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Show The Care of the Orch ard ! e. d. ball I! Director Utah j Experiment Oregon Short Line "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 flant our trees in Ohio andbe 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 (.he 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, ) owever, agree that after the tree has been grown and the head properly formed and spread out, as has been described to you by Secretary Mc-Pherson, 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 un-lesstthere un-lesstthere 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 cut 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 must be remembered that the fruit is borne on the short spurs next to the branches and that the lower down the fruit is bojne on the tree the cheaper and easier it can be handled at picking time. It costs five tirjes as much to pick a bushel of apples ten feet from the ground as it does to pick a bushel within reacfi, and when you get much above ten feet, there is little profit in raising apples. Irrigation is another of the western problems. In this 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-irrigated over-irrigated 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 witn-out witn-out irrigation water. It is easy enough to raise trees, and many orchards or-chards have been raised up to the bearing time with very small use of water, but when a crop of fruit lias 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's crop must be developed during the last 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 iOur 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 of 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 callable 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 irrigat-; irrigat-; ed orchard in its producing power, j 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 ,;ame 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 ol water in the earlier part of the season so as not to stimulate too much woortT growth, but an abundance at the tima 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 w.ere breaking down and being ruined. If half or two-thirds of those apples had been thinned out i the beginning of the season, the remainder remain-der would have produced a crop aa heavy as the trees could bear of bet-terdeveloped bet-terdeveloped 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 Aave 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 thitr.ning as soon as young trees first begin to bear. The first year or so , that a young crchard 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 cpples 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 off 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 gre.-.ter 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. Wi 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 2Y3 cents per busnel for his 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, to cul- - -tivate, to irrigate, to prune and to spray, and it is another business to grade and market fruit, and in my travels through the fruit sections of the western part of America. I have 1-ecome more and more satisfied that those valleys which have been me,st uniformly ;u"cessful in the marketing , it 'their f;u;i ate the ones that have placed this part of the work in the hands of the business man, regardless of his knowledge of orchards an.1 soils. One of the best fruit handlers that I have ever come in contact with is as helpless as a baby when you '-vct him away from his warehouse anj into the orchard, a..i en the othe- nand. some of the worst failures in ts marketing mar-keting end have been made by previously pre-viously successful fruit growers. The wesle'.n orchardist has ,i wonderful won-derful opportunity; the choicest soils, the never-ending sunshine and an abundance of irrigation wate are his. Nature has bee.i lavish in her bounties. boun-ties. Everything that goes to make success is before him. What lie must furnish is intelligent su'peivis.Jn, 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 hi no line of human endeavor will they give greater return in liberty, prosperity pros-perity and security than in ves:eru orchard management. Horrowed trouble cannot be paid back. |