The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1916-01-07
A BETTER APPLE CROP

A BETTER APPLE CROP
The apple crop is making more mon
ey than any other farm crop in Mis-
souri, if properly grown and marketed,
according to j. C. Written of the
Missouri College of Agriculture.
Many men are making little or moth
ing out of it because of their failure
to prune, spray and care for their
trees. Such men have been complain
ing that they could not sell their APP
pies, and enormous quantities GER
tainly were wasted in Missouri or
chards last fall. At the same time,
the growers who had properly man.
aged their orchards, graded their fruit
and put it into cold storage for high
err prices later in the winter are MAX
ing money out of their crops. If the
orchards are not well managed, so
much of the fruit is small, scabby,
wormy, or otherwise so unfit for stor-
age that a satisfactory price cannot
be secured for it; so it is dumped on
the market in poor shape for immedi-
ate use, and in worse shape for stor-
age, but is quickly consumed or lost,
and even this soon after Christmas
we are paying high prices again for
good apples.
The value of careful spraying is
well shown by test in which the
college co-operated with twenty-five
orchardists and sprayed each orchard
four times a year at cost of $22.36
an acre. The fruit on the unsprayed
trees sold for $18.05 an acre, while
that on the sprayed trees sold for
$187.19 an acre, or more than ten
times as much, making the average
net profit from spraying $136.78 an
acre, or about 600 per cent on the in
vestment.
Pruning may be made to show
equally good results, but both prun-
ing and spraying is necessary. f. w.
Faurot of the Agricultural Extension
Service says pruning may be done any
time during the winter when the
weather is warm enough to make the
work comfortable. He proceeds to
give some brief simple directions for
getting good results by what he calls
renovation pruning of apple trees.
Most of the Missouri orchards are
certainly in need of renovation.
Avoid the common practice of cut
ting off all the branches easily reach
ed from the ground, and leaving the
tree looking like a large feather dust
err. Begin at the top and thin out
branches which shade the center of
the tree too much. If the tops are
too high, lower tenn moderately and
gradually so as not to disturb the
balance between top and roots. If the
root system has been developed to
take care Of a large top and much OF
this is suddenly removed, the roots
will send up so much more material
than the remaining top can use that
there will be big growth of water
sprouts. Most people remove too lit
tie instead of too much of the top, but
it is often necessary to distribute the
work over two years and sometimes
over three years.
Trees planted too thickly may neet
thinning, but if the branches of neigh
boring trees overlap, the level one:
may be cut back to some uprigh
branch, Always prune close to thu
trunk, and never leave stub to car
ry decay into the tree. Paint all Gu
surfaces with white lead and raw oil
Cut out blister canker completely
and disinfect the pruning tools in ;
mixture of corrosive sublimate in {
thousand parts of water, or disease
may be carried from tree to tire,
throughout the orchard.