APPLES 



107 



Professor F. H. Ballou. Wooster. Ohio: 

 •Should be located on elevated lands ad- 

 jacent to large bodies of water if pos- 

 sible. " 



Professor H. C. Thompson. Agricultural 

 College, Mississippi: "A northern slope 

 in Mississippi is best." 



Professor J. R. Shinn, Moscow. Idaho: 

 "Apples have been grown at elevations of 

 6.000 feet, but the profitable commercial 

 orchards are below 3.000 feet. A loca- 

 tion near to markets is very desirable." 



Professor R. W. Fisher. Bozeman. Mont., 

 thinks that the best soils are rolling lands 

 on hillsides because soil drainage and air 

 drainage are better on these rolling situa- 

 tions, and there is less danger of frosts. 

 Market Conditions 



Professor F. H. Ballou, Wooster. Ohio: 

 "The orchard should be near a good ship- 

 ping point, a large town is better than a 

 small one." 



Professor H. C. Thompson, Agricultural 

 College, Mississippi: "Locate the orchard 

 near a good road and near a railroad, 

 for the danger of bruising fruit and the 

 cost of hauling are considerable." 



PREPAR.VTI()> OF L.i>DS FOK OH- 



CHAKDS 



Timbered or Rocky Land 



In the case of land that has been cov- 

 ered with timber or of rocky land, it is 

 better before planting the trees to remove 

 all the stumps and large rocks, because if 

 the trees are to be properly lined in 

 straight rows, stumps or rocks may inter- 

 fere w'ith the setting. I saw an orchard 

 of several hundred acres in the Ozark 

 mountains that was set on land where the 

 underbrush had been grubbed and the 

 large timber cut down and allowed to lie 

 on the ground to rot while the apple 

 trees were growing. This was not a sat- 

 isfactory arrangement, because there 

 could not be a proper alignment of trees, 

 and the land could not be cultivated and 

 kept free from weeds and wood growth 

 that sprang up from the roots of trees. 

 At the same time there was more or less 

 danger from injurj' by forest fires that 

 might catch in the dry brush. The theory 

 of the owner was that the decaying tim- 

 ber would fertilize the land, and that 

 if he w'aited to clear the land entirely 



the orchard would be delayed one year, 

 but he discovered later that he would 

 have gained time by waiting another year, 

 and supplying the land with fertilizers, 

 in the form of cover crops. 



>'o General Rule. 



Many things have to be left to the 

 common sense of the man who grows an 

 orchard. It is not possible to lay down 

 a set of rules that are elaborate enough 

 for guidance in all places. Generally, 

 however, the land should be properly lev- 

 eled. This is especially important in irri- 

 gated sections where water must be con- 

 veyed to every part of the orchard. It 

 may cost $10, ?15 or even $25 per acre 

 to level land for proper irrigation, but it 

 it must be done, it pays to do it before 

 planting, because if the trees are set out 

 before leveling, and the elevations low- 

 ered and the depressions filled after the 

 setting of the trees, the soil will be car- 

 ried away from the trees set on the high 

 points and given too great a depth on the 

 lower portions: thus in one part of the 

 orchard the roots of the tre^s will be 

 too near the surface, and in another part 

 too far below the surface. 



Fig. 1. A Sage Brush Grubber. Baker 

 Manufacturing Co. 



Hard Pan Xear Surface 



Where there is hard pan or a thin strat- 

 um of rock near the surface, it can often 

 be broken up with dynamite, and the 

 lower stratum of soil reached, so that the 

 roots of the trees will not be obstructed 

 but will take hold of the lower stratum. 



