Willie)- Meeting. 259 



Baking^ Knox County^ December 13, 1899. 

 Hou. L. A. Goodman : 



Dear Sir. — I hope you had a good and interesting meeting at 

 Princeton. Such meetings are very beneficial, not only to the town, 

 and its surrounding population, but to all lovers and practical workers 

 in all the different branches of horticulture. It must be a great deal 

 of satisfaction to you and other members of our state horticultural so- 

 ciety to have created enthusiasm and extended knowledge to all lovers 

 of and workers in horticulture, and to keep alive the interest therein, as 

 also to new beginners to steer clear of the serious mistakes made in the 

 past, in setting out the wrong sorts for our soil and climate, and the 

 usual slipshod ways in transplanting, all of which is no excuse now 

 when the knowledge of our veterans is available. I am sorry that I 

 have not got any apples to send you for exhibition purposes. I had 

 about a half a crop of winter apples, mostly Ben Davis. They were only 

 medium size and about the fore part of September we had a wind storm 

 that blew fully one half off the trees, bruising the most of them. Over 

 one-half of my grapes were destroyed b}' the black rot. We had a fair 

 crop of pears, mostly Kieffer. We had a partial crop of plums. Wild 

 Goose and Golden Beauty. I cut down all but two of my Marianna 

 ])lum trees, one of them near the hen house, which tree bore fifteen gal- 

 lons of nice plums, the only tree that ever did any good out of a dozen 

 I had on my farm, the others always began rotting about the time the 

 fruit began to color. I believe near a hen house is the place for plum 

 trees. My Japan plum trees suffered greatly last winter, but we must 

 try, try again, as their fruit is fine; besides we may not have just 

 another such a winter in a generation. Our pear trees nearly all 

 blighted, more or less, Keiffer as well as others. The first time blight 

 struck my trees was a year ago, and this season about tmce as bad as 

 last year. I pruned and shortened back all affected limbs and the 

 trees seem to have recovered, but some have soane unnatural new sprouts 

 which I will cut back to healthy wood, and I intend to spray my trees 

 before growth begin with lime and sulphur as I see that recommended. 

 Apples generally are not keeping well, over one-fourth were wormy and 

 a large per cent had small holes gnawed in them before they were gro^^^l 

 which work caused many to rot; some also have the bitter rot. My 

 trees have made a good new growth, so perhaps next year we may have 

 a good crop of fruit again. My trees show no sign of hurt from the 

 last severe winter, with the exception of a few red Astrachan trees 

 whicli had split but which I gave a thick coat of paint, and have nicely 

 calloused over this summer and made fair growth and bore a crop of 

 fruit. We had a long dry spell this fall but trees held their lea^'es 

 until frost. It has been too dry for planting strawberries, but my 

 patch has done well as I took extra care of it. With me the Clyde has 

 proved the most promising of all new sorts I have tried recently. Lu- 



