SEEDLING POUND APPLE 49 



Apples. 



Success? That depends upon the point of view. At any rate, 

 we had the keen joy of living close to nature, and were all in perfect 

 health. The profit in dollars varied. One year I recollect we 

 had over four hundred barrels of apples, but that year everyone 

 had apples in profusion. There was only sufficient cash return to 

 pay the commission merchant's charges, the freight, cost of barrels, 

 and a few cents for the pickers. 



Worthless fruit abounded, as in most old farm orchards, but 

 grafting and regrafting, coeval with our conquest of the San Jose 

 scale, gave far better results. 



Some of the thriftiest wild apple seedlings and occasionally the 

 least desirable of nursery-grown trees were grafted with seek-no- 

 furthers, northern spys, Baldwins and Roxbury russets, Rhode Island 

 greenings, wine sap, king, and snow apples, and Newtown pippins. 



False Economy in Tree Planting. 



The trees had been planted for from twenty-five to fifty years and 

 were a monument to the false economy of the farmer who, having 

 broad acres, yet crowds his apple trees to twenty-five foot spaces, and in 

 less than a score of years has a mass of interlocked branches, conse- 

 quently undersized and mildewed fruit. With this lesson before us, 

 all new settings were spaced from fifty to sixty feet, and trees 

 planted opposite only in every other row, giving still more room for 

 growth. 



Dynamiting the Soil. 



Before planting the orchards, every twenty-five feet and 

 three feet underground were set dynamite cartridges. Electrically 

 exploded as one battery, they thoroughly disintegrated the soil and 

 freed plant food enslaved for centuries. In winter the trees were 

 girdled with newspapers to balk the girdling rabbit. 



Many a farmer is ignorant of the fact vouched for by some 

 authorities that the cedar is the enemy of the apple tree, and that the 

 crisp, tiny, brown, fragile, hollow cedar apple can propagate an apple 

 blight; therefore he who hedges in his fruit trees by wind screens 

 of protecting cedars harbors that which may blight and curtail his 

 apple crop. 



We scraped the rough, loose, scaly bark from the trunks of 

 fruit trees, being careful not to dig into the quick, and gave them 

 thorough scrubbings with greasy water, including dog washing suds. 

 This disheartened and generally annihilated the most voracious bug, 

 and helped to grow a fine, smooth, healthy bark. 



Seedling Pound Apple. 



New apple trees were set out for variety. The former owner's 

 plantings had been russets, Baldwins, one sweet apple, half a 



