93 



I want to bring- out a point in ]\Ir. Frazer's talk, which covers 

 our conditions, regarding potato culture in an orchard. We allow 

 our men to have patches. Usually they plant potatoes, with the re- 

 sult that the fruit we harvested (the first three crops) was practi- 

 cally worthless, hardly any value at all. Other places, where ferti- 

 lizer, manure and cover crops were used, we had almost the same 

 result, and it looks to us as if we would either have to grow fruit 

 or potatoes. We plant the trees so close, 20 feet apart, that it is 

 not profitable to raise anything between them. 



AVe pjiy our laboring men $1.50 per day, 15 cents an hour, 

 and furnish married men with a house costing about $600.00 or 

 $700.00, then charge them rent covering the interest, or $4.00 per 

 month. We, also, give them truck patches, furnish them with 

 wood, horse to drive to town, etc. 



Question. Do you give them time to raise potatoes? 



Mr. Cohill. We stop at four Saturday afternoons and give 

 them horse and plow to care for them. 



Pruning. 



It is very important that young trees get proper pruning for 

 much depends upon it in the future. In many orchards improper 

 pruning is practiced, while in others no pruning whatever is done. 

 I must say that better results can be obtained from the latter. 

 Many orchardists have the idea that after a bunch of men have 

 been started to pruning that all is well, and they will do the work 

 properly. 



A\'ell let me tell you that this is taking a long chance, for we 

 have a high class of laboring men working for us, as well as re- 

 sponsible foremen, but nevertheless the field manager is on the job. 

 We do our pruning diu'ing January, February and ^larch, keeping 

 a force out when weather conditions will permit, usually about half 

 time is made. 



These three months are usually severe but we find some very 

 favorable weather, and with plenty of men, have time to treat each 

 tree individually or in other words, treat each tree as though it 

 were the only one we had. AA'e had our inexperienced man with 

 one of a year or more experience, making two men to each row, 

 until the inexperienced men have been taught, then each man 

 thereafter takes a row and is responsible for it. 



Each man is equipped with a saw, large pruning shears and small 

 hand pruners. Following behind the pruners is a boy to cover all 

 wounds over half inch across, with white lead and linseed oil paint 

 to prevent the exposed wood from drying out. We, also, use a 

 boy to gather up the cut limbs and put them into piles. We use 

 a team with light sled, with very broad, light bed, to carry the brush 

 off to a vacant space to be burned. Be sure to haul this brush off 

 before growing season, because there is nothing which looks worse 

 than trash of this sort in an orchard, and it also prevents clean 

 cultivation. 



The old style of high-headed apple trees has gone out of favor 

 with the progressive fruit growers, and the common sense method 



