WISCONSIN STATK HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. HU 



WISCONSIN STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, AN- 

 NUAL MEETING, FEBRUARY, 1896. 



H. II. s. DAinr, (uvAioxxA, i>i;i,i:(;ai !•;. 



It alTorcled nie ^reat pleasure to attend the annual winter meeting- 

 of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Society as j'our representative, 

 and to meet again the friends of long ago. The meeting was hehl 

 in the senate chamber at the capitol and was well attended. Mr. A, 

 J. Sweeney, of Rockford, 111., and Mr, M. E. Hinkley, of Marcus, Iowa, 

 were admitted as delegates, and' Mr. C. G. Patton, of Charles City, 

 Iowa, attended as a visitor. The delegates present, together with 

 Mr. Patton, were made honorarj- life members of the society, an 

 honor which was highly appreciated. 



Valuable papers were read, but they were not too lengthy or too 

 numerous to shut out full discussion, that great renovator of musty 

 theories. 



Provisions were made for issuing the annual report in monthly 

 installments, to which will be added each month a few pages of 

 general horticultural news. 



A resolution was adopted in favor of memorializing the State Ag- 

 ricultural Society not to allow the sale of intoxicating li(|uor8 on 

 the state fair grounds during the coming year. 



An experimental orchard has been established at Wausau, near 

 the center of the state and about 000 feet above Lake Michigan; it is 

 to be under the control of the Wisconsin State Horticultural Soci- 

 ety. It contains ten acres of land, five acres of which will be used 

 for general trial purposes, and the other five acres as a commercial 

 orchard. A committee, on which were J. C. Plumb and Geo. J. Kel- 

 logg, two of the oldest and best informed horticulturists of the state, 

 recommended the following varieties: for the trial orchard, six of 

 a kind, Tetofsky, Yellow Transparent, Duchess, Barloff, Glass Green, 

 Hibernal, Antonovka, Longtield, Switzer, Wealthy, N. W. Greening, 

 Windsor, Patton's Greening, W^olf River, Newell, McMahon, Haas 

 and Scott's Winter; for the commercial orchard, ten to twenty trees 

 of a kind at one planting, Duchess, McMahon, Hibernal, Newell, N. 

 W. Greening, Scott's Winter, Wealtliy and Patton's Greening. Stock 

 will be contributed by nurserymen and others, and the trial orchard 

 will soon be filled to overflowing with varieties boomed and un- 

 boomed from their own and other states. Here will be a fair test 

 and an impartial report, so that true merit will win, and people who 

 take the trouble to inform themselves need not be humbugged with 

 unreliable varieties sold by unreliable men. 



I took great pleasure in visiting the state experiment station, 

 where I found Prof. GofT with his hands more than full. Many stu- 

 dents must be finished off, both practically and scientifically, re- 

 quiring various experiments and a vast amount of labor. In the 

 greenhouse, he is testing sub-irrigation. Water tight pans cover 

 the bottom of the beds. On the bottoms of the pans, slats are placed, 

 and on the slats oricks, and over the bricks several inches of soil. 

 Water is run into the pans until it touches the bricks, and is then 

 drawn up to the surface by capillary attraction. The advantages of 

 this method are that plants receive a constant supply of moisture, 



