PROCEEDINGS OF THE SUMMER MEETING. ,185 



on. We have land on the lake shore here that is somewhat peculiar. The 

 nearer we get to the lake shore, the more valuable the soil. Now, for the 

 last fifteen years, I have practiced planting pears and peaches alternately 

 on certain spots. The soil will be composed in some places of a light 

 sand, in other places sandy loam, then again there is hard clay, and there 

 is some low ground where the soil is naturally heavy and stro'ng. When 

 1 come to a spot where the ground is too heavy for the peach, I set a pear. 

 I have a pear tree here and a peach tree next, and I find that the pear 

 trees set among the peach trees have borne better crops for the last ten 

 years than where they stood by themselves. I hardly ever miss getting a 

 full crop from these trees, and the peach trees bear all they can, so there 

 certainly can be no detriment to either. They are sixteen to eighteen 

 feet apart, between peach and pear. 



Mr. Pixley : I have seen it recommended that we set fruit trees 

 indiscriminately, of variety — apples, pears, peaches, cherries, and plums ; 

 let them grow in our orchards as the forest trees grow, where oak, beech, 

 and basswood are all mixed together. Each one requires a little different 

 nourishment from the soil, which it selects. My orchard was set alter- 

 nately with peaches and apples. The peaches are a rod from the apples. 

 There are pears, mixed in the same way. The pears alwaj^s seem to do 

 well. The peaches grow and pass out. The apples and pears stay. 1 

 have no definite experience with this, however, 



Mr. Morrill: I think there is just one test you can apply to that, which 

 will satisfy the most of us. Pick out ten of the best peach orchards you 

 know, and has there ever been any alternate variety set with them? Pick 

 out the best ten pear orchards, and see if there has been anything 

 between rows. The same way with apples. Did you ever see anything 

 planted alternately in the best orchards? I am not referring to pol- 

 lenization of different varieties of a kind, but of alternating two kinds 

 of fruit on the same ground, and I would like to know if there is any 

 localitv which can show its best ten orchards, of any kind, which have 

 ever been mixed with fruit of any kind. The question of growing small 

 fruits admits of a good many variations. My observation is that, with 

 most of our tree fruits, the strawberry crop is a very severe one and has 

 ruined a great many orchards. The raspberry crop is not so injurious, and 

 the blackberry least so of any. In my own practice, I have set currants 

 with pear trees, because my observation has been that they are the least 

 injurious to these trees of any crop I can grow, and I can grow them five 

 or six years, by giving them an abundance of food. You can plant cur- 

 rants with pear trees, but I always take them out as soon as the pears 

 begin to have profitable crops. I grant that there is necessity, often, of 

 reaping something off the ground, and also that all men can not wait, but 

 some allusion was made to my ability in this direction. When I com- 

 menced on my ideas, there never was a man in this county poorer than I 

 was, but I have followed the idea of giving an abundance of feeding room 

 to anything I set, believing it was the best way, and I have scratched out 

 a living wherever I could. I think we should look into the detail of these 

 things a little. 



Mr. Matraw: I have had a little experience in raising fruit for the last 

 thirty-six years, about nine miles away from the lake, and I have had a 

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