48 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The dye of this generation is cast, but the bojs! the boys! they 

 must save the day ! To their hands, whom we train with love and 

 prayer, we mast trust the jewel of our country's honor. We must 

 tend the tree with patience, water it with love, spray it with honesty^ 

 pour the sunshine of happiness upon it, and God shall give the fruit* 



Mks. John T. Snodgrass. West Plains. 



The Dark Side of Fruit Growiug-. 



I hardly think your worthy Secretary realized what a mountain he 

 put upon me when he asked me to write on "The Dark Side of Fruit 

 Growing." Had I been living in any other part of the State than in 

 Oregon county, then it would have been an easier matter to do this ; 

 but here at the foot of the mountains, in the Land of the Big Red A^pples, 

 such a side of fruit growing has never been dreamed of. 



Pephaps we have all been too busy trying to get our little farms 

 improved in such a way that they would pay that we have not stopped 

 to think that there might possibly be a dark side to our business. We 

 all, no doubt, make more or less mistakes, and if by numerating some 

 of mine I can help others keep out of such blunders, then my effort 

 will not be in vain. 



Here in this timbered country manj' make the mistake of cutting 

 trees too high in clearing land ; stamps so high that they bother a great 

 deal until they rot away ; cut them low. Many are so anxious to get 

 in many acres that they do not prepare the ground thoroughly, many 

 spots are left unbroken, and in many fields I have seen three or four 

 years after having been cleared there is a large amount of wild grass 

 growing in these spots that were not properly, broken at the start. After 

 we have our ground ready to set, if we are not careful we will be deceived 

 in buying and planting trees that are too large and too old. In the 

 spring of 1889 I planted apple trees so large that I felt sure that I 

 would get a crop in at least a couple of years, but up to this time I have 

 never seen a single specimen of fruit on many of these trees. Two 

 years later I planted one-year-old trees and today they are much larger 

 and more thirfty than some of the old trees planted in 1889 and are full 

 of fruit. 



I made a very serious mistake, in both apple and peach trees, by 

 not looking after them closely in fall and spring for the borers, and I 

 have lost quite a number of trees from this cause. 



One of the most distressing sights that I have seen in our calling 

 has been witnessed in the last two years in my peach orchard. Trees 



