The Minnesota Orchard.
A QUESTION AND ANSWER EXERCISE LED BY J. P. ANDREWS, NURSERYMAN, FARIBAULT.
Mr. Andrews: This is a very important subject. We have been talking about it a long, long time, and we have advanced a little, ought to have advanced quite a little more, and this exercise is along the road of improvement in that line. Anything that is bothering us, anything that is in the way of our success with the apple orchard, ask what questions you can, not that I can answer them all, but there are some good orchardists around here that I know I can call on, in case I can not. In this exercise the questions come first, and it is for you fellows to start the ball rolling.
There is one thing we are lacking, that is winter apples. We have enough of fall apples, seems to me, so we can get along very well, but we are looking for something a little better quality than Malinda and that will keep somewhere near as long. All these new seedlings that have been introduced in the past and big premiums offered, they seem to have stopped right there and we are not getting the benefit of but one or two. If they had been adapted to the north, as they should have been, we undoubtedly could have had several good varieties of apples that we could recommend for planting a considerable ways north of here that are good. As it is now we are really looking in this southern part of the country for keeping apples.
I should think if we could get these new varieties of seedlings that are keeping well introduced into the Fruit-Breeding Farm and let Supt. Haralson handle them under number and send them off to the north of us a good ways, we could have them tested. Those that have exhibited these new seedlings and got premiums for them, they ought to be a little more free to get them in some shape so that they will be tested and we will learn their worth. They have their premiums, they got those simply because they are good keepers. Well, now, that isn't anything in their favor for Minnesota planting, not very much. Of course, good keepers, that is a good thing, good quality is another thing, but the first thing is hardiness, and the people who have been drawing these premiums have been seemingly backward in getting them in shape to test. They are afraid to put them out for fear somebody might steal them, but if Mr. Haralson had the handling of them under number nobody could steal them. You have got title to them and control them just as well as when you keep them right on your place where they haven't a chance to show whether they are hardy or not. There is the weak point in this seedling business for Minnesota, I think.
But the apple orchards of Minnesota, if you are not all getting the good results that you want from your orchards, if you are not all getting a full crop, what is the reason? The last year and this year we have failed of getting a good crop of apples or almost any crop, whereas before, ever since the old orchard was planted in 1878, why, we have regarded the apple crop as really a very much surer crop than almost any of the farm crops, but the last two years we have failed to get a crop.
I attribute the poor crop a year ago to such an excessive crop as we had the year before that. Two years ago everything was loaded, breaking down, because we didn't thin them as we ought to, and we could hardly expect very much the next year. This last year, you know we had frosts quite frequent up to about the 10th of June, I think that was the reason we had such a failure this year. Our own orchard is on ground that is about 225 feet above Faribault, so we have got air drainage, and we would expect to escape frosts on that account and have as good a crop as anybody else would in that neighborhood. But that wasn't the case. We didn't get any apples, and yet during county fair why there was quite a nice show of nice fruit that they had picked up a few here and a few there, where really their location seems to me could not have been any better than ours. I don't know what the reason was, but it was very patchy, and I didn't dream we would have such a good show of fruit as we did, and I couldn't tell where it came from.
Mr. Philips: I think when the trees are loaded so heavily, if you would pick off a third of them you would get more out of the balance of the crop.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, I think that. The question is, if we pick off a third of a heavy crop, if we have a heavy crop, if that wouldn't help the next crop. It surely would.
Mr. Philips: Help that crop, too, in the price.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, sir, it will pay that year besides paying the next year, too; it will pay double.
Mr. Philips: It is a good plan any year.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, we ought to do that, we are lacking in that work of thinning the fruit. We sometimes have a late frost that will take off part of them, thin them that way, or wind, or something of that kind, and we rather depend on that feature of it. Then in that time of the year we are very busy and liable to have some things neglected, and that seems to be the one that is almost always neglected.
Mr. Brackett: Would you advocate the extensive planting of apples in this climate?
Mr. Andrews: I would not. At the same time you take it in the southern part of the state I presume they can grow them there. They can grow there many things we can't think of growing in this part of the state unless it be along Lake Minnetonka.
Mr. Older: Where you have an orchard ten years old, is it best to seed it down or still continue to cultivate it? In the west they have to cultivate. What is the best in this country? I know one man says it is best to keep on cultivating while it is growing, and another man says that that will kill the trees. I want to know which is the best.
Mr. Andrews: I think cultivation is the thing that ought to be done until the trees get well to bearing, anyway, and then it furnishes nitrogen to the soil to seed it down to clover. If we don't do that we are very liable to neglect that element in the soil. The better way to my mind is to cultivate for eight or ten years, and then I do think it is all right perhaps, for farmers, I mean, who will neglect the cultivation if they depend on it. That is, if they make up their minds it is better to cultivate than it is to seed down, their trees are more apt to be neglected. During the busy part of the season they won't cultivate as constantly as they ought to. If they would do that I have not much doubt but what cultivation would be all right right along, if you will furnish that nitrogen that ought to be in the soil for the protection of the crop. Clover is the easiest way to get that, and the trees will be more sure to have the benefit of that if you sow to clover and grow a crop of hay and turn it under, possibly let it be into clover two years, but turn that under and cultivate for two or three years and then put into clover again. I think that would be preferable for the farmer, for the farmer especially, than it would to undertake to either cultivate all the time or seed down all the time.
I don't believe it is a good thing to seed down where there are young trees growing and while the orchard is young. If you will plant your potatoes in that orchard between the rows and cultivate it, you will do the cultivating. I haven't got very much faith in the average farmer—I don't mean you horticulturists—but the average farmer. If he will plant trees and you advise him to cultivate them while they are young, they will be neglected after the first year or so. He may while the fever is on, he may cultivate them one year and the next year about half cultivate them, and the following years they will grow up to grass and weeds. Whereas, if he plants potatoes he gets just the right cultivation for the trees if he cultivates the ground enough to get a good crop of potatoes. Then in the fall when he digs the potatoes he loosens up the ground, and it takes up the moisture, and after the fall rains they go into winter quarters in good shape. It seems to me that is as near right as I could recommend.
Mr. Hansen: What distance apart ought those apple trees to be?
Mr. Older: Another question along that line. Suppose we concede that a young orchard ought to be cultivated until it gets eight or ten years old, then which is the best when you seed it to clover to cut the clover and throw the hay around the trees for a mulch or just take the hay away, or what?
Mr. Andrews: I think it would be better to put the hay around the trees for mulching. If the hay is used and the barnyard manure is taken to the orchard that would fill the bill pretty well.
Now, the distance apart? Grown trees really need about thirty feet apart each way. If you run the rows north and south and put them thirty feet apart, and sixteen feet or a rod apart in the row, with a view to taking out every other tree, you might have to go under bonds to take them out when they are needed to come out (laughter), or else you would leave them there until you hurt your other trees. If you would take out every other tree when they get to interfering after several years, eight or ten years, you can grow a double crop of apples in your orchard, but if you do the way you probably will do, leave them right there until they get too close, you will—
Mr. Hansen: Spoil all of them?
Mr. Andrews: Yes. Then you better put them out a little farther apart, and, as I said, two rods apart each way I don't believe is too far. Our old orchard that we put out in 1877 is just on its last legs now. At that time, you know, we didn't know anything about what varieties to plant, we didn't have as many as we have now. The old orchard only had the Duchess and Wealthy for standards, and half of the orchard was into crabs, because I thought at that time crabs was the only thing that would be any ways sure of staying by us. Well, those trees are about through their usefulness now, the standards. They have borne well until the last two years, generally loaded, and they were put out at that time fourteen feet apart each way, breaking joints so that they didn't come directly opposite. And when they got to be twelve or fifteen years old, it was difficult to get through there with a team or with any satisfaction, it was rubbing the limbs too much. Then the next orchard we put out on the farm was twenty-four feet by fifteen or sixteen feet in the row, the rows twenty-four feet apart. I wish they were a little farther apart, although that hasn't bothered very much about getting through between the rows, but it shows that a tree that is any ways spreading in its habit really needs about two rods each way. Are there any other questions?
Mr. Brackett: Do you think a Wealthy orchard under thorough cultivation, making a rank growth, do you think it is as hardy as an orchard seeded down, and do you think that a Wealthy orchard would blight more than other kinds?
Mr. Andrews: If the ground is rich and under thorough cultivation it does tend to cause fire blight. I haven't followed it on anything but young orchards. When they have commenced to bear then we have generally seeded down and turned in the hogs, and we have rather neglected the cultivation after that. I do think that if we had cultivated a little more often it would have been better.
Mr. Older: What do you consider the best to seed down with, clover or alfalfa?
Mr. Andrews: I have never tried alfalfa. I don't see why it wouldn't be all right, if you don't try to keep it too long. It would furnish the nitrogen all right.
Mr. Older: Which kind of seeding down would you prefer, what kind of clover? Would you want the Alsike clover or sweet clover for an apple orchard?
Mr. Andrews: I haven't tried anything but the medium clover. The sweet clover I think would be rather a rank grower.
Mr. Older: If you are going to mow it, why not mow the sweet clover same as the other?
Mr. Andrews: That would be all right. If you were going to use it for mulching, I think it would be the thing, because it would be better for mulching than for feeding.
Mr. Ludlow: I would like to give a little experience in putting in alfalfa in an orchard. We got the seed, the Grimm alfalfa, I think, is the name of it, and I got a good stand. We got seed from it the first year, and I sowed more, but there seemed to be something about the alfalfa that would draw the pocket-gophers from two miles around. The second year I think I had nineteen of my thriftiest apple tree roots all eaten off. I didn't know there was one in the field because there were no mounds at all. In the spring I found where they were at work, and I catch on an average of twenty pocket-gophers out of that mound every year. Talk about cultivating, the pocket-gophers will cultivate it, and the alfalfa is pretty much all eaten out and it has come into bluegrass.
Mr. Harrison: That question as to alfalfa; the experience is always that the roots go too deep so it hurts the apple trees. Red clover seems to be the clover that is favored by most people.
Mr. Andrews: Mr. Ludlow spoke of the pocket-gopher favoring alfalfa. We have a patch of alfalfa right near the apple trees. I don't remember that I have noticed any pocket-gophers work in that piece at all. On the opposite side of the road, where it is clover and timothy, why, they work there tremendously. I know Brother Ludlow was telling us a little while ago at dinner about pocket-gophers working on his place, and I wouldn't wonder if he is blessed with an extra colony of them there.
Mr. Ludlow: I try to catch them all out every year. I catch out on an average about eighteen to twenty every fall, so as to catch them before they increase early in the spring. It seems as though they came from a distance. I know one came into my garden this year. I didn't know there was a gopher within a mile, and in one night he made four mounds in the middle of my strawberry bed.
Mrs. Glenzke: Did you ever try poisoning them?
Mr. Ludlow: No, I never did. I am most successful in catching them in a trap.
Mr. Brackett: Have you got any pocket-gophers that do not make mounds? Do you understand that?
Mr. Ludlow: No, sir, I don't understand that, but when they came in and killed the nineteen trees in the fall I hadn't seen a mound there. In the spring I found where they were at work, and then I went after them.