262 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



APPLES. 



REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON APPLES. 



CLARENCE WEDGE, ALBERT LEA. 



A year ago in a conversation with Prof. Green, he surprised me by re- 

 marking that he supposed that I was rather discouraged about raising 

 apples, but that he hoped I would not give it up. I had supposed that 

 my horticultural acquaintances all understood that 1 was considerable of 

 an enthusiast on the subject of orcharding. I think I will make my po- 

 sition understood when 1 state that were I given the choice of my loca- 

 tion in America to plant an orchard for profit I should choose southern 

 Minnesota. I should choose it, not because the location promises fewer 

 difficulties or discouragements than others, but mainly because to the 

 average planter, and especially to the planter of the old school, it does 

 offer discouragements of the most forbidding type. For the very reason 

 that apples do not grow spontaneously with us and that we are at the 

 threshold of a region that can never raise them, we are assured of that 

 most important adjunct of an orchard, a market, and that best of all 

 markets, a home market. And, ihoreover, those who plant orchards 

 now will have a monopoly of the home market, for there are no orchards, 

 and none are being planted in that section. True, there are little fruit 

 gardens of an eighth to half an acre planted and being planted to an 

 ill-assorted mixture of varieties; but in the modern market they can never 

 compete with the grower who has twenty or ten or even one acre of one 

 variety and knows how to handle it. 



But 1 would scarcely think it safe to attempt orcharding by the old 

 methods. I should place little dependence on twenty-year-old trees or, 

 indeed, altogether on my trees alone. 1 should plant varieties that are 

 known to make good returns before the trees are set ten years, and should 

 plant in such a manner that my crops of potatoes, corn, beans and clover 

 on the land would be about as large and as conveniently produced . 

 as if the trees were not there. The two ideas of early bearing va- 

 rieties and supplementary crops are, in my humble judgment, to be the 

 first principles of successful orcharding in Minnesota. In order to ac- 

 complish this, the old fashion of planting in hills must give place to the 

 new of planting in drills. From forty to sixty feet is not too far to place 

 the rows apart, and from eight to twelve feet will not be too near to set 

 the trees. 



Wealthys have been set in Freeborn county for twenty years, but the 

 largest now living would not be crowded if set in such rows eight feet 

 apart, and yet I am inclined to class the Wealthy as one of our profitable 

 varieties. The Duchess and Hibernal, being longer lived trees, will re- 

 quire about twelve feet.. The rows must run north and south, and the 

 trees set leaning to the one o'clock sun; if three or four-year-old trees are 

 set, the inclination will be permanent, and, probably, a little time gained 



