32 PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-THIRD FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



seen condition will hasten or retard their normal blooming period and 

 yonr sterile trees will bloom alone. Perhaps in one year in five you may 

 notice the influence of pollinators in the form and vigor of fruit. But 

 these specimens are generally more important as curiosities than other- 

 wise. So that any method that promises to reveal the controlling factors 

 m the setting of fruit will be welcomed by planters of self-sterile or 

 weak pollen-producing trees, and will mark a very distinct advance in 

 fruit culture. 



The paraphernalia of a large apple orchard, and the elaborate pro- 

 cesses of handling fruit, are as spectacular in their operation as in any of 

 the great orange groves and packing-houses of the south. Of late years 

 trees have been groomed as faithfully as are thoroughbred horses in 

 great racing establishments. It is by this attention to detail that 

 fruit is brought to that perfection which enables us to get the highest 

 prices paid in the world to-day for apples. As you have all learned 

 years ago, the haphazard leads to the brush heap, and every detail 

 of our specialty work is the result of much study and experience. 

 'Study with pruning knife and microscope, study of the physical 

 characteristics of a tree with the same minute attention which the physi- 

 cian or surgeon gives to the human system, study of the needs of this 

 market and that, of new and attractive methods of packing, study of 

 even more abstruse subjects than these — all of which require expert 

 attention and demand that the large orchardist shall seldom "go fish- 

 ing." Exactness in the matter of spraying, heedful both of time and 

 of thoroughness, as, for instance, spraying from both elevated platform 

 and the ground at the same time, exactness in the matter of cultivation, 

 of thinning and watching the summer development of the fruit, exactness 

 in allowing no foliage to touch a fruit or two apples to touch each other, 

 such care in picking as is known in no other apple-growing section, 

 the thorough washing and careful sizing, with specially constructed 

 machinery, of fruit before it is stored in warehouses, the storing on 

 ventilated trays, the control of drafts among stored fruit— these are 

 some of the requisites that go to make the growing of high-grade apples 

 a specialty proposition to-day, and are methods in use by the best grow- 

 ers in the Willamette Valley. 



Apple-growers generally believe this to be the most remarkable year 

 for their business known in a generation. So many abnormal physical 

 conditions are found, so many of the old rots and a few new ones, 

 rots like the brown speck in the flesh of the apple, the core rot, the new, 

 dry, spongy rot that shrivels a thin layer of flesh under the skin sur- 

 rounding the calyx, and many others of the same general family, all 

 these are rampant this year where the layman would naturally expect 

 high quality. The crop is the shortest in the history of the United 

 States, and it is often said, 4 4 Well, it will be of an extra good quality 



