98 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Murray — The papers read are excellent, but we are liable to 

 get wrong impressions. I don't believe in grafting old orchards ; it 

 requires too much work. If the old trees are desirable varieties, I 

 would resort to the renewing process of cutting back the old limbs. 

 If the varieties are worthless I would take them out entire. We are 

 troubled even in virgin soil with the aphis in growing apple seedlings. 

 When they are a little too close together the aphis is worse. Very 

 thick places are sometimes entirely destroyed. Cultivation won't pre- 

 vent it in all cases. One of the safest things you can do is to give 

 thorough cultivation. In ISTew York they have failed almost entirely 

 in growing seedlings on account of the aphis. Many eastern nursery- 

 men are buying their apple trees in the West. In the northern part of 

 this State we have no trouble. Trees planted with a little aphis seem 

 to suffer no harm, though I would not advise planting aphis. Deep 

 holes and deep plowing are all right ; the holes are filled up according 

 to the size of the tree. Trees should not be planted more than one 

 inch deeper than they grew in the nursery. The most fatal mistake is 

 high tops. I know one man with a ten-year-old orchard with trunks 

 four to six feet high. One-third of his trees are propped up. It has 

 never yielded a crop of apples to amount to anything ; another orchard 

 of the same age has produced three or four paying crops. 



In my part of the country the good stock is sold cheap and the 

 worthless stuff high. Those who go to the nursery get good stock at 

 low prices. Those who buy of outside agents pay a high price for 

 poor stock. A few days ago I saw a man hauling a bunch of trees 

 home with him, and asked him what he paid for them : he said they cost 

 him forty cents each ; I asked him why he bought trees at such a high 

 price when he could get good trees at home so much cheaper ; he said 

 the pictures in the plate-book looked like the apples that grew in his 

 grandfather's orchard in the East years ago. Education will help us 

 more than legislation ; I think it is largely their own fault if people 

 are swindled by agents. 



Rot pays no regard to the root or anything else. It seems to be 

 contagious, like cholera, in some places. In parts of Kentucky, it has 

 affected old seedlings and everything. It is all right to have your soil 

 deeply plowed, but in the surface soil is where nature intended the 

 roots to grow. Keep the surface soil fine. There is no better mulch 

 than earth. 



It pays to grow apples. From an orchard of eight hundred trees 

 of four or five varieties, nineteen years planted, the owner has netted 

 $12,000. One year he made $425 per acre for Ben Davis ; another, $350 

 per acre. When a man can show better trees and more money from 



