34 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



If we can succeed in showing how, by preparation and culture, this most 

 desirable result can be best attained, it will not be without interest, whether 

 for Northern or Southern culture. We care nothing for the opinions of 

 those who give us only the deductions and figures of an imaginative brain, 

 however scientifically they may sound, if they fail to tell us the real facts 

 and figures or what they have done, how and with what they did it, and the 

 results obtained. We are living in an age of real progress, when, to make 

 ourselves a part of it, we must see, understand and utilize the things around 

 us, and harmonize our pursuits with the peculiarities of our own latitude 

 and soil, not relying too much on the advice and teachings that may have 

 given success to other and distant localities, with different soils and very 

 difTerent latitudinal influences. For over ten years we have lived in and of 

 the field, studying and watching this now rapidly growing enterprise. It 

 took us three years to give it respectibility as an occupation, beyond grow- 

 ing for home and local use. It took us five years to convince any consider- 

 able number of intelligent fruit growers that it deserved the place of a gen- 

 uine enterprise. 



Asking pardon for these seeming digressions and coming directly to our 

 text, we remark, first, that we find in almost every intelligent agricultural 

 community some fundamental, primary principles, so well settled that no 

 intelligent cultivator will call them in question. This is true of what we 

 call our elevated, circular row system ; that is, running our rows in such 

 direction that, while provision is made for carrying off the surplus rain-fall,, 

 it is done so gradually, between our elevated, circular rows, that none of the 

 loose earth is carried off, or left by the water before it is fully saturated. 

 Adopting this as a sound central principle, we make no change in the width 

 or direction of our rows, and taking a sharp steel plow and a strong mule^ 

 we throw out two deep furrows from the water furrow, one each way, open- 

 ing twice the width of the plow; then with a subsoil plow run once in the 

 bottom of each turn furrow, just as deep as our mule can pull it. Thus we 

 have the basis for the new bed center, fully eight inches deeper than the 

 general level. Then with the same sharp plow running narrow, deep fur- 

 rows, we put up our beds on the bed center furrows. In after culture we 

 will show how we finish the plowing so that the new water or drain furrows 

 are deeper by four inches than the furrows under the bed center, and all in- 

 termediate spaces between them deeper, by grading down from the bed cen- 

 ter furrows to the new and now actual drain furrows. Having thus finished 

 the plow work, we next run the harrow to break the clods and smooth off 

 the beds. Then, with a subsoiler, or long, narrow ploAv of some kind, we run 

 once in the center of the beds to form a deep, loose and partially open space 

 that serves as a guide to the setters, and enables them to do their work much 

 easier, more rapidly and better than without it. It is not good policy, after your 

 land has been thus prepared, to allow it to be beaten down and jmcked by 

 the rains before planting. We usually carry on all the work together, and 

 having everything ready, we instruct setters to shake out the roots of the 



