THE ORCHARDS OF MINNESOTA. 01 



the north and sontli. He raises raspberries, strawberries, grai)es, 

 plums, currants, j^fooseberries, apples, cherries, etc. His raspberry 

 biiahes are unusually healthy and vigorous. The fruit from these 

 he ships to Minneapolis, where they net him about 15 cents per 

 quart. His ^rape vines are very thrifty and g^enerally produce 

 abundantly-, but the blossoms were mostly killed by the late frosts 

 last spring-, so he had little fruit and this very late. However, 

 from a Delaware vine g-rowing- against the house, he had on Sep- 

 tember 16, the time of our visit, some very nice grapes, thoroughly 

 ripened. 



He has quite a few Russian apples, trees that he received from 

 Professor Budd, including Hibernal, Juicy Burr, Charlamoff, 

 Steplianka, Prolific and 38 Vor. Most of these trees look exceedingly 

 well, and a few of them have borne a little fruit. He also has 

 October, Virginia, January and Florence. The Florence crab has 

 been very productive, while several other Gideon seedlings have 

 blighted badly. The Peerless trees, of which he had three, are all 

 dead but one, and that is severely injured. He has recently put out 

 quite a large planting of apples on a north slope, which at the time 

 of our visit he was cultivating in corn. The four or more varieties 

 of Russian cherries, which must have been planted four j-ears, are 

 very flourishing. He grows some seedling apples each j^ear and 

 takes great pleasure in the work. His Red Cloud seedling apple 

 was exhibited at our last state fair and attracted much attention. 

 The tree, however, seems inclined to blight. 



He has several kind of grapes, including Cottage, Delaware and 

 Concord. His collection of plums embraced some Russians and 

 named and unnamed native kinds. These are doing well, though 

 his crop this year was nearly a failure. He had an extra good veg- 

 etable garden in which was growing, among other things, some 

 very fine Savoy cabbage. The home buildings are large and com- 

 fortable and made of logs. Surrounding the house was a nice lot 

 of annual and perennial flowering plants that showed that some 

 one loved and cared for them. Take it all in all, this place showed 

 plainly to your committee that we have rather overlooked the horti- 

 cultural possibilities of the northeasterly part of this state. 



KIMBERLY. 



At Kimberly, twenty miles east of Aitkin, a member of your com- 

 mittee had a very enjoyable visit with our friend, H. B. Ayres. In 

 this section there are no graded roads and but little cleared land, 

 and no fruit is raised, but large amounts of vegetables were pro- 

 duced the past season. There is much ignorance here as well as 

 elsewhere among the people of the northern part of this state in 

 regard to the varieties of fruit best adapted to their conditions. 



DULUTII. 



At Duluth we attended the St. Louis county fair, where the show 

 of vegetables was particularly good. There were practically no 

 applesor crabs in this exhibit, owing to the late frosts of last spring. 

 At the fair here a j'ear ago, which a member of j'our committee vis- 

 ited, there were several plates of gooil apples. The only show of 



