STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 7 1 



than it would be if you were selling rum or any other occupation 

 that you are a mind to go into — there are drawbacks to all those 

 things. There is no drawback to orcharding. 



By L. H. Blossom, Turner. 



I wasn't in here at the opening of the meeting. If I had been 

 it might have given me a little clue as to what to say. If I am 

 going to say anything on orcharding I shall have to tell you just 

 what I have done, and that isn't much anyway and wouldn't 

 be very interesting. Some twenty-five years ago I set out three 

 or four acres of orchard. Some of my neighbors thought I was 

 a little crazy, and perhaps I was that I didn't set out more than 

 1 did. There was one thing that I kept out and that was the 

 Ben Davis tree, I did away with that. By accident I got two 

 trees. I have taken as good care of them as I could from that 

 time up but I have never received any profit from them. They 

 never bore me over two barrels apiece a year since I set them 

 out and they are nice large trees at the present time. But the 

 Baldwins that I set out at the same time have been profitable 

 trees to me and under the same treatment, on the same soil, in 

 the same orchard. There has been ten dollars in a Baldwin 

 where there has been a dollar in the other. I started out with the 

 idea that perhaps a good many have, that I wanted all the vari- 

 eties that I could hear of. I got them as far as my purse would 

 allow me to and time and room would permit ; but I soon found 

 that wasn't what I needed, and I cut the tops ofif and put in Bald- 

 wins, believing that was the best variety that I could use. And 

 as a market apple, perhaps I wasn't far out of the way. 



I believe m cultivation, thorough cultivation. I never looked 

 out for the nitrogen, potash or phosphoric acid particularly, but 

 dressed it heavily with barn manure and kept them growing, and 

 the results have been all right. I think they have found some 

 nitrogen in what I have fed them with. But by accident I got 

 in a few varieties that I bought for Baldwins and they proved 

 something else, and among these varieties was the Mcintosh Red. 

 and if I had only made the mistake in setting out all my orchard 

 of Mcintosh Red I might have been a millionaire now, but I am 



