COST OF PRODUCING APPLES IN HOOD RIVER VALLEY. 



21 



convenient place for burning. Another is to gather the brush into 

 piles by hand, or, more comnionlv, by raking with a horserake or 

 some homemade device, and to haul it out and burn it later. The 

 third method, the one least practiced, is to use a brush burner in the 

 orchard. There are several kinds of patented brush burners, but 

 their use as yet is largely confined to younger orchards, many growers 

 claiming that some injury to the trees has resulted from their use 

 in the bearing orchards. A brush burner is a device which is drawn 

 through the orchard and into which the brush is piled and burned. 

 (See fig. 5.) It is a labor-saving device and may come into more 

 general use if the liability of in jurying the trees be overcome. 



Fig. 5. — A portable brush burner in use during the summer pruning in the upper Hood 

 River Valley. Such burners are not generally used in the older orchards. 



The most common method of brush disposal is the one first men- 

 tioned above, in which the brush is gathered and hauled from the 

 orchard in one operation. The abundance of wood for fuel makes it 

 unnecessary to save the trimmings for firewood, as is done in many 

 sections. The annual cost of disposing of the brush is $2.36 per acre, 

 or $0,0106 per box, on the 54 orchards considered. 



CULTIVATION AND SOIL MANAGEMENT. 



Cultivation, which is the most expensive of all maintenance opera- 

 tions, is practiced to some extent in all of the orchards. Thirty, 

 or 55^ per cent, of the men practice clean cultivation annually and 



