19-22.] 



Apple Growing in Australasia and America. 



1007 



On the Pacific Coast, where labour rates are higher — 4 to 6 

 dollars per day being paid at harvest time in 1920 — specialisation 

 and production have to go still further, and 300 boxes per acre 

 is not considered sufficient. Growers have there developed a 

 bigger type of tree kept as near the ground as possible. An 

 orchard of irrigated trees planted 30 feet square on vigorous 

 seedling stocks, with about 2 feet of trunk and growing to a 

 maximum height of 14-15 feet, will not uncommonly be made 

 to produce 800 boxes of export fruit per acre at 15 years old. 

 Once the tree is well shaped with a iS modified leader " filling 

 up the centre of the tree very little pruning other than a yearly 

 thinning out is found necessary, a contrast to the continual and 

 thorough spur-pruning necessary on the small Australian trees. 



Ability to gather the fruit from a step-ladder is an essential 

 factor in orchards producing export fruit : the lean-to ladder is 

 as obsolete in such orchards as the hand-hoe. It is perhaps in 

 their methods of handling the fruit at harvest time that the 

 Pacific Coast States particularly excel. The grower merely picks 

 his crop into boxes and takes these down unclosed on a motor 

 truck to his fruit company or co-operative association ; he unloads 

 each box down a sliding chute which conveys it to a large 

 storage basement ; here each grower's crop is stacked separately 

 until conveyed by machinery to the top of the building for 

 machine grading and packing. To bridge a distance of even 

 50 feet between the end of a receiving chute and two men 

 stacking in a corner of the basement, it has been found worth 

 while to use small portable conveyors on roller bearings at a 

 dollar per foot! Where labour at 6 dollars per day is to be 

 saved, capital expended on mechanical aids to labour is never 

 grudged. After it has been graded and packed the fruit is 

 " shipped " in car loads of any one grade and variety in refri- 

 gerator freight-cars holding up to 800 bushel boxes each. 

 Packed according to the State grading specifications and subject 

 to examination at any time by the State inspectors, a bushel 

 box of Extra Fancy Newtowns means something very definite to 

 a buyer in any country and thereby earns a premium which an 

 individual English grower can hardly hope to command even if 

 he can grow identical material. 



Can he, however, grow identical material? The writer is 

 rather sceptical on this point. Okanagan Vallev, Wenatchee, 

 in Washington State. U.S.A., and the Huon Valley of Tasmania 

 have the climate par excellence for box apple production. It 

 would appear to be a fact that all boxed apples exported to 



