The Apple Part 31

There may be years when the buyers will look far into the future and think they can see visions of long prices, when it would be wise for the growers to sell, as there is some risk to be taken as to future markets being lower than prices in the fall, but such is not the rule.

From six years' experience with mechanical refrigeration and the storage of Western-grown apples, there has not been a year but what a profit has been shown over and above the cost of storage, insurance, and minor incidental charges. One of the first to make the experiment, and who have been patrons of Ryan & Richardson's cold storage, at Leavenworth, since the plant was erected, were Wellhouse & Son, the largest apple growers in the United States, and the records show a net profit of from fifty cents a barrel, as the lowest of any year, to as high as $1.50 other years. It is gratifying to state that, in all the years, not a single car-load was rejected when sold. Much of the success must be given credit to the grower who gathers his crop at the right time, in a careful manner, graded and packed according to the requirements of the trade. Then, if the cold storage to which he intrusts the care of his crop uses the same watchfulness as to necessary temperature, proper ventilation at the right time, the result usually will be gratifying and remunerative to both.

A FRUIT DRYER.

The dryers used by Wellhouse & Son are made as follows: A rough building eighteen feet square and sixteen feet to the eaves is built. In building the roof, a lantern or ventilator is built along the ridge, over an opening in the ridge two feet wide. At eight feet from the ground is built a slatted floor. The timbers [?] upon which this floor is laid are best made of one-inch boards, ten to twelve inches wide, placed only ten or twelve inches apart. The floor slats are best made of poplar, as pine often flavors the fruit. They are sawn from inch lumber one and one-half inches on one face and one and one-quarter inches on the other face. The slats are nailed to the floor joists [?] with the wide faces uppermost and about one eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch apart, thus making the crevices wider below, which, together with the narrowness of the floor joists [?], allows free circulation and prevents clogging. The lower floor is of earth, cinders, stone, or other material. On each side, near the ground, are two openings, each two feet square, with shutters to close them; these are to admit fresh air, and can be closed to regulate draft. A chimney is built up through the center of the building, out through the roof. A door is made to each floor; in front of the upper door is built a balcony reached by outside stairs. This completes the dryer.

It may be used for storing hay, fodder, tools, etc., after the drying season is over. The upper floor might be made removable. Many farmers have a suitable building if the slatted floor is added. Any kind of a wood or coal stove (or a brick furnace) is placed in the lower room and a good heat kept up; maximum 150 degrees. The prepared fruit is simply spread evenly upon the slatted floor from four to twelve inches deep.

Fire must be continuous, and a dryer eighteen feet square will dry 100 bushels in twenty-four hours.

Bleaching is done as follows: An upright box about two feet square and twelve feet long is built outside against the balcony. A set of trays are made to fit it; these trays have bottoms of galvanized-wire screening. A pot of sulphur is kept burning on the ground under the center of said box, the apples, peeled and cored, are placed in the tray and the tray slid in above the sulphur. An endless chain mechanism moves the tray up ten to twelve inches and another goes in; as they come to the top an employee removes them and runs the fruit through a slicer and then spreads it out on the drying floor. In twenty-four hours the product will be dry, but not alike; they are then piled up under cover, and pa.s.s through a sweat, making them alike throughout. As soon as cool they are packed, and pressed into boxes for s.h.i.+pment. This dryer costs but little, and the building may be used eight to ten months of the year for any cleanly purpose. President Wellhouse has six of these dryers in a row in one of his orchards. A single bleacher answers for several dryers.

THE MOYER FRUIT EVAPORATOR.

Bill of lumber for dry-house: Four pieces 24, 10 feet long; flooring, 150 feet; 11 strips, for trays, 400 feet, lineal measure; 12, 47 feet, lineal measure; 14, for tray rest in center, 47 feet, lineal measure.

How to build and operate: For the house or box part, take four pieces of 24, 56 inches long, and four pieces 24, 37-1/2 inches long; nail together with the short pieces on the inside, lapping the long ones on the end of the shorter--thus making a frame 5237-1/2 on the inside.

This makes the sills and plates. Close three sides of this with matched flooring, up and down, seven feet high; now you have a box seven feet high, 5237-1/2 inches. Leave the one side open to be closed with four doors similar to double stable doors, and in the exact center of this door s.p.a.ce nail a 12 inch piece up and down to nail tray rest to. This will give two rows of trays.

Put comb roof on with the flooring, leaving a vent open at comb two inches the entire length of box. Make a V trough, which turn upside down with one inch blocks under the corners; this gives ventilation and also keeps out the rain; also make two six-inch holes below, to be opened or closed as needed; this admits cold air and drives the hot air up, causing complete draft. When the evaporator is full of fruit, the holes below should be open full size, except at night, when fruit is nearly dried, they should be closed, or partly so, which is done by tacking a small piece of board over hole, which can be pushed to one side and a nail or screw hold it in place. For the trays to rest on, take a piece 14, 37-1/2 inches long, nail a two-inch piece of same length in center of this, on top; this gives one inch on each side for rabbet; this is for center, and the rabbet rest is nailed to it through the 12 inch in front, and through the siding on rear side. For the outside rabbet, one piece 11 inch, 37-1/2 long; this nailed to the end of the box forms rabbet for the trays to rest on. As many of these tray rests can be made as needed to fill the box to near the top of doors. Place the first ones twelve inches from bottom of box, and continue up, placing them three and one-half inches apart. The trays are made of 11 inch strips for the frame part, and are 23 feet square; bottom is made of plastering lath sawed in two, and also cut in two lengthwise, as they are too wide; nail these to bottom of frame, three-sixteenths of an inch apart. When used for berries or sweet corn, tack cheese cloth stretched tightly over the lath. There should be four doors, in order to have as small a s.p.a.ce open as possible in attending to the fruit; these are hung by light hinges to outside and fastened by a wooden b.u.t.ton screwed to center upright. The lumber can all be bought at planer ready for use cheaper than it can be cut by hand.

For the furnace, build a box of brick or stone as large on the inside as the house, letting the most of the wall extend on the outside, in order to have all the s.p.a.ce possible inside, for heating. Build into this wall at the bottom and ends a piece of heavy stack or sheet iron; any old smoke-stack will do, but must be at least one foot in diameter: if smoke-stack is used, split it and spread as much as possible, to have large enough place for fire and all the heating surface possible. This open edge of iron must be well plastered down with mortar, or brick and mortar, that no smoke may get inside. Let it extend just through the wall to a flue built at the end on the outside, of brick or stone, as high or a little higher than the wall; then a common six-inch stovepipe set on, to run as high as the evaporator, will do. A damper in pipe is an advantage to check draft and control heat, and pipe should be at least one foot from evaporator.

The mouth of furnace should be at same end as the ventilator holes in the evaporator, and can be closed by a piece of sheet iron with a small draft underneath, the same as a stove door.

Set your box evaporator on this wall, and mud or plaster it down tight.

In using, always have your house well heated before putting in fruit.

The top of wall must be fully one foot above top of iron; this will make two feet s.p.a.ce from iron to first tray. In putting the trays in, shove the first one clear back, let second be flush in front, the third clear back again--placing them the same in both sides; this sends the heated air directly over each tray to the top.

A MISSOURI APPLE HOUSE.

The property of Col. J. C. Evans, Harlem, Mo., president of Missouri State Horticultural Society. Dimensions: Length, 200 feet; width, 46 feet; depth, 11 feet; earth bank, 5-1/2 feet thick. Capacity, 15,000 barrels. Cost, $1,000 and eighty-five loads of sawdust. Double floor overhead, with eight inches of sawdust between. Roof projects three feet all round. Ground slopes away rapidly, to carry away water. Winter entrance through anteroom 1212. Driveway twelve feet wide through whole length.

MANY WAYS OF USING CULL APPLES.

Cider: Newly made sweet cider is both pleasant and healthful, and is a useful ingredient in some culinary preparations; but it should be used fresh from the press or not more than twenty-four hours old. To make it, cut out all the rotten and bruised spots, also the worms and their burrows. To make cider or vinegar from rotten and wormy apples ought to be considered a crime. The famous Russet cider of New York is made from sound Russet apples and brings top price.

Sweet cider may be canned or bottled and will keep interminably, if heated to 160 degrees and kept hot for twenty minutes, then canned and sealed as for fruit.

Boiled cider, that is, reduced to one-fifth by boiling, and canned, is a nice article for culinary use, for making apple-b.u.t.ter, apple-sauce and in apple or mince pies. It would sell.

Cider vinegar is the best for home use and market. No one having an apple orchard should ever buy vinegar, and ought to have some to sell to neighbors or at the stores. To make: Sweet cider carefully made should be placed in clean, sweet, oak barrels, placed in a room where sun and frost cannot reach it. The barrels should be laid on their sides, with the open bung-hole upward, and double mosquito net or wire tacked over it. It requires from eighteen months to two years to become first cla.s.s, but there is no more labor excepting to rack or siphon it off from the sediment; do not be impatient; make some every year, and if you are a "rustler" you will make good money out of it. Our home demand requires over 50,000 barrels per month.

Apple-b.u.t.ter, to be good, requires boiled cider, and if to the boiled cider is added the good parts of the best culls, and carefully and skilfully boiled, either with or without spices, it sells for one dollar per gallon and is very profitable.

Dried apples: The best of the culls, carefully trimmed, peeled, cored, and quartered or sliced, may be dried in the sun and air anywhere in Kansas. A cheap rack of poles or slats three or four feet above the ground, a lot of trays made of lath with muslin bottoms and plenty of mosquito netting to spread on hoops or bars above the fruit to keep off flies, are all that is needed. Do not leave them spread out during rain, or at night. The trays can be piled at night, with the fruit in them, under a shed or cover. Keep all vermin from them and stir often.

Evaporated apples sell better, and by many are preferred. [I like the sun-kissed ones the best.--Sec.] There are numerous patent evaporators, all very good; but any ingenious man can make his own. The evaporators in which the Wellhouse culls are dried are very simple. President Wellhouse says he spent over $2,500 on patent dryers without any satisfaction, and then built his own, which are described elsewhere.

ENEMIES OF THE APPLE.[A]

[A] We are pleased to acknowledge our obligations for much of the following valuable information on our insect enemies and for the loan of cuts used to Prof. J. M. Stedman, of Columbia College, Mo., and Prof. E.

E. Faville, of the Kansas Agricultural College.

APPLE-WORMS.

Many believe that worms are the parents of worms, and that they come suddenly, like a "wolf on the fold." A letter is received at this office telling of the sudden appearance in immense numbers of a worm that is destroying all that is before it, and wondering where they came from "so suddenly." Speaking of apple pests, the canker-worm, tent-caterpillar, the worm (larva) of the handmaid-moth, and the apple-worm (larva of the codling-moth), they did not come (travel) from anywhere; and no difference if they cover your trees, or are like the "sands on the seash.o.r.e," they were all hatched right there on your trees.

An observer looks at an apple or a nut with a hole in it, and says, "There is where the worm went in." It is directly the opposite; that is where the worm went out. He hatched from an egg, placed on, near by or just under the surface of the fruit; and eating a burrow to the core it grew large and plump, became a full-grown worm, burrowed to the surface, and pa.s.sed out. When you see worms hanging in great numbers from single webs or the bole of your tree alive, with myriads of worms crawling, some up, some down, some crosswise, know of a surety that they are not going _up_, but coming _down_ to Mother Earth. Insect life changes more in a day than humanity does in a year. These worms have quit feeding, and are in a nervous, uneasy, often blind and skin-tight condition, going through a change from the luxury of leaf or fruit eating to a desire and ability to burrow into a living tomb several inches below the earth's surface. These myriads of worms are doing you no harm now; they will never eat again, no matter how tempting the morsel. This shows the absurdity of bands of cotton, etc., placed about a tree when the bole is covered with worms, "to keep them from going up."

The real parents, the ones that lay the eggs and propagate their species, are usually winged moths or b.u.t.terflies. A beautiful moth that you admire and will not allow your child to hurt may be the parent of the disgusting and destructive worms covering your trees or shrubs. In the following pages, we have tried in the least and simplest language to describe our commonest and most objectionable apple pests.

SPRING CANKER-WORM.

This is the worm that the amateur and the very busy man suddenly discovers in April defoliating his apple trees, and, on examination, he finds them in such myriads that he imagines some power has suddenly sown them broadcast over his orchard. See fig. 1. Had he been observant during the sunny middays of February, he would have noticed insects similar to figure 2 crawling up the bole of the tree, and looking closer, a little later, he would see small ma.s.ses of eggs, shown in figures 3 _a_ and _b_, glued fast, usually near the base of limbs or twigs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2. Adult Female.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3. _a_, Eggs deposited at base of limb. _b_, Egg ma.s.s.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4. _a_, Larva, or worm. _b_, Cl.u.s.ter, and a magnified egg.]

Along early in April these eggs, warmed by the same sun that swells the buds and causes the green tips of the leaves to protrude, hatch into tiny worms looking like a dark thread snipped into bits about an eighth of an inch long. These millions of tiny worms, scarcely visible, occupy their time eating and growing, and the orchardist is possibly unaware of the army he is feeding until they grow into l.u.s.ty, fat worms, from one and one-eighth to one and one-fourth inches long, of a dark olive-green color, with black heads. See _a_, fig. 4. If disturbed they quickly spin a single web and fall suspended at its end, as in fig. 1. Their life, as worms, lasts only about six weeks, then they seem suddenly to have vanished. They have gone into the earth to pa.s.s into the pupa state, coming out the following spring as adults; the males with wings to fly, the female wingless, as in fig. 2, to crawl up the tree as described.

Now, as these myriads of tiny worms must make the tons of grown worms entirely from the foliage on the trees in which they hatched, it is plain that the said foliage must suffer, and it will look as if scorched by fire.

_Remedies._ Bands smeared with sticky material put tightly around the tree bole early in February has stopped many a female from crawling up to lay her eggs. Spraying with London purple or Paris green, one pound with two pounds of lime and 150 gallons of water, is the common remedy.

To be efficacious the drug must be of a normal strength, say forty-five per cent. a.r.s.enic, and as the worms grow larger and stronger the water must be lessened. When the worms are an inch or more long it may require only fifty gallons of water. Another formula is, two pounds white a.r.s.enic, four pounds sal soda, two gallons of water; boil until the a.r.s.enic is dissolved. One pint is enough for forty gallons of water. As the worms usually feed on the under side of the leaves, spraying should be from below as much as possible. "The early bird catches the worm" is true here. Therefore, spray while the worms are tiny and the foliage thin, and the work will count as the "st.i.tch in time," destroying nine hundred and ninety-nine.

TENT-CATERPILLAR.

Nearly every one has seen the "tents" of these in neglected trees. See fig. 5. They usually betoken the too busy man--the man with too many irons in the fire. They are large, unsightly bunches of webs, closely woven together at the forks of twigs at the ends of limbs or branches.

The parents of these worms are moths (see fig. 6) which appear in June each year, and deposit their eggs in cl.u.s.ters containing two or three hundred, surrounding small twigs. See fig. 7. Sharp eyes, a sharp knife and nimble fingers will bring many to the kitchen fire. These eggs hatch in the warm days of spring, and the tiny worms immediately seek and devour the tender buds and leaves. The day they hatch they begin to build the "tent." Those from the same ma.s.s of eggs, say 250, combine to make the home nest or tent. They come out from this tent to feed in the morning, return for a _siesta_ or sleep, and emerge again in the afternoon for a second feed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5. Tent with larvae.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6. Adult.]