200 State Horticultural Society. 



long the groniid will remain moist where it is cultivated shallow and 

 often. Let us learn to love our trees as our friends which they are, 

 and then we will take better care of them, and in a few years they will 

 pay us many times for all work bestowed upon them. And how much 

 more homelike it makes a home where there is a well-kept orchard. 

 We think if more would attend these meetings and take some good hor- 

 ticultural paper there would not be so many neglected orchards all over 

 north Missouri and they would not show so plainly ''injury by drouth.'^ 



DKESS AND KEEP THE OKCHAED. 



By Conrad Hartzell, St. Joseph, Mo. 



Cleansing the orchard implies that there are orchards and that 

 cleansing is necessary — beginning perhaps with the first work pre- 

 paratory to producing the orchard, then cleansing the land and prepar- 

 ing to plant the trees, belongs to the cleansing which includes first 

 plowing the land — not simply making holes in which to plant trees. 

 Cleansing the orchard fully, means to dress and keep after tree planting. 

 Pruning, is dressing. Preventing insect devastation, is keeping. Both 

 are man's work ; both are possible and within man's "possibilities.'^ 

 Yes, cheap labor is recommended to begin with. Domestic animals 

 and poultry ; sheep lead in cheap labor, because of the very many bene- 

 fits derived from keeping sheep in the orchard ; and hog labor is also 

 cheap ; insect destruction is very necessary and is quite possible. Poul- 

 try keeping in the orchard is a great help in cleansing the orchard, but 

 preferable to all other known helps is manual labor propeily directed. 

 It may prove cheapest of all in the end — labor by intelligent men in 

 the destruction of insects in the orchard is included in the items of 

 dressing and keeping. When in winter quarters insects are easily and 

 readily destroyed by man. Spraying is so very modest, and although 

 very much like hard work, spraying seems like playing and it makes the 

 winged insects laugh. Weed-growing in the orchard should be entirely 

 prohibited. Sheep kept in the orchard in sufficient number is a sure 

 way of cleaning out all the weeds. Clover is a valuable orchard grass 



