198 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



H. L. Gordon: From my own experience, I would not plant 

 trees close enough to shade the ground. I think we must give 

 a tree room to breathe in order to let them live. 



Geo. J. Kellogg: Mrs. Gordon remarks to me confidentially 

 that the trees were better after they were dead; that is, they 

 bore better from the sprouts or suckers that came up from the 

 roots than they did before. 



Mrs. Gordon : There were only a few sprouts from the roots 

 of a Wealthy that came up and bore well. 



H. L. Gordon: I hardly ever take issue with my wife; if I 

 do I give her a curtain lecture; but I agree with her that we 

 have trees, some of those old Wealthys that I spoke of, that 

 killed themselves bearing, that are now bearing trees from the 

 sprouts, and I believe they are of more value than the old trees 

 ever were, and I believe I have got trees there that will do 

 more, ten times over, than the original trees ever did. 



PROTECTING APPLE TEEES. 

 By Seth H. Kenney, Morristown. 

 Mr. President and Members of the Minnesota State Horticultural Society: 



In my early youth I grew up in Franklin county, Mass., where success- 

 ful orchards were the rule. I early acquired a love for the orchard. In 

 the year 1857 I came to Minnesota. Almost one of the first things after 

 securing the land, I hought trees and set out an orchard. To tell the 

 story of my failures, would he to relate the story of every one of you pres- 

 ent. I have been to the meetings of this society for many years, but for 

 many years I did not set out any more appie trees, regarding the invest- 

 ment as money lost. 



In the month of April, 1888, I rented a piece of ground to plant sugar 

 cane that had the remains of seven acres of what once gave promise to 

 be an orchard. I was digging out some of the remaining trees that were 

 nearly dead and found some of them that were nearly or quite girdled 

 with field mice many years ago when they were first set. In order to save 

 them I banker! up with mounds of earth. On digging up these trees I 

 saw that the bark and trunk up as far as the earth came looked remarka- 

 bly healthy. I took ■ saw and sawed off the tree in several places and 

 found the wood white and sound clear to the heart. It was this way 

 clear to the top of the earth mound and no sprouts had grown from the 

 part of the trunk buried. It was as large as the trunk above the earth, 

 and had been buried for at least ten years. There were several trees that 

 had been banked and all the same results, healthy wood as far up as the 

 earth. This experience led to the following conclusions, that if the 

 trunks of apple trees when set out were boxed high enough to cover 

 where the limbs branch out from the main trunk and this box filled with 

 earth so to secure a division of the sap before exposed to the sun's rays, 

 the points of danger would be overcome and the following points of ad- 



