328 ANNUAL EEPORT 



nate year for sixteen years. We can plant ninety trees to the acre, 

 the trees standing about twenty-four feet apart each way. At that 

 rate the crop of each acre would be worth $1,125. Talman Sweet also 

 began to bear in 1864: and bore full crops each alternate year up to 

 1884, some of the trees being still alive. Mr. Harris thinks 1,000 

 bushels a low estimate of the total yield. These sold for about |1,200, 

 or $120 a year for each bearing year, or an average of $6 per tree. At 

 that rate an acre would produce $540 each bearing year, or $270 per 

 acre for the whole time. 



THE "orange belt." 



In these times of pension vetoes, chintz bugs, sixty cents a bushel for 

 wheat, no more free passes on railroads, and the tariff likely to be 

 taken from wool, are not St. Lawrence, that pay over $500 a year, and 

 Talman Sweets, that pay $270 per acre a year, as good as anything 

 we can go into, provided we live in Houston or Winona county — the 

 orange belt of our State? 



Another small tract at Reeds Landing and along Lake Pepin is also 

 favorable for fruit growing. Here there is always or nearly so open 

 water. Pear trees bore three bushels on a tree at Reeds Lauding in 

 1867, and the crop from two trees sold for $100. 



Let us now leave the " orange belt" and go back north and west 

 where the fierce winds coming from the treeless, arid plains of the 

 bleak Northwest, destitute of moisture, blow scorching and wither- 

 ing in summer, — pitiless and enervating to all vegetable or arboreal 

 life in autumn, winter and spring. Here we find apples also, but less 

 varieties; the hardiest list from the orange belt lived in many places 

 up»to 1873, but the quantity of fruit produced, except in a few instan- 

 ces, was not sufficient to give much encouragement to the planter. 

 Many varieties which seemed hardy in tree up to 1873 did not seem to 

 form hardy fruit buds. The oye notable exception being the Duchess 

 of Oldenburg. A few other varieties were more or less fruitful in very 

 favorable seasons. This great district has localities in it more favor- 

 able than others. Such as can be found along the Mississippi river, 

 extending back in places thirty or forty miles; and also along the 

 southern tier of counties west from Albert Lea to the State line. In 

 this district not only do the Wealthy and Duchess look better than in 

 a large part of the State, but there are some old Golden Russets to be 

 found and a good many seedlings planted as long ago as 1863, are stiil 

 in fair condition. This region extending to Blue Earth countv on 



