30 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS * CONVENTION. 



lusciousness of our fruits— an abundance of moisture in the air— fur- 

 nishes the best medium for development of the scab fungus. As yet 

 we have not thoroughly mastered this obstinate fellow, though we have 

 a strangle hold upon him and keep him in fair subjection. 



In handling these fungoid diseases we find that local conditions, 

 atmospheric or otherwise, are often unique, often peculiar to themselves, 

 and are always so variant in different localities that it is impossible 

 to formulate a universal rule for the treatment of such troubles. We 

 have to learn the best methods, the best materials, the best times for 

 application by the old, hard knocks of experience. We must abandon 

 many of the scientific formulas, and, following the doctrine of selection, 

 adapt them to our local needs. For instance, winter treatment of the 

 scab fungus seems to be of no value in our valley and we are compelled 

 to dodge the rainstorms of late spring and, in a moment as it were, dose 

 our trees with preparations of Bordeaux or similar fungicides. As 

 soon as the blossoms drop, we are out combining with Bordeaux one 

 of the arsenieals for the many beetles and measuring worms that inev- 

 itably make their homes in an apple orchard. No effort is made to fill 

 the calyx with poison for codling-moth, as in other apple-growing dis- 

 tricts. Moths do not appear in the Willamette Valley before June 25th, 

 and it is useless to attempt to hold the poison in the calyx cup until 

 that time. The poison is so taken up or lost in the process of fruit 

 elaboration, or is dissipated by dews, fogs, and rains, that it disappears 

 in about three weeks after an application, which would be consider- 

 ably before the appearance of the moth in our valley. 



The labor of thinning begins as soon as the little apple-children 

 begin to show the blessed precocity of youth. In the best practice we 

 thin to about eight inches, and, for better protection against moths and 

 blemishes of fungi, we cut away all foliage that touches the fruit or 

 obstructs the rays of the coloring sun. It is this infinite solicitude, this 

 tender care for the nursling, that gives the immediate vigor, the energy 

 to push fruit along to the special high grade our finicky market demands. 

 Size, form, type, the ability to color well under the proper impulses, 

 are all given when the little fruits are in swaddling clothes as it were. 

 Neglect at this time will cause a slow development, an inability to throw 

 off fungoid diseases, and will leave many footholds for the attacks 

 of apple worms and beetles. Weak pollinators, so-called self-sterile 

 trees, like Spitzenbergs and Gravensteins, will often carry unfertilized 

 fruit to a fair maturity, if given such an extra impulse just as the 

 pome begins to increase in size. 



This problem of pollination and the inter-related corollaries of ster- 

 ility and cross-pollination have received much attention of late, and 

 their theoretic solutions, at least, have been before us for many years. 

 But the more we investigate, the more we study its various phases, the 



