GENERAL FRUITS. ‘228 
On my ‘‘Idlewild Farm” there are a half dozen or more plum and choke- 
cherry thickets. In 1890 there were about ten times as many choke-cher- 
ries as the birds could eat, and our neighbors and their children ‘could 
destroy. We also had enough good plums for our own use. Last year we 
picked about 25 bushels of plums for the home market and our own use, 
and as many more bushels were picked by the neighbors. We planted 
about 100 plum trees in 1879. We cultivated them one or two seasons and 
mulched them twice, and no further attention has been given them, yet 
they have borne heavily about every other year for the past eight years. 
Our plum trees are loaded with blossoms every spring, but as the condi- 
tions for pollenization are not always favorable, the yield is sometimes 
very small. On account of the very dry weather the past years, the 
plums were of an inferior quality. We have about a dozen varieties of 
wild plums belonging to the species prunus Americana. 
The yield of native and cultivated gooseberries was very large. We 
picked about 25 bushels of gooseberries for the home market. 
In western Minnesota, the orchard should be located on low ground 
instead of the bighest ground on the farm, and, if possible, on land slop- 
ing toward the north or east, protected by a good windbreak on the south 
and west sides, if not all around. The trees should be planted at a suth- 
cient distance from the windbreak to avoid all danger from being broken 
down by the snow, and the roots of the trees should be covered with mulch 
in the fall and winter. It may be well to place a box about the trunks 
of the young trees, and to fill them with earth, although our trees appear 
to be healthy and are doing well without ever having had this protection. 
The branches on our trees are quite low, some of them when loaded 
with fruit having their tips on the ground. Those trees that have the 
main part of their foliage on the south and southwest sides have the 
healthiest trunks, grow and bear the best. 
Now the fact that small fruits, crabs, and Duchess apples are success- 
fully grown in Lincoln County, by persons with little experience in fruit 
growing, on a location and soil not best adapted to orcharding, and with 
the smallest rainfall and highest altitude in Minnesota, demonstrates 
conclusively that fruit can be successfully grown in western Minnesota. 
CONDITION OF FRUIT GROWING IN CENTRAL MINNESOTA. 
G. W. HOLMES, GLENCOE. 
Myr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen:—I have thought it best to confine 
my remarks to my observation in the counties of Sibley, Renville, McLeod 
and Wright. It has been claimed by many, and even by some members 
of the Horticyltural Society, that we could never grow apples successfully 
in our part of the state. In order to disprove such statements I shall 
give a detailed list showing individual trials and success, together with 
name. date and place. Ido this, believing that individual effort plainly 
shows what our country is capable of and what can be done in the line of 
fruit growing. I have lived in the vicinity of Glencoe for the past twenty- 
seven years and my own success, in a small way, confirms me in the opin- 
