MY SEEDLING ORCHARD. 77 



been produced. When they came into bearing I found they were 

 fine apples, but they were too tender for our chniate. These things 

 discouraged me and caused me to get Wealthy. I have no faith in 

 a nursery tree, in any nursery tree remaining alive. An apple tree 

 is like the oak. Our climate requires a tap root. If any one asks 

 me how to get an apple I tell him to grow it from the seed. I bought 

 trees from the nursery that stood nine years and never showed a sign 

 of blossoming during all that time, and while those trees were grow- 

 ing a little seedling came up alongside of them and has borne a 

 bushel of apples. I took up the tree and removed it to another place, 

 and that tree bore me three crops of apples before my nursery grown 

 trees bore one, and I got so discouraged that I took the bark off, 

 and the next year I had a bushel of fine Wealthy apples. I have 

 over one hundred seedling apple trees growing transplanted from 

 the nursery row that I depend on for my children and my grand- 

 children, and I am satisfied that that tap root will go through all 

 the vicissitudes of extreme dry and extreme cold and lack of cultiva- 

 tion. If we depend on those trees that have been changed from a 

 tap root to surface roots they may make an effort to establish an- 

 other tap root, and if we ever get any benefit from them we must 

 give them thorough cultivation as long as they are growing. You 

 must have a complete dust blanket around those trees, because when 

 they get into bearing there is no root extending far enough below 

 that extreme drouth and that extreme freezing to retain the vitality. 

 These are my observations, and I have been convinced by those ob- 

 servations and experience that we must depend upon seedling trees. 

 If they grow and have choice fruit let them alone, and if they do not 

 have good fruit graft on them anything you want. I have a tree 

 on which I have four varieties growing. I had no other place to 

 graft them. I have more than sixty-six varieties of apples, and 

 there is no variety that I got from the nursery. We have got to 

 find what tree will do the best in the section of country we each 

 live in. 



Now, fellow members of the horticultural society. I want to make 

 this prediction, that when the horticulturists of this state start on 

 the right lines to .adapt their trees to the various conditions of climate 

 and soil required, this state will be known as one of the greatest 

 apple producing states in the union, and some of the best apples 

 will come from the prairies in the western part of the state. When 

 we have extreme drouth those trees must depend upon the surface 

 roots, and the tree cannot withstand the drain upon them, they can- 

 not withstand the conditions they must go through in this climate. 



Mr. Frank Yahnke : The gentleman tells us we must depend 

 upon seedlings entirely. I think it would be wrong to let this get 

 in our report and in the various papers in just the way it has come. 

 It would lead to the belief that no tree was p-ood for anvthing except 

 a seedlino-. There are more bad seedlino-s than grafted trees. 



The Secretary: That will go into the report too. (Laughter.) 



Mr. Yahnke : That is all rieht. The tap root of a tree does 

 not depend upon whether the tree is a seedling, but it depends upon 

 the root system it has got. 



