COST OF PRODUCING APPLES IN WESTERN COLORADO. 



33 



severe frosts occurred in early May, only a very few apple growers 

 in the entire Grand Valley set out their smudge pots and saved their 

 crops. There is no doubt that orchard heating paid that year. 

 This was due largely to weather conditions, the night being so still 

 that the smoke hung in thick clouds over the orchards. Such 

 results, however, are exceptional. In the early years of the fruit 

 industry orchard heating was a universal practice, but owing to the 

 great expense of equipment and operation, and to frequent failure 

 to save the crop owing to adverse weather conditions, the practice has 

 been almost wholly discontinued. (See fig. 10.) Over 90 per cent 

 of Mesa growers interviewed, while admitting that smudging some- 



Fig. 10.— Discarded smudge pots on a ranch near Grand Junction. 



very few growers. 



Smudging is now practiced by 



times saves the crop, maintain that as an insurance it is too expen- 

 sive. There are a few men, however, who have followed the practice 

 regularly and never lost faith in it. Some of these men are among 

 the most successful men in the valley, but their numbers are so few 

 and their costs and methods so various that no accurate average 

 costs for smudging could be obtained. The apple growers on the 

 farms studied in the lower sections of Delta County formerly prac- 

 ticed orchard heating, as did all those of Montrose, where many still 

 put out their smudge pots every year. 



In the discussion of cost production no figures for orchard heating 

 are taken into account, since not enough estimates could be obtained 

 to constitute reliable data. 



