TENDENCIES IN HORTICULTURE. 171 



H number of commercial fruit growers in Missouri, Arkansas and our 

 own state) the southeastern section of the state, and especially the 

 section comprising the river counties, is one of the finest apple growing 

 regions in the world. This section of the state has the natural con- 

 ditions, the soil, the climate, the natural rainfall, the bright, sunny days 

 to produce fruit of the very highest quality. 



The great fruit regions of the western United States — Oregon, Wash- 

 ington and Idaho — have just as many difficult problems confronting the 

 apple growing business as we find in eastern Nebraska, and when the 

 fruit is produced they cannot compete with this section of the state in 

 quality. 



To grow fruit successfully in any country requires a high classed 

 man and a knowledge of the subject, and one who is not willing to 

 equip himself with this accomplishment had better stay out of the 

 business and continue to be satisfied with from $25 to $40 an acre 

 profits from growing corn, hogs and alfalfa, and it might be stated in 

 this connection that the average farmer in eastern Nebraska is content 

 with a smaller profit than above mentioned. If a man is anxious to 

 make a safe investment, which after ten years' time will return great 

 profits, he can buy a patch of land in eastern Nebraska from twenty 

 acres up, plant it to apple trees of the right varieties, and duplicate the 

 returns from the land which we see in the orchard of Henry C. Smith, 

 of Falls City. $600 per acre in a single year is equivalent to $60 an acre 

 for a period of ten years. A man need not ask returns of such propor- 

 tions for a single year because an orchard in eastern Nebraska ten years 

 of age is just commencing to bear. For the next ten years, properly 

 handled, it should return a net profit of from $150 to $200 an acre, and 

 this can be done. 



There are as many horticulturists in the state of Nebraska as any 

 other class of people, but ignorance of horticultural methods has pre- 

 vented a large majority of tillers of the soil from engaging in this class 

 of work. Hundreds of families have been discouraged with ordinary 

 farming in the state and have gone west — to Idaho, Washington and 

 Oregon to engage in the raising of fruit. Just what frame of mind a 

 man must be in to prompt him to travel all over the United States in 

 search of some pleasant spot where he might plant an orchard, is difficult 

 to analyze. Here in eastern Nebraska we find that nature has been most 

 generous in supplying all the elements and conditions necessary to the 

 production of fruit. This is not the case in the great irrigated districts 

 of the west. There are about five propositions with which it will be 

 necessary for the fruit grower to become acquainted if he expects to 

 make a success of commercial orcharding. First, the choice of land, its 

 preparation and methods of planting the trees; second, the proper selec- 

 tion and proportions of commercial varieties; third, cultivation and 

 pruning; fourth, smudging and orchard heating to keep off frost; fifth, 

 spraying. To these must also be added perhaps the most important con- 



