pROC'EEDiNGS OP THE FaEMERS" ClUB. 537 



standard pear, forty feet each way, planting at the intervening- stakes 

 peacli ; between these twenty feet rows I plant two rows of strawber- 

 ries, wide enough apart to cultivate, with a cultivator that is four feet, 

 leaving eight feet between the fruit trees and the strawberry rows. I 

 hope in ten years to equal the Knox farm, near Pittsburg. There 

 are hundreds of farms that can be bought on this hill at from ten 

 to forty dollars per acre. This is not a good agricultural region ; only 

 seven to twelve bushels of wheat to the acre ; twenty bushels a rare 

 crop ; thirty to thirty-five bushels of corn. The oat crop this year 

 was as good if not better than it was in western Pennsylvania. Those 

 who may wish to make fruit raising a specialty would do well to visit 

 this region. Come here any time from the middle of August to the 

 middle of September, we have ripe peaches here from the twelfth (I 

 do not know but some of Hale's Early were ripe the first) of July 

 until in October. 



HOW' SHALL I HA YE PLENTY OF APPLES? 



Mr. J. F. "\Yolfinger, Milton, Pa. — That our apples trees bear less, 

 and also poorer fruit, than they did thirty and forty years ago, is 

 generally true, and as generally regretted. And the real causes of 

 this apple tree failure are, as yet, involved in mystery, and open to 

 dispute. But it will do no harm, and perhaps some good, to notice 

 the supposed causes : 



1. Exhausted Soils. 



Some say our apple trees fail to do well because they are planted 

 upon old, poor, and worn out, or exhausted soils. This seems to be 

 true to some extent, and the remedy is plain ; manure your orchard 

 every other year with barii-yard manure, lime, salt, bone dust, and 

 such other manures as experience has shown to be essential for a 

 ^^gorous and healthy growth, and a productive condition of the apple 

 tree. Our old orchards, planted many years ago, needed no such 

 manures, because they were planted on new grounds, virgin soils, that 

 were rich in all the elements that were necessary for the production 

 of large crops of apples of superior size, beauty, and flavor. And as 

 these elements are now scarce on most of our lands we must use the 

 necessary manures to replace them. But experience and observation 

 have of late years shown that the new orchards, planted upon om' 

 very best neio grounds do not grow so thrifty, or bear as plentiful as 

 our orchards did many j^ears .ago. And so there must be some other 



