400 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



never have it that cold here. Now, the idea of trees freezing- or be- 

 ing- killed by hard freezing when the wood is in a perfectly normal 

 condition is contrary to all the laws of nature. You may put that 

 down as a fixed fact. Excuse me for taking up so much time, but I 

 never expect to speak before you again. My health is very bad, and 

 I have got to go home tomorrow. I have studied this matter since 

 I was twelve j'^ears old. Fruit was the joy of my life. No person 

 went deeper into investigation than I did on the subject of apples in 

 Minnesota. It seems to me if I could get down to bed rock I would 

 do it. I have not got there yet, but I am trying to get there. Speak- 

 ing of deep setting, I think it is contrary to all laws of nature, con- 

 trary to all the laws of vegetation. Every part of the soil that con- 

 tains the food that produces growth is within from three to five feet 

 of the surface of the ground; nearly every particle of plant food is 

 there. Those roots will run forty feet into the surface of the earth 

 to gather moisture to produce growth in that tree, and they supply 

 the tree with food. Here is another class of roots that go down 

 deep after moisture. They go six to eight feet into the earth. They 

 will go right through sand or anything else. Those roots do not 

 care what kind of soil it is; there is no plant food where they go. 

 They are put there to hold the tree; they are there in cases of ex- 

 treme drouth to supply the tree with moisture when these other 

 feeding roots are entirely inactive. There is not a bit of growth in 

 them, but they supply the tree with moisture to sustain life. There 

 are two principles laid down here. Here is another class of roots, of 

 a later process when the tree is three or four years old. They are 

 called feeding roots. They seldom grow more than two or three 

 feet in length. Those are the ones that produce the fruit. If you 

 want fine fruit, all you have got to do is to spade around your tree, 

 keep it in nice condition, and your fruit will grow right along. Put 

 nice plant food around it. The idea I want to bring out is this: the 

 moment you destroy that system of roots you destroy the fruitful- 

 ness of the tree. If I put that tree down ten or twelve inches, I get 

 those roots entirely below the plant food. There is scarcely any 

 plant food ten or twelve inches below the surface, and in setting a 

 tree that deep you get them way below. The result is that in time 

 you are going to get a lot of roots started where the plant food is; 

 those roots in time are going to die; there is nothing there to sustain 

 life, because those roots are calculated to draw the plant food, and 

 are not calculated to be fed by the tree at all; they are so far above 

 that the tree does not supply them at all, but they must be where 

 the plant food is. I have two trees on my place. One tree is of that 

 class precisely, and one is of the other class. One of those trees is 

 twelve years old, and has borne fruit since five years old, and the 

 other tree bears once in two years one or two little, scaly apples, 

 from the fact that it has no feeding roots. The growth is abnormal, 

 and the tree has a nice, symmetrical look. In all my experience I 

 look to nature and her ways, and it is well for you to study them, 

 and I think it is the greatest error to suppose that you can get a tree 

 to produce fruit that has a lot of roots that are mongrels, the whole 

 of them. 



