148 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Delaware, the Ionia, the Concord, and several of the hybrids ripen in perfec- 

 tion, as was well attested by samples of wine as well as fruits, which your com- 

 Biittee examined. 



But these people are a determined race, and any deficiency of variety or soi^ 

 or anything else attainable, they are bound to supply. They have a fine 

 climate, a fertile soil, a ready market, and are bound to succeed. Nowhere 

 within the borders of our State can a people be found more fully alive to th» 

 subject and success of horticulture than these people of the Grand Traversi 

 region. 



AT SPRING LAKE. 



The peach orchards of Spring Lake as a whole were found not quite up to 

 the better class of orchards in many other sections of the State. The severe 

 winter of 1872-3 left its trace in mostly all of them. It came like an ava- 

 lanche, and the shock was terrible ; add to this the neglect of culture and the 

 proper cutting back, which was in most cases neglected, and the result stands 

 to-day a monument of disaster. The sandy nature of the soil, with little nat- 

 ural elements of fertility and none of any amount supplied, must ever in like 

 seasons of great severity place the growing of the peach in great peril. I 

 speak of these conditions and the results only because I found they existed al- 

 most universally at this place ; and yet it must be acknowledged that there 

 were found some notable exceptions. The orchard of Thomas Petty and Frank 

 Hall, and also the young orchard of J. B. Soule, stood well up in the scale of 

 merit. There are without doubt many farms about Spring Lake that have as 

 good soil for the peach, and possibly the apple and the pear, as in many other 

 sections of the State, but the orchardists of this locality seem to have passed 

 them by. preferring the more convenient and easier cultivated sandy soils im- 

 mediately bordering on the lake and along the margin of the Grand river. These 

 light, sandy soils are well enough during the earlier stages of orchard culture, 

 but when the trees have attained the growth of a few years with the attendant 

 crops of fruit, the strain is too heavy without some extra fertilizing material, 

 which appears difficult for these Spring Lakers to obtain. Their greatest re- 

 liance should be in seeding to clover and a liberal use of land plaster, to be 

 turned under as often as once in two or three years, in June, or when in full 

 bloom. Another one of their great needs is an active, live, and energetic 

 Horticultural Society. They have a Horticultural Society, but judging from 

 the effect it is having on the fruit interests of this locality, it must be in a sorry 

 condition, to say the least; all the enterprise in a fruit direction appeared to 

 be wrapped up in less than half a dozen individuals. Had they a society as^ 

 energetic as the South Haven Pomological Society, or the Peninsular Farmer's 

 Club of Grand Traverse, a marked improvement in the development of the 

 fruit interest would be manifest at once. 



Their system of pruning the peach may have its advocates and succeed with 

 some, but as a rule can never obtain the best results. I do not remember ever 

 to have seen a more objectionable system practiced, unless it may be among 

 orchards farther down the " belt." The long, naked arms or main branches, 

 without a lateral from the body of the tree to near the extremities, may serve 

 to let the sun and air to the center of the tree, only to find neither foliage nor 

 fruit to appreciate the favor. Many of these long branches were noticed 

 broken from the tree by their own weight when racked by the winds or by the 

 weight of fruit. The shortening system I am well convinced would be much 

 preferable in this locality. 



