-5- 



Thinning apples thirty years ago was done only in a limited way and all of 

 it was done by hand. The research work on thinning showed that thinning would 

 improve the size and quality of fruit if done early in the growing period. 

 Varieties such as Wealthy, Duchess, Golden Delicious and Early Mcintosh required 

 thinning in order to obtain marketa"ble fruit but the cost of hand thinning 

 usually was greater than the difference in returns received. Recent experience 

 and research has shown that some of the hormone materials as naphthaleneacetic 

 acid and naphthaleneacetamide can be used to thin apples and their use is be- 

 coming a standard practice in many orchards today. 



Soil Management 



Not too much was kno^rm about soil management in orchards thirty years ago. 

 Most of the bearing orchards were grown in sod. Some of the young orchards were 

 being cultivated, manure and wood ashes when available, were used as fertilizers. 

 It was during this period that the value of a hay mulch and nitrogen was estab- 

 lished. The celebrated fertilizer plots started by Dr. Gourley at the Woodman 

 Orchards in Durham and later continued at the Horticultural Farm by Prof. Potter 

 showed the importance of nitrogen as a fertilizer for apple trees. The experi- 

 ment on the use of hay mulch by Dr. Shaw of Massachusetts was the forerunner of 

 the sod-mulch system of soil management v;hich helped in a large way to make 

 the production of apples profitable on our rough hilly land. Without the sod- 

 mulch system it isn't likely we would have an apple industry in New Hampshire today. 



Minor element deficiencies were not recognized thirty years ago. I remember 

 the first boron deficiency injury reported in New Hampshire. It was on the Harry 

 Chase Farm in Lyndeboro on Gravcnstein trees. Some experimental work by Dr. 

 Latimer showed that the injury could be corrected by adding a half pound of borax 

 to the soil under the trees. Magnesium deficiency was also a mystery at the time. 

 It wasn't until 1940 that the browning of leaves and defoliation on apple trees 

 was known to be caused by magnesium deficiency and could be corrected by applica- 

 tions of epsom salts as a spray to the foliage. 



Number of Growers and Size of Orchard 



The decrease in the number of apple growers and the increase in size of 

 operation is one of the most noticeable changes in the industry. I don't know 

 of any record of the number of apple growers in the State in 1927. The 

 correspondence regarding the better apple campaign between H. A. Rollins and 

 the County' Agents showed that 463 growers from 8 counties owning 121,226 trees 

 were entered in the campaign in 1927. From the comments in 1927 in these letters 

 about 1/3 of the growers in an area entered the contest. This would indicate 

 that there were around 1500 apple growers in the State thrity years ago. The 

 majority of the growers operated between 50 and 200 trees. Some of the figures 

 in these letters are interesting. For instance, Belknap County reported 104 

 growers signed up in the campaign with 14,000 trees. Sullivan County, 15 growers 

 with 3,000 trees. Cheshire County, 29 growers vjith 10,550. Merrimack County, 

 87 growers with 50,000 trees. Strafford County, 36 growers with 10,228 trees. 

 Hillsboro County, 117 growers xjith 63,722 trees and Rockingham County, 63 growers 

 with 23,763 trees. Today Sullivan, Cheshire and Strafford Counties have less 

 than ten commercial growers each. Rockingham and Hillsboro Counties are still 

 the largest apple producing counties with around 100 commercial growers each. 



