518 ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



that I wanted for apple trees, and I had this growth cut off in mid- 

 summer, and in the fall set fire to it, burning nearly clean without 

 any piling, and surveyed off the rows thirty-six feet apart each way, 

 and whether the place for a tree went on a stnmp or rock, we dug 

 the holes, and about sixty per cent, of those holes were dug with 

 dynamite to blow out the stumps and rocks so as to get the tree 

 right where I wanted it. When this planting was going on, an 

 Italian who had been with me eight or ten years, said, "Why not 

 plant peach trees," and I said, "Peaches must be tilled; peaches 

 want tillage better than apples and this land is too rough to till," 

 and he replied, "This best peach land, no better land around than 

 this for the peach, give you a liner tree; you want to plant this land 

 with peach." I said to him, "It can't be done; it is too rough; it can't 

 be tilled." In a day or two he came back again and tried to hammer 

 it into me; he said, "I think more about peach; I tell you I work for 

 3'ou nine years; now I like to go in business for myself; you think no 

 peach grow there; you make me a partner there, and 1 make the 

 peach grow like hell." Now, Lewis's "hell" is really like heaven; he 

 is one of those fellows who makes things grow, and my Secretary, 

 when he went out said to me, "Mr. Hale, what are you going to do 

 about that; whatever you are going to do. you had better be doing 

 it, Lewis knows what good peach land is," and I made a contract 

 with Louie to quit working on a salarv, and move up there on the 

 hill. Of course it took more dynamite, and he planted peach trees 

 eighteen by eighteen between the apples which were thirty-six by 

 thirty-six feet. Lewis's idea was to break up the ground pretty 

 thoroughly and grub around those trees. Those trees were planted 

 in better dug holes than most holes are dug in America for that 

 purpose. He shook out all the grass roots, stones and trash of every 

 kind, and made it fine and mellow as for fine seeds, and set the trees. 

 We used there a moderate amount of fertilizer, and made a good 

 start in the Spring, and he grubbed around the tree, so that there 

 was a place about six feet in diameter thoroughly worked up around 

 those trees and he hoed them over several times and they made a 

 good growth that first Summer. I had across the way another 

 orchard that I started the year before where the land had been 

 cleared, most all stumps and stones got out at an expense of over one 

 hundred dollars an acre, and well plowed, and as I went away I told 

 Lewis, here is culture on the one side, and here is your grub method 

 on the other. I went away in June, and came back in a couple of 

 months, and found Lewis had a couple of Italian friends who had 

 come from Italy, and he made a contract with those fellows to grub 

 it over, the entire ground between the trees in one section of his 

 orchard, and where he dug all over, they were growing there better 

 than in the plowed land that it had cost $100 per acre to clean, and 

 he said "Mr. Hale, you want to grub hoe the whole business;" I 

 said, "You said you were going to grub around the trees," and he 

 said, "I did not tell you how much I was going to grub." and I con- 

 cluded it would cost about three thousand dollars to grub that whole 

 orchard, but they grew so much better, possibly it might pay to do it. 

 The rocks and stones are as thick almost as your heads are here in 

 this hall. Now the conditions would be almost as easy to plow in 

 that land as it would be plow between your heads which I see before 

 me. There were rocks weighing from two hundred to four hun- 



