42 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



than S6 or $8 or $10 a thousand, but I had plants that gave me fruit. More 

 and better Wilsons than other growers could or did not get when taking 

 plants from non-fruiting beds. 



Take a strawberry catalog of today, take one of ten years ago, one of twenty^ 

 thirty, forty years ago — every ten years 90 per cent of varieties are practically 

 all wiped off the list; there are new ones there; they tell you the old ones 

 have "run out." They run out with runners that never have had a chance 

 to fruit largely, in my own belief. And I say if you want to keep up the 

 bearing quality of the strawberry, get your plants from bearing beds; that 

 will cut out us nurserymen; you won't buy any of us, because we can't 

 afford to sell them to you from such beds at less than $8 to $10 per 1,000. 

 And so you will buy the plants from the fellows that will sell them the 

 cheapest; and cheap plants can only be had from non-fruiting beds. 



President Cook: Would you restrict the fruitfulness for those mother 

 plants? 



Mr. Hale: No. If they overbear they won't make plants at all. But 

 if you can get a few plants from one that will overbear, from my experience 

 —not carefully conducted experiments, but from the general experience of 

 a fruit grower of year in and-year out, for a good deal more than forty years — 

 I would say the best plant you can get from the plant that will fruit the 

 most is the best. 



Going back to the nurseryman's tree: The propagating from the nursery- 

 man's row is all WTong, from the man who grows trees for fruit; but how 

 many of you here will buy the trees from the nurseryman who will propagate 

 from the bearing tree, and pay the price he will charge you? None of you. 

 So you go to buy from the cheap nurseryman. It is all wrong; but the buyer 

 of the trees is to blame for it because you want that which is the cheapest^ 

 not the best. 



Mr. Post: We get around that all right. We buy those cheap trees and 

 then top work them. 



Mr. Hale: That makes a lot of work and seldom fully satisfactory. 



COMMERCIAL APPLE CULTURE. 



(j. H. HALE, CONNECTICUT.) 



Mr. President, you seem bound to have a Hale of a time. (Applause) 

 ^ I wish that subject had been proposed a little differently almost — "the 

 awakening of the apple" would be a good text to talk upon, because while 

 the apple is our oldest and our best fruit, we are just beginning to awaken 

 to its possibilities as a food supply and a foundation for a good hving, and 

 possibly an ample fortune on many of our American farms — no fruit that 

 can compare with it in its surety and permanence of value. 



The apple came into this country in the early days, certainly in New 

 England our old Puritan ancestors planted their first apple trees for the 

 purpose of getting something that would make drink, rather than food; 

 and I imagine that a large number of the early apple orchards in Michigan 

 were planted as much or more to fill the cider barrel than the family food 

 supply. But within recent years the consuming public at large steadily 

 have been appreciating fruits of all kinds, and the demand for fruits as food 



