254 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. | ee 
PROBLEMS CONFRONTING THE SOUTH DAKOTA : x 
FRUIT GROWER. Sa 
W. S. THORNBER, BROOKINGS, S. D. me 
It would be impossible to enumerate in one brief paper all the & 
problems that are confronting the South Dakota fruit grower, so I 
shall try and confine myself more particularly to the prominent 
ones. 
Many will verify the fact that South Dakota is not a “Garden of 
Eden” and, in all probabilities, if the prevailing environments con- | 
tinue will never be one. ee 
Less than fifteen years ago the greater portion of our state was a 
vast, treeless plain, with not so much as a native willow to check | 
those fierce and merciless winds which traversed all parts of the 
state. Very few native groves appeared along the streams, while 
the prairies were broad and expansive on either side. This was the ¥ 
time, while hundreds of dollars were being expended every spring | 
and fall for unsuitable and worthless nursery stock, that Dakota 
needed a horticulture of herown. But South Dakota, like all other 
new states, has had to get her experience in tree planting by doing. ; 
It was during this period of its development that the idea of South © 
Dakota ever raising any fruit was almost killed. Nor did some of 
our neighboring nurserymen (I hope there are none of them here 
today) help matters in the least when they permitted, or in some in- fi 
stances sent out, smooth-tongued tree-peddlers to make the farmers 
believe that anything and everything would grow in South Dakota. 
They in this way supplied the farmers with many dollars’ worth of 
tender nursery goods, which would have been very dear as presents 
to most of them. 
We must not blame the nurserymen alone for all the early fail- 
ures, as many are due to the practice of fall planting, which was so 
common in early days. Professor N. E. Hanson very nicely forbids 
fall planting when he says, “Don’t do it, for our Dakota winter winds 
will drive the sap from a fence post.”. In many parts of our state v 
remnants of orchards of early days lift their heads but little above 
the quack grass and weeds among which they have been left to die. 
It is more than probable that the factor most detrimental to our 
early work was the unsubdued condition of the soil planted upon. 
The majority of our farmers came from Minnesota, Lowa, Wisconsin 
and Illinois, in which states they had seen the soil subdued with ~ : 
less labor and trees and shrubs grown with less care. They soon 
found to their sorrow that it was utterly impossible in three years, 
with ordinary treatment, to kill the quack grass which grows so 
abundantly on our breaking. 
Such were the early drawbacks to growing fruit in our state, but in 
spite of these difficulties many successful orchards were estab- 
lished. 
The past few years we have been greatly encouraged over the 
prospect that soon we should be able to supply the greater portion. 
of our home demand. By correspondence, reaching nearly every or 
ganized county in the state, I learned that in all parts of the state a 
