PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING 85 



Ml'. Hale: 1 wish to call attention to Judge Russell's orchard. He 

 trimmed it well, nnd it \A'ns a fine-lookin*;- orchard, and I believe that later 

 it was the ^^ursl-lo(»king orchard in the euunty. Orchards uncultivated 

 last year, comparatively, near to that, greatly exceeded it. 



Mr. Graham: That is my experience regarding the peach, not only re- 

 garding trimming but cultivation. Our immediate neighborhood has one 

 grower who says the way to get money out of i)eaches is to grow them as 

 cheaply as you can. The consequence is, he never cultivates, prunes, or 

 fertilizes, or does anything else. He has a very good piece of land, how- 

 ever. This year he had a good crop of peaches, and he is confirmed in his 

 opinion. He never will put a cultivator in there as long as he lives. But 

 he certainly had as fine a crop of peaches as there was in that country, and 

 he has not cultivated any; he never did cultivate any to speak of. So far 

 as I am concerned, I do not practice this severe pruning — shortening in; 

 but our orchards, with the best cultivation and on the best of land, and I 

 will say also on the best locations, failed to produce anything like so good 

 a crop of peaches this year as orchards on lands not so well taken care of 

 and lacking a long way of being as well located. The past season's experi- 

 ence has knocked our theories as to cultivation, pruning, and location, 

 clear out. I have one orchard of 600 or 700 trees, a nine-year-old orchard. 

 The land is good, and it has had good cultivation and borne four heavy . 

 crops, but the location is not what we call good. It is probably twenty- 

 five feet lower than my main orchard at home. This year I had a good 

 crop in that orchard, not only of the hardy varieties, but I had a good 

 crop of Early Crawfords. I have had four big crops (there was a big crop 

 everj'where last year) but this year I got a crop of Early Crawfords and 

 plums, and there were some Oldmixons, which w'e consider one of the ten- 

 derest in bud, a nice crop of Oldmixons, in the orchard. The orchard 

 suffered little or none from curl-leaf. There were no varieties in there 

 that would naturally suffer, such as Elberta, and the orchard all the w'ay 

 through produced a nice crop of fruit, almost, in fact, in every tree, and 

 in a place that we generally consider a poor location. 



Prof. Tracy: Do you remember the condition of the soil and the surface, 

 etc., of the uncultivated orchard of which you spoke? 



Mr. Graham : O, it was plowed in the spring. 



Prof. Tracy: What w^as the condition in the fall? 



Mr. Graham: You can imagine. 



Prof. Tracy: You say the ground is rich? 



Mr. Graham: It is good land. 



Prof. Tracy: It was w^ell covered with weeds? 



Mr. Graham: Yes, June grass — a nice crop of June grass. 



Prof. Tracy: In the fall of 1890? 



Mr. Graham: Every fall, right along from the time the orchard was 

 planted, that was his custom. 



Prof. Tracy: What has been the yield of the orchard in previous 

 years? 



Mr. Graham: Just fair. We have had several other dry seasons and 

 they suffered very badly with drouth, usually, and I want to say that 

 there is a part of that orchard that has got to be twelve or fourteen 

 years old. 



Q: Has it ever produced first-class peaches? 



Mr. Graham: They were not first-class peaches — what jon would 



