62 



STATEMENT OF T. C. THURLOW, OF WEST Nl5WBURY. 



To answer your inquiries in brief, — we have n'ow about 

 eight hundred apple trees, and over twenty-five varieties. 

 The soil is generally a good gravelly loam, with a sandy or 

 gravelly subsoil. A very large proportion are Baldwins, — 

 budded trees taken from our nursery, and planted in orchard 

 rows in 1850 to 1855. The orchards were for several years 

 cultivated, — two or three times planted with corn or pota- 

 toes, — but for the last sixteen or seventeen years have been 

 down to grass, and for ten years or more pastured with sheep. 

 The trees have not been enriched in any other way, except a 

 small portion of the orchard, which has been partially culti- 

 vated, and two or three dressings of barn-yard manure 

 ploughed in. 



Occasionally we see a borer, which is or ought to be imme- 

 diately dug out, or killed with a pointed wire. When our 

 trees were young, they were washed every year, in June, 

 with soft-soap and 'water, (half-and-half,) which killed all the 

 borers' eggs, (if there were any,) and was otherwise benefi- 

 cial to the trees. Of late years this has been neglected, 

 hence the increase of the borer. 



We have been troubled with canker worms since 1860. 

 More than half our trees were entirely ruined by them within 

 five or six years of their first appearance, and our apple crop 

 reduced to merely nothing, — from eight hundred barrels a 

 year before their appearance, to less than a smgle barrel of 

 all kinds six or seven years afterwards, — and our trees re- 

 duced from four thousand in 1860 to eight hundred at the 

 present time ; although they were planted much too thickly 

 at the commencement. After trying various remedies, we 

 have decided that printers'' ink ( applied fall and spring ) is 

 the cheapest and most effectual. Our trees this year produced 

 over nine hundred barrels of good merchantable apples. The 

 tent caterpillar is at all times very troublesome, but can easily 

 be taken off when small with the baud or a stiff conical 



