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MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



MY PLUM ORCHARD. 



R. E. ITYN^SOX, MAXKATO. 



I have made a study of ])luni orchards for ten years, and I have 

 noticed that wherever an orchard has hcen set out in a chister or 

 thicket, as most all of the fruit'agents recommend, they come into 

 hearing- in f5ur or five years and bear one or two good crops, and 

 after that they begin to crowd each other, and they don't fertilize, 

 or if they do the plums are small and scabby. We had a grove of 

 native plums on the old homestead, of a very delicious plum. We 

 call them the Peach plum ; they taste like a peach. We always had 

 orders for more than we could supply. About twenty yearN ago 

 they bore heavy crops, but after the trees got larger they v.-nuld 



R. E. Hynson. Mankato- 



blossom full every year but would produce very little fruit. We 

 had a garden on one side of them, and I noticed the trees next to 

 the cultivated land always haa large, perfect fruit, while those inside 

 of the grove were almost worthless. That set me to thinking, '"what 

 can I do to make them all perfect ?" Some one told me they needed 

 bees to make them fertilize. So I bought a swarm of bees and 

 kept them in the orchard three years, but that was not a success. 

 The plums were too small and badly stung by curculio. So I 

 thought I would look over my apple orchard and see if I could not 

 get an idea from them that would give me light on the plum. I 



