96 STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



and I propose to make money, and propose to make money 

 through recognizing all these details which to many people may 

 seem unreasonable and of no great importance. 



Now about preparing the land, and what crops to grow in the 

 young orchard. You are a good class of farmers here. I know 

 that by looking into your faces. How do you prepare your land 

 for the ordinary hoed crop? You prepare it by plowing and 

 giving it a good dressing of fertilizer, and giving it a good 

 harrowing. And those of you who grow the best crops are 

 those that give the greatest attention to the preparing of the 

 soil. That is a well-recognized fact in agriculture. The men 

 who are growing the best crops today in any line whatever are 

 those that pay the greatest amount of attention to the prepara- 

 tion of what we might call the seed bed. And what does it 

 mean? It simply means that we are providing an environment 

 where the plant is able to get hold of the plant food. That is 

 just what we want to do in regard to the apple. We just want 

 to fix that soil so that the mass of fibrous roots that come to us 

 from the nursery, when we place them in the ground will be 

 able to get hold of the plant food in the soil. And unless we do 

 prepare the soil in some such way as that, we are going to get 

 a stunted tree. And when we get a stunted tree, we get a poor 

 tree and become discouraged apple growers. 



Now the only way to continue our interest in this young 

 orchard is to get a good healthy tree and plant it in soil that is 

 well prepared so that it will start to grow and continue to grow. 

 And, by the way, I do not advocate to farmers and business 

 men large operations. I say go slow. Learn the business. 

 Begin at the bottom, even if you have got an ordinarily large 

 orchard established. Start your young orchard in a small way 

 and take good care of it, and let it be a source of inspiration to 

 you to take better care of it every year and put out more trees. 

 If you put out an acre this year and take care of it, it will be 

 pretty safe to assume that you will put out another acre next 

 year, and in a very few years you will have an orchard that is 

 large enough for you. With the capitalist it is an entirely differ- 

 ent proposition. Your capitalists, in the corporate form of man- 

 agement, can put out just as many acres as they have the capital 

 and the ability to manage. 



