SUM^HER MEETING AT LOUISIANA. 39 



REPOET OF COMMITTEE OX ORCHARDS. 



REPORT BY D. S. HOLMAN, OF SPRINGFIELD. 



Officers and Members: 



As a member of your Committee on Orchards, I am requested by. 

 your chairman, Mr. Gano, to report to you the condition of the orchards 

 and the fruit prospect at the present time in southweet Missouri. 



Allow me to preface what I may report by regret that we do not 

 get into these orchard reports that system and thoroughness a matter 

 of so much importance demonds. I have hoped for two or three years 

 that the next time some one with more time and better method would 

 give you a report worth reading, and worthy of our section of the state, 

 but the same dififlculty is with us once more, and we proceed. 



Allow me once more to tell you, without boasting, but gladly, that 

 in the ojiinion of a part of your committee that the hill country from 

 which I report and a strip of similar lands from northwestern Arkansas, 

 say from the top of the Ozarks to the summit of the Boston Moun- 

 tains, is nature's best apple lands of the west. As experiment in plant- 

 ing and fruiting the apple there advances this becomes more apparent. 

 To utilize the natural advantages given here is the mission of horticul- 

 ture to-day with us. While we are slow and have made many, very 

 many, failures, we are learning and, I believe, going forward. One of 

 our orchardists there said if he had known at first what to plant he 

 would have been many thousand dollars richer to-day. Our orchards 

 have for profit too many varieties. This we have learned at much 

 cost, and are correcting by only planting a few sorts. 



Another evil in our orchards there is want of proper treatment. 

 We have planted too much and cultivated too little. We have at last 

 learned that the law by which man eats bread must be recognized in 

 the orchard. A little more sweat upon the brow and we may eat and 

 sell better apples. 



Our orchards are getting more'cultivation and are responding in 

 good growth of wood and healthy, good foliage, looking a little better 

 now than last year. * 



As prospect for crop of fruit there was a general good show of 

 bloom on all trees but the peach, and nearly all varieties of the apple 

 set fruit well, and while much of it dropped there is, perhaps, enough 



