THE ONTARIO FRUIT EXPERIMENT STATIONS * 



REPORT OF THE INSPECTOR, PROF. H. L. HUTT, GUEL.PH, ONT. 



Fruit trees in the St. Lawrence Valley 

 suffered severely last winter. Mr. Jones, 

 of Maitland, the experimenter, has made 

 careful note of the relative hardiness of the 

 different varieties. He has a good general 

 collection of the hardiest varieties of fruit, 

 made up of 74 varieties of apples, 40 of 

 pears, 51 of plums, and 11 of cherries. 

 Only a few of the hardiest varieties of pears 

 and plums survived the winter, and none ot 

 them, with the exception of the American 

 plums, fruited satisfactorily. 



Many varieties of apples supposed to be 

 quite hardy were not sufficiently so to stand 

 the severity of last winter. A young or- 

 chard of 150 Ontario apple trees, three 

 years planted, was entirely destroyed. Blen- 

 heim, Ben Davis and Stark trees also were 

 killed or more or less severely injured. 

 Even large trees of Fameuse and Scarlet 

 Pippin, which had been bearing regularly 

 for the past 20 years, were killed outright. 

 In nearly all cases, however, these were 

 trees which had weakened their vitality by 

 over-bearing the previous year. Trees of 

 the same variety along side, which bore no 

 crop in 1903 were quite healthy and bore 

 heavily this year. In this connection a 

 valuable lesson may be learned as to the im- 

 portance of keeping trees at all times in 

 good health if possible, and not allowing 

 them to lose vigor through over-bearing, 

 attacks of insects, fungii, or other causes. 



Mr. Jones is a strong believer in the im- 

 portance of hardy stock for top working the 

 less hardy varieties upon. He has set out 

 about four acres of McMahon White apple 

 trees, and has top-grafted them with scions 

 selected from his most productive and best 

 colored Fameuse trees. In this way he 

 will soon have an orchard of hardy produc- 

 tive trees bearing fine, high colored fruit as 

 the result of careful selection of scions. 



For a commercial orchard Mr. Jones has 

 found the Fameuse, Mcintosh and Scarlet 



Pippin the most profitable varieties for his 

 section, but for a general home collection, 

 covering the season from early to late he 

 recommends the following: 



Apples: Yellow Transparent, Astra- 

 chan. Duchess, Alexander, Fameuse, Mcin- 

 tosh, Scarlet Pippin, Wealthy, Milwaukee, 

 Scott's Winter, and Golden Russet. 



Pears and plums cannot be relied upon 

 for a profit in that section, although a few 

 may be grown for home use. The follow- 

 ing are the varieties which Mr. Jones re- 

 commends as a result of his testing so far : 



Pears : Flemish Beauty, Clapp's Favor- 

 ite, and Ritson. 



Plums: Whittaker, Wolf, Stoddard, 

 Red June, Mana, Ogon, and Glass Seedling. 



Cherries : Early Richmond, Montmo- 

 rency, Orel, and English Morello. 



THE GRIMSBY STATION. 



Mr. L. Woolverton, of Grimsby, the ex- 

 perimenter at this station, has 100 acres 

 closely planted with fruit. His collection 

 of varieties is one of the largest and most 

 representative to be found in Ontario. It 

 is made up of 50 varieties of apples, 60 of 

 pears, 60 of plums, 100 of peaches, 100 of 

 cherries, 5 of quinces, 12 of apricots, 104 of 

 grapes, 15 of currants, 40 of gooseberries, 

 and 50 of strawberries. 



The following are the varieties he recom- 

 mends for planting in his section : 



Sweet Cherries : Governor Wood, Na- 

 poleon Knight, Tartarian, Elkhorn, and on 

 clay soil, Windsor. 



Sour Cherries: Montmorency and 

 English Morello. 



Mr. Woolverton has about 200 Windsor 

 cherry trees six or seven years old which 

 have made good growth, but borne very lit- 

 tle fruit, while trees of the same variety 

 on heavy soil at Mr. Orr's a few miles far- 

 ther west have fruited heavily. Last win- 

 ter killed the fruit buds on most of the 



The first part of this report was published in the February issue. 



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