 

 plant only varieties that are at home in our soil and climate. It is 

 worse than folly for any one to plant anything else. 



Someone has said that the training of a cliild should begin with 

 its grandparents, likewise the man who expects to market fancy 

 fruit must grow fancy fruit, begin by planting the right tree in the 

 right place — then he must spray the trees to kee]) the foliage healthy 

 and the fruit clean ; must prune to allow the sun to reach every part 

 of the tree; must thin when too heavily loaded and when harvest 

 time comes handle like eggs to prevent liulsir 





GRADING, PACKING AND SE;.LING THE CROP 



We have much to learn in Pennsylvania about grading and pack- 

 ing. We have become so accustomed to sell the run of the tree 

 in our iMcal markets, having each basket topped out with a few 

 fine specimors that we find it very hard to follow the lead of our 

 progres^iN 3 western brethern — but we must do it — and it seems to 

 me the easiest way for us to fall in line will be to start as they did, 

 have the growers in each small fruit district co-operate, that is get 

 together and decide upon the different grades of fruit that shall go out 

 from that district and carry their brand into the general market, and 

 determine to stand or fall on the reputation of the fruit carrying that 

 brand. The grading and packing of fruit is an art, it requires time 

 and patience and a certain amount of intelligence to learn it, hence in 

 the fruit districts of the west and south we find expert packers often 

 command very high wages. We sometimes find it difficult to get 

 the right kind of help at picking time to i)ick and pack our fruit, but 

 I think the establishment of fruit centres along our eastern coast, 

 and the co-operation of the growers at these centres is going to solve 



