ESSAY ON FRUIT CULTURE. 
The complaining or earnest enquiry still comes up from many 
quarters, “why cannot we raise successfully here in Iowa, those 
fruits with which we were so abundantly blessed in our Eastern 
homes?” And while a crowning success has attended well directed 
efforts to grow fruit, it has also become patent to every one, that 
from some cause, thousands of our more or less recently planted 
fruit trees do die every year, in our young and fast growing State, 
and consequently it is quite natural that such inquiries should con- 
tinue to be made, and that many fears of a failure in fruit growing 
should still be seriously entertained. The causes and prevention 
of these losses are therefore the more interesting and important. 
Permit me to premise what I shall write upon this subject, by 
saying that my remarks are designed to be adapted to lowa, with 
its dry and windy climate, its extreme and sudden changes, as well 
as its usually light, deep, friable and comparatively timberless soil. 
Reared in Ontario county, New York, and for some years a resi- 
dent of central Ohio, U’khow that much of what I shall communi- 
cate upon this subject will appear very inapplicable to those locali- 
ties, and doubtless equally so to the East in general. 
The causes of the destruction of fruit trees above referred to, are 
usually one or more of the four following, viz: 
1st. No suitable preparation of the orchard grounds, but only a 
shallow culture and planting which has caused the horizontal tree 
roots to grow and remain so near the surface that they have often 
been killed by hard freezing during some of our dry and nearly 
snowless winters. The planting of unacclimated trees, or una- 
dapted varieties that have died either quickly or by slow degrees. 
The killing of the fibrous roots by freezing, or excessive drying 
while being transplanted. The starving of the trees, by permit- 
ting the more rampant and exhausting crops of grass, grain, or 
weeds, to occupy and possess the orchard grounds, after the trees 
were planted. 
But, as I wish to give my views in a more extended form, I will 
pursue the general subject in the following order, namely : 
1st. How to prepare the ground for an orchard. 
