ouri Pippin and Winesap, and for family
would add Early Pennock and Maiden's Blush. Ben Davis would not do any
good for me. I prefer bottom or table land with a heavy subsoil and a
northern slope. I prefer two-year-old trees with low heads, set in a
ditch. I cultivate my orchard to corn as long as I can get in with a
plow; I also use a disc and harrow. I cease cropping when the trees need
all the moisture; do not plant anything in a bearing orchard. Windbreaks
are essential; would make them of mulberry trees, set thirty or forty
feet away from the orchard. For rabbits I use axle grease and sulphur
mixed. I prune, leaving the tops low, and thin out the branches so as to
give air and produce larger fruit; it has paid me. I fertilize my
orchard with stable litter but do not put it close to the trees; I think
it beneficial, and would advise its use on all soils. I have pastured my
orchard with cattle and hogs; do not think it advisable; it does not
pay. Trees are troubled with flathead borer and leaf-roller, and my
apples with codling-moth. I have sprayed, but not lately, with London
purple for codling-moth, just after the blossoms fell; it did not
pay--did not reduce the codling-moth any. I go after insects not
affected by spraying with a small wire. I pick my apples by hand in
half-bushel baskets; sort into three classes--largest and sound, second
best, and cider. I wholesale, retail, and peddle, and make the culls
into cider and vinegar. Never have tried distant markets. I dry some
with a Stutzman dryer; it is satisfactory. I pack them in cracker boxes
and find a ready market for them at times; it does not pay. Am
successful in storing apples two feet deep in bins, one above another,
in a cellar walled up with rock; never tried any excepting Missouri
Pippin and Winesap. I have to repack stored apples before marketing,
losing about five per cent. I irrigate my orchard with water pumped into
a reservoir 80x120 feet, and three feet deep. Prices have been from 50
cents to $1.25 per bushel; dried apples, ten cents per pound. I employ
women at fifty cents per day.
* * * * *
A. S. DRAKE, Bucklin, Ford county: Have lived in Kansas twenty years,
and have 330 apple trees from three to eleven years old, part of them
ten inches in diameter. I prefer good keeping apples for family use. I
prefer bottom land, subirrigated, with a north and east slope. I prefer
two-year-old trees, set the same depth as
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