The Ellensburg dawn. [volume] (Ellensburg, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1906-12-28
CLIMATIC INFLUENCES
And Clean Culture Necessary in Orchards
As Well as Profitable.

The following paper was read before
the annual meeting Of the Washington
State Horticultural Association, held
North Yakima, January, Oil, 1906, by
S. w. Maxey, of this city:
Climatic influences and clean culture
are both essential factors in growing
an orchard. Clean culture gives life
and vigor to fruit trees. Climatic con-
ditions are to great extent governed
by clean culture. Natural air is pure
and carries no evils, but contaminated
air carries disease and death to man,
beast and the vegetable kingdom as
we'll.
In this we see tar barrels, refuse, to-
bacco, sulphur and other bacteria eX'
terminators burned to purify the air in
times of cholera and other contagious
diseases. Rotting and decaying vege-
tation, dung heaps and stagnant pools
of water are agents in the contamina-
ton of the air. This, with the ele-
ments of an impoverished soil taken up
by the rays of the sun, compounds
formula that organizes fungi which
attacks plant life as cholera, malaria
and other diseases attack man.
| have known hogs to have cholera
when the elements we're full of bac-
terra: hens to have the roup and cholera
when the air they breathe is foul from
an uncleanly chicken house.
Fruit trees and all manner OF plant
life are no exception to the evil; hence
we have fungus diseases among our
fruit trees, plants and flowers.
1t has been observed that fruit al
ways does best in new countries where
there is an abundance of ozone, and we
have observed also that a mountainous
country produces regular crop OF
fruit. as does New York, Pennsylvania,
Missouri, Arkansas, Idaho, Oregon and
Washington. This we attribute to the
large arena OF uncultivated land--land
that is productive Of virgin frag-
rance. Have you not walked out on a
fine morning and smelled and breathed
until you could almost taste the life
giving incense-until sort of halo
would surround you and you would feel
that it was almost heaven? We have
often wondered if this was not why
Christ went up into the mountains to
pray.
This sweet fragrance is essential to
the frucrifcation of the fruit bloom.
The clearing up of farms, the turning
of the sod, the dscomposing of vegeta-
ton, the rotting of straw stack, the
smoking dung heaps-all go to make
up foul air and fungi producing ele-
ment, and sweet fragrance disappears
as the wild game vanishes with the
approach of civiliza ton.
In the middle tates, where nearly
every foot of land is in cultivation.
where there is little or no fragrance,
they seldom have good crops Of fruit.
but fungus diseases abound and plan.
food is impoverished. The sickly ele-
ments of the soil are taken up in the
air and distilled into poisonous spores
| that float with the air and attack fruit
| trees and plants that are susceptible to
attack. A half ration OF plant food If
not enough to exempt our trees from
fungi
Clean culture is an essential to sue
cessful crcharding. There is less cause
| of attack from pests: it encourages the
deposit of plant food and increases the
health and vigor of the tree or plant.
Under-drainage is of vast Importance
| to an orchard, not alone for the purpose
of drainage but to conduct the air into
the earth and carry oxygen to starving
| plant food. Cultivation is an agent tC
carry oxygen into the earth and make
plant food more plentiful. The best
sample of oats which we took to the
Lewis and Clark exposition at Portland
and which took the gold medal was
grown on tile drain or blind ditch
where irrigation could do no good.
You might as well plant a tree in the
air and expect it 70 grow as to plant il
it the earth without the air
Plant food organizes the sap of the
tree or plant: if the plant food is moi
pure the sap is not healthy sap. In the
spring of the year the warm rays of the
| sun put the valves in the tissues of the