We have never irrigated or watered any part of our orchards.
Prices have ranged as follows with us: For No. 1, from $1.50 to $4; and No. 2, 90 cents to $2 per barrel. Culls have brought from 25 cents to 60 cents per 100 pounds; evaporated apples from 4 to 13 cents per pound; all these free on board.
A. E. Houghton, Weltbote, Washington county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-nine years; have 100 apple trees, fifteen years old, twelve inches in diameter. For commercial and family orchards, I prefer Ben Davis, Winesap, Rawle's Janet, Huntman's Favorite, Grimes's Golden Pippin, Rambo, and Jonathan. Have tried and discarded Dominie, Roman Stem, and Bellflower; the latter on account of shy bearing. Think bottom land, black, rich loam, and north aspect, the best. I prefer three-year-old, short, stout-bodied trees—the shorter the better—with limbs as low as they will grow. I cultivate my orchard to corn, potatoes or vines as long as it is possible to do the work. I use a plow, cultivator, and one-horse double-shovel plow. I cease cropping when they begin to bear, and plant to clover. I consider windbreaks essential; would not grow an orchard without one, and would use Osage orange, ash, Russian mulberry, or box-elder, planted in several rows on south and west.
I wrap my trees with corn-stalks to protect from rabbits, and wash them with strong soapsuds, for borers, in May and June. I prune a great deal to let the sun, light and air in; I think it beneficial and that it pays. I never thin; but think it would be beneficial when the apples are large enough to tell the good ones from the bad. I think it advisable to use fertilizers on poor land. I never pasture my orchard under any circumstances whatever: do not think it advisable. My trees are bothered with borers. Some worm troubles my apples. I do not spray.
I pick into a sack over the shoulder, as for sowing wheat. I sort into two classes as I pick, to avoid handling again, putting the sound, hand-picked in one pile and the windfalls in another; cover them with hay and let them stay out as long as I dare, then put them in the cellar; but the cellar is too warm; think an outdoor cellar or cave would be better; would like to put them in cold storage, which is far the best. I sell my apples in the orchard, or any way I can get the most for them; generally take them to town and sell them. I sell my second and third grades at home; feed the culls to the hogs. My best markets are Washington and Greenleaf. I have never tried distant markets. Never dry any. I store some apples in boxes, barrels, and bulk; am not very successful. I find that Winesap and Rawle's Janet keep best. I do not irrigate. Prices have been from fifty to seventy-five cents per bushel. There is not much sale for dried apples. We do most of our own work.
Edwin Taylor, Delaware township, Wyandotte county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-seven years. Have about 5000 apple trees aged from eight to twelve years. The best varieties of apples for commercial orchards are not many. No one variety could be named which would be best for all locations or conditions. The Ben Davis is most largely planted in the West. Jonathan, Missouri Pippin, Willow Twig, Park's Keeper, are all valuable sorts. There are others. A family orchard is the most important orchard a farmer plants. It should contain a small number of trees and a large number of varieties. Two of a kind are a plenty. There should be at least twenty kinds. That will allow for a new variety to ripen in its season every two weeks or less in summer and fall and every three weeks during the winter. They should begin with the earliest and finish with the very longest keeper. These varieties will overlap, so that the farmer will almost always have two sorts to choose from. There should be sweet apples among them—particularly winter sweets.
The names, characteristics, qualities, description, etc., of the twenty to thirty varieties that make up an ideal orchard would require a long chapter, if the subject was fully treated. Beginners in tree buying should be cautioned not to let the nurseryman run in half a dozen trees of each kind for the family orchard on them. Two trees of a kind are plenty, particularly as the surplus of the family orchard commonly goes to waste. The names should be carefully registered, so there will be no wondering what an apple is when it begins to bear. You can't keep company satisfactorily with an apple that you don't know the name of, any better than you can an unknown man.
The best place to keep these family apples is in a dugout, in the side of a bank if possible, at all events good and deep, with the door at the north, and a good blow-hole in the south end. I don't know much about soils or location. I found myself in possession of some Kaw river timbered hills, clay soil carrying some sand; not good for much else; so I planted them—tops, sides, and draws—with apple trees, which have done well on the tops of the hills, sides of the hills, and in the valleys between the hills. Am inclined to suspect there is a great deal of gammon written about "slope" and "expanse" for orchards. My conclusion is that that is a good slope which you happen to have. Trees growing in the Kaw bottoms themselves, I observe, thrive and bear. The only cultivation I have ever given trees has been such as they got by being component parts of a corn-field, except that I have mainly given the tree rows extra cultivation, keeping them clean of grass and weeds. My orchards are now seeded to clover; clover is not valuable, for its own sake, among trees, but the trees thrive with it. Its greatest use, so far as I can see, is to make you mow the orchard where it is twice during the season. I prefer to stop cultivation in orchards when they are six years old.