ISO REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE. 



said to me, "Set out pitting plums, and peach-plums, and don't set anything- 

 you cannot pit, for the American people don't want a prune with the pit in it. 

 They don't like them. A few of our large-pitted plums had reached the 

 Saint Louis market, and were selling readily at thirty-five cents per pound. 

 We figured two hundred pounds to the tree, then thought to be a conserva- 

 tive estimate, one hundred and sixty trees to the acre, and forty acres in 

 plums, at fiften cents a pound, dried. This was good, better than a quartz 

 mine ; divided by two, it seemed good enough. Time passed. Market re- 

 ports east showed active demand for pitted plums. Leading wholesale 

 grocers ordered, and said we need not fear an oversupply of plums as ])er 

 sample sent, and that there was nothing so fine in the market. We sold at 

 sixteen cents per pound, and were assured they could not drop much below 

 that price. 



A correspondent, a grower, Mr. S. .J. Brandon, of New York, had discov- 

 ered, or thought he had, that a heavy clay soil, very like our hilled lands, 

 was unfavorable to the curculio, the blighting pest of the east that had dis- 

 couraged plum and prune gi'owing in all the states east of the Rockies. Mr. 

 Brandon, however, was growing successfully a forty-acre orchard of Reine 

 Claude plums on heavy clay land in New York State, and was reaping a 

 golden harvest from the green product in New York City market. 



Another correspondent. Prof. C. V. Riley, then state entomologist of 

 Missouri, afterwai'ds government entomologist at Washigton, had written 

 me that the curculio did her vv'ork at night, and only when the thermometer 

 was above 75° F. : lower, she was chilled and could not work. 



As our nights are uniformly below that temperature, I concluded, and yet 

 think correctly, we should not be troubled with that pest, the one pest that 

 had discouraged the growing of plums and prunes in the east. 



Set one thousand Italian prunes, and with the idea of filling in the dry- 

 ing season from the early peach-plum to the Italian prune, successively, for 

 some years I set out the following varieties: Five hundred late peach-plums, 

 five hundred Washington, five hundred Jefl'erson, five hundred Columbia, 

 five hundred Pond's, five hundred Reine Claude, fifteen hundred French 

 prunes, twelve hundred Coe's Golden Drop: cultivated — plowed twice, 

 hoed around trees twice, harrowed four times, and finished with clod-crusher 

 and leveler, made of six-inch fir poles, five i^ieces six feet long, spaced six 

 inches apart, 2x4 scantling spiked to ends, which has to this time proven the 

 best implement for this purpose, and seems to me almost indispensable as a 

 finishing tool in cultivating our clay hill soil. 



The winter of 1878 was cold, the thermometer falling to five degrees be- 

 low zero, with stormy northeast winds for weeks, ending with a heavy snow 

 storm. The cambium wood froze and turned dark, almost black, the bark 

 burst loose almost entirely on many trees, particularly the peach-plums. 

 Over in Clark County, Washington, and about Portland we thought our 

 trees were killed; yet, in the spring, to our surprise, they nearly all grew 

 and seemed not injured, excej^ting on the southwest the bark of the peach- 

 plum died, as we judged, on account of the warm 2 o'clock sun while the 

 trees were yet frozen. In a few years the damage was scarcely noticed. 



The first year of bearing I sent two carloads of peach-plums, wrapped in 



