PROCEEDINGS OF THE WINTER MEETING. 33 



city of the dairymen; and yet, if you will ride from Maine to Michigan, 

 I think you will come to the conclusion this is equally true of those 

 engaged in fruit culture, and that fully three fourths of the fruit trees 

 growing in the good fruit districts fail to pay the interest on the land 

 they occupy. They may produce fruit, but oh! such fruit. There is no 

 •cream about it and it is simply forced upon the markets to compete with 

 and break down the market value of good fruit in time of a surplus. 

 " By their fruits shall ye know them," and that ye can not gather grapes 

 from thorns, etc., is certainly true. 



BE CAKEFUL HOW AND WHAT YOU PLANT. 



We should plant only trees from reliable families that produce fruit of 

 the right sort, and if we have been so unfortunate as to have a stock of 

 of others, graft them over to those wanted, at the earliest moment 

 practicable. 



In planting new orchards, study adaptability thoroughly, give them 

 such excellent care and generous feed as will develop their surface in the 

 least possible time consistent with a well-ripened growth. Much 

 more may be done in this direction than is generally supposed, by 

 judicious culture and the application of such wholesome plant food as may 

 be at our command. How often we pass the roadsides and fence corners 

 without once thinking that they often harbor much that is the best kind of 

 plant food. Those old sods are rich in just those elements we would buy 

 in a first-class commercial fertilizer. That muck swamp, which for cent- 

 uries has taken the wash of the surrounding land, full of decaying wood 

 and leaves, as an absorbent of the salts and gases of your manure heap is 

 unequaled for that purpose and will hold them in readiness for the action 

 of the little rootlets of your orchard trees that are ever ready to perform 

 their allotted functions. Every one knows the value of wood ashes and 

 fine ground bone — nothing is better to'produce good, hard, ripened wood 

 from which are developed fruit buds that are especially adapted to stand 

 severe cold. The man who fails to make a good use of all these means at 

 his command makes a mistake. Much might be said on the experience of 

 underdraining, its effect on plant life, etc., but time will not permit. Let it 

 suffice to say, no fruit tree can be healthy with roots submerged one half 

 of the year, and artificial drainage should be provided when it is not 

 natural. 



GREAT DAMAGE BY BAD PRUNING. 



Observation and experience have taught me that good, judicious pruning 

 (or a lack of it) is a grave error into which a large number of otherwise 

 good fruitgrowers have unwittingly fallen, and that the operation of prun- 

 ing requires the api^lication of much more good common-sense than is 

 usually accorded the subject. Thousands of good treen are annually ruined 

 by the unwise use of the saw and axe, all of which might have been pre- 

 vented by beginning the second year from planting and following up 

 annually, as might be required, to let in the necessary light and air, and 

 in such a way that none of the vital forces are left to be expended in pro- 

 ducing waste material which, sooner or later, must, go to the brush heap. 

 This subject, in a short paper of this kind, can only be touched in a gen- 

 eral way. No iron-clad rule can be laid down which will hold good in all 

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