Winter Meeting. 361 



Intense cultivation and eternal vigilance are the key words to a 

 successful fruit business. 



Without good cultivation one could hardly expect any results in 

 any of the various lines of the fruit business. 



With good cultivation success seems sure, and the rest of the work 

 seems to come along easier. But as sure as cultivation is neglected, 

 and tall weeds and grass are allowed to grow, the remainder of the 

 work is almost sure to be neglected. 



Of course, everybody knows what good cultivation is, and how to 

 do it. They also know that vegetable crops are the best to grow in 

 among trees, but vegetables cannot be grown in all of our orchards, as 

 the acreage is too large. After vegetables would come corn, wherever it 

 can be grown at a profit, as corn can be planted in a commercial orchard 

 on a large scale, and make it profitable to orchard, as well as get the crop 

 of corn, with little damage to crop on account of trees shading it. 



I am aware that there are places that commercial orchards are a 

 success, and where corn cannot be grown among the trees as cheaply as 

 it can be bought on the market in that locality, but if the good of the 

 trees is taken into consideration (provided they are young trees) I 

 think a corn crop would be a profit even in these places. 



In traveHng around from time to time we have noticed, like all other 

 people have noticed, the difference in well-cultivated and poorly culti- 

 vated orchards ; the one thriving and doing well, while the other dwindles 

 along for a few years, produces a few poor crops of fruit and dies. 



Those who took advantage of the fruit growers' excursion last 

 June from St. Louis to Tyler, Texas, had an excellent opportunity of 

 seeing what intense cultivation is doing in Eastern Texas, and more 

 particular at the little town of Morrell. The trip over Mr. W. C. 

 Hall's 128-acre farm shows what cultivation can do, as he has beyond 

 doubt the best small peach orchard in many states, for it is a three- 

 year-old orchard which would be a credit to any six-year-old orchard we 

 ever saw before. And the trip over the Morrell orchard was a revela- 

 tion to many an experienced fruit grower in the party. The heighth 

 of their success is reached on what is known in Texas as the Ferris 

 farm, or Mound farm, on which is a 250-acre solid Elberta orchard. 

 The land lays level, and so intense was the cultivation that there was 

 not a weed to be seen. 



The land the two previous seasons had grown Irish potatoes and 

 melons, and such trees one could scarcelv dream of. As we stood on one 

 of the large horse-shoe mounds, built ages ago by the mound builders, 

 and looked down across the vast stretch of green, one could not realize 



