INDIANA HOETICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 481 



Now take up the cultivation of fruit. A few months ago I visited an 

 old neighbor friend of mine in the town of Fowler, and he had in his 

 back yard a very nice grape arbor and a few vines which were well cared 

 for, and just across the way was a vineyard, of probably three or four 

 acres, that was allowed to grew up in weeds and no attention was given 

 to it scarcely. This friend of mine to whom I refer, had gone to the 

 pains of spraying during the summer season. He had a rich soil, yet he 

 used bone dust fertilizer around the roots of his grape vines, and he kept 

 the ground stirred and in a good condition all the while. And he had the 

 most luxuriant crop of grapes that you ever saw growing on a few vines. 

 Every grape was perfect. It seemed lo me that they must be equal to 

 those grapes that the children of Israel found when they had been sent 

 to the land of Canaan, and when they came back they came with a pole 

 on their shoulder with bunches of grapes hanging across the pole, and 

 reaching to the ground, and this was their report. This was a kind of a 

 statistical report that chey made. The fruit told about the fruitfulness 

 of the land and the productiveness of the vines in that country. 



Now the publication of things like this is of value to every man inter- 

 ested in the cultivation of fruit in the state of Indiana. If you find out a 

 good thing do not be selfish about it; do not close up like a clam and keep 

 it from the world. Let your neighbors know it: let them know how you 

 do things. There is no better Avay in the world to let things be known 

 than to make a report to the Indiana Bureau of Statistics, or to the 

 Secretary of the Horticultural Society and we will have it in our reports 

 and the people will then hear about it and will understand the conditions 

 under which you succeeded or failed, in the production of fruit or corn 

 or wheat. These facts, as you know, should be made public. The same 

 thing may be said of the production of the potato. Why, what do you 

 think? Indiana is one of the liest states in the Union for raising all kinds 

 of farm produce, including potatoes, and yet, year in and year out, there 

 is shipped into Indiana from other states hundreds and thousands of 

 bushels of potatoes. I believe I am not exaggerating when I say that 

 forty per cent, of the Indiana farmers buy their potatoes, the potatoes 

 that they eat at their own tables. Am I not right? Yes, I am. Why is 

 it? Why is it? Is it because we cannot raise potatoes in Indiana? It is 

 not that, because there is not a corner in Indiana, be it ever so remote, 

 but what potatoes can be cultivated successfully and with good profit. 

 Wliat is the trouble? Well. I am not going to tell you all of the things 

 tliMt are in the way. l)Ut I shall point out a few of them that come in to 

 iiitfi fere witli the farmer in raising potatoes. Bad selection of soil, bad 

 s('P(l. poor or improper cultivation. When you are planting plant the early 

 varieties just as early as you can plant them, just as soon as you can 

 get them into the ground in the spring. And when you are planting your 

 late varieties do not plant them until about the fifteenth of June. Try 

 the experiment of planting the late potatoes in June and then cultivate 



31-Agri. 



