456 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



fruit apiece, when the blight made its appearance in the orchard. 



The first year these escaped, but the next the trees showed 

 considerable many blighted twigs, but nothing serious however. 



The following season (two years ago) the blight was more dis- 

 astrous, and I was obliged to cut one of the four trees, and the 

 past season another nearly succumbed, but the other two, which 

 stand on the opposite (south) side of the orchard, seem perfectly 

 sound, and only a few of the twigs have blighted as yet. Both 

 trees bore a heavy crop of fruit the past season. 



The second season after setting my orchard I enlarged it to 

 one hundred trees, giving especial attention in the selection to 

 what I had learned to be essential — hardiness. 



I have made it a rule from the first never to let a spring pass 

 without setting more or less trees, although sometimes this was 

 done at a sacrifice of the necessaries of life. 



I have now two forest groves, one of twelve and the other of 

 ten acres, both of which are successful and fast growing into large 

 trees. They consist mostly of ash, with a sprinkling of elm, box 

 elder, black walnut, black cherry, soft maple and catalpa for va- 

 riety. 



One of the groves forms the northwest windbreak for one of 

 my orchards, being but four rods away from the north line. 

 The south and east of the same orchard is protected by a close 

 row of red cedars about four rods away. 



The space between is reserved for a fire break and is in brome 

 grass at present. I have in orchard 350 apple trees. 450 native 

 plum trees, a few Early Richmond cherry trees, with grapes, cur- 

 rants, gooseberries, black cap and Turner raspberries and straw- 

 berries, all of which yield good returns for the labor bestowed upon 

 them. 



I set my apple trees in rows thirty feet apart and fifteen feet 

 apart in the rows. My custom has been to make my orchard my 

 garden spot, and I bestow good care on the garden, dressing it with 

 a covering of barnyard manure about once in two years. By 

 giving it my personal care, it not only gives good returns for my 

 labor, but it afifords rrie opportunity and pleasure while doing 

 this work to observe the orchard trees and with my jack knife 

 to keep them pruned and headed aright, and this with little or no 

 loss of time. 



If the rows run north and south the closeness of the trees 

 in the row will be quite a protection from the sun. But as a pro- 



