96 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



hardest kind of soil, which increased the hardiness, but the season is 

 not long enough to mature the late varieties. Our first planting 

 was in the spring of 1885, and we have been planting considerably 

 every year since. 



In our plum orchard we have had, I think, about all the insect 

 pests known. We have had the curculio, the plum gouger and a 

 lot more, but they have disappeared, and the worst we have now is 

 the shot hole fungus and plum rot. The plum rot is really the worst 

 thing we have. It takes the blossoms in the spring — oftentimes 

 so they do not set any fruit — and it takes the small fruit in the 

 summer. Last year it was so bad we had no plums to market. 

 We did not spray. We did a little spraying once on some special 

 trees. 



Our apple trees came out all right. We had no trouble about 

 winter-killing. Sun-scald is something I do not know anything 

 about. I never had a sun-scalded tree on the farm. We had 

 a large amount of scab, and it was worse this year than last. 

 I think in time everybody will have the scab, so the man who 

 takes care of his orchard will be the only man who will get per- 

 fect fruit. Another thing which is dangerous in apple growing 

 is the brown rot. We had it last year, and this year it was a 

 good deal worse. Even the Duchess apple was not quite free 

 from it. and you could see them covered with a white mould, 

 which is the brown rot, and there were but few varieties exempt 

 from that rot. In my paper I have enumerated some of the 

 varieties. There are a few varieties that seem to be free 

 from scab. The Okabena has not much scab, and the Whitney No. 

 20 has been exempt from it. The Hibernal is one of the worst, and 

 we can certainly grow better varieties. People do not want to buy 

 it. The Antonovka is free from scab and rot. The rot is the most 

 serious thing we have to contend with at the present time, and if 

 it increases much more we shall not be able to raise any apples. 



One of the speakers mentioned the Compass cherry. I have 

 been growing it for ten or twelve years. It was all right, but it has 

 been subject to plum rot of late years, and the result is we get no 

 fruit from the Compass cherries. It is going the same way with 

 the plums, and we have not been able to get a blossom this year, 

 and I do not know what it will do next. 



It was a good season for red raspberries, and they did fairly well 

 on high land, but there were few places where the black raspberries 

 did well. The alkali in the soil seems to be detrimental to this kind 

 of fruit, and raspberries do not seem to grow on that soil. 



Mr. Seth Kenny : How do you succeed with dewberries ? 



Mr. Cook : I have not done anything with them for quite a 

 number of years. There are but few dewberries grown, and some- 

 body tells me that they grow where they are not taken care of and 

 yield a lot of fruit. The dewberries are so badly troubled with 

 anthracnose that it seems as though thev would be entirelv destroved. 



