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APPLE GROWING
APPLE
GROWING
BY
M.C. BURRITT
NEW YORK
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
MCMXII
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
PREFACE
In the preparation of this book I have tried to keep constantly before
me the conditions of the average farm in the Northeastern States with
its small apple orchard. It has been my aim to set down only such
facts as would be of practical value to an owner of such a farm and to
state these facts in the plain language of experience. This book is in
no sense intended as a final scientific treatment of the subject, and
if it is of any value in helping to make the fruit department of the
general farm more profitable the author will be entirely satisfied.
The facts herein set down were first learned in the school of
practical experience on the writer's own farm in Western New York.
They were afterwards supplemented by some theoretical training and by
a rather wide observation of farm orchard conditions and methods in
New York, Pennsylvania, the New England States and other contiguous
territory. These facts were first put together in something like
their present form in the winter of 1909-10, when the writer gave a
series of lectures on Commercial Fruit Growing to the Short Courses in
Horticulture at Cornell University. These lectures were revised and
repeated in 1910-11 and are now put in their present form.
The author's sincere thanks are due to Professor C.S. Wilson, of the
Department of Pomology at Cornell University, for many valuable facts
and suggestions used in this book, and for a careful reading of the
manuscript. He is also under obligations to Mr. Roy D. Anthony of the
same Department for corrections and suggestions on the chapters on
Insects and Diseases and on Spraying.
M.C. BURRITT.
Hilton, N.Y.
February, 1912.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GROWING OF APPLES 11
II. PLANNING FOR THE ORCHARD 18
III. PLANTING AND GROWING THE ORCHARD 30
IV. PRUNING THE TREES 48
V. CULTIVATION AND COVER CROPPING 62
VI. MANURING AND FERTILIZING 78
VII. INSECTS AND DISEASES AFFECTING THE APPLE 92
VIII. THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF SPRAYING 108
IX. HARVESTING AND STORING 127
X. MARKETS AND MARKETING 142
XI. SOME HINTS ON RENOVATING OLD ORCHARDS 153
XII. THE COST OF GROWING APPLES 164
APPLE GROWING
CHAPTER I
THE OUTLOOK FOR THE GROWING OF APPLES
The apple has long been the most popular of our tree fruits, but the
last few years have seen a steady growth in its appreciation and use.
This is probably due in a large measure to a better knowledge of its
value and to the development of new methods of preparation for
consumption. Few fruits can be utilized in as many ways as can the
apple. In addition to the common use of the fresh fruit out of hand
and of the fresh, sweet juice as cider, this "King of Fruits" can be
cooked, baked, dried, canned, and made into jellies and other
appetizing dishes, to enumerate all of which would be to prepare a
list pages long. Few who have tasted once want to be without their
apple sauce and apple pies in season, not to mention the crisp, juicy
specimens to eat out of hand by the open fireplace in the long winter
evenings. Apples thus served call up pleasant memories to most of us,
but only recently have the culinary possibilities of the apple,
especially as a dessert fruit, been fully realized.
It is doubtless this realization of its great adaptability, together
with its long season, which have brought the apple into so great
demand of late. It is possible to have apples on the table in some
form the year round. The first summer apples are almost always with us
before the bottom of the Russet barrel is reached. Or, should the
fresh fruit be too expensive or for some reason fail altogether, the
housewife can fall back on the canned and dried fruit which are almost
as good.
The tendency in the price of this staple fruit has been constantly
upward during the last decade. Many people are greatly surprised when
the fact that apples cost more than oranges is called to their
attention. The increase in consumption, due to the greater variety of
ways of preparing the apple for use, has undoubtedly been an important
factor in this higher price. But at least an equally important factor
is the marked decrease in the supply of this fruit. To those who are
not familiar with the facts, the great falling off in production which
the figures show will be no less than startling.
PRODUCTION OF APPLES IN BARRELS IN THE UNITED STATES FROM 1896 TO 1910
1896 69,070,000
1897 41,530,000
1898 28,570,000
1899 37,460,000
1900 56,820,000
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Total crop for five years 233,450,000
Average crop for five years 46,690,000
1901 26,970,000
1902 46,625,000
1903 42,626,000
1904 45,360,000
1905 24,310,000
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Total crop for five years 185,891,000
Average crop for five years 37,178,200
1906 38,280,000
1907 29,540,000
1908 25,850,000
1909 25,415,000
1910 23,825,000
Total crop for five years 142,910,000
------------
Average crop for five years 28,582,000
Estimates of 1896, 1897, and 1898 from "Better Fruit," Vol. 5,
No. 5. All other years from the estimates of the "American
Agriculturist."
It will thus be seen that the apple crop of 1910 was 45,245,000
barrels less than that of 1896, and that during the whole period of
fifteen years the decline has been regular. The average annual crop of
the five year period ending with 1905 was 9,511,800 barrels less than
the average annual crop of the preceding five years ending with 1900,
and correspondingly the annual average crop of the last five years,
ending with 1910, was 8,596,200 barrels less than that of the second
five year period. Comparing the first and the last five year periods,
we find that the crop of the last was 18,108,000 barrels less than
that of the first. These facts alone are enough to explain the higher
price of this fruit during the last ten years.
HEAVY PLANTINGS.--Moreover, it should be further noted that this
falling off in the apple crop has been in the face of the heaviest
plantings ever known in this country. During the last ten years old
fruit growing regions like western New York have practically doubled
their orchard plantings. Careful figures gathered by the New York
State Agricultural College in an orchard survey of Monroe County show
that 4,972 more trees (21,289 in all) were planted in one
representative township during the five year period from 1904 to 1908
inclusive than were ever planted in any other equal period in its
history. New fruit regions like the Northwestern States and a large
part of the Shenandoah valley of Virginia have been developed by heavy
plantings. These three are all great commercial sections. To them we
might add thousands of orchards which are scattered all over the
Northern and Eastern States, from Michigan to Maine and from Maine to
north Georgia.
It is doubtful, however, if these scattered plantings have made good
the older trees which have died out. Scarcely a season passes that
hundreds of these old veteran trees are not blown down or badly
broken. Every wind takes its toll. After one of these windstorms in
Southern New York the writer estimated that at least twenty per cent
of all the standing old apple trees had been destroyed or badly
broken. In the commercial regions only a small part of the new
plantings have yet come to bearing and even here these probably do not
much more than make good the losses of old trees. So that on the
whole, heavy as our plantings have been, it is extremely doubtful if
they have very much more than made good the losses of the older trees
throughout the country. It is a fact worthy of note that this talk of
over-planting the apple has been going on for over thirty years, and
while the timid ones talked those who had faith in the business and
the courage of their convictions planted apples and reaped golden
harvests while their neighbors still talked of over-planting.
Whether or not it is true that we have over-planted the apple, it must
be admitted that at the present time the demand is so much greater
than the supply that the poorer of our people cannot afford to use
apples commonly, and that no class of farmer in the Northeastern
States is more prosperous than the fruit growers. The new plantings
must of necessity begin to bear and become factors in the market very
slowly. Meanwhile the great opportunity of the present lies in making
the most possible out of the older orchards which are already in
bearing. Practically all of these old farm orchards which can present
a fairly clean bill of health, and in which the varieties are
desirable, can with a small amount of well directed effort be put to
work at once and during the next ten years or more of their life time,
they may be made to add a substantial income to that of the general
farm. Now is a time of opportunity for the owner of the small farm
apple orchard.
FUTURE OF APPLE GROWING.--In the writer's opinion the future of apple
growing in the United States is likely to shape itself largely in the
great commercial regions. As these become more and more developed and
as the industry becomes more specialized the farmer who is merely
growing apples as a side line, except where he is delivering directly
to a special or a local market, will be crowded out. Here as elsewhere
it will be a case of the survival of the fittest. In the production of
apples commercially those growers who can produce the best article the
most cheaply are bound to win out in the end.
It would, therefore, seem to be advisable for the general farmer to
plant apples only under two conditions; first, when he has a very
favorable location and site and plants heavily enough to make it worth
while to have the equipment and skilled labor necessary to make the
enterprise a success, and second, when he can market his fruit
directly in a local market. It would appear that the immediate future
of apple growing in the United States lies in the small farm orchard
as well as in the commercial orchards, but that the more distant
future lies in the commercial orchard except where special conditions
surround the farm.