122 
THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN. 
A PERIOD OF TRANSITION. 
The Status of Apple Growing In the United States—A Thought¬ 
ful Review by Roland Morrill—Northern Counties Produce 
Best Fruit—Oldest Markets are Most Discriminating — 
Conditions Under Which Apples Should be Grown. 
Roland Morrill, in a paper before the Michigan State Hor¬ 
ticultural Society, made the following general observations re¬ 
garding the growing of apples : 
I am first going to make two or three propositions which, if 
they have not already occurred to you, may commend them¬ 
selves : The first is that the northern countries, in the success¬ 
ful production of any variety of fruit tree or vegetable, produce 
the highest quality. That is a broad proposition that any 
scientific man or close observer will bear me out in making. 
The next proposition is that as our markets become older 
they become more discriminating. If you please, take Boston, 
and every well informed fruit grower of this country knows 
that Boston will pay more for quality than any other market in 
the United States, and is far more exacting than any other 
market. I think t iat is true the world over—the older the 
market the more discriminating it becomes ; and as the mar¬ 
kets become older the people who handle fruit understand the 
nomenclature better, the correct naming of fruit, and they 
judge less by the eye than they do by the reputation of a cer¬ 
tain variety, and the knowledge it contains certain qualities. 
I am going to make another suggestion, that the conditions 
are better for growing a perfect apple, so far as quality is con¬ 
cerned, in Michigan, Canada, Northern Ohio, New York and 
New England, than they are in any portion of the United 
States. I am going to follow that up with another statement, 
that the best apple markets in the United States, the great 
cities, are located within their boundaries or very near them. 
Chicago is really proving to be one of the best apple markets 
in the world, because it feeds a vast country which so far has 
not succeeded in producing what it needs. 
BEST CONDITIONS FOR GROWTH. 
1 'he best facilities or transportation ara largely located with¬ 
in these regions, the cheapest rates made within the United 
States. I am going to combine all these propositions with the 
suggestion that these are the the conditions under which the 
apples of the United States should be grown. The fact is 
that these states have had their era of growing apples cheaply 
with very little intelligence or care, and have gotten into the 
bad habit of neglecting apple orchards, with the natural result 
that now, under new and more trying conditions than they have 
ever seen, they are rapidly going out of the apple business and 
turning it over to regions that are only temporarily favored, in 
my opinion. We will take Missouri, with a soil admirably 
adapted to growing the apple, but a climate entirely against its 
favor, a new region, in which insects and fungi have not yet 
secured a strong foothold, and region destined, when these do 
establish themselves, to have more trouble than we have in my 
opinion. These are the conditions which confront us. We 
find here men who have grown apples successfully in the past. 
Their orchards are becoming old—thirty, forty, fifty and even 
sixty years old. Condemning the apple business, or saying 
that it does not pay — and certainly it does not, in the condi¬ 
tions under which they are cultivating) or not cultivating, 
as you please), does not conclude the matter, 
What is the history of the apple, and in fact of all othe - 
fruits in the United States ? The early settlers of any state 
planted and grew fruits that succeeded in that state, with com¬ 
parative ease ; they simply set the trees and found the crop, 
and it has required no effort on their part ; and through those 
plantings certain areas have been discovered, if you please, 
which proved so successful in every sense of the word that 
they became known as apple localities or peach regions. We 
have one over on the west side of the state, a peach region, 
simply because the local conditions favor the peach, and we 
set largely. 
That induced all sorts of troubles that the peach-grower has 
to contend with, and those troubles were too many for us. 
We were not far enough advanced in peach culture to keep up 
with the difficulties, and we had to go out of it, our climate not 
changing at all, but the industry was destroyed. With this 
destruction came a better knowledge of conditions. A few 
men who were broad enough, quick enough to catch the idea, 
with the aid of our scientific men, that there were ways to com¬ 
bat this trouble, began to do so, and a new idea dawned, an 
era in which men make it a business, not to find things, but to 
produce things, and again we are making money. Now that is 
the history, I think, all over the United States, of these various 
favored regions. 
PRESENT CHANGES. 
The apple is going through a period of transition. Grow¬ 
ers in these regions that I have mentioned as being the best in 
the United States are now destroying their orchards because 
of their age. They are somewhat discouraged, but through 
all those regions can be found a few men—occasionally one 
who has taken his orchard in time, who has applied the best 
intelligence he can collect, the best there is of his own knowl¬ 
edge, and is making a decided success of apple-growing. I 
have in mind a few men who have succeeded in producing 
annual crops. I could name one man in the state of Michi- 
gon, in a neighborhood admirably adapted to the growing of 
the apple. He has succeeded in producing eight successive 
crops, and the lightest one has been a fair crop, by the appli¬ 
cation of intelligence and hard labor to his work, and he has 
made that a very profitable orchard. It covers forty acres 
and the average for that whole time has been a net profit of 
between thirty-eight and forty dollars net per acre, or the in¬ 
terest on four hundred dollars per acre, for eight years, com¬ 
mencing with an orchard twenty-five to thirty years old. 
We would naturally infer that if one man can do this in a 
certain neighborhood, another man under the same conditions 
should be able to do it, because, as has been said here, there 
are no secrets among horticulturists ; or, if there are, they do 
not amount to very much. The best thought of horticultur¬ 
ists is given away in meetings like this. Those conditions 
under which this man, and other men like him, produces good 
apples are the ordinary well-known methods of caring for an 
orchard—good culture, fertilization, careful pruning and 
spraying in season, and thoroughly—just the ordinary pre¬ 
cautions that every man must understand to-day who pays 
any attention to it, and which are necessary to successful 
orchard-growing 
We find that the average farmer is a stubborn creature. He 
does not take to new ideas very rapidly. It may be his mis¬ 
fortune, and I think it is, but it certainly opens the way for 
ambitious men who really have intelligence, and men who are 
