5S 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMEK. 



Feb. 



nois, the graft must be planted an inch or two 

 under ground ; cut off the root if it go too deep: 

 the surface roots must be kept alive. Leading 

 men differ much in their treatment, owiog to their 

 diffejent localities; Barry plants his grafts even 

 with the surface; there is snow theie nearly al- 

 ways during the severe cold ; there came a winter 

 without much snow and they lost their trees; 

 Wilder plants the graft two inches under ground 

 in order to have the tree take root from the pear; 

 Rivers, a man that has had experience, says never 

 to plant so as to have the pear take root ; but he 

 plants on a reclaimed swamp, and if the pear 

 takes root it rnns down into the water and so 

 fails ; Lewis F. Allen condemns all dwarf pears ; 

 he can raise good pastures, but grass is not good 

 for pears ; Cobbett at Buffalo succeeds ; we see 

 dwarf pears can be grown to take root under 

 ground (though they do so more slowly than ap- 

 ples,) and thus AVilder makes his trees more per- 

 manent. 



Overman — The cultivation of the pear is get- 

 ting to be an all absorbing topic ; for myself I 

 have been very much troubled in getting dwarf 

 pears by leaf blight ; I succeed better by grafting 

 the quince on a bit of apple root first ; the quince 

 lives better, and finally kills the apple root, and 

 gets in fit condition for budding the same year. 



Doug'as — I have had a good deal of trouble get- 

 ting quince stocks ; my plan is to take up roots 

 early for grafting, and heel them in, in dry sandy 

 soil, covering the greater part of the leaves; in 

 this way the leaves ripen sooner; must not be 

 covered so as to heat , when the quince stocks 

 remain in the nursery I head them down and 

 throw up a furrow each side of them. 



Ellsworth — I put litter (not manure) along the 

 rows before throwing furrows against them ; this 

 keeps the ends dry; short straw or chaff is the 

 best; peach trees may be treated the same way 

 by covering up the buds ; This makes a substi- 

 tute f©r snow. 



Pr^ident — I had a perfect mat of grass in my 

 nursery which I covered with the plow, in the 

 way just spoken of, and the long tailed mice got 

 in and did a good deal of mischief. 



Ellsworth — The reason quince roots kill so is 

 want of deep culture and drainage. 



Dunlap — The pear fever rages, although ten 

 years tgo we had the fire blight, and this year it 

 has appeared, somewhat, near the Mississippi, on 

 the lime mud drift ; I have made pears a special 

 study during the last year ; I think we can grow 

 them ; [Mr. Dunlap here read an abstract from a 

 letter from Mr. Coe, of Port Byron, (page 323, 

 of the Illinois Farmer for 1861,) to the effect 

 that the climate, not soil, was the difiSculty to be 

 overcome } At Leyden pears protected by belts 

 of trees have succeeded, whilst those unprotect- 

 ed Flemish Beauties, Buffums, etc., are all that 

 are left of hundreds of trees ; wherever I have 

 found the pear tree sheltered, I have found pears; 

 the soil is all right ; the difficulty is only in the 

 climate ; we must grow pear trees in one climate 

 and winter them in another; I believe pears will 

 be raised on pear stocks ; the trees ar« every way 

 more durable ; the only objection is they are said 

 not to bear so soon ; as a fact some bear earlier ; 

 the competition on pear orchards before the farm 



committee was strong; the committee, after a 

 careful examination of a number of orchards, 

 concluded that the pear stock was the thing and 

 would have awarded premiums to orchards on 

 pear stock had it not been that the society made 

 it a condition that the 100 trees competing should 

 be in bearing ; the three points essential in pear 

 culture are drainage, shelter and low heads. 



Starr — The summidg up of this evidence is, 

 that top protection is beneficial; the flow of sap 

 cannot be retarded by covering the ground. 



Bliss — Said he knew a tree, all of which stood 

 in the shade of a house, except one limb, which 

 the sun shone on ; that limb was barren ; the re- 

 mainder of the tree blossoraed. 



Minier — I knew two peach trees to have corn 

 shocks just around them, and they bloomed when 

 all the rest in the country were killed. 



Hansen — Said he had put coarse straw around 

 every other tree in a row, and perceived no dif- 

 ference in the time of putting out. 



Ellsworth — I have removed large pear trees 

 with a ball of frozen earth about the roots in 

 winter; they bloomed later, and bore when oth- 

 ers failed ; I would not, therefore, recommend to 

 remove your trees every winter, but wish to call 

 your attention to the fact that to get fruit, you 

 must retard the blossoming. 



BLACKBEBRIES. 



A paper, giving Mr. Ozanne's experience in the 

 cultivation of this fruit was read : 



" The Blackheiry. — In the autumn of '541 prox 

 cured of W. Lawton, Naw Rochelle, one dozen 

 (Lawton ?) New Rochelle blackberry plants, set 

 them out on a prairie soil in the latter part of 

 October. The following summer they made a 

 good growth ; the winter of 1855-6 killed them 

 almost entirely, so that with difficulty I found a 

 few small roots that with care made a feeble 

 growth in the summer of 1856 ; the winter of 

 1856-7 I partially protected them, and in the 

 summer of 1857 I had a fine giowth and a large 

 increase of plants, which bore a few large ber- 

 ries in the following year, 1858 ; I did not keep 

 back suckers, so that in the years 1859-60 I had 

 a perfect thicket from my original setting-out, 

 which bore a few berries without protection, gen- 

 erally small, with an occasional good sized one ; 

 in the fall of 1859, I laid down a few canes, cov- 

 ered with earth ; these, notwithstanding the 

 drought of 1860, bore heavily; I also set out a 

 small plantation that spring, kept back all suck- 

 ers, protected them last winter with straw, and 

 in some instances a little earth, just enough to 

 keep the straw from blowing off by the wind, and 

 this year every cane was loaded to its utmost ca- 

 pacity with the largest kind of berries ; so much 

 60 that some of the laterals broke down under 

 the weight of the fruit; I might state that the 

 plants were set in rows six feet apart and four in 

 the rows, pruned in the summer of 1860 to about 

 five feet in hight, and laterals cut back this 

 spring at least one-half; and what I consider of 

 great importance, all suckers kept down, by cut- 

 ting them off as soon as they appeared ; the 

 quantity of fruit on each bush was estimated by 

 several who saw them to average four quarts to 



