810 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
to produce the longest season of bloom; the front yard reaches almost 
around the house, so the view from the kitchen window is nearly as 
fine as from the front porch. She can show you the favorite flowers of each 
member of her family, and in some sheltered spot she will show you some 
of the tall, old-fashioned flowers that used to grow in mother’s garden. To 
give my opinion of this woman I will borrow a phrase from “Josiah Allen’s 
Wife,” and say, “She is always mejum.” 
From the vast storehouse of nature we have chosen flowers to represent 
the purest and noblest impulses of the human heart; mothers drop them on 
the baby’s pillow; the bride carries them to the altar, and we fashion them 
in many forms to be laid upon the casket. They are our life long compan- 
ions, and through their refining influence one often betrays his true char- 
acter. 
WHAT CAN BE PROFITABLY GROWN IN THE 
ORCHARD. 
S. D. RICHARDSON, WINNEBAGO CITY. 
The most profitable crop that I ever saw grown in the orchard was ap- 
ples. Before the trees are large enough to bear and require the whole 
ground, there is a chance to raise something else with profit if the require- 
ments of successful apple growing in Minnesota are not forgotten. 
That veteran horticulturist of Martin Co., Capt. W. H. Budd, said to me 
several years ago, that his experience in Minnesota since 1856 had taught 
him that if we did not want our apple trees to blight we must keep the 
ground shaded from the direct rays of the sun as much as possible, and my 
experience agrees with his. Any crop that must be removed in the fall, leav- 
ing the ground bare for winter, should not be grown in the orchard. If I 
wished to kill a young orchard I would leave the ground bare and level in- 
the fall. I saw it tried several years ago at Granada, Martin Co. The trees 
were half dead in the spring, and it was not a very hard winter either. 
A man near Amboy, Blue Earth Co., had a young orchard that he gave 
good cultivation, but it blighted very badly. He asked Mr. Derby, of Win- 
nebago City, what he could do to stop it. Mr. Derby told him to seed it to 
clover, and if he cut it leave it on the ground for mulch. He followed Mr. 
Derby’s advice, and his orchard stopped blighting. 
Last summer I saw in the garden of Mr. Nims, of Vernon Center, Blue 
Earth Co., a thrifty young orchard—trees full of apples and apparently not 
injured in the least by the trying weather of last winter. The rows of trees 
and space between was occupied with currants and raspberries. 
Mr. Mills, of Garden City, had a heavy crop of blackberries in his 
orchard. He was growing a profitable crop and has a fine young orchard 
just coming into bearing. 
The orchard is a good place for the asparagus bed. Corn can be profit- 
ably grown in a young orchard, then husked on the hill, and the stalks left 
standing on the ground over the winter, if the right kind of a man drives the 
team when cultivating. Only a man who loves trees and will keep the ends 
of the whiffletrees away from their bodies should ever venture into a young 
orchard with a team. If the trees are grown with low tops even the ordinary 
