No. 4.] WESTERN METHODS IN ORCHARDING. 295 



chards long past their prime. Until we get orchards on a par witli the 

 west as to age, we shall not be comjieting with them on anything lilce 

 an equal footing. 



In the second place, the orchard business is a great industry with 

 them. Whole districts do little else than grow apples, and with this 

 immense capital at stake, and with every man in the section talking 

 and thinking and even dreaming of nothing but apples, the industry 

 is bound to forge ahead. This is a well-recognized principle in any 

 industry, yet one which we have systematically neglected here in New 

 England. If Denmark had had only a handful of men scattered over 

 the country who were engaged in dairying, it would never have become 

 the leading dairy country of the world. And if we are to put the 

 orchard industry of New England on a satisfactory footing, one of the 

 first steps that must be taken is to get more people engaged in it. I 

 have repeatedly urged the importance of tliis, for I believe that too 

 much stress cannot be laid on it. 



The third factor which has certainly contributed to the success of 

 the western fruit is the fertility question. Their lands are new, virgin 

 soils, full of all the elem.ents of plant food, and the fruit grown on them 

 has all the raw materials at its disposal which it can possibly use at 

 any stage of its development. We here in New England are growing 

 the fruit which we expect to compete with it on lands which are many 

 of them already worn out with constant cropping, and which are in 

 addition too often forced to grow two crops every year, — a crop of 

 fruit and a crop of hay. 



The fourth factor in their success is spraying. It is a business prop- 

 osition with them, and they never neglect it. One hears of orchards 

 which are sprayed five, six, seven or even more times in a season; and 

 experimental spraying at the Oregon Agricultural College has shown 

 that 99 per cent of their apples can be kept free from worms or fungous 

 diseases, and many of their orchardists are approaching very close to 

 this in actual practice by proper spraying. With us in New England 

 the orchard which is sprayed at all is the exception; and usually one, 

 or at most two, sprayings are all that even these orchards receive. 



A fifth element of their success is certainly cultivation. It is 

 thorough and continuous, so that all the power of the soil goes to 

 making fine foliage and fine fruit, instead of being divided up among 

 weeds, grass and fruit trees, as is too often the case with us. 



Tlie sixth factor in the conquest of our markets by western fruit, 

 and the one which more than all others has given them the inside 

 track, is, in the writer's opinion, their method of handling and grading 

 and packing their fruit after it is grown. Even with our faulty 

 methods of growing fruit, we produce a lot of fine apples, but nine- 

 tenths of them are not marketed so as to command the highest price 

 which their quality would warrant; while with the western grower 

 the grading and packing is such as to insure the apples reaching the 

 consumer in perfect condition. Not only is every apple perfect, or 



