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272 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
PLUMS OF THE VILLAGE LOT. 
LYCURGUS R, MOYER, MONTEVIDEO. 
During one of the grasshopper years in the early seventies, I was 
examining railroad land in southwestern Minnesota for a railroad 
company. My work brought me to what is known as Dutch 
Charley’s Creek, in Cottonwood County, late in the afternoon of a. 
beautiful day inearly autumn. The surrounding country had been 
settled before the Indian outbreak of 1862, but had been twice de- 
populated, once by the Indians who had driven out the settlers and 
again by the grasshoppers. A thicket of native plums had ripened 
its fruit unmolested in the creek valley, where it was discovered by 
our surveying party. The fruit, as I said, had ripened unmolested, 
and it was fully matured. I need not say that the plums disappear- 
ed as if by magic before the hungry surveyors. To this day the 
remembrance of the fine flavor of that particular fruit is a fragrant 
and precious memory. 
The next year I married and determined to settle down on a vil- 
lage lot, and I thought it would be well to reproduce, if I could, a 
plum thicket similaf to the one I found on Dutch Charley’s Creek. 
I recalled the fact that I had once eaten fine plums gathered in a 
thicket on the Chippewariver nearour place. I found that the trees 
had grown old in that particular thicket, but by dint of hard work I 
was enabled to remove a few small trees tothe garden. The plan- 
tation was successful, and we were rewarded with fine fruit. Had 
we been wealthier—or wiser—we would have bought grafted trees of 
improved varieties. Weafterwards did make a plantation of the bet- 
ter varieties, and this season the Wyants began to bear. We call 
the Wyant a success on the village lot. We mulch the trees well, 
but we cultivate them too. On our high,dry bluff we often get 
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plums when the crop fails in the valley from unseasonable weather. - 
One beauty of the plum tree for the village lot is that it bears. 
crowding and, in fact, rather seems to enjoy it. Youcan plant a 
large number a plum trees in a small space and seemingly get 
better crops. 
We have sprayed our trees with Bordeaux mixture for curculio 
and with kerosene emulsion for aphis, but the plum has one enemy 
that we have found exceedingly hard to manage. I refer to the vil- 
lage boy. We have surrounded the village lot with a Page fence, 
such as they use to confine wild animals for a game preserve, and 
have added a barbed wire on top of that, but the small boy gets 
there just the same. Perhaps he deserves the plums. When the 
bright golden days of the future come, of which the poets have 
dreamed, there will bea plum patch in every village lot, and the 
village boy will not have to visit the neighbor’s orchard to get the 
fruit that belongs to him as a matter of right. 
Plant plums and give the small boy a chance at home, 
