twenty
years old. For market I prefer Missouri Pippin and Winesap, and for
family use would add Early Harvest and Smith's Cider. Have tried and
discarded Fall Pippin, Northern Spy, and Rambo. I prefer level prairie
land well enriched, with black limestone soil and a sandy subsoil,
northern aspect, to hold the trees back in the spring. I prefer large,
smooth trees with good roots, planted in large holes with rotten chip
manure. I cultivate my orchard to hoed crops, using a diamond plow. I
plant bearing orchard to white beans, peanuts, etc., and cease cropping
when well in bearing. Windbreaks are essential; I use soft maple four
feet apart, in four rows around the orchard. For rabbits I wrap my trees
with slough grass. I pasture my orchard with hogs, and think it
advisable. My trees are troubled with tent-caterpillar and borers, and
my apples with curculio. I sprayed once with Bordeaux mixture; have no
faith in it; I may possibly have reduced the codling-moth a little. I
now watch and burn the insects. [?] I pick my apples in a sack over the
left shoulder, from a step-ladder wide at the bottom and narrow at the
top. Sort into three classes: first take out all inferior for cider,
then put the sound ones in the barn until late in the fall, when I
sort, keeping No. 1's for spring, No. 2's for winter, and use all the
rest for cider. I sell some apples in the orchard to neighbors, and some
to grocerymen. I haul my best apples to market in a spring wagon with
hay under them. We use many culls and give some away. My best market is
at home. I dry some for market, then put them in sacks and keep in a
cool place; find a ready market for them, but it does not pay. I store
apples for winter market in a pit; am successful; find Winesap, Rawle's
Janet and Missouri Pippin keep best. We have to repack stored apples
before marketing, losing about ten per cent. of them. I water my trees
artificially. Prices have been from $1 to $1.50 per bushel. I employ
young men at one dollar per day and board.

* * * * *

B. F. COX, Fowler, Meade county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-one
years; have an apple orchard of 125 trees ten years old, six to ten
inches in diameter. For family orchard I prefer Early Harvest, Maiden's
Blush, Ben Davis, Gennetting, and Rawle's Janet. I prefer hill land,
with a northeast slope, having a clay subsoil. I prefer two-year-old
trees, set at crossing of furrows run both ways. I cultivate