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
FRANK SEIFERT, Strawberry, Washington county: I have lived in Kansas
twenty-eight years; have an apple orchard of 150 trees, from three to
twenty years planted. For commercial purposes I prefer Ben Davis,
Missouri Pippin, and Winesap, and for family orchard would add Maiden's
Blush. Have tried and discarded Willow Twig on account of blight. I
prefer limestone upland with an eastern aspect. I prefer three-year-old
trees for planting. I cultivate my orchard for eight or ten years with a
plow and harrow. I seed bearing orchard to red clover. Windbreaks are
essential; would make them of one row of box-elder and two rows of
plums. I fertilize my orchard with straw and hay, and think it
advisable, on all soils. I never pasture my orchard; it is not
advisable. I do not spray. I pick my apples the old way. [?] Sell my
apples in the orchard. I sometimes store for winter in bulk in an arched
cellar, and am successful. I find the Ben Davis, Missouri Pippin and
Winesap keep equally well. Prices have been from fifty to seventy-five
cents per bushel.
* * * * *
J. T. TRAVIS, Aurora, Cloud county: Have lived in Kansas twenty-six
years; have an apple orchard of seventy-five trees from five to twenty
years old. I prefer low land, black loam soil with clay subsoil, and a
northern slope. I prefer two-year-old trees, straight, with no forks,
the limbs low down, planted in furrows made by a plow. I cultivate my
orchard as long as I can get through it, with potatoes and sweet corn,
using a harrow often enough to keep weeds down and ground smooth. Cease
cropping when the trees get too large for sweet corn to do any good.
Windbreaks are essential; would make them of Russian mulberry, planted
in two or three rows, eight to ten feet apart, on all sides of the
orchard. I prune little, only enough to thin out the tops and keep limbs
from rubbing each other, and to give light. I fertilize my old orchard
with any kind of coarse stable litter; I pile it in heaps between the
trees and let it lay until it rots. I pasture my orchard with hogs when
it grows to wild rye and is too large for me to plow; I think it
advisable only when the trees get foul; it pays if not pastured with too
many and they are not kept on too long. My trees are troubled with
leaf-roller, and my apples with codling-moth. I have sprayed, but only
to a limited extent.
* * * * *
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