Show the care of the orchard orcha w rd ED E D by BALL utah ex orn ahot lint line train lecraw e do continued from last week pruning Is 1 just as essential as praying spraying and another two or three centa cents a bushel spent on the care of the trey tree will yield big returns one of the chief reasons why we are able to raise high priced apples la Is because of our lone long days of eummer summer sunshine and yet it 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 IL it the open headed tree with plenty of sunlight plenty of air circulation carrying a email small enough crop 0 ot T apples eo so that the tree can produce them to the standard size Is the efficient tree there are almost ft as its many methods of pruning as there v are men to prune and yet they all practically agree in regard to the ob eject sought the major portion of the experienced western r however agree that alter after the tree has i been grown and the head properly property formed and spread out as has been described to you by secretary Ph orson one should be careful with the pruning knife in the winter time until the tree Is la in full bearing and above all other thugs after the fourth or fifth year the tops of the branches should not be cut back un less there is to be a heavy crop of apples the next season and even in that case it la 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 dijk original branch haa has been beaded headed back f only to start three more long water f growths which have again been head i ed ad back each one starting two or three more and BO so on until the top of the tree la Is a miniature broom end and a witch 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 develop ing tree is in never to cut off a branch t toa towards ards the top unless you cut oft a the entire branch until that tree Is fruiting heavily then the excessive wood growth may le be reduced a email small amount at a time by summer pruning without disturbing the balance be tween the roots and top in all prun arun ing of course it must be remembered that the fruit la is borne borno on the hort short spurs next to the branches and that the lower down the fruit Is borne on the tree the cheaper and easier it can be handled at picking time it costs five times aa as much to pick a bushel of apples ten feet from the ground as it does to pick a bushel within reach and when you get much above ten feet there is little profit in raising apples of western problems in this day we bear a good deal about raising orchards without irrigation or with a very email small num br her of irrigations it is probably true that many orchards have been over irrigated in the past but there will be b still greater disappointment in the future if we go to the extreme and think we aro are going to raise fruit out irrigation water it Js is easy enough to raise trees an my nr or charas have been raised up to the bearing time with very email small use jot of water but when a crop of at fruit lias has to be ripened right at the very drnest time of at the tho year when wood growth has practically ceased and otherwise the tree would be baing very little moisture it will be round that an isit or chard requires as much aa saw an other crop and it the water la Is short abort at that time a it few days may ruin the entire efforts ot the year thre there is also another factor to be apt in ill mind in the uio uso of the irrig irrigation atlon water and that is that the fruit buds for the next teason a crop must be developed during the last part or july and august of at the preceding year juat just at the time that the greatest drain Is 13 made on the tree by tb biow ing crop in our irrigate 12 expert ments on peaches we have been able by withholding water at thie this time to absolutely atop stop the development of fruit buds there is also another factor to be considered coo eldered in irrigating the orchard enthusiastic will take one out point to a young orchard and say look at that it has his never had a drop of water and I 1 have looked nany times and have seen trees fine and lad healthy in appear appearance anee but only halt half or even one third the size they would have been had they been irrigated and capable of carrying only a very email small load of at fruit even if it they had plenty of moisture to mature it so that even if it the orchard should be ir fr righted from that time on it would be three or four years behind an irrigated orchard in its producing power on the other hand band in our peach ex pert pertinent ments we have found that the rows that had bad the greatest amount ot 01 water had made the largest wood growth then when it came time to mature the fruit the immense amount of foliage took up eo so much of the water that it was impossible to develop the fruit to the proper lie 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 01 water in the earlier part of at 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 1 saw an orchard this year in which everything that I 1 have described to you so tar far had been done and appan antly well done the orchard was bearing from nine t twelve hundred bushels of apples per acre and yet the crop was practically worthless there ie Is therefore one more factor to t be considered and that Is thin ning this orchard was a gano jon athan ben davia davis orchard of about alf teen years old and each tree had three to ilya thousand little bits of under undersized sized shrunken apples the applee were of little value and the trees were breaking down and being ruined it half halt or two thirds of those applee had been thinned out la in the be beginning Linning of at the season the remainder would have produced a crop as heavy as the tree trees could bear of bet ter developed and standard size apples there would hare have been enough vitality in the tree to develop fruit buds for another year and everybody would have been happy aks s it Is the or ch ardist got an immense crop of un salable fruit and next year his or chard will not bear at all since it I 1 is Is impossible tor for a tree to feed fruit buds under such an excessive load two or three centa cents expended la in thin ning would have made 50 60 cents differ ence la in the worth of these apples la in the tall fall and it the way while I 1 think of at it let me suggest to you that you begin thi Balig as soon as young trees first begin to bear brar the first year or eo 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 for carrying the loads of the fu u ture years and in every way it Is bet ter to pull aft the few apples that appear here and there and yet to the man trian that Is developing the young orchard it Is too like pulling fc tooth to pull off one of these apples for this thin reason it is to good discipline it you begin at that time and leara learn to pull apples off la in order to make greater profile profits in the future it will not be hard to keep it up and properly thin your fruit when the tho orchard reaches the bearing age and eren even after all this ie is done the problem of fruit growing has not yet been solved with a fine crop of standard sized bound sound fruit on his trees the facea faces the arob lem of t picking packing picking and marinet ing and right here there have been more failures in the past than la in any other part of the work except pos sibly spraying I 1 know two neighbors with orchards side by aide side where one of them received 2 cents per bushel tor for bis bin apples more than they their cost while the other man received 60 and right at this point let me tell you corned comes the parting of the ways it Is one business to handle ground to cut sivate 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 1 have becom amore and more satisfied that valleys which have been most uniformly successful la a the marketing of their fruit are the ones that hare have placed this part of the work in the business man regardless of his knowledge of orchards and soils on do of hi j lest fruit handlers that I 1 have a eaf ear r cow in contact with Is as helpless as a baby when you get him away from bis his warehouse and into th the orchard and on the other nand some of the worst failure failures in the mar end hare have been made by previously successful fruit growers the western has a wonderful opportunity the choicest soils the never ending sunshine and an abunda abundance zice of irrigation water are his big nature has been lavish in her boun ties everything that goes to make success Is before him nhat he must burnish is to intelligent supervision en grgetic prosecutions and a lore love of his calling tempered by conservative business sense these are the essen 1 alls aisis of success in any line but in no line of human endeavor will they give greater return in liberty proa prom verity and security than in western orchard management Boff borrowed owed trouble cannot be paid back |