After pruning all brush is removed from the orchard and burned.

The next operation is spraying, and our first spraying was done when most of the petals were down, using a Cushman power sprayer, running at two hundred pounds pressure, with two leads of hose and extension rods with two nozzles on each.  Spraying solution, six gallons of lime and sulphur, twelve pounds of arsenate of lead paste to each tank of water containing two hundred gallons.  We aim to cover the tree thoroughly from top to bottom and spray twice each season.  However, the past season half the orchard only was sprayed twice, the other half only once, the second spraying being applied about two weeks after the first, when we use lime and sulphur only, and then five gallons instead of six, in each tank of water.  We use angle nozzles, the better to direct the spray into the calyxes.

The orchard was mowed twice during the summer, early in June and the middle of July.  A heavy growth of clover covers most of the orchard, and none is ever removed, all is left to decay just as it is left by the mowers.

The next thing in line to take our attention is thinning the fruit.  The past season we thinned the Wealthy and top-worked varieties only; another season, we expect to carry this work to every tree in the orchard.  The trees were gone over twice in the season, although the bulk of the work is done at the first operation.  We use thinning shears made expressly for the purpose.

By the end of July the trees in many instances were carrying maximum loads, and unless rendered assistance by propping in some way, the limbs, great numbers of them, must soon break.  To get props to prop hundreds of trees, needing from five to six up to a dozen per tree, and apply them, looked like a big job.  To purchase lumber for props the price was prohibitive; to get them from the woods was impossible.  We finally solved the problem by purchasing bamboo fish poles, sixteen and twenty feet long, and by using No. 12 wire, making one turn around the pole at the required height, turning up the end of the wire to hold it and making a hook out of the other end of the wire, using about seven or eight inches of wire for each.  These made excellent props at small expense, the ringlike excresences on the pole preventing the wire from slipping.  We propped as many as four and five limbs at different heights on one pole.  This method carried the heavily loaded trees through the season in good shape.  Anyone afflicted with too many apples on their trees should try it.

Next in line came the harvesting of the crop.  We use the “Ideal Bottomless Bag” for a picking utensil, and almost all the fruit is picked from six foot step-ladders.  We pack the apples in the orchard.  Fortunately we have had the same people pick our apples year after year, from the first crop until the last one of the past season.

[Illustration:  Apples by the carload at Howard Lake.]