16 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



The fellow that has failed in developing the good orchard out of where 

 there was an old one, is the one who knows where the difficulties and troubles 

 are; and the fellow who has gone on and won, thinks he knows it all, and 

 doesn't let you into the real truth of the game. And it takes a good many 

 experiences and failures, and there are a whole lot of you in Michigan and 

 in the east that are wanting to know what to do. 



I have had experience in Georgia. My first hopefulness was inspired 

 perhaps by a German neighbor in Georgia, who had one of the finest orchards 

 I knew of down there twenty years ago, and it finally failed in various ways; 

 there was a good many missing trees. He pulled out the trees, ploughed 

 the land, subsoiled it, put on a crop of cow peas, and immediately planted 

 it to peaches, and has made as fine an orchard as you will find anywhere 

 in the South. He had sold the place; it was infested with San Jose scales; 

 the trees nearly dead; the new owner concluded he better pull them out, 

 and he did, and sowed a crop of cow peas there during the summer; the 

 following winter they were replanted. He now has a splendid orchard, 

 the third on the same land in 20 years. 



So that in my own orchard in Georgia, I have taken up some 300 or 400 

 acres of orchards at 15 or 16 years of age, and have replanted the land. 

 Some of them are now two and three years of age, and are coming along 

 superbly. If you just plow the land over to stir up the subsoil and are not 

 particular in getting the roots down into the new soil, there is not as quick 

 a start, as on new land. It does pay to give a little extra care and a little 

 extra feeding to the trees — nitrogenous manure— and I find nothing better 

 than nitrate of soda to stimulate a quick start. Once get a young tree started, 

 and I have had no difficulty in growing a healthy apple or peach or plum 

 where other trees had been before, except in the case of the yellows. I 

 have had trouble with that, and I am out here to have you help me. I 

 have written to some of you Michigan men, and I want some of you to help 

 me. I need help to know how. to grow a healthy peach tree on any land 

 once infested by yellows.' 



I had an orchard some ten years ago — possibly ten, I won't be accurate 

 as to the years, but ten or twelve, infested with the yellows so that perhaps 

 30 per cent of the trees had died, and it seemed best to pull the whole orchard. 

 I pulled it out clean right after fruiting time in late September, and ploughed 

 the land; in December I cross-ploughed it again. It happened to be an 

 open winter — it was rather a gravelly or sandy piece of groimd — and I was 

 able to plough it again in February, and ploughing it deeper; in spring the 

 land was again ploughed and a crop of corn planted thereon. In the mean- 

 time I had talked with some of j^ou Michigan people, who said, ''Certainly 

 you can plant right over where j^ou have had the yellows." So after being 

 out of trees only one year I planted it with peaches; the trees grew vigor- 

 ously and well. I planted on an adjoining new land half a mile away some, 

 of the same trees from the same nursery row. In two years these trees 

 planted on the old yellows ground began to show signs of yellows; and we 

 had to pull them out, and 90 per cent were actually gone with the yellows; 

 and not a sign of yellows on the trees planted on the new land half a mile 

 away. That made me sit up and take notice, either the conditions were 

 absolutely different in Connecticut than in Michigan, or else you Michigan 

 people were fooling me. I knew the trees were not. I kept that land free 

 of fruit crops for four years, ploughing it always twice a year; ploughing 

 under green crops, and growing various other farm products on the land, 

 manuring it liberally with commercial fertilizers and with stable manure; 



