Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 275, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1914 — FARM [?] CARDEN [ARTICLE]

FARM [?] CARDEN

TALK TO FRUIT GROWERS. J. H. Hale Gives Some Sound Views on Orcharding. J, Hale, the veteran orchardist, In a talk tor fruit growers, said: Give the orchard the best soil you have, rolling land preferred. Prepare this land thoroughly and continue thorough tillage. Get good trees. Plan ahead and transplant trees two or three tirdes before setting in permanent place, or pay nurserymen for doing it. Head your trees low. Manufacture them to suit your idea. Get them down where you can handle them easily and cheaply. Prune annually and spray often and thoroughly. Thin apples. Good trees overbear. This is the most paying operation of all. Pick two to four times to get all of crop at proper stages ofripeness. We don’t pick the whole of any other fruit crop at once; why apples? Don’t plant dwarfs, but rather dwarf your standard trees by summer and root pruning if they are overvigorous. Throw such trees into bearing by plowing deep and subsoiling. Cultivate early and thoroughly until middle of July, then seedGto cover crop and let alone. -Mr. Hale has used commercial fertilizers supplemented by cover crops for forty years, and thinks them equal to barnyard manure,. He has secured results in color and quantity with potash, and he says use care in harvesting. If possible put apples in cold storage every night. Communities, should unite and build storage plants. • j „ .