228 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



to my "wind," and have hit me back so often. I have enjoyed 

 it, and the greatest pleasure I have is in meeting with you, 

 and if you come to Owaconna I hope I may be able to prove 

 to you that there is a little something substantial back of the 

 wind, and as long as that substantial thing lasts I hope to meet 

 with you. (Applause.) 



Mr. Harris: There is a little matter that ought to be made 

 business. We ought to have a committee appointed and in- 

 structed to visit that orchard of Mr. Dartt's, that experiment 

 station, and spend considerable time there in examining those 

 trees and testing the fruit, making a thorough and practical 

 examination of the whole and report to this society. In my 

 visit last fall, I did not know there were more than four 

 varieties that were in bearing, but if there are any better 

 looking trees that will be in bearing this year the state ought 

 to know it, and if not, the sooner the state knows it and cuts 

 off the encumbrance and gets rid of the wind at Owatonna the 

 better for us. I think it would be a matter of business, and 

 interesting business too. for this society to take some steps to 

 have a suitable committee appointed to visit that place and 

 spend a week's time there, or make two visits during the 

 summer. 



Mr. Dartt: The trees, a great many of them, will bear next 

 year, and that is because they have been girdled. (Laughter. ) 



MULCHING AND IRRIGATION OF THE ORCHARD. 



D. R. McGiNNis, St. Paul. 



Mr. President: If any one had any doubt of the benefit conferred 

 on horticulture by seedling's which have originated in Wisconsin 

 and Minnesota, they only need have attended the Spokane Fruit 

 Fair and the Portland Exposition, as it was my pleasure to do last 

 October. The Pewaukee, the Wolf River, the Wealthy and other 

 seedling's were the finest looking apples I saw at those expositions, 

 superior to any other varieties in color and smoothness and, appar- 

 ently, in quality and size that I saw there; and it makes me 

 enthusiastic, and I say all honor to those experimenters who de- 

 vote time and thought and money to originate those magnificent 

 varieties of apples. But this is not my subject. I have not had an 

 extended experience in looking over Minnesota orchards. I have 

 had a somewhat extended experience in looking over orchards in 

 climates different from this and where fruit raising is a business 

 that people expect to make their living out of, and I possibly may 

 say something that may be of value to j'^ou in respect to the man- 

 agement of orchards where it is looked upon as one source of live- 

 lihood. I notice where a man has an orchard, where all of his farm 

 is covered with trees, that even in perfect fruit climates he does not 



