1908.] Competition in Apple Growing. 491 



standard trees are generally grown, only thirty permanent 

 trees as a rule to the acre, though in recent plantings it has 

 become common to place a " filler " between each pair of 

 permanent trees, to bear fruit until it becomes overshadowed 

 and has to be removed, and dwarf trees are also now 

 coming into favour. In this country it is usual to grow goose- 

 berries or currants as ft fillers/' and even full standards are 

 50 per cent, more to the acre than they are on the other side 

 of the Atlantic, while our dwarfs are ten times as numerous 

 per acre ; but, in an average of seasons, apart from the yields 

 of " fillers/' I believe that the production of apples per acre is 

 greater in these outside countries than in our own. Indeed, 

 the question of the yield of '''hllers" applies only to young 

 plantations, and the statistics to be noticed presently nearly all 

 relate to the yields and returns of old orchards. 



From a series of articles in the Rural New- Yorker, on 

 questions connected with apple growing in the United States, 

 some remarkable reports of yield and money return have been 

 extracted. Nearly all are records of results obtained in New 

 York State. 



The first is that of an orchard of 9 acres only 9 years old, 

 in which the trees were planted somewhat more thickly than 

 they usually are, 46 permanent trees and an equal number of 

 " fillers/.' There are 825 trees in all, and the yield in 1907 

 was 1,734 bushels suitable for packing, or 2^ bushels per 

 tree, a remarkably good yield for so young an orchard. No 

 account is given of the yield of seconds or tail fruit, and ap- 

 parently the money return, £49 per acre, was that of the 

 barrelled fruit only. Some of the trees, it is stated, had grown 

 to a spread of 20 feet. The cost of tillage by horse and hand, 

 pruning and spraying — in short of all work except the har- 

 vesting and packing of the fruit — was only 36s. 6d. per acre. 



In a small orchard of 26 trees, presumably on less than an 

 acre, the crop in 1907 was 55S bushels suitable for packing, 

 or 21 J. bushels per tree. Nineteen of the trees were 75 years 

 old and the rest were 35 years of age ; one tree produced 36 

 bushels, which sold for £10. The variety was Northern Spy, 

 which sells at a higher price than the ordinary Baldwin, 

 Ben Davis or Greening, and the money return, including a 

 small sum for windfalls, was £186 ; a great amount to obtain 

 from less than an acre. 



