MY DUOHESS ORCHARD. 299 



Capt. Reed : Have you any apple trees on a southern slope ? 



Mr. Stone : No, I have not. ' 



Mr. Penning: Did you cultivate the orchard the first three 

 or four years? 



Mr. Stone: Yes, I cultivated the ground all over. When the 

 trees became pretty large I seeded the ground down. 



Mr. Underwood : What is your soil ? 



Mr. Stone: It is a dark loam with a yellow clay subsoil. 



Mr. Elliot : It was originally timber land ? 



Mr. Stone : Yes, brush land, about the same thing. 



Mr. Penning: How do you recommend planting the rows? 



Mr. Stone: I don't believe that makes much difference. My 

 reason for saying that is because this Duchess orchard is in the 

 form of a small circle. It inclines mostly to the east, but the north 

 end of it falls slightly to the southeast. 



Mr. McCulley : How far apart are your trees? 



Mr. Stone : Sixteen feet apart. That is too close, however, 

 I find. 



Mr. Underwood: How far apart would you plant? 



Mr. Stone : I have planted an orchard since that time twenty- 

 one feet apart, but if I should plant again I would put them twenty- 

 five or thirty feet. I believe it would be better. 



Mr. Stone : I omitted to tell one thing which I think is im- 

 portant. I feed to my pigs all the decayed fruit, the windfalls. 



Mr. A. B. Lyman: That Duchess orchard is a model orchard, 

 and the pigs eating those windfall apples insures the perfection of 

 his fruit, and that is the reason he grows good fruit without spray- 

 ing. 



Mr. Stone : I think the pigs and the bees together are re- 

 sponsible for that condition. 



Mr. A. Brackett : I was employed by our secretary to collect 

 some apples for the St. Louis show. I scoured the country thor- 

 oughly, and I must say I did not find any orchard that had as fine 

 Duchess as Mr. Stone raised in that orchard which he has just 

 described. They were entirely free from worms or from insects 

 or fungous disease, and all of the trees looked perfectly healthy 

 and thrifty. In regard to this basin he spoke of, I do not think 

 he made it entirely plain to all of you. It is just a hollow in the 

 ground around the tree that holds the water so it does not run away 

 from the base of the tree. I think that is one great point we over- 

 look in raising an orchard in this country. Very often a tree sold 

 from the nursery is on tender roots and not perfectly hardy in 

 this northern country. If you cultivate the orchard and cultivate 

 it thoroughly you will perhaps get svifficient moisture to main- 

 fain the tree, but if yoii seed it down you do not give it a chance to 

 get plenty of water, and your ground is dry when the orchard 

 goes into winter quarters. Mr. Stone has his orchard seeded down, 

 but he has this little basin around his Duchess trees and in that 

 way he gets a sufficient amount of water to put those trees in as 

 good shape as they woi;ld be if under cultivation. 



Mr. Elliot : Do you put a mound around the base of the tree 

 to keep the water from freezing that flows in ? 



