PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING. 259 



My windfalls netted me about $300, and I did not touch the larger 

 share of them, for over one hundred head of hogs picked them all up for 

 me, so there is not an apple to be found on the ground in any of my 

 orchards, and the hogs improved all the time on the feed. I adopted my 

 usual method of sowing my orchard to peas. The hogs have eaten the 

 peas, pods, vines, all the apples, and have plowed the orchard besides, 

 which more than repays my outlay of .1?T.5 for peas. We turned the hogs 

 into ihe orchards about July 20, and never fed a bit of grain until Novem- 

 bei' JO: and when comparing condition of orchards and hogs, the result 

 certainly was satisfactory. 



In comparing orchards on sod to my cultivated orchard, it was very 

 apparent even to a casual observer that the fruit was better on the culti- 

 vated trees, and I believe we find a better growth of the next year's fruit 

 buds. A great many predict a short crop for another year. I believe my 

 tiees will bear a fair crop, judging from the present prospect of fruit 

 buds 



The importance of fertilizing an apple orchard can not be overesti- 

 mared, and 1 believe horticulturists generally are becoming more in favor 

 of cultivating and fertilizing any bearing orchard. It has been my 

 experience with apple orchards that, in the past eight years, they have 

 not failed to bear a good crop except one year, while man}- adjoining 

 orchards have not had so regular bearing. 



Allowing an orchard to grow a thick sod of either June grass or 

 tin^othy is exhaustive to the soil. If carefully observed, it will be found 

 they absorb all the moisture of the summer, it requiring an unusually 

 hard rain to wet through this blanket of roots and libers. This season of 

 heavy bearing it was particularly noticeable that apple trees, notably 

 r.aldwlns. that bore so heavily, bore smaller fruit in grass orchards than 

 in th(<se cultivated. 



An acre of wheat at twenty bushels per acre gives twelve hundred 

 pounds of grain. An acre of apple orchard at two barrels per tree, 

 seventy-five trees, gives us 22,500 pounds of fruit; and the tree should be 

 fed with expectation of better foliage, to produce better fruit, as land 

 should be replenished after frequent crops. The apparent neglect of the 

 apple orchards is possibly the reason for feeling that they are not profit- 

 able, and many have been cut down within the last five years, the ground 

 either set to peaches or used for farm crops. 



iJy idea of fruit-farming, as an exclusive occupation, is to have the 

 whole variety of standard fruits^ — apple, pear, peach, and plum, so we 

 can reasonably expect a crop from some of them. I make this application 

 to Michigan particularly. In this year of excessive bearing it became 

 apparent at an early date that the apple trees were going to break down 

 with their enormous weight of fruit, if some means were not used to 

 reli<'ve them. It did not seem practicable to thin them, when I found 

 tliat our honored president had tried it, and a good man had thinned a 

 tree and a half in a day, so I relied upon nature's thinning and stayed my 

 trees l»y wiring — not, as was recently advised by a prominent farm i)ai)er, 

 by putting the wire around the limb and twisting tight, but by putting 

 large screw-hooks on the inside of the limbs and wiring around the entire 



