1871 



THE POMOLOGIST AN"© GARDENER. 



219 



with all on the trees, literally killed — exhibiting the 

 physical condition of a wet rag. 1 learned some- 

 thing which perhaps everbody else knew ; but I 

 should like to have some one explain why the ap- 

 ples could endure ten degrees of frost without the 

 slightest injury, and be completely ruined by four- 

 teen degrees. 



Would the frozen apples of which there were 

 many hundred bushels in this vicinity, answer for 

 cider ? No facts could be elicited from positive ex- 

 perience either nfBrmative or negative, but specula- 

 tive opinions gratis, were as plenty as blackberries. 

 Referring the question immediately to a practical 

 test, I was surprised and gratified to find the cider 

 instead of being impaired was really improved in 

 flavor and quality. It was high colored, very sach- 

 arine, and every way superior. I regret I did not 

 try its keeping qualities, but have no doubt it would 

 have kept equally as well and perhaps better than 

 that from apples not frozen. 



A neighbor favored me with a sample of cider 

 made from apples that had been suffered to hang 

 on the trees until Febuary, which had the same im- 

 paired flavor that is found in "frozen and thawed " 

 apples at that late season. 



Hortlcnltnral Notes from 'Wisconsin. 



Bt Geo. J. Kellogg, Janesville, Wis. 



Ed. PoMOLOGisT AND GARDENER: — The scasou, 

 with its failures and successes, is so far past that we 

 may safely record some of its facts and teachings. 

 Spring opened early ; its harbingers, the bluebirds 

 and wild geese made their appearance about the 

 l8t of March. Digging trees the 10th to 15th. 

 Frogs commenced their music about the 20th, and 

 mosquitoes on town meeting day. Weather fine, 

 seasonable showers, and no frosts to injure anything 

 till May 6th, 7th, 9th and 10th, when cherries, 

 Early Richmond, were in full bloom. — Also peaches, 

 pears, plums, currants and strawberries. The frost 

 was so severe on the morning of the 10th as to form 

 ice In my horse - trough. The following week the 

 thermometer ranged from 38 to 84; no day but 

 it was up to 60. The morning of the 18th of May, 

 Ice formed in a tin wash dish one - half an inch 

 thick. This was a hard one on strawberries ; and 

 the hot weather of the last six days of May and the 

 first six of June, (when the thermometer was not 

 less than 63 any morning at daybreak, and the 

 extremes at noonday were 78 to 93), combined to 

 destroy our crop of strawberries ; — well mulched 

 beds did not do as well as those all grown over with 

 sorrell and grass 



Other fruits have done, and are doing finely, 

 — except the losses by blight on pears, apples and 

 crab — which made its appearance about the 10th 

 of June, following closely on the hot two weeks 

 previous. The causes of this disease are yet a mys- 



tery — whether heat, electricity, insects, rapid 

 growth, want of cultivation, or a combined influ- 

 ence of a part of them, the fact is, blight mK kill. 

 We ought to have applied the salt remedy, but did 

 not. Pears have blighted worse than for many 

 years, and all kinds with me have suffered about 

 alike ; having mostly Flemish Beauty, have lost 

 more of those. Worse on bearing trees and those 

 three or four years planted than nursery growing 

 trees. In one lot of four hundred Flemish Beauty, 

 three to five feet high, that have made from twelve 

 to thirty - six inches growth, we have not seen a 

 black tree or limb. Stocks seem to make no exemp- 

 tion, for those on white thorn and mountain ash 

 are served about the same ; even the Mt. Vernon 

 has blighted a little. 



Blight among apples has been very severe, — Tall- 

 mans's Sweet suflfering most of any variety — and 

 of the best five varieties for the Northwest, viz : 



Red Astrachan, Buchess, Fameuse, Golden Rus- 

 set and Tallman's Sweet ; they are aflfected by blight 

 as in the order named, the first having least, and 

 the last most. 



And yet with all these drawbacks the apple crop 

 of our State is larger than ever before, apples sell- 

 ing on the street from twenty -five cents to one 

 dollar per bushel. The first picking of Red Astra- 

 chan sold at one dollar and a half to two dollars. 

 Some of our orchardists report two thousand bush- 

 els as their crop this year — and all this in Wiscon- 

 sin, where we can't grow fruit. Suppose we had 

 planted, twenty years ago, what we now would 

 recommend, we could now have supplied all the 

 Northwest with apples. If the past twenty years' 

 experience and observation has been of so much 

 advantage to us, what may not the future become ? 

 What if we had continued to plant Rhode Island 

 Greenings, Baldwins, etc? 



What do you think of the man who .still contin- 

 ues to buy of these traveling tree peddler, who 

 furnish everything a man wants out of the same 

 bundle? He ought to go without fruit so long as 

 he lives. When will our people look about them, 

 see what is doing the best on their own soil and in 

 their own vicinity, and order of some reliable nur- 

 seryman what they want, and let these itinerant, 

 swindling tree dealers go to Waupun, or some other 

 place where they will have to work for a living. 



To any one setting one hundred apple trees, the 

 last volume of the Wisconsin Horticultural Society, 

 would be worth ten dollars, and one dollar will buy 

 it and give you a membership in said Society. O. 

 8. Willey, Secretary, Madison. 



I cannot close this already too long communica- 

 tion without a word in favor of the Davison Thorn- 

 less raspberry, also the true Miami. Worthless 

 varieties are sold in the place of each. Beware of 

 whom you get the plants. The Davison Thornless is 



