SPECIAL THINGS NEEDED BY FRUITS 



let three-year-old trees bear more than twenty apples, four-year- 

 old trees more than fifty, or five-year-old more than one hundred. 

 After five years, thin at the regular rate. 



Pay attention to securing pollination of your apples. A 

 few varieties may have the power of fertilizing their own blos- 

 soms, but the larger number of kinds do not. Baldwin generally 

 is known as a kind that needs little outside help, yet in many 

 experiments where the bees and winds were prevented from 

 carrying pollen from other trees, a thousand Baldwin blossoms 

 would set only a half-dozen gnarly little apples. 



By far the greatest trouble due to insufficient pollination 

 is not in the total failure to set fruit, but in the production of 

 knotty and crooked fruit. Freezing will cause apples to grow 

 crooked, but, in nine cases out of ten, they grow that way be- 

 cause the blossoms, while fertilized enough to start the fruit, 

 were not fertilized enough to give it vigor and vitality. The 

 individual fruits were cripples from the beginning. Therefore, 

 provide plenty of chances for cross-fertilizing in your orchards, 

 and do not depend upon trees of the same variety fertilizing each 

 other. See that each tree in the orchard has three or more 

 trees of one or more other kinds within a hundred and fifty 

 feet. 



Care must be taken, also, to see that the different kinds in 

 the same section of the orchard bloom at the same time. We 

 know of one big orchard in which there are only two varieties. 

 One is through blooming before the other begins, so no benefit 

 is derived from having the two kinds together. 



Two classes are enough into which to divide varieties accord- 

 ing to blooming habits. In both the early and late classes the 

 varieties will overlap each other sufficiently. But an early 

 bloomer and a late one could not help one another. Gideon, 

 Gravenstein, Early Ripe, Smokehouse, Stark, Arkansas Black, 

 Benoni, Chenango, Mclntosh, Maiden's Blush, Duchess, 

 M. B. Twig, Baldwin, King, Fallawater and others bloom early. 

 Wagner, Yellow Transparent, Spitzenburg, the Greenings, 

 Stayman's Winesap, Winesap, Gano, Williams' Early Red, 

 York Imperial, Rome Beauty, Ben Davis, Hubbardston, Jona- 

 than, Spy, Wealthy, Delicious, Missouri Pippin, etc., bloom 

 comparatively late. 



These statements are based on observations in New York. 

 They might not be entirely correct in other localities. Watch 

 the trees in your neighborhood and make notes of when they 

 bloom. If you find your bearing orchard is suffering from a 

 lack of cross pollenization, start at once and top-work some of 

 the trees with other good varieties. In about three years you 

 can expect blossoms on these grafts or buds. When you plant 

 now, see that this trouble is avoided. 



As to varieties it depends on the elevation, the latitude, 

 the climate generally, the time of ripening desired, and the 

 purpose for which apples are wanted. Still the list is not very 

 large. Probably twenty-five varieties cover the good ones for 

 all conditions found between Florida and Ontario. 



In the Piedmont and Blue Ridge sections and the Delaware 



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