442 MINNKSOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL .SOCIETY. 



grade of our apples can be raised very much by pruning; very 

 young trees can be shaped so that scarcely any limbs will 

 need to be cut; and if trees can be regulated by judicious 

 pruning so as to bear every year they would in a series of years 

 be of more profit than a large crop every other year. 



Mr. Penning: Do you wax the limbs? 



Mr. Kenney: No, I don't. I looked them over carefully this 

 fall, and I noticed at the outer edge they were healed over nicely. 



Mr. Murray : How large limbs do you cuf ? 



Mr. Kenney : I look over the top, and if I see a place the sun 

 cannot get in I take out a limb. 



Mr. Murray: Without regard to the size of the limb? 



Mr. Kenney: Yes, if they are too thick. I think an apple that 

 is not colored up well is one that has not had enough sunshine. 



Mr. Murray : Have you ever had any rotting ? 



Mr. Kenney : I have not. I have trees I trimmed twenty years 

 ago, and I have not cut anything off since. Three years ago on 

 the 30th day of June we had a severe windstorm that blew down 

 a great many trees. I thought they had too much top and got too 

 much wind. I did not expect to get any apples this year, but apples 

 were much larger, and it did not cost me so much to harvest them. 

 I could not get a nicer lot of fruit, and the merchants who bought 

 them told me they could use as many as I could furnish them. 



Mr. Taylor : You told us last year about growing Malinda on 

 Duchess stock. 



Mr. Kenney : I think that is going to be a great success. I 

 have thirty Duchess trees top-worked last spring, top-worked with 

 Malinda, and apples growing on the Malinda trees were not half 

 as large as Malinda apples that grew on Duchess trees this year and 

 some last year. I sent some to St. Louis, and Mr. Yahnke said he 

 saw them, and he considered them the nicest he had ever seen. I 

 expect to get a hundred bushels or more another season. The 

 thermometer went down tO' twenty below zero, and there was not 

 a bud killed on those Malinda trees. When I had to cut out limbs 

 I cut out Duchess limbs. I thought it was better to have apples 

 that would bring a dollar a bushel late in the winter than to have 

 Duchess worth from twenty-five to fifty cents a bushel. 



Mr. Stone: I always paint the stubs of the limbs where I cut 

 them off. Is that a good plan? 



Mr, Kenney : Yes, I think it is a good plan, but I have had no 

 trouble with those W'ealthy I trimmed twenty years ago. 



Mr. Murray : We older horticulturists know that Peter Gideon 

 was absolutely opposed to cutting off any limbs bigger than his 

 little finger. My rule is to cut off the little limbs. I wish to give 

 you my experience in another line. I had one of the most pro- 

 ductive little orchards of wild plums I knew of anywhere, and the 

 trees did not seem to fail to bear every year. I went to work and 

 gave those trees a thorough pruning to put them in better shape, 

 and I cut off limbs without regard to size, and I got those trees in 

 good shape. That orchard was never worth anything afterward. I 



