Indiana horticultural society. 3t3 



"leaders." Don't just trim tliem. but cut them out and leave the strength 

 to go into the branches. Pruning in the growuig season checks the woody 

 growth and developes fruit spears. I do not do this in the first five or 

 six years of the tree's life, because then I am building a tree and want 

 wood. Now, you want your bearing wood down low; you don't want 

 yovu* apples up in the air where it takes a long ladder* to get at them. 

 Then in the winter and early spring your regular pruning for the shaping 

 of the tree may continue as much as the tree needs, but do the summer 

 pruning of taking out the strong wood every year so as to keep the tree 

 down and develop the fruit buds. Then you will have a strong develop- 

 ment of fruit buds every year. Of course, if for some reason the buds are 

 killed one year j'ou will have an overbearing the next, and then you will 

 have to do more severe thinning. The apple gi'owing of the future does 

 not mean an easy time. The successful fruit grower of the future will 

 thin his apples every year, and if the summer pruning and the cultivating 

 is properly attended to, he ought to have a good deal of thinning to do. 

 It is said to be an expensive process, but it does not cost as much to pick 

 small gi-een apples and throw them on the ground for hogs and sheep to 

 pick as it does later on to pick up the fruit and sort it out and not have a 

 good market for it then because it is not first-class fruit. 



Now we have our apple orchard up to the beai-ing and fruiting, and 

 here comes another thing that is very important to me. The average 

 apple orchardist of the past usually began picking apples when enough 

 had dropped and the ground was covered. He would then commence to 

 pick what was left on the trees, put them in piles on the ground and 

 hoped somebody would come along and buy them. After a month or so, 

 if nobody came, he sorted them and packed them and disposed of them as 

 he could. Apples on a tree never all ripen at the same time. You pick 

 tomatoes a few at a time; you pick your ripe sti'awberries one day. and 

 the next come along and pick the next lot that ripens, and the next day 

 the same until the berries are all piclved. We do the same with peaches 

 and other fruit, except apples. We are from fifteen to twenty days get- 

 ting the entix'e harvest from a peach tree. The apple orchardist, however, 

 did not do that way. He waited until a gi"eat mauy apples had dropped, 

 and then stripped the tree of what was left. Apples should be picked as 

 they mature on a tree. Pick the matured ones one week, next week pick 

 what are matured then, and so on uutil they are all picked. These apples 

 are worth more money than if you pick them all at one scoop. The 

 modern apple grower is going to pick his apples as they mature, and he 

 will be a monin or more doing it, because that is the way they mature on 

 the ti'ees. 



We are speaking now in a general way of winter varieties. I have not 

 touched on the other varieties, and I do not intend to. as that is largely a 

 local question. If you live near a large market town, and aim to do a 

 local business, you will have to have a variety of apples covering the 



