APPLES. 197 



and then I seeded it to clover. I mulched around the trees 

 with hay and kept the grass killed around the trees. As long 

 as I cultivated the ground at all I raised a good crop; and I did 

 the same with my young orchard, in which the trees were six 

 years old last spring, and I still cultivate the ground there. I 

 did it from a farmer's standpoint, and yet the trees are doing 

 well enough to permit the fruit of sporting the blue ribbon on 

 the table yonder. My trees are eighteen feet apart each way. 



A. W. Latham: I want to ask Mr. Gordon if those Weal thy 's 

 on the table were raised from trees twenty years old. 



H. L. Gordon: They were six years old. I cultivate the 

 ground just as long as — 



A. W. Latham: You will have no trouble in cultivating the 

 ground until they are all dead. 



H. L. Gordon: Perhaps not, but I would rather think they 

 would bear themselves to death. I believe the Wealthy is just 

 as hardy as the Duchess today, Last year was really the first 

 year they bore to amount to anything. I have been 

 troubled a little with blight. The Wealthy has blighted some- 

 what more than the Duchess. 



Wm. Somerville: His success has been somewhat similar to 

 mine, and when I set out an orchard I am not expecting a fail- 

 ure, hence I set out fifty trees in 1862 and there are now forty- 

 nine of them living, and they look as though they were good 

 for another half century . My success has been very good, and 

 my trees have been bearing fruit for me for twenty-five years, 

 and I have never experienced a failure in that time. 



A. W. Latham: I want to say just a word more. Mr. Gordon's 

 statement only confirms my own view of the matter. There are 

 some Duchess trees in our neighborhood twenty years old. 

 With the Duchess it is precisely the same as with the Wealthy. 

 If you plant them in cultivated ground with some other crop 

 you can just as well raise a large crop of large apples as if you 

 put them in grass. Now, to support this, I have side by side 

 two lots of Duchess, one in the grass on a side hill and one row 

 in the garden, that I planted sixteen years ago. One fourth of 

 these trees are dead, but most of them are alive and bearing. 

 In the grass on the side hill are several times as many Duchess 

 planted at the same time. There is no comparison, whatever, 

 to be made between those trees. Those in the cultivated 

 ground have borne four times as many apples as those stand- 

 ing in the grass, the fruit has been fully one -half larger, and 

 I have been able to get more for them. 



