Daily Kennebec Journal

Pennsylvania has become interested in apple growing and at the present time the farmers are earnestly discussing the outlook. They have come to the conclusion that the farmers of the East have a tremendous advantage over the farmers of the West in apple raising, on account of the superior flavor of the Eastern product and on account of their proximity to the market. It costs $2 a barrel or $300 a car to ship Western apples to Eastern tide water, while it costs about 20 cents to ship apples from Adams county, Penn., to New York, a difference of $1.80 per barrel. It is figured that this $1.80 can be pocketed by the Eastern grower if he will but make his apples as attractive in appearance as those of the West.

It is admitted that the Western man sells his apples because they are what is called "fancy" fruit. They do please the eye but their flavor is far inferior to apples raised in this part of the country. Fancy apples bring $5 per barrel in New York and it is not a difficult matter to figure that the Eastern grower can make a larger profit at that figure than can the Western, if he can sell as many apples. Men who are versed in horticulture told the Pennsylvania farmers that the climatic conditions of the West are such that the apples can not have the same flavor as those possessed by the almost totally neglected Pennsylvania crop. The same is also true of New England and Maine apples.

One Pennsylvania grower who has raised apples on scientific principles for several years had the following to say of his methods:

"By intelligent intercropage with cabbage and potatoes expenses can be made out of a planting until the orchard comes into bearing about the tenth year. Then the proper yearly caring for the trees will include one spraying for scale and two for the fruit, fertilization, cultivation, pruning and of course the picking. All those costs will not be more than $100 an acre and I know many instances where they have not totaled half that amount. York Imperials are generally planted thirty feet apart, fifty trees to the acre and I know of a 9-year-old orchard of that variety of apples which yielded $375 worth of apples to an acre and this year, when 11 years old, returned $425 to the acre.

"I know of another forty-acre planting near the sighted one, which was operated at a cost of $20 to the acre and returned over $250 an acre. I also have in mind a 12-year-old orchard which returned $400 an acre with a hundred-dollar acreage expense, and can show you an old orchard, made over by cutting out the tops of the old trees four years ago, from which two years ago $290 worth of apples were taken to the acre."