. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. COST OF PRODUCING APPLES IN WESTERN COLORADO. 33 severe frosts occurred in early May, only a very few apple growers in the entire Grand Valley set out their smudge pots and saved their crops. There is no doubt that orchard heating paid that year. This was due largely to weather conditions, the night being so still that the smoke hung in thick clouds over the orchards. Such results, however, are exceptional. In the early years of the fruit industry orchard heating was a universal practice, but owing to the great expense
. Bulletin of the Department of Agriculture. Agriculture; Agriculture. COST OF PRODUCING APPLES IN WESTERN COLORADO. 33 severe frosts occurred in early May, only a very few apple growers in the entire Grand Valley set out their smudge pots and saved their crops. There is no doubt that orchard heating paid that year. This was due largely to weather conditions, the night being so still that the smoke hung in thick clouds over the orchards. Such results, however, are exceptional. In the early years of the fruit industry orchard heating was a universal practice, but owing to the great expense of equipment and operation, and to frequent failure to save the crop owing to adverse weather conditions, the practice has been almost wholly discontinued. (See fig. 10.) Over 90 per cent of Mesa growers interviewed, while admitting that smudging some-. Fig. 10.—Discarded smudge pots on a ranch near Grand Junction. very few growers. Smudging is now practiced by times saves the crop, maintain that as an insurance it is too expen- sive. There are a few men, however, who have followed the practice regularly and never lost faith in it. Some of these men are among the most successful men in the valley, but their numbers are so few and their costs and methods so various that no accurate average costs for smudging could be obtained. The apple growers on the farms studied in the lower sections of Delta County formerly prac- ticed orchard heating, as did all those of Montrose, where many still put out their smudge pots every year. In the discussion of cost production no figures for orchard heating are taken into account, since not enough estimates could be obtained to constitute reliable Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original United States. Dept. of Agriculture. [Washington, D. C. ?] : The Dept. :
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