68 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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color. (The October seems to do best when top grafted on Abundance.) 

 The Burbank is an abundant bearer, of good size, quite firm but is very 

 susceptible to rot and cracking in wet weather. 



Of the European sorts, the varieties which qualify best in the require- 

 ments of the market and grower are Bradshaw, Black Diamond, Hudson 

 Egg, Arch Duke, Grand Duke, Copper, Monarch, French Damson and Fellen- 

 berg. All of these are valuable commercial varieties. Goes Golden and 

 Bavay have the wrong color but are excellent in every other way. They 

 are of high quality and the very best for dessert and canning purposes. 

 The Geuii and Field invariably fall prey to brown rot, sometimes as much 

 as three-fourths of the crop being destroyed. 



CULTURE AND CARE. 



The second point in our discussion is culture and care. This is quite as 

 important as the selection of varieties. Though a grower may have the 

 choicest varieties if he dosen't practice high culture and take good care of 

 his orchard, he cannot expect to get regular paying returns from it. In 

 the culture and care of an orchard I include pruning and thinning, spraying 

 and tillage. Each of these operations is absolutely essential. It cannot be 

 omitted. Much damage is done in prejudicing consumers against the plum 

 as a desirable fruit and a great loss to the grower is caused by the neglect 

 to prune and to thin the fruit. Neglect in pruning allows the tops to become 

 matted, irregular and to grow out of reach of the pickers. Neglect to thin 

 permits over bearing which should, by all means, be avoided. It requires 

 one or two years for the exhausted tree to regain its vigor. Now this is 

 the result: Matted tree tops which are over loaded produce a crop which 

 is very inferior in quality, in color, and in size. Besides such crops are usually 

 picked too early and rushed into the market and cause a distaste for plums 

 and hurt the market more than any one thing. There is no one variety 

 which has caused more damage to the plum market or which has over borne 

 so much as the Lombard. 



Pruning should be done thoroughly every year aifc the spring time before 

 the growth begins. Head the young trees low, cut them back severely 

 until bearing, and thin every year, cut the current year's growth back one- 

 half to two-thirds whenever the growth exceeds five or six inches. 



Thinning out the top may be omitted every other year. In this cut out 

 all the cross limbs and enough others to leave it open so that the sun can 

 penetrate and color the fruit. 



Thinning of the fruit must be done thoroughly for it serves two important 

 purposes; first to relieve the tree of its excessive load and second, to reduce 

 the chances of rot. In relieving the tree of its excessive load, we not only 

 save it from exhausting itself but we secure a much larger size in the fruit 

 that is left, if it is done in time. Thin the fruit so that the load is well dis- 

 tributed and no bunches are left for the rot to thrive in. 



Of the insect enemies and fungous diseases which infect the plum orchards, 

 the curculio, San Jose scale. Tussock moth, Shot Hole fungus and the Brown 

 Rot are the only ones which so far as I know, do any serious harm in Michigan. 

 All of these can be controlled if proper sprays are used and applied at the 

 right time. A successful spray for curculio, shot hole fungus, and rot is 

 Bordeaux mixture in the proportion of copper sulphate four pounds, slaked 

 lime 5 pounds, water fifty gallons with one-third to one-half pound white 

 arsenic added, this applied first just after the petals fall and again at intervals 



