48 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



40 y^ars ago, with the trees a rod apart. The intention of 

 the planter was to take out a portion of the trees, but 

 this has never been done. Neither of these orchards has 

 ever produced much fruit. We did muster up courage 

 enough to cut out alternate trees on one end of our orchard 

 a few years ago, but it seemed hard to cut down healthy, 

 vigorous, bearing trees. 



The first ten years after planting, our orchard was cul- 

 tivated, fertilized and planted with some hoed crop every 

 year. The trees made a luxuriant growth and injurious in- 

 sects, blights and fungi did not seem to trouble them as 

 in later years, but they produced little fruit. It is a fact 

 that a rapidly growing young apple orchard seldom pro- 

 duces fruit enough to be of much commercial value. 



After 10 years' cultivation the trees had grown to good 

 size and shaded much of the ground. It was then seeded 

 to grass and pastured with cattle, the intention being to 

 check the wood growth and throw the trees into fruiting. 

 The orchard remained in pasture 15 years. During this 

 time it had no fertilizer except one light application of 

 ground bone and another of leached ashes. It was fairly 

 profitable during the 15 years it was in pasture, bearing 

 some fruit every year, generally having pretty full crops in 

 the years when apples were plenty and cheap, but in size 

 and quality the fruit did not grade very high ; very little 

 of it was fancy. During this time the foliage suffered much 

 from insects and blights, for which spraying seemed to be 

 only a partial remedy. 



This way of treating the orchard did not bring as satis- 

 factory results as we wished, so two years ago, in the spring 

 of 1896, we plowed the orchard as shallow as possible and, 

 later, applied a car-load of New York stable manure to 

 the 3}^ acres. The orchard was cultivated six or eight 

 times with our orchard harrow, keeping the surface clean 

 and mellow. 



The crop of fruit in 1896 was a good one, but the 

 trees had not yet fairly felt the results of the new treat- 

 ment. Last season, 1897, the same cultivation with the 

 orchard harrow was kept up and another car-load of New 

 York manure applied in June. The cultivation and fer- 



