8Q TRANSACTIONS OF TOE ILLINOIS 



It is a fact, gentlemen, 'I never had nice apples, plums, straw- 

 berries, or anything nice in the fruit line but what I could have 

 sold as many more had I had them. Dealers like to handle large 

 lots of nicely grown fruits of all kinds. 



The "coming" apple, of a bright red color, to take the place of 

 the old Ben Davis, is bound to come from the south. To have a 

 good crop of apples the "off" year we must have a large variety. 

 A good plan to keep up the orchard is to plant some trees every 

 year and to plant some of the new kinds of red apples. Plow the 

 orchard in the fall to catch all the water possible in the sub-soil. 

 We can cultivate an orchard too much as well as not enough. 



We observe that insects were very numerous this season and 

 took entire possession where unmolested. I am now almost con- 

 vinced that insects are the cause of more scabby, knotty, rotten 

 apples, and more rot in peaches and tender skinned plums than 

 all other causes combined. Peaches rotted badly this year because 

 the insects stung them and the moist, hot weather prevented the 

 wound from healing or drying up. My neighbor, Mr. Chase, had 

 a few plum trees of what he called the Jefferson or Lombard 

 varieties (greenish purple with some blue bloom, and sweet like 

 the California plum). These trees hung very full of plums at 

 first, but as the season advanced they commenced falling off, — 

 "rolling" as he said. At the time of ripening I called to investi- 

 gate and found but few perfect plums on the trees. The rot, I 

 think, was certainly caused by the stings, bites, or punctures of 

 insects, as all the rotten fruit on the ground which we examined 

 had a worm. The rotten ones on the trees hanging close together 

 showed signs of insects having crawled in between, made a sort of 

 harbor and stung the whole cluster. I observe that to have fine, 

 large, Wild Goose plums the trees should not be too close to- 

 gether, and the ground beneath and around should be clear of 

 brush, weeds and trash, then spray with London Purple. I am 

 more thoroughly convinced than ever that it is a bad plan to have 

 peach, plum or apple trees in a raspberry or blackberry patch. 

 Peach trees standing in the patch bore no fruit, while on those 

 just outside there was plenty. 



To cheat the birds out of their share of grapes we must grow 

 the white varieties. The idea of pruning, cultivating, pinching, 

 tieing and working with a vineyard three years for one crop of 

 grapes, to sell for about two-cents per pound, is surely discour- 

 aging. 



There is a man living near Golden, in Adams county, who has 

 a cave for an apple cellar. Late in the spring when the market is- 

 quite bare of fruit we see his Willow Twig apples for sale at the 

 stores; fresh, crisp and good. Remember: castle in the air, cas- 

 tle in the ground. I have had it in mind for some time that the 

 best plan for a fruit cellar, or cold storage, would be to dig on 

 top of a ridge close to the side of the hill a deep pit or cellai 



