424 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



horticnltiire in all the United States. Here is something that can be 

 demonstrated by actual test so there will be no doubt about it. I 

 am not afraid of the outcome should the test be made. Set to work 

 and get that eighty acre farm, as suggested by the president, and let 

 Professor Green decide that question. It is one of the most impor- 

 tant questions that confronts apple growers today. 



Mr. S. D. Richardson : Has not the United States been experi- 

 menting along this very line for five or six years in Ohio? Those 

 that w^ere grown in sod and mulched were best, and those that were 

 given some kind of a cover crop with cultivation were next. 



Prof. Shaw : The gentlemen will remember that experiment 

 took place in another state ; this is Minnesota. I want to be per- 

 fectly fair, and the conditions in another state might make the result 

 entirely different. This is a question which must be decided in the 

 state of Minnesota ; it cannot be decided in Ohio or any other state. 

 I am not here to say that farmers shall plant out orchards and never 

 cultivate them. They should cultivate them a couple of years, but as 

 soon as they can let them put them in grass and regulate the growth 

 by mulching, and that is the only way to keep the tree in a healthy 

 condition. 



FOUR MINNESOTA ORCHARDS IN FIFTY YEARS. 



WM. S. CHOWEN, MINNETONKA. 



Fifty-three years ago the first week in June, 1853. I took a claim 

 on the land upon which I now live, and having come from a part 

 of the country whicli I considered one of the best apple growing 

 sections in the United States I thought an orchard should be the 

 first thing I ought to prepare for. When T went to work to prepare 

 for an orchard the first thing was to get grafts to start the orchard. 

 At that time there were not many inhabitants in this part of the coun- 

 try, and there were not so many nurserymen in the business as there 

 are today. In 1856 I had my orchard ground all ready. About that 

 time I saw an advertisement in a paper of a man up at St. Peter 

 who had grafts to sell. I sent there and got fifty and set them in 

 the orchard, and they grew. I want to state right here, before I for- 

 get it, that I never lost a tree in my life when I set it out, and I have 

 set a great many trees. Those grafts grew nicely, and when they 

 were two vears old I set them in the orchard. I want to make this 

 statement here because this society is considered pretty good author- 

 ity on orchards. When they were four years old from the graft, my 

 old friend Gideon, up there on the lake, came down to see me on 

 some business. He knew I went through the bluff's up there with 

 a gun once in a while, and he asked me to test all the wild opiums 

 I found ; so he had come down there to see what I had found. 



