20 
WISCONSIN HORTICULTURE 
October, 1918 
The Home Orchard in Wisconsin 
Marshall W. Sergeant 
The climate and topography of 
Wisconsin are such that commer- 
cial fruit-growing is likely never 
to become general throughout the 
state. There is, however, no val- 
id reason for limiting the estab- 
lishment of home orchards to the 
most favorable locations. They 
should be everywhere, and our 
slogan should be, “An ore! „d for 
every farm.” The kinds of fruit 
that can be grown successfully in 
some parts of Wisconsin are few, 
but there is no farm between Lake 
Superior and the Illinois line that 
cannot produce one or more kinds, 
and in many cases a wide variety. 
I shall now attempt to show, first : 
why home orchards are relatively 
scarce and unprofitable, and sec- 
ond : how their status may be im- 
proved. 
The first mistake that leads to 
failure is often in the purchase of 
tbe trees, for the farmer fre- 
quently orders them of an agent 
who is a stranger to him, and who 
represents an unknown company 
in some distant state. The rep- 
resentatives of these distant con- 
cerns are usually better qualified 
as salesmen than as horticultur- 
ists, and they are not capable of 
advising the buyer intelligently 
regarding the trees he should 
plant. Consequently, when the 
farmer also knows little concern- 
ing the matter, as is often the 
case, the trees he orders are more 
likely to be of the size and variety 
that is cheapest, or those that the 
agent has been instructed to “un- 
load,” than they are to be those 
best adapted to his local soil and 
climatic conditions. 
After the trees are ordered they 
are all too frequently forgotten 
until during the rush of spring- 
work, when their arrival is an- 
nounced by a card from the ex- 
press office, telling the recipient to 
call and pay for a package of 
nursery stock. The farmer leaves 
his other work, often rather re- 
luctantly, gets his trees, and sets 
them out, perhaps following in- 
structions that were sent with 
them, but just as likely according 
to his own ideas. At best, they 
are usually planted in a hurry, 
and a liberal shovelful of manure 
is often dumped into each hole to 
make up for deficiencies in other 
respects. Whatever the size, 
quality, or variety of the trees 
may have been, they are now set 
out, and our next step is to see 
what becomes of them. 
Some three years ago, I spent 
five months in traveling through 
rural Wisconsin, and being inter- 
ested in the matter, the condition 
of farm orchards was one of the 
things that I noticed particularly. 
Cropping the young orchard with 
some cultivated crop was almost 
universally practiced, and as it 
grew older it was turned into pas- 
ture, or hayfield, or was neglected 
entirely to compete with grass 
and weeds. I did not see above 
three orchards during the entire 
summer where any system of til- 
lage was practiced, and spraying 
and pruning were not much more 
common. Many of the older trees 
served as turkey roosts, clothes- 
line posts, for hanging up scythes, 
or for tethering-stakes. Trees 
girdled by mice or rabbits, trees 
dying from blight ; trees with 
leaves curled by the work of lice ; 
trees infested with tent caterpil- 
lars; trees grown up to water 
sprouts; trees with dead, dying 
or windbroken tops : all these 
were, and are, far too common 
sights. (To he continued'! 
New Asparagus Strain Routs 
“Rust” Disease. 
Ten years of introducing, testing 
and hybridizing asparagus from all 
parts of the world by J. B. Norton, 
a plant breeder in the United 
States Department of Agriculture, 
has resulted in the development of 
a new strain of asparagus that is 
not only larger, more uniform, and 
more productive than the old var- 
ieties, but is highly disease-resist- 
ant — a virtue that American 
asparagus heretofore has lacked. 
Development of the new strain is 
expected eventually to stamp out 
the “rust,” a destructive disease 
that swept over the country a few 
years ago, leaving the asparagus 
fields brown and dead and wiping 
out the profits of the growers. 
Commercial quantities of the new 
type in Washington, D. C., re- 
cently sold for more than double 
the price of other asparagus. 
Turkey is starving, Germany 
pinched and Austria rioting for 
food. The Allies are well fed and 
full of fight, thanks to Uncle Sam 
who invited them to sit down to 
his table a year ago — he has been 
passing around the victuals ever 
since. 
THE ALLIES’ FOOD MAR- 
GINS ARE THIN 
If the United States fails to 
send the food that is asked of 
us we lessen the perilously 
thin margin between mere 
food-lack and food disaster, 
and the Teuton yoke settles a 
little more heavily on Eur- 
ope ’s galled shoulders — but 
heaviest of all on broken Bel- 
gium. — U. S. Food Adminis- 
tration. 
