282 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



crops of fruit maturing- here. The Loudon, as a red raspberry, 

 stands at the head with Mr. Yahnke, it is quite evident. As to 

 other small fruits, the writer did not notice any particular prefer- 

 ence. The apple orchards, both young and old, were looking well, 

 but as this is somewhat an off year in apple fruitage the crop as 

 a whole was comparatively light. The same may be said of plums, 

 although there was a better setting of this class of fruit than the 

 writer has seen at any other point this year. As to cherries, there 

 were in a general way three orchards of different ages. The 

 orchard of medium age consisted of about two hundred trees, eight 

 years planted, and these were well loaded with nearly ripe fruit, 

 yielding, as we were informed, an average of about two cases to the 

 tree, the cases holding sixteen quarts each. The youngest and 

 oldest of these three orchards were not bearing as well as the 

 one above referred to, but were carrying nevertheless very fair 

 crops. These orchards were of the variety of cherry named "Ho- 

 mer," from its having been planted extensively in and about the 

 village of Homer, a few miles south of Winona. There were scat- 

 tering trees of other varieties of cherries in Mr. Yahnke's orchard, 

 but the fruit that they bore vvas inferior in quality and scant in 

 quantity, and many of the trees looked not to be hardy. The 

 Homer cherry seemed to be in every way healthy, and, judging 

 from this one instance, a safe and profitable fruit to plant, at least 

 in that section and in that soil. The cherry orchard of a neighbor of 

 Mr. Yahnke's, that we saw across the fence, contained larger trees 

 than the most of those in Mr. Yahnke's orchard and were well filled 

 with equally handsome fruit. Judging from appearances, the soil 

 in this location is well watered by seepage beneath the surface 

 through the substrata of rocks leading down from the bluff's above. 

 Mr. Yahnke is especially well located for his purpose, and he has 

 a pleasant home and in respect to location a very picturesque one. 

 We spent the afternoon looking over his place, between the showers, 

 and visiting with this genial old gentleman and his interesting 

 family. 



The early evening hour found us on the way back up the river 

 to Lake City, where we spent the night with Mr. Underwood. Dur- 

 ing the forenoon of Wednesday we had opporunity, it being a 

 pleasant day, to look over the orchards and nursery grounds of the 

 Jewell Nursery Co. As at Mr. Yahnke's we found comparatively 

 small settings of apples in the orchards, although a notable exception 

 to this were several rows of Okabena in one of the older orchards 

 that has been for several years thoroughly cultivated early and late. 

 The company has one very interesting orchard growing well up 



