No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 483 



sufficient amount of moisture in the ground and neglect the humus 

 and that humus must come from decaying vegetation of some kind, 

 and unless jou have it, 3'ou don't get enough moisture and it is too 

 expensive to buy enougli, but we are doing what I think is about as 

 good. We are using the sod muh>h system. We keep our hill- 

 sides in grass. We mow this grass about the last of May or first 

 of June and leave it on the ground. We generally mow it again 

 through August or September, leaving both of those lots of grass 

 on the ground to form a mulch. We don't plow it up at any time, 

 because I saw the land washing away everytime we would plow. 

 I believe I stated a while ago that all the manure we make is carted 

 into the orchard. We don't f>ut manure around all the trees, because 

 we don't have enough. We try to go to some of the poorest places 

 or over some poor spot where we cannot get grass to grow. I don't 

 believe in having barren soil. 



You can't make fruit growers out of men who do not love the 

 work. They generally make a failure of the work unless they love 

 the business. If he don't know anything about the business he had 

 better keep to live stock or grain growing for such men are going to 

 make a failure out of it. Then after growing the fruit, they have 

 to learn to make a success of disposing of it. I will talk of that a 

 little later. 



There are lots of apples eaten and the cores thrown away so 

 that we find seedlings coming up out of the ground; in some re- 

 spects a great deal better than three-fourths of the varieties grown 

 by the nurserymen in the country. The people want some of these 

 new varieties and they can get them very cheaply. I believe that 

 we have several varieties down there, two or three, that are worth 

 the attention of people to make a trial of them. There are lots of 

 apples that do well in one place but don't do well in another. There 

 are lots of apples that look poor but are excellent. People must 

 be educated and know what to appreciate in an apple. You may 

 go on the market but be deceived by appearances. When a person 

 learns to appreciate a certain apple he will ask for it every time. 

 For instance, you buy a Grimes Golden once and find how good it 

 tastes, you want to buy more of them. You can sell these apples 

 after they are known at higher prices than Ben Davis, and yet 

 Grimes Golden won't hold its good color under certain conditions as 

 well as Ben Davis. They look bad after they have been carried 

 around for a few days and bruises will show on them. Some peo- 

 ple, not familiar with varieties, seeing a Ben Davis and a Grimes 

 Golden, would pick out the Ben Davis every time because it looks 

 better. For that reason, a red api)le takes better on the market than 

 a yellow one. I believe that some of the best apples that have ever 

 been grown in this country are just simply seedlings and the people 

 don't know the parentage of them, and that only a comparatively 

 few appples have been introduced, the parentage of which is known. 

 The time is coming, however, when more attention will be paid to 

 this matter than at present. Luther Burbank is bringing out great 

 things, but he is not working on the apple as much as other fruits. 



My father used to set out his trees down there when he com- 

 menced in 1860, east and west. What I have planted of late years, 

 have been set with the curvature of the hills, so we can drive through 

 an orchard better and they were set out by guess. I believe I showed 



