Weekly journal-miner., 1919-10-29

| ] Yavapai. An old man leaned off lis
 wagon seat and called to us: "Youall
 will shore raise hell with fruit on t!rat
 dry land" We replied that we ex- pec5ed to raise apples Instead of the
 commodity he menti..no l--l lot more common in Arizona ;a those days
 than apples too.
 There were times when the old
 ran's crop seemed more likely 70 be abundant than apples we .'rsthei ed
 a long series of dry years iii which
 lite trees just hucg 20 life ard no
 mo.e and we had ro;hing 10 guide
 u, ill what to do win fr4i7 growing
 in a dry region, as the present day
 orcTard planter can kava. :|e had to get our experience in the most
 costly way-by many q painful fail
 ure-but we have raised apples, goo5
 ones, and the 25-year-olI orchard
 seen 5 ;rst in its fuil;s. vigoT
 Now many orchards are berhg p'1uted in the hills of Yaya25i every year and each one of these that comes
 into bearing is new proof of the ad- aptation of soil and climate to apple growing. There are dozens of ideal
 locations as yet undiscovered, acres and acres of grazing land that will one day bear fruit instead of growing grasses for beef cattle. One of the finest little orchards I know IS under a great hill on one of the oldest cattle ranches-where a sheltered reach of lowland will some day beworth more than all the range belonging to the ranch.
 However, commercial orchard growing is a long way from the old fashioned planting a tree and letting it do just as it pleases; fruit growing has become a science, as indeed has all agriculture, and the men who are to develop the orchards which our apple expert prophesied for Yavapai will not make the many mistakes which we made. There are too many good examples of what an orchard should be, and too many good books and authorities which are within reach of everyone.
 I judge from talks with ranchers 1 have met this fall that more trees will be planted in Yavapai this coming spring that in all the past together Right here is the place to start right or start wrong. Fruit tree agents circulated over the county pretty freely this fall but l hope a lot of people were wise enough not to bite The two best ways to get good fruit trees, healthy and true to name, are to select a catalog endorsed by our own state horticultural men and or der from it, or to go to the nursery and select stuff at first hand as one of the leading orchardmen of Yava- pal is planning to do.
 l remember our own orders for the beginning of the present orchard. Tie catalogs were gorgeous, the agent a good talker-and we were ignorant of what we could hope to have do well. As the trees came into bearing we found whole blocks of them not true to name but bearing quite different fruit and at other times than we expected. This is a serious thing to the commercial orch ardist who needs to be able to fill orders for good quantities of cer- tain apple and 10 have blocks of his orchard ripcn at the same time and to save going back again and again in picking.
 Our oldest orchard seemed to con tain samples of all varieties without even a speaking acquaintance with each other; sometimes it seemed as if the nursery had just cleaned up its odd stock and dumped the lcavings on us-we got diseased trees too, for inspection was not so rigid as al present when state and government protect the tree grower.
 Now, this Yavapai orchardist 1. whose success has proven that hc has what Liberty H. Bailey, the great horticulturist, has called tree seuse,' really ought to go to the nurseries | as the agent of Yavapai fruit tree planters. We should have, will have soon, I do not doubt, a Yavapai Fruit 1 Growers Association, through which l we will keep in touch with each other and with everything touching fruit growing interests, from ordering young trees to marketing fruit.
 Most of our own mistakes come from not knowing what other people had done-a needless ignorance, even twenty years ago tor the department of agriculture could have given Us much data on fruit growing in inc