Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 64

Mr. Sauter: Powder mixes a great deal easier.

Mr. Dunlap: Yes, sir. I had this experience with hydrated lime. The hydrated lime, as you know, comes in sacks and in the form of flour, and all you have to do is just to pour that into the water, and there is no trouble about mixing it at all. With lime from barrels that we used for making bordeaux, we would slake it and run it off into barrels, and there we diluted it so that we got two pounds to every gallon of water, our stock solution. But with the hydrated lime we can take so much out, so much by weight, and put it into the tank, and it dissolves right in the water. But we found this difficulty as between slaked lime and the hydrated lime. While the hydrated is very nice to use it did not possess the adhesive quality that the regular slaked lime did, and it would wash off the trees and take the vitriol solution with it, and we discontinued its use.

Mr. Sauter: You think it best for anybody with a small orchard to make his own lime-sulphur solution?

Mr. Dunlap: That depends on how he is equipped. It costs a great deal less to make your own solution than it does to buy it. Whether you could afford to do it or not depends upon the amount you spray and your equipment. You really ought to have, in making your own lime-sulphur, a steam boiler, although you can make it in an ordinary farm feed boiler.

You can boil it right in that and turn it out after it is made, stirring it with a wooden paddle while cooking. I find that if we are equipped for it we will make a product that is equal to the imported product, but we ought to have a little more equipment. We ought to have steam and run this steam into our cooking vat to keep it boiling at the right temperature right along, and boil it for an hour, and then have a mechanical agitator in the bottom of the tub that keeps it stirred up, and keep the cover closed down as nearly tight as possible so as to exclude the air as much as possible, letting the surplus steam escape, and in that way we get a product as good as anything we are able to buy, at less than half the price. If one is using a great quant.i.ty that is the way to do it, but in small quant.i.ties I don't think it would pay to bother with it. (Applause.)

Marketing Fruit at Mankato.

P. L. KEENE, UNIVERSITY FARM, ST. PAUL.

(Gideon Memorial Contest.)

Mankato has a population of about twelve thousand and is just about within the car-lot market. In seasons of low production it can easily use all the fruit grown in the vicinity, but in seasons of good production some must be s.h.i.+pped out. This irregular supply makes it difficult to obtain a satisfactory method of marketing the fruit.

Nearly all kinds of fruit are grown here. Apples, strawberries and raspberries are grown to the greatest extent. There are several orchards having from five hundred to a thousand trees, while many small fruit growers have several acres of strawberries and raspberries. Plums, blackberries, currants and gooseberries are grown on a smaller scale, so that there is seldom enough produced to make it necessary to s.h.i.+p them.

The number of varieties grown is very great, as it is in almost every locality where the industry is relatively young. There are over forty varieties of apples grown on a more or less large scale. This makes the marketing problem still more difficult. Many of the growers are beginning to specialize in two or three varieties, such as Wealthy, Patten, Northwestern and Malinda. Last year some of the growers produced as many as five carloads. Small fruits are brought in by the wagon load during the heaviest part of the season, making it possible for the fruit houses to load a car in a day.

The commercial growers use good, practical methods of culture, keeping the land well cultivated and using cover crops and mulch; but many of the small growers of half-way fruit men--those who do not specialize in fruit growing--neglect their orchards. Most growers properly prune and thin their trees and bushes, while many are beginning to spray.

In the picking, grading and packing of the fruit is where the great majority fail. After they have grown the fruit carefully and successfully, they fail to properly harvest and dispose of it. This fault lies in the fact that they have specialized in the production of their product and have given little time or attention to the marketing of it. They realize, though, that success in fruit growing depends as largely upon proper marketing as upon proper growing.

The first step in marketing is the picking of the fruit. Fruit, as any other product, should be picked at a certain time; and the grower who allows his fruit to remain on the tree or bush too long, as is often done with the apple, until his work is caught up, is the grower who receives unsatisfactory prices for his product. Many farmers bring windfalls and bruised apples mixed with the hand picked ones and expect as much as the grower who carefully picks his apples. The picking utensils are also often a cause of injury. Tin pails, wooden buckets and boxes are used to too great an extent. These naturally bruise more or less of the apples as they are put into the pails, especially if extreme care is not used. The pouring of the fruit from one receptacle into another is still another source of injury.

The small fruit grower usually handles his fruit with greater care than the apple grower does, for the simple reason that improper handling of these fruits soon shows itself, and the grower may find that he is unable to dispose of his fruit. The most common cause of injury to small fruit is over-ripeness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: P. L. Keene.]

The improper sorting and grading of fruit is another cause of unprofitable returns. All bruised, wormy or injured apples should be discarded at picking time. The presence of only a few inferior fruits in a lot will bring the price down considerably. The same holds true with berries, and is even more important, for if one berry rots it soon spreads disease to the other berries. For this reason the sorting out of all inferior fruit is essential, even more so than grading.

The grading aids in getting better prices but is not necessary for profitable results. If small fruit is well sorted, the growers claim that it is not necessary to grade it, for the fruit will then be fairly uniform.

With apples, grading is distinctly beneficial. Many marketable apples may be blemished so that their appearance is hurt, while their keeping and s.h.i.+pping qualities are but slightly injured. The best grade must contain apples uniform in size, shape and color, and free from all blemishes. Hence it is readily seen why at least two grades are essential. The growers at Mankato do not grade their apples to more than one grade and this amounts only to sorting. The best of the commercial apple growers carefully sort out the small and injured fruits, but a large portion of the growers even neglect this to some extent.

The method of packing the fruit is very variable, and in fact a large part of it is not packed at all. Most of the small fruit growers use the sixteen quart crate, while the apple, if it is packed at all, is packed in barrels. One requirement of a package is that it be clean, and if it must be clean a secondhand package cannot be used. Many fall down here by using secondhand, odd sized and dirty crates or barrels. The s.h.i.+pping crate should be kept out of the field and off of the ground. The place for it is in the packing house.

The apple growers often take their barrels into the field to fill them and thus more or less soil them. This is not done to any great extent at Mankato, for most of the barrel packing is done at the fruit houses, the growers bringing in the apples loose in a wagonbox. This is a good system as the apples are only handled three times: from the tree to the picking basket, from the picking basket to the wagonbox, and from here into barrels. By this method the apples are sorted both at the picking and barreling time. If the apples are to be graded or packed at the farm, a packing house should be provided at or near the orchard.

It is needless to speak of the slack and inefficient method of marketing apples in sacks, salt barrels and odd boxes; but this is still done by some half-way growers. They often have to either take the fruit back and feed it to the pigs or give it away. Even when they are able to sell it, they barely cover expense of picking and marketing.

Several methods of selling their fruit are available to the growers around Mankato. The different methods used are (1) selling direct to consumer, (2) selling to stores, (3) selling to wholesale houses, (4) selling to commission men.

The amount handled in the "direct to the consumer" way is rather large in the case of small fruit, but there is very little so-called "apple peddling" done. Some growers have regular customers whom they supply yearly with a barrel or more of apples, but this is usually some friend or relative. Some growers peddle out their summer apples by driving through the residence sections of the city and selling to anyone who wants to buy and in such quant.i.ties as they desire, but not all growers care to follow this plan. Sales are always made for cash, except perhaps where a person is a regular customer. This method is too unsatisfactory to be used for winter apples but is often advantageous in disposing of a large crop of summer apples. The fruit is not usually in very good shape, and is often that which the fruit dealers have rejected. The fruit is marketed in any package that happens to be handy, or loose, in the box, and is measured out usually in small quant.i.ties to the buyer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A load of apples from P.L. Keene's orchard, near Mankato]

The handling of berries direct to consumer is much more systematized and therefore proves more satisfactory to both parties concerned. The majority of growers sell a considerable quant.i.ty in this way. They pack in sixteen quart crates, and usually will not divide a crate. The berries are for the most part delivered on order of the customer, for cash. Each grower has his regular customers, and some advertise to a limited extent. This method is usually satisfactory to the grower for he sells at a fixed price, and over that which he could get at the stores.

He finds that it pays him to furnish good berries, for if he delivers a poor crate the lady receiving that crate is sure to make it known to her neighbors, while a good crate will add to his reputation. Therefore, the grower will take particular pains to have the boxes well filled with good berries and delivered promptly, in order to hold this trade. In compensation he receives a good price, regular customers and a sure market for his product.

The amount handled through the stores is about equal to that handled direct to the consumer, but in some seasons it is not as great. The grower demands cash, for he can get it at the other places, while most of the stores prefer cash rather than a trade basis, on account of the bother of handling the trade checks. Some stores, by offering a higher trade price, try to draw trade, but this does not attract the commercial grower. It may, however, attract the half-way grower. Most stores do not try to handle more than they can dispose of themselves. It is the small grower who sells to the stores. The large grower cannot get the prices that will pay him to bother with the store trade, while the fruit houses do not want to handle the small fruit grower's product, for it is usually of inferior quality. Hence, the store trade is a necessity under present conditions, even though it is not a very satisfactory method.

The apples are brought to the stores in the same packages as to the consumer direct. The berries are handled in the same packages, but the condition and quality are more apt to be inferior than with those sold to the consumer. The stores usually re-sort the fruit before they sell it. They very seldom s.h.i.+p fruit. In case they get more on their hands than they can sell, they either store it for a few days, or sell to the wholesale fruit houses.

There is more fruit handled by either one of the two wholesale fruit houses than by any other single way in Mankato. They handle the bulk of the apple crop grown commercially but will not take inferior fruit. The small fruit growers market a considerable portion of their crops through them, especially in years when they have more than they can dispose of to consumers. The wholesale houses offer no fixed price, except it be in a contract with some individual grower whom they know will bring in good fruit. When a load comes in they look it over and bid on it. If the grower is satisfied with the price, he sells, and if not he tries the other house or the stores.

The commercial growers usually bring in their apples loose in the wagon-box, and the apples are packed into barrels here. This insures a clean barrel, properly packed. It enables the buyer to look over the load as it is being unloaded. One or two growers have a reputation good enough that the houses will buy their fruit barreled. All small fruits are handled in the sixteen quart crates and are not repacked. The grower delivers them as up to grade on his reputation, which will not last long if he does not furnish good berries. The grower usually tells the wholesaler when they were picked and the condition they are in. They do a cash business only.

Very little has been handled through the commission men of other cities.

A few carloads have been s.h.i.+pped to Minneapolis, but returns were not as satisfactory as when sold to the wholesale houses. In s.h.i.+pping the grower has to take more risk and do more work, such as packing and loading the car, than when he sells to the wholesaler. Most growers prefer to sell to the houses than to do this extra work, which they are neither used to, nor capable of handling. Besides this, most growers do not have enough fruit at any one time to load a car.

There is no co-operative a.s.sociation at the present time, but the growers were trying to organize one last winter. In a certain way there is an agreement among the small fruit growers, in that nearly all of them agree to market their fruit in the sixteen quart crate and stick to certain prices as far as possible, and not to cut prices under other growers. This applies especially to the "direct to the consumer" trade.

There are no street venders to whom the growers can sell nor with whom they would have to compete, and there is no city market at Mankato.

Storage conditions have not been developed. The wholesale houses have small storage rooms of their own, but do little storing of home grown products, as they s.h.i.+p them out as soon as they get a carload. The stores store a few days in case they get an over-supply on hand. The growers store apples in their own cellars, often keeping them until the following spring. A few city people buy apples in the fall and store for winter use, but it is not very satisfactory for the storage houses do not regulate the temperature accurately enough.

PRUNING OF CURRANTS AND GOOSEBERRIES.--The main reason that currant and gooseberry bushes do not yield satisfactory crops from year to year is due to the lack of proper pruning.

Both currants and gooseberries produce their fruit on canes that are at least two years old, the first season being generally utilized for the growing of the canes, the second for the formation of fruit buds or spurs, and the third a full crop may be expected. These canes will bear for two and even three years, but each year after the third they begin to show a decided decline--the fruit becomes smaller and less valuable.

In order to keep the production up to the standard, the bush should be placed on the rotation basis, that is, each year a few new, strong shoots should be permitted to grow. All the rest should be cut out, and also each spring a like number of the oldest canes should be removed. In other words, we should grow the same number of new canes that we take out in old canes. In this way, we eliminate the old and exhausted canes and keep the bushes in strong, vigorous growth. Further, as the season progresses, all shoots beyond those that we wish to use for fruiting later on should be removed and not permitted to utilize the food supply that should go to the fruiting canes.--E.P. Sandsten, Col. Agri.

College.

Support for an Overloaded Fruit Tree.

MISS NELLIE B. PENDERGAST, DULUTH.

Some years ago the writer wearied of the many objectionable features connected with propping overloaded apple trees, and found relief in a new application of the maxim of modern charity--"help people to help themselves."

The average apple tree is quite capable of supporting its load of fruit, with a little a.s.sistance in applying its strength. This is satisfactorily given by overhead supports. My method is as follows:

Take a piece of gas pipe, the diameter depending on the size of the tree and consequent weight of the load, and long enough to extend some two or three feet above the tree. The required height would be governed by the spread of the branches and the distance between the trunk of the tree and the proper point for support of the limbs.

The pipe is placed against the trunk of the tree, pushed a few inches into the ground, and tied in several places tightly to the tree. On the top (which must be screw-threaded) is screwed an ordinary gas pipe end.

Heavy cords are then run through holes in the top piece and tied to the branches wherever needed--the same cord often being made to tie several branches which are in line perpendicularly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of apple tree with fruit laden branches supported by pipe or wire.]

The branches should be wrapped with a bit of burlap or other suitable padding under the cord, as otherwise the friction resulting from the inevitable swaying of the heavy limbs on windy days would result in rubbing the bark off and possibly entirely girdling the branch. Pads should also be placed between the gas pipe and the tree trunk wherever there is contact, and under the rope where tied.