THIRTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 103 



trouble with people today is we don't top graft enough. Top graft the Spy, 

 and in five years top graft again, and you increase the quantity. 



Mr. Crane: There may be some special strain of the Spy tree, and it might 

 be well to work that on to other stock; we may catch something from that; 

 we may possibly get into a stock that would be an early bearing Spy, but 

 that has not been so in my case. 



Mr. Hutchins: I don't propose to do any free advertising for any man, 

 but I have understood that is the case, and I understood Mr. Gebhart did 

 have some Spies that either by the process of selection or something of the 

 kind, got to bearing earlier, and I sent there a couple of years ago and got 

 some Spies and grafted them; and there may be something in that. 



A Member: I don't know as the Spy is so much different from any other 

 apple in that respect. What I mean, as a rule, if I put a graft into an old 

 tree 12 or 15 years old, they come into bearing more or less in three to five 

 years. I know a case where the trees were grafted with Spies and in three 

 years he had a good crop, and bearing ever since. I had one tree of Spies 

 which the hired man ran through with a plough some years ago, and it had 

 a bushel or so. If the Spies are checked in any way with top graft, or any 

 other way — and I believe as a rule, if you top graft old trees you will get in 

 two or three years more or less apples. All the trouble I have seen is they 

 make rather of a high tree; they are upright growing, and you are liable to 

 get a two-story tree on old trees; but there is no c|uestion that they get into 

 bearing in a short time, if the tree you put them on is all right; but some soils 

 they don't seem to do well on. 



Question No. 18: What per cent of young peach trees, five or six years 

 old, are destroyed by either the yellows or little peach, when planted in 

 the same places immediately after the old trees have been destroyed by these 

 diseases? 



Mr. Hutchins: Mr. President, in my own experience, not one. We took 

 out quite a good many trees a few years ago, and very largely the vacancies 

 have been filled in, fertilized as we could, and filled in, and in five years 

 I don't remember of seeing but one or two cases of yellows. More recently 

 the little peach has been making ravages — not so much with us as with 

 some others, because we have been after them pretty lively when we found 

 them; but we at once fill in again, and I have not known of an instance of 

 the disease developing. Now I want to speak guardedly here. My ground 

 is heavy loam and clay; and still on lighter soils, lighter loams, I have seen 

 some things that would make me hesitate a little before setting trees on that 

 kind of ground. I don't want to make any sweeping assertion. 

 . Mr. Tucker: I have had a little experience on a loam soil in taking old 

 orchards out and setting young trees in. It is my experience it cannot be 

 done successfully, and we have tried it and I have lost the whole business. 



Mr. Hutchins: Mr. Tucker's orchard is quite a Uttle lighter; and where 

 the old trees are taken out on that land they are very liable, 1 guess pretty 

 sure, to be affected with the black aphis, and I know people do have difficulty 

 with the black aphis in setting on that kind of ground, and still I don't 

 think it is the yellows or little peaches. 



Question No. 7: Shall we burn over strawberry beds in renemng or clean 

 out without burning? 



C. D. Rhodes : My idea in burning over strawberry beds is simply this: 

 That I would invariably do that, provided it could be done at the right time 

 and in the right way. By the right time, I would say that the strawberry 

 beds should be burned over just as quick as the crop is harvested. The 



