The Apple: The Kansas Apple, the Big Red Apple; the Luscious, Red-Cheeked First Love of the Farmer's Boy; the Healthful, Hearty Heart of the Darling Dumpling. What It Is; How to Grow It; Its Commercial and Economic Importance; How to Utilize It.
Science
The Apple: The Kansas Apple, the Big Red Apple; the Luscious, Red-Cheeked First Love of the Farmer's Boy; the Healthful, Hearty Heart of the Darling Dumpling. What It Is; How to Grow It; Its Commercial and Economic Importance; How to Utilize It.
Apples
W. D. KERN, Baldwin, Douglas county: I have resided in Kansas
thirty-nine years. Have an apple orchard of 775 trees four years old.
For market I prefer Missouri Pippin, Ben Davis, and Willow Twig, and for
family orchard Yellow Transparent, Maiden's Blush, and Jonathan. I
prefer a loose, porous subsoil on a north slope. I prefer one- or
two-year-old trees, set twenty-two feet apart north and south and
thirty-three feet east and west. I plant my orchard to corn, potatoes,
and clover, and keep up the cultivation until they are bearing well,
using a diamond plow and one-horse cultivator. I never cease cropping.
Windbreaks are not essential, but if they were I should make them of
four or five rows of maple or some quick-growing trees, on the south and
west sides of the orchard. For rabbits I use wooden tree wrappers, and
dig the borers out. I prune to give the tree shape and let in the sun; I
think it pays, as it keeps the tree from overbearing. I do not thin the
fruit while on the trees, but think it would pay. I fertilize my orchard
with barn-yard litter, and would advise it on all soils when it needs
it. I pasture my orchard with hogs; I think it advisable, and that it
pays. My trees are troubled with canker-worms, tent-caterpillars,
borers, tree-hoppers, and leaf-rollers, and my apples with codling-moth
and curculio. I do not spray. I hand-pick my apples into buckets and
sacks from step-ladders. I sell my apples in the orchard at wholesale. I
sell the best to shippers, and the second and third grades the best way
I can. I sell or feed the culls to the stock. Never tried distant
markets. I do not dry any. Some years I am successful in storing apples
in barrels and boxes in a cellar. Winesap and Missouri Pippin keep best.
I never tried artificial cold storage. I have to repack stored apples
before marketing, losing about one-fourth of them. I do not irrigate.
Prices have been from sixty cents to one dollar per eleven-peck barrel.
I employ men at ten cents per hour.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account