FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT. 33 



up North and I saw the havoc wrought by the frost they had there th{\t 

 destroyed their crops so I came back pretty well satisfied. The grapes 

 were not of as good quality this year as usual, but some varieties stood 

 the bad weather better than others. Tlie Delavrare grape Avhich is a 

 rather shy bearer did the best of any we had, while the Blue grape was 

 not as good as it should be. We had a frost the 10th of October, which 

 froze all of our grapes to a greater or less extent and especially where 

 they were not covered up with leaves. We didn't have any more frost, 

 however, until the grapes were gathered. We sold every grape there 

 was. As for apples the Ben Davis did not bear any — Ave had hardly 

 one in the orchard, so we did not have to pick them. Take it all to- 

 gether I think we have come out about equal to an average year. 



Chairman: We will next listen to Mr. Benthall, of Old Mission. 



Mr. Benthall: Mr. Ladd has told you my experience as we live close 

 together. We started out with every expectation of a good crop, and 

 prepared for the marketing of six thousand l)arrels. The buyers of the 

 crop estimated that there would be that number of bushels of apples. 

 AVe bought 6,000 barrels. When we came to harvest even Mr. Ladd was 

 surprised for we had only about 1,800 barrels. We ran quite heavy, 

 to Baldwins but they did not grow. Well, as expensive as this experi- 

 ment has been and as disappointing, I have tried to learn a valuable 

 lesson from it. As I said we prepared for harvesting six thousand bar- 

 rels ; we bought the barrels and went to all the other expenses incident 

 to the raising of a crop of this size; we sprayed four times; thin sixty 

 acres — we have about one hundred and five acres of apple trees — we 

 used seventy-five barrels of lime- sulphur solution ; twelve hundred lbs. 

 of lead, and kept two or three machines going; did a fair amount of 

 cultivation, though no pruning. Well, the marketing of a little less 

 than eighteen hundred barrels instead of six thousand just paid the run- 

 ning expenses, with about two hundred dollars profit. So you see, if 

 we had gotton what we expected to get, our orchard would have paid 

 very well. 



Chairman : We will now listen to the experience of Mr. Nichols. 



Mr. Nichols: The experience that we had this year that was new 

 was the figliting of the aphis. We had four trees of a special variety 

 that seemed to be affected more than any other of the trees. They 

 were flanked on one side of Greenings and on the other side by Eussets 

 that were not very much affected. I sent specimens to the Department 

 'Of Agriculture and they called it aphis. 



At first tlie apples looked like Siberian Crabbs. We sprayed them 

 three times. They did not show any great improvement until the aphis 

 was gone. Wlien we sprayed these trees we put in an extra dose of 

 Black-leaf-Forty. The apples were fifty per cent nol. We sprayed 

 them three times, two extra sprayings, and picked 600 pounds to the 

 tree. I cannot tell you yet just how we will come out for I haven't 

 received our late returns but our men said that the cider apples paid 

 for the trimming so the result was worth all the Blackleaf-Forty spray 

 I used. 



Chairman: We have been calling upon those who have had a lot 

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