362 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



solve soda in one cup sweet milk. Beat eggs light, add milk in 

 which soda was dissolved, sour milk and dry ingredients. Have 

 a spider very hot on stove. Melt butter in it, greasing the sides 

 well. Pour in mixture. Then add on top of this the other cup 

 of sweet milk, but do not stir it. Place spider in hot oven and 

 bake from "twenty to thirty minutes. 



Orchard Observations. 



P. H. O'CONNOR, MINNEAPOLIS. 



In the past ten years I have been on some of the finest and 

 best fruit farms in New England and have watched the processes 

 of spraying, trimming, cultivating, and planting, and let me say 

 right here that in Minnesota the trees are planted too close. If 

 the trees were planted thirty to thirty-five feet apart they could 

 be sprayed from the ground and the fruit picked from an eight 

 foot step ladder instead of an extension ladder. The trees should 

 be pruned with a pruning knife or a saw to let the sunshine 

 properly color the apples. I am a thorough believer in the vase 

 shaped fruit tree. The limbs should start about two feet from 

 the ground, and if there is danger of the tree splitting it should 

 be wired. 



The apple was one of the earliest settlers in New England 

 although it might not have been indigenous to the soil. It fol- 

 lowed the settlers into the back woods and up the mountain sides, 

 and grew beside the cabin door, extending its pleasant branches 

 for the children to play under, and dropped its fruit almost into 

 the laps of the people. The fruit was hard and bitter compared 

 with the apples of today, and would not keep through the winter, 

 yet it added immensely to the simple diet of our ancestors. 

 Nature, ever ready to be bountiful, unexpectedly dropped into 

 the laps of those people some very great gifts. Wherever chil- 

 dren threw away apple cores, or wherever pomace from the cider 

 mills was thrown, apple trees sprung up, and many of these were 

 marvelous trees. The Rhode Island Greening, the Yellow Bell- 

 flower, the Baldwin, and a number of other good varieties came 

 forth spontaneously. They were nature's gift. We can truth- 

 fully say that the apple is the king of fruits. Out West, in 

 Oregon and Washington, this king of fruits is crowned. The 

 people almost fall down and worship it. If there is anything 

 under the sun that the apple needs the people bring it to it. 

 When they put the apple up on exhibition, they put garlands of 

 flowers around the boxes, and trim them up with flags and bunt- 

 ing, for they believe the apple is the king of fruits. What do we 

 do? We treat it like a beggar. We do not give it scraps from 

 the table. If we have a little time we do not know what to do 

 with we go and trim the apple trees. Some people use an ax and 

 trim the lower part of the trees and neglect the top. The apple 

 tree gets just what it can. It lies at our door like Lazarus in 

 the Bible story, full of sores, and we do not seem to care any- 

 thing about it. Let me give you a motto : "Boost the apple and 

 it will boost your state." 



