284 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



.as I believe we can grow it. Celery, after it has attained its full growth and 

 is bleached, is taken and put away the same as you would cabbages for 

 the winter and is shipped all over the U. S. by express and the large crops 

 in refrigerator cars. When celery was first raised at Kalamazoo there 

 was a very limited market, and when they found that it was growing 

 rapidly into favor and that our north marshes were especially adapted to 

 it, the acreage increased so fast that there was thousands of dollars' 

 worth spoiled. It was first sent to the commission people in Chi- 

 cago, and I do not think I need to dilate on that subject at all, but we 

 found that it would not do. It is now sold about as low as it ever will 

 be; we sell it at 15 to 22 cents per dozen. That is quite a difference from 

 35 cents. I think that probably fruit growing will come to that, that the 

 price you will get for fruit in the future will be something like what we 

 ^et for celery according to the cost of celery. If we get 15 cents that 

 would be about 100 per cent. 



EXPERIMENT STATION AT SOUTH HAVEN. 



T. T. LYON, SOUTH HAVEN. 



I would state to begin with that if I were to begin this work today, 

 with the experience of the last few years, I might do it in quite a dif- 

 ferent way in some respects. The soil on which the Station is located 

 is in some respects peculiar, with much variety. The country seems to 

 have been originally covered with timber, which had been blown down 

 and large amounts of earth left where the stumps were overturned, leav- 

 ing hummocks. In some places there is a subsoil of poor drifting sand. 

 Again, an occasional spot with sand mixed with iron ore becomes imper- 

 vious to water, and if I had the authority and means, my plan would have 

 l)een to put the subsoil plow through this and mix up such subsoils as 

 those, not to bring them to the surface to be sure, but to break them up 

 in such a way that trees would not be damaged. I have cherry trees 

 placed under the same apparent circumstances, one of them three or 

 four times as large as the other. These differences might thus have been 

 prevented to some extent. 



The institution has been engaged in experimenting quite largely with 

 strawberries. Perhaps a dozen or two varieties might occur in a very 

 unfavorable spot, but could not be detected because the unfavorable con- 

 dition occurs in the subsoil, and hence the comparison is not satisfactory, 

 and the consequence is these experiments must be tried over and over 

 again that the average of the results may be more equal. We readily 

 understand that a strawberry plant having fruited once will never fririt 

 again unless it can produce new crowns and new roots. In the location 

 in which we have been accustomed to plant them, they, to some extent 

 perhaps, exhaust the soil during the first year's planting. A remedy for 

 this might have been to plow away a furrow from each side of the row, 

 put in some nicely decomposed manure which it would take a year to pro- 

 duce, and turn the furrow back and give the plants the advantage of 

 this. This has not so far been done. 



