136 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



CLOSE PLANTING OF TREES. 



J. S. HARRIS, I.A CRESCENT. 



I want to say a word in regard to the close planting- of 

 trees. I plant my trees too close because I have not land enough ; I 

 plant on other people's land ; I have three or four orchards in dif- 

 ferent places. I want to condemn the close planting of trees in our 

 district. All the trees where they stood twelve to sixteen feet apart 

 this year dropped their fruit a long time before they ought to have 

 done so. In my opinion the sap went into the growth, and the apples 

 went on the ground, and I don't believe close planting is a good 

 thing. There is another objection. Where trees are fifteen to six- 

 teen years old all the lower branches are shaded and the fruit is 

 light in color and inferior in flavor, and you have got to have a tall 

 step ladder to get up to the fruit. I condemn too close planting ; I 

 think it is injurious. I noticed another thing. I had one Duchess 

 tree that stood a number of rods from any other tree, and it did not 

 drop its fruit. All the others dropped their fruit very badly. This 

 one always produced very good crops, and I got good specimens 

 for the state fair when the others had been gone two weeks. The 

 quality of the fruit is a great deal better. Some seasons I could take 

 as much fruit from that one tree as I could take from six planted 

 close together. Where trees stand close together like that the fruit 

 ripens a good deal earlier and is poorer. 



I think it is a bad plan to let an orchard get set over with June 

 grass, because it will shed rain better than any roof you can put up. 

 You will find dry ground more frequent under blue grass than any- 

 where else. 



Air. J. S. Trigg (Iowa) : You have been engaged in fruit grow- 

 ing forty years. What have been the two or three valuable facts that 

 you have learned in those years of experience down there that you 

 have been engaged in fruit culture ? 



Mr. Harris : One of those facts is that you must give the trees 

 plenty of room ; another is that cultivation is better than any other 

 treatment. I used to keep the weeds ofif as clean as this floor and 

 then mulch, and about the first of September I used to rake the 

 ground with a rake. Another is that on account of the fart that in 

 late years insects have become rather plentiful you need to spray or 

 use traps to catch the insects. I think if a man would place bands 

 around his trees in the orchard he would accomplish as much in 

 that line as he would by spraying. Those are the three principal 

 things : the trees need room, they need cultivation and they need 

 spraying or the use of some method to keep ofif insects, but I have 

 never yet learned a way to keep the gougers out. 



Mr. Trigg: Does the tree "gouger" get after you sometimes? 

 (Laughter.) 



