Apple Orchards. 345 



freely without money and without price. JS.ot one single student who 

 has attended and taken this course can be found who will not testify that 

 what he learned is worth from five to ten times what it cost him. 



I know of a few men in Missouri who are called upon through the mail 

 for such an amount of information on horticulture that if they would 

 charge for their work as do lawyers, they would soon grow rich. Why 

 should the successful fruit grower who knows how to make an orchard 

 pay, one who has given forty years of his life to the study of horticulture, 

 be expected crowd the very cream of all he has learned into a letter to 

 some stranger for the mere asking, and that often without a stamp to pay 

 postage ? 



We horticulturists, the writer among the rest, are often blamed for 

 giving the rosy side of horticulture and always telling of the orchards 

 that pay and saying nothing of the many that do not pay. Now, in this 

 I propose to speak of some orchards that do not pay and of some kinds 

 that never can be made to pay. 



One man that we are acquainted with bought 1,000 apple trees in 

 1890 for Ben Davis, planted and cultivated for four years, when they 

 bore a little fruit, and to his surprise and mortification he found that he 

 had 500 Whitney crab and 500 of a mixture of sweet and worthless 

 varieties, but not one Ben Davis in the lot. This was the one fatal mis- 

 take. The location, land, planting, cultivation and all else were all that 

 were needed to insure success. It was impossible to make this orchard 

 pay. It was grubbed out and replanted with Ben Davis from a home 

 nursery and responsible parties. It was a mistake that he did not do this 

 in the first place. Then, again, all men before they plant 1,000 apple 

 trees should be able to tell a Ben Davis from a crab apple tree by its 

 appearance. 



Another orchard of sixty acres in Holt Co., Mo., planted about thirty 

 years ago, on fine land, and reasonably well cared for, never paid as well 

 as corn would have done. Why? The trees came from the east. The 

 varieties were the Domine, Northern Spy, Baldwin and many others all 

 unsuited to the west for a commercial orchard. In fact, there are many 

 similar orchards, but fortunately they are smaller. 



I have noticed a number of orchards in south Missouri where the oak 

 grubs are growing up thick all over them. These will never pay. 



