TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL MEETING. 81 



FRUITGROWING HAS NOT GROWN SO FAST. 



Here, then, is a basis on which to begin our speculations for our "future 

 possibilities." In the economy of nature no one state in this great com- 

 monwealth has been so admirably adapted and provided with all of the 

 essentials for growing such a diversity of fruit products, while at the same 

 time enjoying the advantages to be derived from markets so easily and 

 economically reached, the demand for which, twenty years hence, no living 

 man of today can estimate. 



Certain it is that the general fruitgrowing interests are not keeping pace 

 with the increase of the people, who, as they become more highly educated 

 and civilized, will consume in their living a much greater amount of fruit 

 and less of those foods of a carbonaceous character. 



Let us, then, as practical men, give our subject practical thought, and, 

 if correct in our conclusions, proceed promptly to put into execution the 

 result of our convictions. 



We often fail to do this. We read, we talk, we think, but we fail to 

 digest and put into practice. This is neither wisdom nor good sense. 



Fruitgrowing has too often been regarded as a sort of sideshow of farm- 

 ing, and treated with a degree of neglect which would only insure failure 

 when applied to any other crops. It has been regarded as a fit field of 

 operation for him who, failing in everything else, might take this up as a 

 last resort; but the successful fruitgrower of this latter part of the nine- 

 teenth century requires a combination of practical good sense, with intelli- 

 gence in his profession, second to that possessed by no other man, no mat- 

 ter what may be his calling. It is a lack of required knowledge and 

 attainments, more than anything else, to which may be ascribed discour- 

 agements and crop failures in fruitgrowing. 



We want a more intimate acquaintance with all varieties of fruit adapted 

 to our soils and climate, their habits and structure, their diseases and the 

 insect life that preys upon them — in short, give us botany, chemistry, and 

 entomology as applied to our business, and we will give you results less 

 unsatisfactory than those that too often characterize the slip-shod orchard 

 culture of today. 



"Our possibilities," then, should not be sought for in the lines of ignor- 

 ance, while all required and needed information of a practical and scien- 

 tific nature can readily be had at those institutions of learning with which 

 your state is so amply provided. 



At one of your meetings, a few years since, I was interested in listening 

 to a paper from one of the professors of your Agricultural college, on the 

 use of wood ashes as a fertilizer for fruit trees; and so strong was the 

 impression left as to their value for that purpose, that ever since then I 

 have been using them largely for this purpose and I have found them val- 

 uable beyond my anticipations, as a plant food, for everything in the way 

 of fruits to which I apply them, and it seems to me if we of the east can 

 aflPord to purchase and pay transportation a long distance for them you 

 certainly can not afford to allow them to be carried off from your fields. 



But as I shall have occasion to refer to this subject in another connec- 

 tion, 1 will simply say, try two or three tons of wood ashes and two hun- 

 dred to three hundred pounds of bone meal per acre to your orchards, 

 once in two to three years, and watch for the results. 



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