98 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



five bushels of apples; the other is the Catherine, which produced a 

 much larger amount and has been in bearing for twenty-five years, 

 and there has been no other tree within fifty feet of them. 



A tree to produce a large crop of fruit has got to have room; it has 

 got to have air. "Wind" has a good deal to do (lavighter) in making 

 trees have fruit, and we need a good deal of wind too. If j'^ou plant 

 your trees at long distances apart, the roots have plentj^ of room 

 from which to draw sustenance; there must be something drawn 

 from the soil. The roots of an apple tree fifteen j^ears old extend 

 thirty feet in all directions. If you confine trees in a narrow limit, 

 you weaken the tree, and a tree in a weak condition is in a 

 more favorable condition to be attacked by disease than when 

 healthy and strong. Warding off and preventing these diseases we 

 must consider, and the best thing we can do is to begin right and 

 place the tree in the most favorable position we can. The rows 

 should be planted thirty feet apart, and sixteen to twenty-five feet 

 apart in the row, twenty-five feet is better. My friend Somer- 

 ville is a very good sort of a inan, but he is liable to forget some 

 things. He says his trees never blight; he has always told us that. 

 A year ago last summer when the conditions for blight were favor- 

 able, I went down there. He met me as I drove up and shook hands 

 with me. I said: "How are j'^our trees, Mr. Somerville?" "Well," he 

 said, "Mr. Brand, I am sorry to say my Russians are blighting for 

 the first tiine." I looked among his Russians and I found consider- 

 able blight, but he has forgotten "considerable" of it. We must 

 take not only one man's testimony, but the testimony of several, and 

 we will be a good deal more likely to get at the facts in the case. 



Mr. Dartt: I expected last night I would get a little chastisement, 

 I guess I deserved it, and I am rather glad I got it. Well, now, in 

 isolated cases in this country, you can find great trees spread out 

 and bearing great crops of fruit; but that is not the rule. Now, then, 

 how many trees have died out to give those trees that he referred to 

 more room? Perhaps, if thej^ were counted up, the farmer who owns 

 the farm where those trees are would tell you he lost 100, may be 

 more. It is simply the "survival of the fittest," and because a man 

 lives to a great age, and becomes learned and great, like our friend, 

 that is no evidence that it would be the case with the majority of men, 

 and isolated cases do not prove that this is the rule with trees any 

 more than it is with men. The rule is that apple trees die young, 

 and we cannot very well expect or prove the opposite. That has 

 been the experience of everybody. There are some trees — now the 

 Transcendent, I would plant them close; if you let them grow they 

 will spread over a great deal of ground. They are good for nothing. 

 Thej' are like some of those "windy" folks, the}^ spread a great deal 

 but amount to nothing. (Laughter.) Plant an orchard the way experi- 

 ence proves it to be the most favorable. I have got more money 

 from an acre of ground planted closely with Duchess apple trees 

 than any man in Minnesota has got from the same amount of 

 ground from any other fruit, except strawberries. I planted them 

 ten by twenty feet apart, and some as close as sixteen feet, and they 

 paid remarkably well, and they died off fast enough so that at the 

 present time the trees are not too close together. 



