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AMONG THE ORCHARDS OF SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA. 105 
On the morning of August 25th, we went on our bicycles to the 
home of Dewain Cook, a distance of thirteen miles. It is located on 
a rolling prairie, nicely protected by trees, and shows much care and 
good management on the part of the owner. The late spring frost 
about destroyed the apples, plums and grapes. The apple orchard 
is in nothing more than an average prairie location, and yet looks 
well. This year the blossoms were caught by frost, but last season 
he hada good crop. Among the varieties which we found doing 
well here are Yellow Transparent, Okabena, Tetofsky, Duchess, 
Early Strawberry, Minnesota, Grandmother, Crampton’s No. 3, Sweet 
Russet, Antonovka, Pointed Pippin, Pride of Minneapolis, Hiber- 
nal, Patten’s Greening and Rollin’s Pippin. The most of these 
varieties were set in 1888, and have not been seriously troubled with 
blight or sunscald. The Success Juneberry is doing finely here 
and produced about seven bushels of fruit, but itis marketable only 
at alow price. Mr. Cook, however, believes it very desirable for the 
farmer’s garden on account of its reliability and productiveness, 
We noted also a very handsome and unusually fruitful bush of 
black haw, a variety quite worthy of propagation for ornamental 
purposes. Strawberries and currants were a good crop this year. 
There is considerable alkali in the land in this section, and Mr. Cook 
has made some ridges, perhaps two rods wide, with a road machine, 
which he thinks gives the alkali a chance to wash out and improves 
the land for crops. This seemed to us a very interesting line of 
work. He finds that the Bederwood strawberry does better on alkali 
spots than either the Warfield or Haverland strawberrics, and that 
currants do better than other kinds of fruit on such land. 
Here we heard the Norway cottonwood, spoken of most highly. I 
am not yet able to make out what it is, butit resembles both our 
cottonwood and the Populus betulifolia of Europe. 
On the way back to Windom we stopped at Jos.Wood’s ais He 
has a nice young apple orchard of Hibernal and Duchess. The 
mulberry does well here and bears fruit larger than the blackberry. 
The Wood plum, a new seedling, is very early, good in quality, and 
very strong in the crotches. The Minnesota Early is also a good 
plum, and the Wyant does well. The Cheney fruits heavily but 
drops badly. He hasa hybrid sand cherry of his own production, 
that is doing well, and several others, one from Williams, of Benson, 
Neb. We found here a thorn apple with large fruit and very pecu- 
liar and interesting foliage, and black walnut with oval fruit. 
From Windom we took the train to Worthington, and had supper 
at the home of H. J. Ludlow. Mr. Ludlow’s orchard is in town, near 
Okabena Lake, but on land about thirty feet higher than the lake. 
Here we saw the original Okabena apple tree, which now measures 
35 in.in circumference. It spreads twenty-four feet and is reasona- 
bly sound for so old a tree, its only defect being a weakness ina 
share of the main branches on the south side, indicaied by lighter 
and thinner foliage. It was bearing a good crop of fruit on the 
- southwest side. The fruit of the Okabena keeps into autumn, about 
thirty days later than the Duchess. The Wealthy, on its own roots, 
measured 9 in. in diameter. Some of this variety, top-grafted on an 
