In the growing of apples in Kansas many things are to be well considered. That injunction of Davy Crockett's must be kept constantly in view to be successful: "Be sure you're right, then go ahead." First, to select varieties that are well adapted to your soil; next, location; last but not least, the preparation of the soil and future care. Many of the varieties that are well adapted to the Eastern states are unprofitable here. Another great mistake is the planting of too many varieties. When I first came to this state thirty years ago, I consulted Col. A. S. Johnson, now of Topeka. From him I obtained a great deal of valuable information, he having had thirty-six years of Kansas experience. I should, no doubt, have planted many that I did not, owing to the information obtained of him; so it may be seen that, by proper care, experience, and observation, we may be of benefit to the rising generation. Having selected your varieties by consulting the published fruit list of the Kansas State Horticultural Society, next select your location. Select, if you can, the highest northern slope; next east, next west. Put your ground in good order by plowing and subsoiling at least fifteen inches deep. Should there be any tenacious soil or spouty places, tile with four-inch tile, forty feet apart, three feet deep. A great mistake is made by many in planting too closely. I have trees twenty-eight years old, forty feet from tip to tip. Plant to some cultivated crop for six years, then seed to clover; trim your trees each February; keep the borers out, and if they do get into your trees hunt them out; spray your trees frequently at the proper time to prevent the noxious insects from getting the start of you, and when your trees commence to bear commence to fertilize by turning under clover and stable litter. Horace Greeley once said: "You might as well expect milk from a cow tied to a stake as apples from an orchard uncared for."
A. Munger, Hollis, Cloud county: I have lived in Kansas fifteen years; have an apple orchard of seventy-five trees twelve inches in diameter, eighteen feet high, seventeen years old. I prefer for market Ben Davis, Missouri Pippin, and, to a limited extent, Yellow Transparent and Grimes's Golden Pippin, and for a family orchard add Early Harvest and Maiden's Blush. Have tried and discarded the Willow Twig on account of blight and rot. I prefer bottom land, with a loose subsoil, and young and stocky trees. I plant my orchard to potatoes, beans and vines for ten years, and use a cultivator that keeps three inches very mellow, and cease cropping when impossible to cultivate. I grow weeds in the orchard and mow them. Windbreaks are not essential, but are very desirable; would make them of Osage orange, Russian mulberries, or box-elder. Set the first row four feet apart, the second six inches, and never trim; the third six feet. For rabbits I use traps and gun. I hunt the borers and encourage the birds. I prune my trees so as to give air and sunshine; think it pays. Do not thin the fruit while on the trees. My apples are in mixed plantings. I fertilize my orchard in the winter with stable litter fresh from the stable; it appears to do good, and would advise its use, with judgment, on all soils. I pasture my orchard with hogs and calves. I do not think it advisable among young trees. My trees are troubled with leaf-roller, and my fruit with codling-moth. I spray just after the blossom falls, with Paris green, for the codling-moth. Prices have been from 25 cents to $1 per bushel. What the future of apple-growing in northern central Kansas may be, it is of course impossible to tell, but from the success of the few orchards that have been planted, and after being planted have received some attention besides that bestowed by calves and pigs, it would seem well worth a trial. There are years when the best attention possible cannot prevent damage and some loss from drought, especially on upland. For this reason bottom land would seem more suitable for an orchard in this county, even though subject to some disadvantages. In some orchards on low land only a few feet above the water-level, where a sandy subsoil admits of a free natural subirrigation, the thrift and productiveness of the trees have been unusually good. Cold seems to be dreaded less than hot, dry weather in the latter part of the summer, although late spring frosts sometimes do damage. Even the traditional "north slope" might have its advantages somewhat balanced in this county by the valley lands that retain a large amount of moisture.
A good soil with a loose subsoil that holds the greatest possible amount of water are the most important requirements as to location. If the cultivation is then such as to save the water of early summer rains to the best advantage until the dry weather of the late summer comes, it will be drawn upon, and some very dry seasons may be tided over without much loss. Plowing in the spring and very frequent shallow cultivation afterwards are, as yet, the best known means to this end; and as a general rule they are sufficient to answer every purpose as far west as central Kansas, without artificial watering, as the average rainfall shows; but if the early rains are allowed to go to waste by falling on the hard ground and running directly off, or by rapid evaporation from an undisturbed surface, where capillary force is rapidly carrying back to the surface what has already soaked in, we invite ultimate failure when the drought comes. Cultivate once a week, or after each rain, when they come oftener than that, with something that will keep two or three inches of very fine, mellow earth on the surface, and will cause an amount of water to be retained in the soil below the earth mulch that will surprise any one who has never tried it. An ordinary harrow will do very well, or better a five-tooth cultivator, behind which I fasten a 2×4 scantling with large wire nails driven through it, about two inches apart, weighted on the back edge to keep it right side up; the scantling is cut as long as the width of the cultivator. At one operation the cultivator and this harrow leave the ground about like a hand-rake would, marked only by the footprints of the driver. Last summer this was used several times where young peach trees had been set out, going around each row and sometimes over the entire ground. There was no time during the summer that the trees stopped growing or showed signs of needing more moisture than they had. Nine hundred and ninety-four lived, the horses killed two, and the borers two more. Fifteen years ago I bought a small farm having on it a small family orchard of seventy-two apple trees. It included several varieties, from summer to winter sorts.
The trees were 28×28 feet apart, with peach trees alternating both ways, making three times as many peaches as apples in the orchard. The land was cultivated until the trees were ten years old, then sowed to timothy and clover. The timothy soon died out; but the clover lived for a few years, but is gone now. It happened that some of the years that it was not cultivated were some of the driest during the fifteen, and several trees died of blight. Would this have happened if the cultivation had been continued? I have gone to plowing and cultivating again, anyway, with no crop in the orchard. The trees are now fifteen or twenty feet high, and about twelve inches in diameter at the ground. The peach trees have mostly been cut out. Cannot see that they did any harm, unless it might have been harder on the apple trees during the dry season; but if it was, the peaches were worth about as much as the apples, and the trees make a quick, bushy growth, thus forming a shelter for the apple trees, which now stand straight and are well balanced. We have had a peach crop about half of the years. Potatoes, beans and vine crops were raised in the orchard the first few years. It was surrounded by a windbreak of cottonwood and box-elder trees, several rows, seven feet apart each way. This is certainly very beneficial; but Russian mulberries grow as well, make a thicker top, and at the same time invite birds to keep up their quarters there and make their homes with us, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." Osage orange, planted the same as for a hedge and never cut back, will make a better windbreak than cottonwood or box-elder, and a fence at the same time.
This orchard has borne variable crops, some good, some light, but always fruits. It is on bottom land sloping very slightly to the southeast; soil a sandy loam with a clay subsoil. It has been pruned considerably, but not very much at a time. One man in this county who succeeds well with apples never prunes, except to keep the center open to sun and air. Another near him gave his orchard a severe trimming a few years ago, and had no fruit, but some dead trees for two or three years afterward. In planting, the ground should be well plowed, then mark off one way with a plow or lister. Twice to the row with the lister, with three or four horses, and the subsoiler well down, will make a very good preparation for small trees without much digging, and small trees are best for several reasons: they are cheaper, less work to set out, and more likely to live. Set stakes to go by, and, in planting, cross the furrows. We have just finished setting 2000 peach trees in this way, and very little digging was needed. Then cultivate well and often. Rub off shoots that start where limbs are not wanted, and start an evenly balanced top of four or five limbs. A year after the trees are set out, if any of them are leaning much, dig away the dirt on the side from which they lean, and set them up straight, tramping the dirt well on the opposite side.
With winter will come the rabbits, and they will girdle the trees if not prevented. Many and varied are the sure cures for them, but none are perfect. A wash of ordinary whitewash and a pint of sulphur to the bucketful, applied with a brush or swab to the bodies of the trees, generally stops their work, but if the rain washes it off it must be put on again or they will resume operations. A little coal-oil added to the whitewash prevents the rain from having so much effect on it; make it thin, so it will not scale off so badly. Two applications have been enough for our young trees the past winter. We also use traps which are very similar to the Wellhouse traps, described in the Kansas State Horticultural Report for 1897. Tarred paper, corn-stalks, veneering, screen wire, cloth tied around the trees, or a woven-wire fence around the entire orchard, are all among the practical means used to fence against rabbits; but don't try the plan of one of my neighbors, unless you have too many trees; he applied coal-tar; it kept the rabbits off, and his orchard is now a treeless corn-field.
During winter we haul manure direct from the stable and spread under the trees (not against them) out as far as the ends of the limbs. On good ground I would not do much of this until the trees get to bearing, as it would interfere somewhat with cultivation and would not be needed, but when a good annual crop is taken from the orchard something must be returned, or the supply is going to run out. On thin land rotten manure applied when the trees are small will do them good. Pasturing an orchard at any time is of doubtful expediency; it is safer not to. I have sprayed but once. That was done just after the blossoms fell, and again ten days later. There were fewer wormy apples than usual. That was last year. Think I will try it further.
For a home orchard Early Harvest, Yellow Transparent, Maiden's Blush, Grimes's Golden Pippin, Winesap, Missouri Pippin and Ben Davis do well here and keep up a supply from first to last. For commercial planting Ben Davis is perhaps best here as elsewhere. Missouri Pippin does well; Winesap bears enormously, but is too small, and gets smaller as the trees get older. There is a good local demand here for Grimes's Golden Pippin and a few of any very early variety. Willow Twig has been worthless on account of blight and rot. Encourage birds by every means, and never let one, or a nest, be disturbed, unless it is that belligerent little alien, the English sparrow. They are at war with all the feathered tribe, even with their own relations, and should be exterminated. Don't begrudge birds a few feeds of cherries and berries, when they work for nothing and board themselves nearly all the year.