FORTIETH ANNUAL REPORT. 105 



go to Pittsburg. Detroit is our best market for sour cherries. Cincin- 

 nati is a good market. 



For sour cherries we grow the Montmorency. It is the best sour 

 cherry we have ever gotten hold of. We are growing two later varieties 

 the Bing and the Lambert. These come in after all the other sweet 

 cherries are gone. 



You cannot raise good cherries unless you give the trees plenty of 

 room. Why do you plant so close and then have to prune and prune and 

 prune? That will hold true on every thing in the fruit line. 



We grow the early Richmond but that is pretty soft and is without 

 sufficient color to meet the demands of many. However it is a good 

 bearer and there are many people who will have no other cheri-y. You 

 must give life and vitality to the trees, if you want them to grow and 

 develop as they should. We like the red May Duke. It is a sub-acid 

 cherry, a good bearer and the fruit is of an excellent quality. We grow 

 the Louis Phillips which is one of the best cherries but is a shy bearer. 

 It must be ten or twelve years old before it bears. Then there is the 

 English Morello cherry. It is sour, dark and takes well on the markets 

 and brings good prices. 



I advise keeping the fruit ofif the trees until it has size and strength 

 enough to bear. 



Just a word about protection from fungus. Y^ou should spray these 

 cherries after the little cherry is about the size of a green pea or about 

 half grown and by spraying at this time, you catch the little spores 

 just before the fungus starts; for this purpose we use Bordeaux. 



We have gotten rid of the curculio. We went around under the trees 

 and picked up the worthless fruit and put them on the hard gravel 

 road where they are tramped upon and the worms are crushed. We 

 have no more worms in our orchard. 



It has been advocated that we should plow in our orchards. Y^ou can 

 do no plowing in my orchard. I believe in clean cultivation. We begin 

 with a spring tooth harrow and the ground works up nicely. Follow 

 this with commercial fertilizers. We use 1,000 pounds of high grade fer- 

 tilizers to the acre the first time over. We work that land until the 

 middle of the summer, then we go in with gang harrows — one man and 

 three horse team will cover 30 acres a day. They go over the ground 

 one way and the next week they go back over it the other way. That 

 keeps a fine dust mulch. We have clean culture. Then in the summer 

 about the middle of July we sow a cover crop and for this we use the 

 Canada field pea. We also use oats; we do not sow rye. The root system 

 of bearing fruit trees is right at the top of the ground so I do not think 

 a plow should ever go into an orchard. 



We usually get |1.75 a crate for our sour cherries — sometimes 75 

 cents more than the general market. You see there is a profit right 

 there. Our sweet cherries, we calculate fl.OO for a 10 pound box of 

 cherries. One season we got |2.00 a box for 10 pound boxes. During the 

 last year my wife kept track of how many Montmorency cherries were 

 picked from one tree, (one of the largest) and we found that they had 

 picked 550 pounds, these were contracted at 4 cents a pound. Our 

 orchard is planted 50 trees to the acre. We have sweet cherry trees 

 from which we pick 50 boxes. These cherries are the Schmidt's Big- 

 gareau. 



This has been a somewhat rambling talk on the subject of cherries but 



