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
L. L. LOVETTE, Toronto, Woodson county: I have lived in Kansas
thirty-two years; have an apple orchard of thirty trees twelve to 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.
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