54 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



it is better for a poor man to run iu debt for good soil than to take 

 pine barrens as a gift if he intends to make a living on the land. The 

 80 acres on which T have made my home the past 25 years was formerly 

 part of an estate of which I was executor and which I could not sell 

 at any price worth mentioning. Thus it was necessity and not choice 

 which started me farming on this kind of land. 



This necessity was doubled a few years later by the apparent certainty 

 of a railroad being built from Traverse City to Old Mission at that 

 time, which if done would destroy the only means I had at that time of 

 making a living, that of forwarding fruit and farm produce by water, 

 which occupied my time only late in summer and the fall months. It 

 will thus be readily understood that I was not a bloated bondholder 

 farming for fun. There was but little published data at that time, 1887, 

 to assist me in building up this barren soil, so I had to work out the 

 problem mainly myself, necessarily doing the manual labor also. At 

 first I tried general farming with rotation of crops in which clover was 

 one crop. I soon found that clover would not grow in any degree worth 

 mentioning, and as I could not raise farmi crops in paying quantities 

 to feed live stock, I abandoned all idea of making a living by general 

 farming on such land. In fact I have never raised, even after years of 

 careful and expensive upbuilding of this sand, more than 15 bushels of 

 ears of corn per acre and one-fourth ton of hay per acre. But Old Mis- 

 sion was already known to have a fine climate for fruit and I decided 

 to plant an orchard. My first planting was in the year 18S>5, seven 

 acres of sour and sweet cherries, also Wagner and Duchess apples. Next 

 year I planted 6 acres more, mostly cherries and crab apples. I put 

 commercial fertilizer under every tree, mixing the fertilizer with the soil 

 to avoid burning the roots. I grew a crop of corn among the trees 

 which was well cultivated and fertilized with commercial fertilizer. 

 Both the years 1895 and 1896 were extremelv hot dry summers with verv 

 little rain. I have always believed that it was the fertilizer which pre- 

 vented the trees from entirely dying, which not only furnished plant 

 food in available form but helped hold the moisture around the roots. 



As it was the trees barely lived, some of them did not live. A few 

 years after, 300, practically all, my English Morello trees died, partly 

 because this cherry is hard to start and a poor grower at any period of 

 its life, partly long continued hot dry weather, and partly because they 

 were not sprayed. Two years in succession the leaves turned yellow and 

 dropped in the middle of the growing season. Then came a hard winter 

 and they all died. To show how little we fruit groAvers of Old Mis- 

 sion knew about spraying at that time, I asked the question of the 

 famous Peninsula Farmers' Club about spraying my young orchard. 

 All the m,embers present at that session said they did not consider it 

 necessary to spray young trees; that spraying was necessary only for 

 bearing trees. Nearly all the Morello cherry trees in this township died 

 at the same time from the same causes here shown. The almost total 

 widespread loss of this cherry, Avhen it had been thoroughly discussed, 

 and especially when it was found that the few Morello cherry trees that 

 had been sprayed with Bordeaux, if in a favorable location as regards 

 frost, had survived the cold winter led to a much more general and 

 thorough use of this fungicide. 



This kind of soil is almost totally lacking in all the elements of 

 fertility. The first necessary step in building it up is to fill it with 



