CORRESPONDENCE. 133 



FROM REV. S. W. DE BUSK, OF LAS ANIMAS COUNTY. 



In the last volume of our State Horticultural Report you will find an 

 article entitled "The Beginnings in Las Animas County," which gives a 

 correct statement of our first efforts in this County. My own orchard the 

 past season (1887) yielded eighty bushels of Ben Davis, Rawles Janet, 

 Wine Sap, Missouri Pippin, Tetofsky, Duchess, Cooper's Early White, 

 Fall Spitzenburg, Wealthy and Hyslop. Crabs did well with me this 

 year. My first trees were set in the year 1881. Large holes were dug, 

 and a heap of bones placed in each hole. Trees set a rod apart, I find, 

 will prove to be too close soon. The limbs of the Ben Davis trees promise 

 to touch across the space between the rows in three years longer. 



One Missouri Pippin tree, set three years ago last April, ripened one 

 hundred apples five years from graft. One Jonathan tree, same age 

 ripened eighty apples; one Ben Davis tree, same age, ripened seventy-five 

 apples remarkable for fine size and color. So much for early bearing. 



My trees are on a hill-side, sloping to the North. Soil, a clay loam, 

 which is usual on our prairies. At two points leads of slate crop out on 

 knolls. This upland needs irrigating twice as often as the compact loam 

 or adobe of my low bottom. 



In starting my trees, six years ago, the land was kept in hoed crop; 

 part being used for the vegetable garden, and the other part cultivated in 

 beans, turnips, and sometimes corn. 



The spots* irrigated oftenest gave best results. Where the cabbage 

 and tomato patch was, and the water ran three to five times a week, trees 

 grew most rapidly, bore earliest, and to-day are the favorites in the or- 

 chard. My hill-side was rough, having two or three gullies across it, 

 when I began to cultivate it. In irrigating this uneven land, a few trees, 

 which stood in low places, received twice Uie water the others had. 

 Those getting a superabundance of water on this well-drained soil are, in 

 every way, the best trees. It is well undei stood, here in my family, that 

 on this hill-side of clay loam, underlaid by slate, there is no danger of 

 irrigating too much for apples, pears, raspberries, strawberries, currants 

 and gooseberries, even if that irrigation be twice a week from June 1st 

 to September 1st, seasons of heavy rains excepted, of course. 



The above is the sum of my experience for five years. 



The past summer, matters were quite different with me. The floods 



