194 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



Mr. Krick, like many others, who planted years ago, has always 

 cultivated with a stirring plow two or three times each year, but 

 would not now recommend this method of cultivation. I have been 

 over other counties in this horticultural district more or less the 

 past twenty years and find about the same conditions to contend 

 with as here, finding once in a while some man who has had faith 

 enough in Nebraska to plant and care for successfullj'-, while 

 the majority of men fail from different causes. We visited a 

 peach orchard near Beaver City last summer while the crop was 

 being gathered, where the owner reported between two-thou- 

 sand and three-thousand bushels of fruit, which he was selling 

 from $1.50 to $2.00 per bushel. In one orchard near McCook, 

 one-hundred miles west of Minden, two-thousand bushels of 

 cherries were grown. The planting of budded peaches, to any 

 extent over these western counties is of comparative recent 

 dates, many thinking that a seedling peach is good enough, and 

 think that they cost them nothing. This idea seems to be wear- 

 ing off in the past few years, that it costs no more time and labor 

 to produce a choice budded tree than a seedling. 



Realizing that the failure of the many, in comparison with the 

 success of the few, in localities where the local conditions as to 

 soil and climate are the same to the man who fails, as to him 

 who succeeds, we are led to believe that the causes of success 

 or failure lie largely in the interest and the knowledge of him 

 who plants. It is then largely a matter of education and from 

 what source that information is obtained. In the first place 

 then, one must become interested in any work of the kind as 

 the principal element in his success. It must be of that kind 

 of interest which will prompt him to obtain all the practical 

 knowledge available, which will bear on the subject in hand. 

 John Smith buys a bill of trees, and afterwards says to himself, 

 "I was a fool to let that agent talk me into bnying this bill, be- 

 cause the trees will not grow in Nebraska any way. But now 

 I have bought them, I will plant them, but I do not expect they 

 will grow, and if they do I will never get any fruit from them." 

 He plants his trees as quickly as possible, just to get the job off 

 his hands, and perhaps does not see them again till sometime 

 in the fall, when he finds the result as he at first predicted, 

 all dead. 



