420 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



FRUIT IN AITKEN COUNTY. 



OTTO WASSERZIEHER, BAY LAKE. 



You want a brief sketch of our fruit raising' in Aitken county. A 

 few districts represent the whole. I planted apple trees in 1886 in 

 Aitken county bought of Mr. Peter Gideon, Excelsior. I left the 

 choice to him, and he sent Gideon, Lou, October, September, January 

 and Florence. They all did very well for a time; I got three or four 

 crops from them and then, was it blig-ht?— or, I don't know, the trees 

 began to die one after another, and now I have only the Florence and 

 January and a few October half alive left. I planted and kept on 

 planting every year. I tried Russians a year after I planted my first 

 lot. Yellow Transparent, Repka, Malenka, sweet Anis and Step- 

 lianka. The first and second of those bore several crops of nice? 

 choice fruit, and then went the way of all apple trees. I have yet a 

 few hundred Russians and seedlings growing and have the best of 

 hopes for the future. Those seedlings I raised are from seeds ob- 

 tained from Mr. P. Gideon, as he said from the best dessert apples — 

 thanks to him! I shall be pleased to send some fruit to the station 

 next year. My nearest neighbors, at Bay Lake, Crow Wing, too> 

 commenced planting after my trees fruited and with good success — 

 all Russian trees from the Iowa station. The Hazelton family, 

 father and three sons, all with homesteads, are among our largest 

 fruit growers. The tree peddler is a pest in this country; they not 

 only sell at enormous prices, but they sell worthless and unhardy 

 stuff, trees die and people get discouraged. 



Simple Fruit Preservative.— Details of a new process for keep- 

 ing fruit in a fresh condition have recently been received from France. 

 A scientist noted that pears and apples kept for several months in 

 an atmosphere saturated with vapors of water and alcohol, and he 

 resolved to carry the experiment further, with a view to learning the 

 possibility of reducing the scheme to the requirements of every day 

 needs and methods. 



With this object in view the operator placed a variety of fruit, in- 

 cluding grapes, together with a bottle containing sixty-one cubic 

 inches of alcohol at 90 degrees in a brick receptacle from which the 

 light and air were excluded by a common wooden door. In two 

 similar receptacles, the door of one being left open and that of the 

 other closed, but the alcohol being absent from both, other fruit 

 w^as placed, and they were placed in a deep cellar, the atmosphere of 

 which registered about 50 degrees. Twenty days later the contents 

 of the two last named chambers were found to be absolutely worth- 

 less, but the receptacle in which the bottle of alcohol had also been 

 placed presented a very different spectacle. Not only were the 

 grapes firm, full and entirely free from mould, but the bloom upon 

 them was found to be as fresh as though the bunch had just been 

 taken from the vine. The chamber was closed for another month, 

 and at the end of that period everything was still as fresh as form- 

 erly, and the freshness was evident equally as much in the taste as 

 in the appearance. 



These experiments have certainly added to our methods of fruit 

 preserving a process which is not only inexpensive, but exceedingly 

 useful. — Farmer's Voice. 



