76 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



block of a single variety, both in cultivation and in picking the fruit, 



and that unless mixed planting is shown to be absolutely neces- 

 sary such advice as we have been driving toward in the foregoing 

 discussion is dangerous. Personally, I think these men minimize 

 the dangers of solid planting, and magnify the difficulties of mixed 

 planting. If one were to plant a hundred and sixty acres in any 

 class of fruits he would hardly want to put the whole area to one 

 variety, even though that variety were Ben Davis apples. If two 

 or three varieties are to be planted it is just as easy to put them 

 into strips a half mile long and three or four rows wide as it is 

 to put them into two eighty-acre blocks. I think that the general 

 opinion of practical fruit growers will bear me out in this. 



Attention should be called at this point to the fact already men- 

 tioned, that many varieties which are not strictly self-sterile bear 

 more and better fruit when suitably cross-fertilized. In many cases 

 this amounts to a great deal. Particularly when larger and better 

 looking fruit is secured, as is often the case, it has a direct influence 

 on the cash account, and this is the supreme test in all experiments. 

 The difference between No. I and No. 2 apples is not more than 

 a half-inch in the measure of their diameters, but it is apt to be 

 more than a half a dollar in the measure of their selling prices. 

 If proper cross-pollination will put twenty per cent more of the 

 apples in any orchard into the first grade barrels, then cross-pol- 

 lination had better be looked after. 



MUTUAL AFFINITIES OF VARIETIES. 



When the experimenters first began to tinker with these ques- 

 tions they were all apparently possessed of the feeling that striking 

 mutual affinities and distastes existed amongst the varieties of 

 plums, pears, apples, etc. The notion was, for instance, that though 

 Hawkeye might fertilize De Soto well enough, it still might be of 

 no value whatever in fertilizing Weaver or Miner, Ocheeda or 

 Rollingstone. Several of us inquisitive chaps spent a long time, 

 therefore, in prying into the private affections of our friends in 

 the orchard. It must be said that if they had any such private pre- 

 dilections they kept them well to themselves. All the teasing lit- 

 tle experiments yet performed have failed to bring out more than 

 what would make a good society scandal for a sensational New 

 York daily. At the present time it seems fairly certain that these 

 special proclivities cut no figure with the practical orchardist — 

 at least not in the present stage of our pomological development. 

 One variety will pollinate almost any other variety, providing that 

 the two blossom at the same time. 



