62 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



VICE-PRESIDENT'S REPORT, THIRD CONG. DIST. 



A, H. REED, GLENCOE. 



In this, my second report to our annual meeting, I must confess 

 that I have learned but little outside of my own county of interest 

 to the society through the lack of some system, or a system, 

 by which the vice-presidents are supplied with proper uniform 

 blanks and the address of members, in each of the counties in their 

 district, to whom the vice-president can look to for reports when 

 asked, on receiving a blank on which to report his county. 



I did, however, visit an apple and plum orchard in Dakota 

 county belonging to Hon. C. F. Staples, worthy of note for the fruit 

 it was producing while trees were uncultivated and seemingly neg- 

 lected. There were several acres of apple and plum trees, contain- 

 ing several hundred trees, the grass knee high, growing up to the 

 bodies of the trees. The apple trees were mostly Wealthy, about a 

 foot in diameter, and were producing a great crop notwithstanding 

 their neglected condition. The great cyclonic wind of about August 

 20th had blown many of the apples to the ground, of which a hun- 

 dred and fifty bushels had been picked up and marketed at fifty 

 cents a bushel. 



The plum orchard was a magnificent sight to behold. Each and 

 every tree was loaded with large, ripe plums to such an extent that 

 many of the limbs hung to the ground from the weight of the fruit. 

 I understood that the market price of plums was so low that it did 

 not pay to gather and take them to the city a few miles distant. 



I think the same condition of a large yield of apples and plums 

 extended over the whole district. In my own county, that of Mc- 

 Leod, the product of standard apples was more than double what 

 it had ever before been, and the crop of wild plums was immense. 

 In my own garden the trees of the native or wild variety bore pro- 

 fusely, while my imported trees of high sounding names bore but 

 a few, and some of them that had appeared thrifty the year before 

 winter-killed. 



At our county fair, held at Hutchinson about the middle of Sep- 

 tember, I was happily surprised to note the display of the king of all 

 fruit, the apple, produced in the county and put on exhibition by 

 farmers living in different sections of the county, some on the bleak 

 prairie, where it is demonstrated that apple trees will grow, thrive 

 and produce just as well as in the timber. In noting the different 

 plates of apples exhibited by twelve different farmers, there were 

 twelve plates of Wealthy, ten of Hibernal, six of Patten's Greening, 

 six Duchess, four of Peerless, four Okabena, three Charlamof, 



i 



