108 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



To enable him to make his business profitable and satisfactory, 

 nothing will do so much as the c iltivation of fruit. How much is 

 annually lost by neglecting the cultivation of apples, pears, plums, 

 berries and grapes. Nothing a farmer can do will add so much to 

 the comfort, happiness, health, and contentment of his family as a 

 succession of all these fiuits every day in the year ; and the profits 

 in the culture of fruit in Maine far surpass that of anything else cul- 

 tivated here or elsewhere. Berries can be profitably raised at five 

 cents a quart, they are far more profitable, in fact, at that price than 

 hay, corn or potatoes, and the Miine producer is surrounded with 

 markets offering twice or three times that price. 



To the profits of the orchard when properly cared for, there 

 is hardly any limit. I know a King apple tree of moderate size, 

 which has not borne le^ss than two barrels any year during the 

 past five, and there are many other trees in the same neighborhood 

 that do nearl}^ as well. The only difference between this tree and 

 others of the same sort is in the cultivation. An acre of such trees 

 would produce at least one hundred barrels. 



In an item published in two of our agricultural papers it is stated 

 that a farm of only thirty acres produced about thirteen hundred 

 dollars worth of grass, grain, vegetables and fruit. This was a 

 good result for one man, better than is usually obtained; but two- 

 thirds of this came from three or four acres of orchard and the other 

 third from the remaining twent3'-six or twenty-seven, and he prob- 

 ably put five times the labor on the rest of the farm that he did upon 

 the orchard. Were twenty acres of his farm in apple trtes, and well 

 cultivated and fertilized, his income would have been four thousand 

 instead of thirteen hundred dollars. 



How easy it would be for three-fourths of our farmers to have 

 twenty acres of good apple trees and receive at least an annual net 

 income of fifteen hundred dollars a year. This is just as certain as 

 it is that he could raise one hundred bushels of potatoes or twenty 

 bushels of wheat. But, say some, '•! know many orchards that do 

 not yield a quarter of that amount." So do I, orchards where the 

 trees are starving and in a few years will starve to death. 



I examined an orchard a few months ago which had been set two 

 years on land that would not produce five bushels of corn an acre 

 without dressing, and the trees had received neither dressing, mulch- 

 ing, nor care of any kind. Fifteen or twentj' years hence half or 

 two-thirds of those trees will be alive and begin to bear a few scat- 



