HORTICULTURE, the art of growing, improving, propagating and utilizing fruits, vegetables and flowers for food and for orna mentation. While horticulture is strictly an art, it is grounded in and supported by many branches of science, all of which play an im portant part in the success of the work. Al though the sciences of plant physiology, chem istry and physics may aid greatly in all branches of horticulture, there have been, are still and will no doubt continue to be men endowed with natural gifts who must be re garded as masters in this field, to whom the sciences as such remain unknown. The de gree to which plants may intuitively be molded, shaped and made to respond to the needs of man are little short of marvelous. Science with all its power cannot always accomplish the ends secured by the skilled craftsman who knows plants and loves them, who may work wonders with them himself, but who may be unable to pass this knowledge on to others. While the word horticulture is still retained for a large number of activities, the field has' become so extensive that there are now well recognized groups. No hard and fast lines can be drawn between these groups, but they are generally recognized as more or less distinct and are as follows: (a) Fruit growing, or pomology; (b) Vegetable growing; (c) Flower growing, or floriculture; (d) Landscape art.
Fruit Growing, or PomOlogy.— growing embraces all those practices having to do with the production, handling and within certain limits the utilization of fruits. Here again it is impracticable to draw any arbitrary lines between products commonly classed as fruits and those classed as vegetables. The tomato is a fruit but the tomato grower may be either a trucicer or a vegetable gardener. He would not be classed as a pomologist or a fruit grower. In America fruit growing embraces the production of fruits like the apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot, quince, orange, lemon, and a considerable number of products from trees, vines, bushes, and even soft wooded plants like the strawberry, banana and papaya. growing as a whole has been mote highly de veloped commercially in America than in any other country. The last decade has showri progress in the standardization of methods practices. A striking feature of the past 20 years' development in fruit growing, especially with the apple, has been the demonstration of the fact that the more successful operators are those who live with their trees, who work them and know them, and that orcharding by proxy through corporations or syndicates ia large measure a failure. In the necessary keen competition' that exists in the production of a high-grade fruit like the apple, • the factors are of such a nature that their recog nition and control cannot be syndicated or re duced to mathematical formula so that an indi vidual may expand his activities indefinitely.
An apple grower who owns his orchard of 40 to 60 acres, who knows his trees and lives with them may be highly successful, but if he at tempts to expand his activities and oversee several hundred acres, the chances are that he may fail or else become a mediocre grower. In the light of developments during the past 20 years, we may, therefore, look forward to com mercial fruit, growing as more or less of an industrypreeminently suited to individual effort so fir as production is concerned. The handling and marketing, however, are matters that lend themselves to organization, but of these points we shall speak later.
The latest available figures indicate that the total value of fruits produced in the United States is somewhere around $250,000,000 to $300,000,000 annually. The deciduous tree fruits like the apple, pear, peach, plum, apricot and quince represent at least two-thirds of the total value of all fruits. Quoting the available fig ures in percentages, deciduous tree fruits repre sent about 65 per cent of the total value, citrons fruits 10 per cent, grapes 10 per cent, small fruits 14 per cent, miscellaneous fruits (mostly subtropical) 1 per cent. The apple leads in quantity and value of fruits grown. It also leads in distribution and may without ques tion be characterized as the most important fruit in the United States. More than one-half of the farms in the United States, of which there are now nearly 6,500,000, produce apples. The quantity of fruit produced is quite vari able, running all the way from 125,000,000 to 225,000,000 bushels a year. The last census figures give the number of bearing trees as 151,322,340 and the vield as 146,122,318 bushels. About 500 different varieties of apples are reported as being offered by nurserymen for planting. Of these, however, 30 to 35 varie ties constitute the chief source of this valuable fruit, About one-fourth of all the apples grown in this country are of two varieties — namely, Baldwin and Ben Davis. The principal apple growing States in the order of quantity pro duced and value of fruit are New York, Wash ington, Missouri and Pennsylvania. The great centres of apple production are to be found in southern Maine, southern Vermont, eastern Massachusetts and Connecticut, western New York, western Pennsylvania, the Appalachian region of Virginia, West Vinrinia and Carolina, southern and western Missouri, south ern Michigan and western Washington and Oregon.