The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1906-03-08
ADOPT HOOD
RIVER METHOD
SUGGESTS POSTMASTER ATWELL
Observations of Forest Grove Dele
gate Who Attended the HOrtlcul.
tural Meeting at Hood River.

H. y. aJWeu, postmaster OF tofes
Grove, Ore, has the following com
munication in the Forest Grove
Times, regarding his impressions o
Hood River methods and results, af
ter attending the horticultural meet
ing held here last month:
1t was my privilege recently to visit
Hood River and attend a meeting o
the fruit growers of that hustling com,
munity. Mr.. Smith and Mr.. Mason,
who so ably assisted us in organizing
our society, recently, we're especially
careful that | should miss none of the
glories of their beautiful valley.
The meeting was great success
and resulted in the organization of q
society similar to ours, with mem.
bership of l0l.
Doubtless the membership would
have been much larger, had it not
been for the fact that the fruit growers
of that place already had two stI ong
organizations known As the Hood
River Apple Growers Union and the
| Hood River Fruit Growers Union,
the latter having been organized to
look after the interests of ber' y
growers.
A visit to Hood River is an interest
ing and instructive experience.
Hood River is one of the most wide
awake and progressive communities
to be found anywhere. Its people are
hOspitable in the highest degree, and
perfectly willing to give one the ben
eft of their experiences.
Hood River affords an impressive
object lesson in cooperative and in
tensive farming. Their individual
holdings are small, twenty acres OF
apples in full bearing being considered
all that the individual can properly
care for. Division fences are being
done away with, as a useless expense,
haI Dor for insects and hindrance
to cultivation, They have no need of
s1oh fences, as they would not think
Of rasturing their orchards.
They prune annually and systemat.
ically, with careful attention to every
detail. They practice clean cultiva.
tion. With few exceptions their trees
are trained in the hollow vase form,
so as to let in the sunshine, which
gives the beautiful red to their Spit
zenbergs. They do not crowd their
trees with main limbs and | did not
see tree whose top started more than
two feet above ground.
They believe in low heads, because
such heads greatly reduce the cost of
spraying, thinning and picking, and
khou ha 90 1Ap, OnotrataJ Ehnt tho Ion,
headed tree, il its main branches have
been made stocky by proper pruning,
is just as easy to work about with
team as the palm trees which we grow
in such abundance and miscall apple
trees.
They do not allow their tree tops to
become brush heaps, because they
know they cannot grow highly colored
fruit in a brush heap. They thin
heir tops in winter, but defer cutting
them back until summer--a practice
we could we'll follow; for if you CON
tinue to cut back the top of tree in
winter, you will soon have it SO dense
bird can't get through it.
Their spraying is thoroughly done
aud they adopt every Contrivance and
items to save labor and secure ell.
cheney
When their apples have formed and
appear to be more than the trees can
properly mature, they pick eff the
surplus apples. 1t matters not IL they
remove two-thirds the crop. They
know the apples have to be picked
some time, and believe the time to do
it 10 before those not desired have
taken the strength of the tree from
the other fruit, They have figured
out that there is more profit in one
box of 81 90 apples than in three boxes
of 75c apples.
When it comes to harvesting, the
Hood River grower picks his apples,
puts them in bis packing house, wipes
them, gets his boxes ready and notifies
the union or other packing company.
The latter sends II packing crew of
four packers and an inspector who
pack the crop in short order.
The boxes are branded to show vari-
ETY., quality, color and size. The
name of the grower, the inspector and
the union are all affixed. Expensive,
do you sayp 1t doesn't cost the Hood
River grower as much to have his Bp-
pies in that manner rs it costs you
and me to have ours packed after the
style usually followed here,
When the apples are to be shipped
they are hauled to the car in spring
wagon-no other vehicle would be per-
No one in Hood River valley thinks
of packing his own apples; first, be
cause he can't do it so cheaply, and
second, because the stamp of the uu-
ion adds Toe a box to the selling price.
The benefits of the union, which is
an entirely cooperative affair, are IL
lustrated in many ways
The union buys boxes, paper and
spraying material by the car load.
1t furnishes the grower boxes at SIC
which cost me llc. There are other
packing and shipping concerns there
who pursue the same methods, except
that they buy from the grower.
All these eveiations of up-to-date
methods and successful results did
not discourage me. They rather in
spired me to work for the same results
here, especially as was given, private
ly, two admissions. One was that the
willamette valley apple keeps as well
as the Hood River apple; the other
was that we could undoubtedly get as
good color if we adopted their
methods.
In view of these admissions, does
not the success of Hood River warrant
our attempting to achieve like results?
We know we have a good apple
country. If we raised enough to
make a carload of one variety, the
buyers would come to us and pay US
a fair value. But we ! ust study the
business in all its aspects and work
together.
The place to do this is in our horti-
cultural society. Let us not work
alone, but pull together and we shall
obtain satisfactory results.