VARIETIES OF APPLES ADAPTED TO SOUTH DAKOTA. 377 

 VARIETIES OF APPLES ADAPTED TO SOUTH DAKOTA. 



MRS. Iv. A. ALDERMAN, HURLEY, SOUTH DAKOTA. 

 (Paper read at Sioux Falls, Jan. 22, 1901.) 



I shall speak with assurance only for the southeast part of the 

 state, but there are a few rules that apply to all. If in ignorance 

 of the fruits adapted to your location, invest a little time and money 

 in studying the matter up, rather than spend many times the same sum 

 in the costly school of experience by ordering blindly of a glib- 

 tongued salesman. If I were planting a new orchard I should visit 

 Prof. Hansen, at Brookings, and learn all that I could of his methods 

 and success with dilferent fruits and their varieties, and should rely 

 very largely on his advice as to what to plant outside of the varieties 

 with which I am familiar. And if I could not do this I should write 

 for his bulletins and advice. 



I deem it very important that the people who are primarily in 

 lines of work other than fruit-raising and yet who hunger and 

 thirst after the luxuries of the orchard and garden, should know 

 to whom they can appeal to get them started right. To me there is 

 something very pitiful in the little tragedies that have been enacted 

 all over our state, especially among its first pioneers. The depriva- 

 tion that they submitted to bravely to pay for nursery stock sold at 

 the most exorbitant price, being extra choice (so said the agent; in 

 reality Ben Davis, probably), the care with which this worthless 

 stock was tended, and the keen disappointment when the inevitable 

 failure followed ! 



It always seemed to me that the tree shark's game was an ag- 

 gravated case of total depravity, akin to the looting of a savings 

 bank. But it is not* in generalities that I am expected to deal, 

 but to glean from my experience for the benefit of this society. It 

 will bear repeating that for general adaptability all over South Da- 

 kota the Duchess is still in the lead as a business apple, but except 

 for commercial planting one needs only a few. Their season is 

 short. If I could raise but this one apple alone I should plant so 

 as to have them for cooking from July 15th, when they are perhaps 

 one-half grown, till their season is past, and a surplus for apple 

 butter and drying — for, remember, a dried Duchess is better than a 

 fresh Ben Davis. 



The Tetofsky is a fine harvest apple for our locality. It is 

 somewhat subject to injury from insects and blight, but after fifteen 

 years' trial on our grounds we, two years ago, set out a block of 

 one hundred and fifty of them. The home orchard ought to have 

 half a dozen of them at least. It is an early Russian apple of fine 



