ESSAY ON FRUIT GROWING. 
447 
Mr. J. C. Plumb then read an 
ESSAY ON FRUIT GROWING ON PRAIRIE SOILS. 
That the “ prairies are not adapted to fruit-growing,” has 
become almost an axiom in the minds of perhaps a majority 
of the people of the northwest, and, in view of the many fail¬ 
ures, this is not a strange conclusion, yet it is one which is so 
unfortunate in its tendency and results, that, if by careful 
study of the nature of the case, and patient, persevering effort, 
it may be proven practically unfounded, and not a necessary 
misfortune of this great garden of the world—the prairies of 
the west—then it is worth a life’s study and toil, to demon¬ 
strate how to adapt fruit-growing to the prairies. 
Without stopping to inquire how these great interior tables 
came to have the accumulated vegetable mould of other geo¬ 
logical periods, spread out in such lavish profusion, over hill 
and valley, I shall briefly designate the nature of the prairie 
soils, as found in this immediate northwest, and endeavor to 
show their adaptation to fruit growing. 
These soils are of so similar a nature as to be classed as one, 
being composed mainly of alumina and silica, with a large per 
cent, of mould, and rich in the phosphates. This is essen¬ 
tially the cream from the great perennial summer of a past 
age, and happily for our time, it varies its proportions, from 
an excess of mould, to a large per centage of silica, or sand, 
and varies in depth from a few inches to many feet, where the 
subsoil is of the same nature, but of lighter color, from the 
absence of humus, or decaying vegetable matter of the pres¬ 
ent age. 
This soil rests upon a base of many grades, of which the 
gravel drift is most common; also, lime and sand rock, with 
us, and in the state of Iowa. In some parts of Minnesota the 
prairie soil rests upon a base of blue clay, which rests upon a 
tight bottom, as in the Blue Earth valley at Winnebago City. 
Now I shall assume that the prairie soil, as first described, 
possesses all the elements of a perfect structure in the fruit 
tree, but that there is a tendency to excessive and prolonged 
