138 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. * 



this herbage under in the spring, just as early as the land is dry enough, 

 the herbage will decay quickly, while if you leave the clover there until 

 it becomes hard, it lies there, a foreign body, perhaps the whole season, 

 breaking up the communication between the upper and lower soils. 

 Never leave crimson clover on your orchard lands until it blossoms, if you 

 can plow it under before. 



Along the lake shore people leave their rye until they have to drag it 

 under with a chain on the plow. The land has received more damage 

 from that rye than benefit, for, in the meantime, we have lost much of the 

 water the Lord has given us, and which in July or August we are praying 

 for, and wishing for irrigation to put it back. Again, I say, don't talk 

 about irrigating your land until you have thoroughly mastered the prob- 

 lem of saving what water you have. 



We have been much exercised during the past few years over the sub- 

 ject of spraying, and we have heard a good deal upon the subject of 

 insects, fungi, and all the other pests that have come into our orchards, 

 and we wonder why the apple is singled out to be the pest-house of our 

 farms. The very best remedy for leaf-blight of the strawberry is early 

 setting; force your strawberries to early bearing, and by the time the 

 enemy is there, you are off. The man who is quick enough to keep ahead 

 of these pests is the man who tills his land well and gets his crops off 

 quickly. I do not believe that, as a rule, it pays to spray for the straw- 

 berry. I am thankful the strawberry leaf-blight has got into New York 

 state, for it will make us better cultivators. 



But to return to the apple orchards. Their rotation is forty to sixty 

 years. We can not tear them up, and they are a perpetual breeding- 

 place; and all these years the pests have been encouraged to breed. 



Now, as to the matter of spraying. I do not wish to discourage it, but 

 it is not the sum and essence of cultivation. We must grow our trees 

 first, must begin at the bottom and do the whole thing right from the 

 start. 



The man who does not find that his apple orchard is unprofitable until 

 it is thirty years old, is not the man to do much with orchards. An 

 orchard ought to bear every year., and I know of some that are doing it. 



Now, when an orchard is ten years old, a man ought to know something 

 about it, or be able to form some idea as to whether it is going to be 

 profitable, and his remedial treatment should begin then. In the major- 

 ity of cases, when an orchard has not been profitable after twenty-five 

 years, he would better give it up. I am looking to the Russian thistle to 

 help us out in this matter. It has gotten into New York, and it is going 

 to wake us up. We will get some western ideas and when it gets into the 

 old orchards it will shake them up from top to bottom, and it will be as 

 good a reformer as the codlin moth or apple-scab. The apple-scab is 

 bound to revolutionize apple-culture; it is the prick that keeps the man 

 thinking. The cultivation of the potato took on a new phase shortly 

 after the potato bug came in. At first every one was in the dumps; but 

 soon they found that they could beat the potato bug, and then, as the 

 man went up and down his rows, he wondered whether it paid him to 

 raise twenty-five or thirty bushels per year. It is a matter of education, 

 and where these bugs are worst is the place where potato men ought 

 to be the best educated. Peach yellows is also a case in point. It is bet- 



