The Old Time Farm Magazine Reprint

The following was reprinted in Mother Earth News, as found in New York Homestead, Inland Farmer, American Agriculturist, and New England Homestead dated 1883 to 1903.

Cheaper Apples
We must expect cheaper apples. Cheaper apples will increase consumption. Present prices are abnormally high. They yield more than the ordinary manufacturers profits. For instance, there were many Virginia orchards which netted the owners twenty per cent, on a thousand dollars per acre, this season. Figuring the ground crops which they take for the land there, while the trees are young, those orchards have rarely cost the owners more than four hundred dollars per acre. They got over forty per cent. on their investment. Growers must prepare for cheaper apples by better system and more up to date methods in production. If the average orchard were run like the modern factory, with an exact cost price system, apples could be profitably grown at one-half the present prices. Location with references to climate, productiveness of, soil and proximity to markets, will have great bearing. When the price falls the orchardist who is badly located will be struck the hardest. To illustrate; the Virginians claim that owing to their long growing season; short, mild winters; their consequent ability to get annual crops; and their proximity to the eastern markets; and their cheap labor, they can make a profit with apples at twenty five cents per bushel. This remains to be proved, however. Anyway, apple growers have no cause to worry until apples are sold from the fruit stands at less than a nickel apiece.

Preparations for an Apple Orchard.
S.A. BEACH, NEW YORK:

When an apple orchard is planted, the ground should be in a high state of cultivation and not, allowed to deteriorate. To accomplish this, corn may be planted in the spring. Shallow cultivation should be followed and at last working, sow cowpeas or crimson clover before the harrow or cultivator. I would not advise the sowing of small grain in an orchard of any kind. In breaking up the land in an apple orchard; I would plow as it there were no trees present, that is, divide the orchard into such sections as seem most advantageous, and avoid dead furrows between the rows.

By plowing in this way, the laud is kept level and not worked into ridges or gullies. Ease the breaking plow out of the ground, so that no dirt will stick to the tree. Care should be taken not to injure the surface roots by plowing. If cowpeas are sown, a disk or cutaway harrow should be run over them after the vines are dead from frost, and clover should succeed them the following spring. In breaking up land and harrowing with two horses, I would not use the double or singletree or even the trace chains. It is impossible to take such an outfit in the or chard and work without injury to trees.