458 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



orchard is ready to be planted again. We make a great mistake in 

 our reports about the hardiness of trees. One man will report one 

 way, and another man will report his trees thrifty and healthy. If 

 a tree fruits heavily its vitality is exhausted, and the hardiness of 

 an apple depends upon so many conditions of soil, climate, etc. that 

 we cannot say that an apple is hardy everywhere. I believe the 

 hardy apples you have got here will prove a failure if you take 

 them away from the conditions you have here. You cannot make a 

 statement here in regard to anything, but some one will appear and 

 give an experience exactly the reverse. Let us give the conditions 

 under which we are laboring. (Applause.) 



Mr. Kellogg: If there is any advantage in the whole-root sys- 

 tem this man gets pretty near it. I would plant the seed where the 

 apple tree should stand. I do not believe in the whole-root system. 

 You will get the downward roots anyway. 



Z'.Ir. Patten : Mr. Yahnke seems to be very positive in his 

 preference for a small tree. About thirty-five years ago when I 

 came to northern Iowa there was a man living there by the name 

 of Hyse, one of the most practical orchardists we ever had in that 

 section of country, and there was another man living in Mitchell 

 county, and their trees were six to eight inches in diameter. I 

 had a good deal of business with those two men, and they were men 

 who were practical orchardists, and those men would not plant 

 small trees. They wanted the best three-year-old tree they could 

 get, or even a tree four years old. My preference would be today, 

 if I could get a two-year-old and a year-old tree, I would take the 

 first of those trees, and I think it would stand more chances than 

 any other tree you could select. 



Mr. Yahnke : Just one word more. We are both right, I 

 think. (Laughter.) It is all right to plant a bigger tree if you 

 have an ideal place to plant it, but when you have not an ideal place, 

 like mine and Mr. Busse's, where you have to plant your trees it is 

 better to plant a young tree, because the roots will go down to seek 

 water, while an older tree will bear more fruit. 



Mr. Philips : This is a matter upon which we are not agreed, 

 and it is a question which comes up everywhere. I was delegated 

 to plant a trial orchard in northern Wisconsin. I have a report 

 here of that orchard which it will take me just eight minutes to 

 read. That orchard has been planted eight years, and I have made 

 experiments in the growth of those trees right along the lines this 

 man has been speaking about. I planted one-year-old, two-year-old 

 and five-year-old trees in the same row, and I have the dimensions 

 of those trees here. 



"In the spring of 1896 I planted eighteen Northwestern Greening 

 apple trees in the same row. Nine were two-year-olds and 

 nine were five-year-olds. In 1903 I find the five-year-old trees aver- 

 age twelve inches in circumference and the two-year-olds eleven 

 and one-half inches in circumference, and in three years more the 

 two-year-olds, having been set back less in transplanting, will be 

 away ahead of the older trees, an argument in favor of planting 

 young trees. I also planted at same time nine different varieties of 



