42 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Without care and culture the trees will go, one by one, to the 

 brush pile, until at the end of five years, when the young orchard 

 well cared for should begin to show signs of fruiting, not one tree 

 in ten will be found worth saving. If they can have two or three 

 years of care and culture they will get rooted, and, with hardy 

 sorts, will cling to life for a number of years, but with steady 

 culture for fifteen years we get a good thrifty tree, with trunks 

 measuring twenty-eight or thirty inches in circumference and 

 paying a profit. 



Culture, we should understand, means any method of care that 

 will keep the grass down and the tree growing. It may be by 

 mulching, or by plowing and harrowing. 



We had the opportunity, the past season, of seeing some of the 

 results of simply plowing and harrowing, no dressing being used. 

 It was noticeable; as far as the orchard could be seen the large, 

 dark foliage and the more abundant and better fruit plainly told 

 the story. 



Another result of culture is that an orchard properly set and 

 cared for will be an even stand of trees. It is seldom that a tree 

 will be lost except by accident or an ice storm, something that 

 we cannot foresee and guard against. 



With proper culture the roots run deeper and will spread over 

 the whole ground. We have found them two and one-half feet 

 below the surface, firmly imbedded in solid pin ground fifteen 

 feet from the tree at the end of ten years. With such roots a 

 tree will not be affected by any drouth that we have in this 

 climate, and will hold its fruit much better, in our opinion, than a 

 tree growing in grass with its roots near the surface. 



The fruit from a well cultivated orchard, (which should 

 include pruning,) will be far more abundant and will be pro- 

 duced more regularly ; it will also be of better size, and if the 

 pruning has been properly attended to it will be of just as good 

 color; and we are all well aware of the fact that it is the well 

 grown fruit that is sought for by the buyers, and will bring the 

 most money, the "Results" that we are all striving for. 



Q. I would like to ask Brother True if he has adopted any 

 method to try to kill twitch grass ? 



A. Some of my orchards I have plowed for fourteen years 

 and now the limbs are getting so near that I cannot get a team in 

 to do very much work and I have been for the last two or three 



