-5- 



vigorous fruit trees in lawns are the rule rather than the exception. Nitrogen in 

 young grass seems to be in a rather readily available form and capable of being 

 washed back into the soil. A regularly clipped lavm therefore returns to the soil 

 much of the nitrogen taken up by the grass. The layer of grass also adds a small 

 amount of mulching materialthus aidiiig in the conservation of moisture, And so the 

 fruit tree in a la-vm fares much the same as the tree in cultivation. YiThether or 

 not the orchard sod should be mowed every Saturday is a debatable question. The 

 cost vfould probably exceed the returns," 



HELP WANTED FROi: FRUIT GR01TO:RS 



"I wish I hadl" "I wish I hadn'ti" "Vte certainly played it smart that time." 

 "That certainly we s a bad guess." "Oh, if somebody had only told us these thingsl" 



And so it goes — satisfaction and regret over various things that have 

 happened in the fruit industry during our times. "If only we had known" ~ there 

 certainly is a lot of pathos in that sentiment c Nobody can guess right all the 

 time, but the more facts we have to go on, the more records we have of what others 

 have accomplished or what others have tried to do and failed, the more vre can be 

 sure of figuring things out right. 



It's all suimned up in five little words from Shakespeare s Tempest — really big 

 words ~ v^rhich are inscribed near the entrance of the Bureau of Archives in 

 Washington, proclaiming that "v'lfhat is past is prologue." 



In effect this means that the experiences of the past provide us vdth many 

 valuable guides for ^le future. This fact is readily accepted by various industries. 

 They have gone so far as to establish collections and build museums, sho-vn.ng the 

 progress made over the years and over the centuries. 



There is a lesson here for us. And that is the reason behind the project now 

 under way by the Llassachusetts Fruit Growers" Association, to establish a Fruit 

 Room conveniently located for use by present and future fruit growers. This Room 

 is to serve as a repository for records of the Association and for other material 

 related to the fruit industry. The purpose is to have such records available for 

 reference for future growers, so that they can profit by our experiences , 

 capitalizing on the progress vfhich we have made, and avoiding pitfalls which we 

 might have avoided if we had had the benefit of such records of years gone by, 



I'/e are calling tliis to your attention here, in the hope that every reader of 

 FRUIT NOTES will make a special effort to look over possible material for this Room, 

 Just to give you some idea of the various items that it is hoped may be obtained, 

 the collection ;irill include complete sets of annual i;.F,G,A, reports, complete files 

 of apple market reports, and then a large number of other types of related publi- 

 cations, such as: bulletins and other publications dealing with the fruit industryj 

 catalogues of orchard machinery and equipment; pictures (probably everybody has 

 some) of orchard activities or other phases of fruit grovdngj records of the Red 

 Apple Club; personal stores of experiences with various varieties of fruits. 



These are just- a few suggestions as to items v;hich the Association is anxious 

 to collect, lou can aid this project greatly by your contributions of material, 

 large or small. Some may not seem important to you, but they may be to others. 



