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Show The Care of the Orchard e.dbball Director Utah Experiment Ormtfon Short Linm demonstration Train Lecture Station (Continued from last week) Pruning is Just as essential as spraying and another two or three cents a bushel spent on the care of the tree will yield big returns. One of the chief reasons why we are able to raise high priced apples is because of our long days of summer sunshine, and yet if we allow the wood growth of our trees to become so thick as to shade a crop of apples, we might as well plant our trees in Ohio and be done with it. The open-headed tree with plenty of sunlight, plenty of air circulation carrying a small enough crop of apples so that the tree can produce them to the standard size, is the efficient tree. There are almost as many methods of pruning as there are men to prune, and yet they all practically agree in regard to the object ob-ject sought. The major portion of the experienced western orchardists, however, agree that after the tree has been grown and the head properly formed and spread out, as has been described to you by Secretary Mcpherson, Mc-pherson, one should be careful with the pruning knife in the winter time until the tree is in full bearing. And, above all other things, after the fourth or fifth year, the tops of the branches should not be cut back unless un-less there is to be a heavy crop of apples ap-ples the next season, and even in that case, it is far better to leave them until the crop of apples is set and assured and then reduce their length by summer pruning work. There are thousands of orchards in this intermountain region in which an original branch has been headed back only to start three more long water growths which have again been headed head-ed back, each one starting two or three more, and so on, until the top of the tree is a miniature broom, and a witch's broom at that. A tree in that shape can only be cured by long and tedious effort. One-third of this energy, however, expended in starting the tree right will prevent all this. The rule, then, on the young developing develop-ing tree is never to cut off a branch towards the top unless you cwi off the entire branch, until that tree is fruiting heavily, then the excessive wood growth may be reduced a small amount at a time by summer pruning without disturbing the balance between be-tween the roots and top. In all pruning prun-ing of course it muBt be remembered that the fruit Is borne on the short Bpurs next to the branches and that the lower down the fruit is borne on the tree Vhe cheaper and easier it can be handled at picking time. It costs five times as much to pick a bushel of apples ten feet from the gTound as It does to pick a bushel within reach, and when you get jnuch above ten feet, there is little profit in raising apples. Irrigation is anothef et the western problems. In thii, day we hear a good deal about raising orchards without irrigation or with a very small number num-ber of irrigations. It is probably true that many orchards have been over-lrriga'ed over-lrriga'ed in the past, but there will be still greater disappointment in the future if we go to the extreme and think we are going to raise fruit without with-out irrigation water. It is easy enough to raUse trees, and many orchards or-chards have been raised ap to the bearing time with very small use of water, but when a crop of fruit has to be ripened right at the very dryest time of the year when wood growth has practically ceased and otherwise the tree would be using very little moisture, it will be round that an orchard or-chard requires as much water as any other crop, and if- the water is short at that time a few days may ruin the entire efforts of the year. There is also another factor to be kept in mind in the use of the irrigation water, and that is that the fruit buds for the next season'c crop must be developed during the Inst part of July and August of the preceding year, Just at the time that the greatest drain is made on the tree by the growing grow-ing crop. In our irrigation experiments experi-ments on peaches, we have been able by withholding water at this time to absolutely stop the development of fruit buds. There is also another factor-to be considered in irrigating the orchard. Enthusiastic orchardists will take one Out, point to a young orchard and say, "Look at that, it has never had a drop Df water," and I have looked many times and have seen trees fine and healthy' in appearance, but only half or even one-third the size they would have been had they been irrigated, and capable of carrying only a very small load of fruit, even if they had plenty of moisture to mature it, so that even if the orchard should be irrigated, ir-rigated, from that time on it would be three or four years behind an irrigated irrigat-ed orchard in its producing power. On the other hand, in our peach experiments, ex-periments, we have found that the rows that had the greatest amount of water had made the largest wood growth. Then when it came time to mature the fruit the immense amount of foliage took up so much of the water that it was impossible to develop de-velop the fruit to the proper size. The happy medium, therefore, is a sufficient amount of water to develop a normal size tree not an excess that develops water sprouts and sappy wood, a rather light application of water in the earlier part of the season so as not to stimulate too much wood growth, but an abundance at the time when the fruit is ripening and the fruit buds are developing. I saw an orchard this year in which everything' that I have described to you so far had been done and apparently appar-ently well done the orchard was bearing from nine to twelve hundred bushels of apples per acre and yet the crop was practically worthless. There is, therefore, one more factor to be considered, and that is thinning. thin-ning. This orchard was a Gano, Jonathan, Jon-athan, Ben Davis orchard of about fifteen fif-teen years old, and each tree had three to five thousand little bits of under-sized, shrunken apples. The apples were of little value and the trees were breaking down and being ruined. If half or two-thirds of those apples had been thinned out in the beginning of the season, the remainder remain-der would have produced a crop as heavy as the trees could bear of better bet-ter developed and standard size apples. There would have been enough vitality in the tree to develop fruit buds for another year and everybody would have been happy. As it is, the or-chardist or-chardist got an immense crop of unsalable un-salable fruit and next year his orchard or-chard will not bear at all, since it is impossible for a tree to feed fruit buds under such an excessive load. Two or three cents expended in thinning thin-ning would have made 50 cents difference differ-ence in the worth of these apples in the fall. And, by the way, while I think of it, let me suggest to you that you begin be-gin thinning as soon as young trees first begin .to bear. The first year or so that a young orchard begins bearing the crop is not worth the expense of spraying and handling, the trees need all of their energy to develop a framework frame-work for carrying the loads of the future fu-ture years and in every way It is better bet-ter to pull off the few apples that appear ap-pear here and there; and yet to the man that Is developing the young orchard or-chard it is too much like pulling a tooth to pull oft one of these apples. For this reason it is good discipline. If you begin at that time and learn to pull apples off in order to make greater profits in the future, it will not be hard to keep it up and properly proper-ly thin your fruit when the orchard reaches the bearing age. And even after all this is done, the problem of fruit growing has not yet been solved. With a fine crop of standard sized, sound fruit on his trees, the orchardist faces the problem prob-lem of picking, packing and marketing, market-ing, and right here there have been more failures in the past than in any other part of the work, except possibly pos-sibly spraying. I know two neighbors with orchards side by side where one of them received 2 cents per bushel for bis apples' more than they cost, while the other man received 60, and right at this point, let me tell you, comes the parting of the ways. It is one business to handle ground, topl-tivate, topl-tivate, to irrigate, to prune and to spray, and ft"Ms another business to grade and market fruit, and in my travels through the fruit sections of the western part of America, 1 have become more and more satisfied that those valleys which have been most uniformly successful in the marketing of their fruit are the ones that have placed this part of the work in the hands of the business man, regardless of liia knowledge of orchards and soils. One of the best fruit handlers that I have ever come in contact with is as helpless as a baby whpn you get him away from his warehouse and into the orchard, and on the other hand, some of the worst failures in the marketing mar-keting end have been made by previously pre-viously successful fruit growers. The western orchardist. has a wonderful won-derful opportunity; the choicest soils, the never-ending sunshine and an abundance of irrigation water are his. Nature has been lavish in her bounties. boun-ties. Everything that goes to make success is before him. What he must furnish is intelligent supervision, energetic en-ergetic prosecutions, and a love of his calling, tempered by conservative business sense. These are the essentials essen-tials of success in any line, but in no line of human endeavor will they give greater return in liberty, prosperity pros-perity and security than in western orchard management. |