ELEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 6i 



Mr. Hitchixgs: I think about 36. 



Mr. Ives : How much annual wood growth could you expect 

 to get from the first beginning of the young trees under your 

 system ? 



]^Ir. Hitchixgs : If you will take notice from the pictures 

 that have been shown — those trees were from five to six years 

 old, and the annual growth would vary from 6 inches to 8 

 inches. But in some of them it would be a good deal more 

 than that. You will get all the growth that is necessary. I 

 try to restrict it. You see if you have got an accumulation of 

 that vegetable matter there, it forces them along until the grass 

 gets started in the spring. You want time for the blossoms 

 to develop. 



Mr. Fexx: How many apples did you get on those trees the 

 fifth year from the setting? 



Mr. Hitchixgs : There were some trees that had a bushel 

 and a half on. They ran from a bushel up to a bushel and a 

 half. 



Mr. Ives : On the fifth year, as I understand you, they were 

 mostly Jonathan, Wealthy, Spitzenberg and apples of that kind ? 



Mr. Hitchixgs : I will tell you what I got from six-year-old 

 Northern Spy. That is an apple which usually does not bear 

 very strong. Six years from planting I had 150 I guess, and 

 a good many of them had half a bushel of Northern Spys. 

 Some of them are here. I stimulate the fruit-bud development 

 and restrict the wood growth. By stimulating the fruit-bud 

 development on trees nine years old, and on those eleven years 

 old we have had at least fifteen bushels per tree. Sometimes 

 when a tree is eleven years old — on certain trees we have picked 

 as high as twenty bushels. 



Mr. Fexx : And with no other fertilization other than what 

 they got by your simply mowing the grass and putting it around 

 the trees? 



]\Ir. Hitchixgs: That is all. Never was a pound of fer- 

 tilizer put on the orchard. It has been spoken of by somebody 

 that they did not think the trees would live. Right in this 

 orchard there are trees that have been standing there a hundred 

 years. There are quite a number that were set a hundred and 

 four years ago. An old lady, a neighbor of mine, told me 

 she could remember seventv-five vears and she savs that never 



