1896 
TIIE RURAL 
NEW-YORKER 
6o7 
section which come into the market earlier, and are 
nearly as good for their season as the Baldwin. There 
is no discount on the Baker, Hubbardston Nonsuch, 
Wealthy, King of Tompkins County and Hurlbut, 
for red apples. The R. I. Greening is one of the very 
best for a green apple ; the tree grows strong, is a 
good bearer, and the apple is good for both eating and 
cooking. Peck’s Pleasant is of the Newtown Pippin 
family, the tree being a better grower and the apples 
more easily raised than the Newtown Pippin. For a 
late variety, the English Russet stands very popular, 
especially where it does well. In Westchester County, 
N. Y., it is planted very extensively, and more money 
made from it than from any other variety. The Ben 
Davis has, from its large size and color, gained much 
reputation in the West, but for New England is not 
considered as profitable as for the West The quality 
of the apple is so poor that it will not sell where there 
are other varieties so much better. There are many 
new varieties about which there is much talk in the 
various catalogues and papers, but as yet, they have 
not been sufficiently tested here to warrant placing 
them above those already named. Some of them may, 
however, be even more valuable than any which are 
now grown here, and if so, we want them. They are 
Sutton Beauty, Stark, Paragon, Bethel, McIntosh 
Red, Wolf River, Salome, York Imperial, Gano, Belle 
de Boskoop, Kinnaird and others.” 
FRUITS IN THE COLD NORTH. 
NEW PLAN FOR TRAINING PEACH TREES. 
Grand Isle County is naturally the fruit-growing 
section of Vermont. Composed 
wholly of islands and peninsulas 
in Lake Champlain, it has an at¬ 
mosphere especially suited to 
growing fruits of the choicest 
quality. Grand Isle does not 
boast any great bonanza fruit 
farms of several hundred acres 
in extent, but what is better for 
the community, it has a good 
many hundred acres in bearing 
orchards owned in small tracts 
by practical, industrious farmers 
and fruit growers. I made a 
trip over there recently, and 
talked with some of the leading 
fruit growers of the county. 
Mr. T. L. 
has a capacity of 2,000 barrels, 
and he expects almost to fill it 
this fall from his own orchards. 
Mr. Kinney said, “ I have about 
1,000 apple trees in full bearing, 
besides 500 or more young trees 
set from two to three years. This 
orchard in front of my house, 
contains 500 trees, one-half Green¬ 
ings and the other half Baldwins. 
The lower orchard has more 
varieties, Fameuse, Greenings, 
Yellow Bellflowers, Baldwins, 
Spys, Kings and other standard 
sorts. Our strongest winds are 
from the south, and that is why I have grown that 
tall cedar hedge along the south line to protect my 
trees.” 
In walking through the orchard with Mr. Kinney, I 
noticed that nearly every tree was very evenly set 
with apples, some trees carrying more than should 
be allowed to ripen. Mr. Kinney believes in thorough 
and frequent cultivation to check wood growth and 
retain moisture for the trees. I asked him how and 
where the bulk of the apples raised on the island 
were sold, and he said, “ Right here in the orchards ; 
buyers from New York, Boston and from the West 
are here every fall, and buy all the apples they can 
get. My apple house is constructed with hollow 
walls, but plastered between the studding, so that I 
can keep my apples all winter without freezing, and 
I usually keep a portion of them to ship to com- 
missionmen in New York and Boston later in the 
season.” 
This is the home of the Vermont Beauty pear, one 
of the choicest new varieties, and while on my rounds 
1 met Mr. J. T. Macoinber, in whose orchard now 
stands the parent tree. Mr. Macomber is one of the 
leading pomologists of New England, having origin¬ 
ated many new and valuable varieties of fruits. 
Many years ago, he tried to raise peaches, but the 
severity of the winters in this latitude so interfered 
with the growth of the trees, that he never was able 
to mature good, sound fruit. Some 10 or 12 years ago, 
however, he tried an experiment in training the trunk 
of the tree to trail along the ground, so as to be able 
to give it a winter protection. This plan has worked 
successfully, and he now has a peach orchard of 50 
trees, many of them in bearing this year. Fig. 191 
shows one of the trees, a five-year-old, on which there 
is now growing a fine lot of fruit. The picture shows 
Mr. Macomber lifting one end of the fender so as to 
give an unobstructed view of the trunk. 
“ In the first place,” said he, “ I wanted to train the 
trees so that I could lay them down easily in the fall, 
and take them up again in the spring, without dis¬ 
turbing the roots or straining the bodies. I found 
that, by rubbing off the buds of the seedling or graft, 
and forcing it to grow up like a whip, I could bend it 
over flat, cover all but the tip with an inverted wooden 
trough, made of clapboards or any light material, to 
keep off the direct rays of the sun. By extending the 
trough and rubbing off fresh buds, I could, in two or 
three years, have a horizontal stem 16 or 18 feet long, 
and about one inch in diameter. I then turn the tip 
end up, and allow the buds to form branches in a line 
with the trunk so as to make a fan-shaped top that 
would more easily lie flat on the ground. This pro¬ 
cess of extending the trunk requires a couple of years 
before any top is attempted, so you see that it takes 
some time longer to get an orchard into bearing than 
by allowing the top to grow naturally.” 
“ How do you protect these trees in winter ? ” 
“ I loosen the bandage that holds the top to the 
stake, remove the blocks of wood from under the 
trunk, and the tree turns over on its side as easily as 
a man turns over in bed. Then I cover the tops with 
old boards, replace the trough over the stem, and the 
job is done. I use no straw or litter, as I find that 
the boards alone are sufficient. At first, I gave my 
land level culture, but about five or six years ago, ice 
formed all over the orchard, and froze my trees down 
to the roots ; so I had to commence all over again. 1 
now plow my orchard in ridges so that, in a wet time, 
the water will run away from the trees.” 
“ Do you think that your method of growing peaches 
could be employed profitably in raising fruit for 
market ? ” 
“ Yes, I do. Aside from the longer time required 
to bring an orchard into bearing, there is not much 
extra labor. I can lay down my whole orchard of 50 
trees, cover them in a day, and raise them again in 
the spring in a day. The cost of spouting and the 
time spent in trailing the stems along the ground are, 
of course, something to take into consideration ; but 
where parties are situated near our large, northern 
towns and can find a special market for something 
extra nice and fresh, I think that they could make 
peach growing quite profitable.” 
“ What varieties do you grow ? ” 
“ Well, I hardly know ; they are all seedlings of my 
own raising. I believe that, where we have so severe 
a climate to contend with, and wish to grow tender 
fruits, we can get better results to grow the tree from 
the seed under the same conditions of soil and cli¬ 
mate.” 
I think that this process of training the growth of 
trees might well be employed, in the higher latitudes, 
in the culture of the apricot, quince, Japan plum and 
other fruits or flowering shrubs that require some 
protection in winter. It seems to me that this is 
especially applicable to small gardens and private 
grounds, where the owners take pride in growing 
choice fruits for their own tables. Thousands of dol¬ 
lars are squandered every year in northern New Eng¬ 
land for tender varieties of fruit trees that never bear 
fruit. Take, as an instance, the Russian apricot ; 
every tree agent that comes around, has it for sale. 
The name, Russian, sells the trees. I have seen hun¬ 
dreds of them in the last 10 years, in private gardens. 
Others may have seen a real, live, ripe, Russian apri¬ 
cot, but I never have. 
My first impression, after seeing Mr. Macoinber’s 
peach trees, was that they were too frail to be of 
any commercial value; but after learning of his ex¬ 
perience, and comparing the necessary labor pertain¬ 
ing thereto, with grape culture, I concluded that a 
peach tree could be grown in Vermont by Mr. Ma- 
comber’s method, almost as cheaply as a grape vine. 
When it is more generally known that peaches can 
be successfully grown in northern New England, I 
think that many will be glad to adopt this unique 
method of growing them. c. w. scarff. 
Vermont. 
POTATO NOTES FROM CONNECTICUT. 
VARIETIES ; ADVERTISING ; TOMATOES ; BUYING GRAIN. 
A small acreage of potatoes was planted, and the 
crop is much lighter in this vicinity, this year. Many 
pieces blighted, and there has been considerable rot. 
Where neither blight nor rot has prevailed, not so 
many have set in the hill. I am unable to account 
for this, as the season would seem to have been a 
favorable one. Potatoes wholesale at 50 cents per 
bushel, which is a good living price when they can 
be delivered right from the field. We consider 50 
cents now better thaD 60 or 65 cents in winter, as 
handling and reassorting cost, and the more hand¬ 
ling, the greater the shrinkage. 
Our potatoes have sold unusually 
well this year. We have kept 
them moving as fast as ready to 
dig. We aim, by soil and the 
right kind of fertilizers, to grow 
tubers of extra good quality, and 
to get this fact before the people, 
have done considerable small ad¬ 
vertising in our local daily paper, 
asking consumers to test our po¬ 
tatoes, and to insist upon getting 
ours from their grocer. Adver¬ 
tisements cost us one cent per 
word, and 15 cents or so per day 
for a couple of weeks, have helped 
sales. If one wishes to sell prod¬ 
uce, have something good, then 
get people to talking about it 1 
We have learned that it does 
not pay to grow potatoes too 
many years on the same land ; 
two years are long enough. We 
much prefer to follow corn. We 
don’t want potatoes for seed, at 
any price, that have been chilled 
or sprouted. They will cost dear 
in the end. Not enough atten¬ 
tion is given to the seed by the 
general run of farmers, and poor 
yields can often be traced to this 
cause. We like to grow varieties 
whose vines will cover the soilj 
thus providing a mulch and keeping down weeds. 
Rural New-Yorker No. 2 and Carman No. 3 are poor 
in this respect; nevertheless, they are very good 
yielders with us. This year, we planted all our 
potatoes in rows 32 inches apart, and 14 inches in 
the row. We want the first sprouts, and want the 
seed covered as soon as possible after being cut. 
It’s much cheaper to kill weeds before they are up, 
and to do this there is nothing like a smoothing har¬ 
row. Used once a week after planting until the pota¬ 
toes are so high as to injure the tops, one will find 
his labor bill in growing potatoes materially lessened. 
We cannot afford to dig by hand ; it costs too much, 
is hard work, and quite a per cent are injured by the 
hook or fork. We use a Success Jr., digging every 
alternate row. After picking, we run through with 
half of a lever spring-tooth harrow, using one horse. 
In running the digger, we pay no attention to tops, 
but it will work a little better if the tops are partially 
dead. If they clog the harrow, release the lever, drive 
the length of the harrow, and it’s clean to start in 
again. 
We believe in going rather slow with much-puffed 
new varieties, giving them a trial in our soil to see 
whether they are at home before planting a large 
area. We tried Vick’s Early Leader tomato this year, 
but shall not again. Good, strong plants set out at 
the same time as Dwarf Champion, Ruby, Matchless 
and others, failed to ripen before the others, and 
when doing so, gave us a lot of little tomatoes, too 
small to sell, and a large part of them very irregular. 
We have yet to find a tomato of better size, shape, 
yield and market quality than the Dwarf Champion. 
The apple crop is heavy in this locality, and prom- 
Kinney’s apple house 
r ' ' ^ • <>. ‘ - 
T'. N ,#V*. " V '■ .,/ V . -“.I 
PEACH GROWING IN THE COLD NORTH ; TRAINING THE STEM. Fig. 191. 
