; fptiGher. a you are going to Bie left, Our nursery trees that 
are cultivated as long as there is any growth, are better than 
the others. Sometimes those trees in which you have stopped 
cultivation early will ripen up, and then the buds will swell 
again. Thatis where we get the most danger—and then cold 
- weather coming right on. 
Mr. Wragg, (lowa): We use surface cultivation. We have 
found the best thing to use is Clark’s cutaway harrow; we 
use that in our orchards both ways, and if the season turns 
out very dry we keep it up during the month of July. We sow 
buckwheat sometimes late enough so it does not ripen its seed. 
We run the harrow through every week. 
Mr. Spickerman: Do you do thatin orchards that are grown 
up to sod? 
Mr. Wragg, (lowa): Yes, sir; we have used this method to 
cut up the sod. 
Mr. Harris: Down in Arkansas I saw two orchards where 
the cyltivator had been kept running up to the first of October; 
the fruit was all large and perfect, very fine. They had six or 
eight weeks without rain, and the fruit that came from those 
orchards was better thanany I eversaw. Inorchards that had 
had no cultivation for several weeks, a great deal of the fruit 
was smaller. 
Mr. Wragg, (Iowa): I was down over the line of_the Pitts- 
burg & Gulf railroad. There were orchards ten miles long, 
and in orchards where they had the same mode of cultivating 
the trees were one-third larger and maturing better, and their 
orchards had been growing one year longer than those orchards 
in Arkansas. 
Mr. Burnap, (Iowa): I do not want to be understood as op- 
posing the cultivation Mr. Van Houten mentions, and this man 
in talking about in Arkansas, but I think we in the north must 
. _ decide when that cultivation must stop. There is a time when 
we must stop it, and I am satisfied that in northeastern Iowa 
usually that season is early in July, and then when we do stop, 
to sow a little bit of buckwheat is the best thing we can do. 
The President: Our greatest injury in Minnesota comes from 
lack of moisture. We cannot get any damage done or hurt the 
trees if we keep up the cultivation so as to prevent the evapor- 
ation of moisture. 
Mr. Wragg, (lowa): I should be afraid of it. 
Mr. Dartt: Put on a dust blanket. 
