286 Slate Horticultural Society. 



Society, and for our physical endurance, to cut orchards down before 

 they reach such an age and size and plant new ones. 



One of the most successful orchards visited was that of W. F. 

 Brown and Brothers, at Browndale, Hancock Co., West Va. It con- 

 tains one hundred and twenty-five acres, and has proved a financial suc- 

 cess. A portion of this orchard is on second Ohio River bottom land, 

 some on a very steep hillside running up two hundred and fifty feet high, 

 and ten acres is on a comparatively level hill top, their best crop was in 

 1896 when the one hundred and twenty-five acres produced ten thousand 

 barrels which sold for seventeen thousand and five hundred dollars. The 

 ten acre lot on hill top referred to was first planted with Northern Spy 

 thirty-three feet apart each way, and at eight years of age they were 

 grafted with Willow Twig; at seventeen years from top grafting and 

 twenty-five from planting it produced three thousand barrels, an average 

 of eight barrels to the tree (the two best trees produced twenty barrels 

 each) but how is this to help us out? Let me tell you the secret — this 

 ten acre hill top was very poor land when planted, so poor, that it would 

 only bring five bushels of wheat to the acre, but Mr. Brown and Brothers 

 are wide awake intelligent gentlemen, that understand their business, 

 and hang on to their business with the indomitable will that will only 

 surrender to man's last enemy. They fertilized, pruned and cultivated, 

 in one year they hauled and spread upon this ten acre orchard two 

 hundred wagon loads of barnyard manure, and in addition applied one 

 thousand pounds of bone meal to the acre. 



Now I suggest that it will help our Society very much, and prove 

 profitable to the individual members, if we imitate the example of Mr. 

 Brown and Brothers, and other successful fruit growers, not that we are 

 to do the identical same thing they have done, for our land and climate 

 here in iMissouri is better than theirs, and the same intelligence, and per- 

 severence that has given them a measure of success on their poor land, 

 would have given better results here. One thing is certain to my mind 

 if we expect success in the future with our orchards, we must continue 

 to put out new plantings from year to year, cultivate, prune, manure, 

 fertilize and spray,and last but not least I suggest for the good of our 

 society, that "United we stand, divided we fall," if the latter it will be 

 to our everlasting shame. 



