IXDIANA HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 351 



fruit iu a dry season such as we have had in the past yeai\ Is it not 

 especially desirable to thin fruit especially where trees are heavily 

 loaded? Ma'turiug fruit requires an immense amount of water, and 

 especially such a season as we have had the fruit ought to )>e thinned. 

 There are some thoughts along that line I would like to hear discussed. 



Mr. Howell: I have three small orchards, two of them just in bearing, 

 one been bearing for several years. Four years ago last spring the oldest 

 of the orchards I plowed and planted to corn and never since then have 

 the trees done any good. Trees have been planted twenty years. Before 

 plowed they bore abundantly. I did not spray. I think plowing disturbed 

 the roots to such an extent that it has never been worth anything. In 

 the other orchard I have done no plowing at all. When an orchard is 

 left several years without any cultivation the roots came close to surface, 

 and it is dangerous to plow deep. I plowed six inches deei). 



Mr. Little: It looks reasonable that if you cultivate an orchard you 

 will have fruit, but after it has stood without cultivation for some time 

 I believe it is better to leave it as it is than to plow it up. 



Professor Beach: There is no question about peaches. I believe if 

 anyone expects to do anything with peaches, he should cultivate thorough- 

 ly. Also large plum orchards. It is pretty safe to follow the experience 

 of the men who are doing the work. In regard to apple orchards, how- 

 ever, we strike a little different condition of affairs, for the reason that 

 the apple in New York State is grown very largely upon farms where the 

 apple orchard is but part of the farm. The old idea we got from our 

 forefathers was to use it as a pasture as much as possible, and if we got 

 a crop of apples we were so much ahead; but since spraying has come 

 into use so that we can control enemies to the apple crops more than we 

 used to, we can insure to a greater extent a good crop, and are not so 

 much at the mercy of the moth. You know our best apple growers all 

 practice the cultivating of apple orchards. There is still some difference 

 of opinion in regard to it, but sentiment seems to be growing very rapidly 

 in apple sections of the State in favor of cultivation, not that we get so 

 highly colored fruit, because we do not, nor that it keeps so well, because 

 it does not. but we get it more regularly and more abundantly than 

 where the orchard is pastured bj- sheep or in the usual way. Orchards 

 that I am speaking of noAv were orchards planted along about 18G0 to 

 1865. I have in mind .just at this moment the belt of apple country 

 extending along the south shore of Lake Ontario and back of that, in- 

 cluding some of the best apple growing country. Two years ago I 

 was driving through a township where they ship 275,000 barrels of apples 

 from one station. Sentiment through that section is for cultivation. 

 Another orchard I visited this year, south of Syracuse, in different soil, 

 on the northern slope of rather a high hill on which the shale crops out, 



