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
WM. N. SMITH, Brownsville, Chautauqua county: I have lived in Kansas
twenty-eight years. I have an apple orchard of fifty trees twenty years
old and twelve inches in diameter. For commercial purposes I prefer Ben
Davis, Missouri Pippin, and Winesap, and for family orchard I would add
Maiden's Blush and Bellflower. I prefer bottom land, black, sandy loam,
with a clay bottom and a north slope. I plant my trees thirty-six feet
each way. I plant my orchard to corn and potatoes, using a disc, and
plant tame grass in a bearing orchard, and cease cropping when they
begin to bear. Windbreaks are essential. I would make them of Osage
orange, and would surround the orchard with a fence of the same. I prune
to keep the limbs from rubbing, and I think it pays. I do not thin the
fruit while on the trees. My trees are in mixed plantings. I do not
fertilize my orchard; am on bottom land, which does not need it, but
think it would be beneficial on some soils. I pasture my orchard with
hogs, but do not think it advisable; it does not pay. My trees are
troubled with canker-worm, tent-caterpillar, flathead borer, roundhead
borer, twig-borer, and leaf-roller. I spray with Paris green and London
purple when the worms are at work on the leaves. I dig borers out. I
hand-pick my apples in baskets from ladders, and sort into two
classes--large and perfect in number one, small and perfect in number
two; the balance for cider. I pack in barrels filled full, and mark with
the grade; then haul to market in a wagon. I make the culls into cider.
Coffeyville is my best market. I dry some and find a ready market for
them; it pays. I am successful in storing apples in bulk in a cellar,
and find Ben Davis, Missouri Pippin and Winesap keep best. Prices have
been about fifty cents per bushel; dried apples, five cents per pound.
* * * * *
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