FORTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT. 57 



from every hortinltmal county in the State and from several regions 

 outside of the state. 



I trust that the summer meetings will be made a feature of the 

 society's work in the future. 



TEN YEARS OF FRUIT GROWING IN KALAMAZOO COUNTY. 



MR. E. P. STODDARD^ KALAMAZOO. 



I feel that one is placed under quite a handicap in being expected to 

 discuss the conditions in Kalamazoo County horticulture before an 

 audience made up largely of people from the sections where you are 

 really doing things in fruit growing. Probably most of you know that 

 we do not make any claim to being a fruit growing County. If we wished 

 to brag about any of our accomplishments we would tell you of our 

 splendid dairy or stock farms, or of the grain or potatoes we raise. 

 Thanks to Brother Woodman we are becoming quite a potato growing 

 section, and will become more so, then of course we have "Kalamazoo 

 Celery," 



Nevertheless, we do raise a good deal of fruit, and perhaps the best 

 recommendation for its quality is the fact that it is mostly used at home, 

 so that the growers seldom ship to the outside markets, with the excep- 

 tion of apples. This may account in some measure for the fact that you 

 have not heard more of us away from home. We have not been making 

 much noise out in the open, but working quietly away on our local 

 proposition we have built up a very nice business in apples, peiiches and 

 the smaller fruits. As would be expected in a general farming community 

 our stronghold on fruit is the apples, and some of our growers make 

 car shipments of these. 



Ten years ago there was very little interest in commercial fruit grow- 

 ing here. Here and there over the County were a number of the old 

 type of farm orchards, mostly apples, varying in size from a few trees to 

 several hundred, and in age from good young orchards up to those that 

 were rapidly- going out from age and abuse. Some of them were well 

 cultivated, a few were pruned, and still fewer were sprayed as well as 

 grow^ers then knew how to spray. 



Those that were cared for were doing good work, and the time was 

 not entirely past when even without much care, the orchards sometimes 

 bore paying crops. But the beginning of the end for many of them was 

 already in sight for they were beginning to feel the effects of insects 

 and diseases, and the worst was yet to come in the form of San Jose scale. 

 The story of what has happened since to these orchards is well known. 

 It is sufficient to say that many of them are now gone, and that most 

 of those that are left are of no commercial value. 



Luckily a few orchard owners were awake to the possibilities of 

 their fruit, and took steps to keep their orchards at work. A number 

 of others were leased and got to working in this way. Thus the business 

 was kept alive until some of the young orchards that were then growing 



