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and first fruited in 1887. Planted seed again in 1879-1880, none grew. In 1881 one seed grew,and the tree was planted in orchard in 1885 and bore first fruit in 1889. The three trees have borne fruit every year since they began to bear. The trees all look alike, and the fruit is so near alike in size, color and flavor that no one is able to distinguish any difference. In 1891 one of the oldest trees produced elever measured bushels, being the fifth crop and but thirteen years from the time the seed was planted. There were no other tame apples bearing upon the farm at the time the seeds were saved except one

ETHLYN.

Utter, likewise top-grafted on native crab but standing on the opposite side of the highway. No other tame apples were growing within one mile. The originator thinks the angles of the branches, notching of the leaves, straight down on the under side, and the blossom end of the fruit, show traces of the wild crab, and it is thought by some to be a hybrid between the apple and the crab. We do not think so, but that these traces come from the influence of the stock on the graft and that they are more marked because a portion of the tree still carried crab top.

Mr. Elliot: I would like to ask Mr. Harris if in his effort in hunting up new seedlings he has ever found anything in the way of a new seedling that is superior to the Wealthy?

Mr. Harris: No, not in every respect. The Eberhard seedling is a longer keeper than the Wealthy and no doubt as hardy a tree and freer from blight, but it has not been tested outside of the place where it originated. I got a very few scions last spring and started them. I have one tree that bore year before last. I believe there are some among those Gideon seedlings, that he sent out, that will prove to be as valuable as the Wealthy, and will be as large, of as good quality, if anything, and hard

ier and freer from blight. I believe there are some varieties in the orchard of Mr. Lightly's that are worthy of propagation. I believe that orchard should be visited every year, and Mr. Kimball and myself know where they are.

Mr. Dartt:

Will Mr. Harris tell us what he knows ahout the

Minnetonka apple?

Mr. Harris: I inquired all around but nobody knew anything about it, and Gideon says he knows nothing about it. A few years ago there was an apple out which was said to have originated at Minnetonka and was sold around our place. After it began to bear it proved to be the Ben Davis, and I suppose the Minnetonka apple is of the same stripe.

THE SUCKER AND CAP VARIETIES OF RASPBERRIES COMPARED AS TO PROFITS.

H. C. ELLERGODT, LANESBORO.

When I was asked by our secretary to write a paper on this sub. ject I wished it had referred to watermelons and muskmelons rather than berries, because I believe I could then have given some of our members a good impetus toward planting and raising more of this delicious and thirst-quenching fruit, as this has been my occupation for twenty years.

Fruit raising with me is of a more recent date, so that the conclusions I have come to regarding which is the more profitable variety to grow, the sucker or the blackcap raspberry, may not hold good here in the future and for other localities.

The growing of blackcaps here has been a success. They have produced a good crop every year, and that without winter protection.

The red raspberries have some years produced a good crop also, but other seasons they have been a failure, although they have been covered in winter. Then, by comparing one year with another, the black ones have produced the more fruit and the berries of both kinds have sold here in this and adjoining markets for the same price most of the time except, in a few instances, when the blackcaps have sold for a little less than the red raspberry; but I believe that the general trend of the market in the larger cities is that the berries of the blackcap variety sell for less than the red raspberries.

Taking everything into consideration the red raspberries cost the more of the two varieties to raise, because a constant war has to be waged against the young suckers that, they shall not sap the life blood out the parent plant and hinder it from bringing forth a crop of berries. The trimming out of the canes to the right number in the hill is also an item of expense which is not so much with the blackcaps, and my experience has led me to believe that the red or suckering kinds are more liable to disease, making it necessary to apply preventives and fungicides, which also cuts down the profit of that variety-so that my verdict will be in favor of the blackcap varieties.

PROBLEMS

CONFRONTING THE SOUTH

FRUIT GROWER.

W. S. THORnber, BROOKINGS, S. D.

DAKOTA

It would be impossible to enumerate in one brief paper all the problems that are confronting the South Dakota fruit grower, so I shall try and confine myself more particularly to the prominent

ones.

Many will verify the fact that South Dakota is not a "Garden of Eden" and, in all probabilities, if the prevailing environments continue will never be one.

Less than fifteen years ago the greater portion of our state was a vast, treeless plain, with not so much as a native willow to check those fierce and merciless winds which traversed all parts of the state. Very few native groves appeared along the streams, while the prairies were broad and expansive on either side. This was the time, while hundreds of dollars were being expended every spring and fall for unsuitable and worthless nursery stock, that Dakota needed a horticulture of her own. But South Dakota, like all other new states, has had to get her experience in tree planting by doing. It was during this period of its development that the idea of South Dakota ever raising any fruit was almost killed. Nor did some of our neighboring nurserymen (I hope there are none of them here today) help matters in the least when they permitted, or in some instances sent out, smooth-tongued tree-peddlers to make the farmers believe that anything and everything would grow in South Dakota. They in this way eupplied the farmers with many dollars' worth of tender nursery goods, which would have been very dear as presents to most of them.

We must not blame the nurserymen alone for all the early failures, as many are due to the practice of fall planting, which was so common in early days. Professor N. E. Hanson very nicely forbids fall planting when he says, “Don't do it, for our Dakota winter winds will drive the sap from a fence post." In many parts of our state remnants of orchards of early days lift their heads but little above the quack grass and weeds among which they have been left to die. It is more than probable that the factor most detrimental to our early work was the unsubdued condition of the soil planted upon. The majority of our farmers came from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois, in which states they had seen the soil subdued with less labor and trees and shrubs grown with less care. They soon found to their sorrow that it was utterly impossible in three years, with ordinary treatment, to kill the quack grass which grows so abundantly on our breaking.

Such were the early drawbacks to growing fruit in our state, but in spite of these difficulties many successful orchards were established.

The past few years we have been greatly encouraged over the prospect that soon we should be able to supply the greater portion of our home demand. By correspondence, reaching nearly every or ganized county in the state, I learned that in all parts of the state a

few men are meeting with fair success in growing fruit. And every successful orchard in the state becomes an object lesson of the highest value, encouraging and teaching every passer-by the lesson that to some seems hard to learn, the lesson of successful fruit culture.

Many of our farmers find it exceedingly difficult to get trees, even from well established nurseries, that are true to name, and hardly ever is this possible from tree agents. As a rule, these agents find a nursery overstocked with undesirable trees, which they buy at a great reduction in prices, then re-label and send out for whatever the order calls; and as most of our trees have been bought from roaming agents, is it any wonder that so many of them have failed? / Under the prevailing system, it is essential that live nurseries have agents to advertise their stock, for not one farmer in one thousand would ever go to the nursery at the proper season to procure the necessary trees and shrubs to plant a farm.

We feel and believe that if we were able to control the varieties and quality of the supplies that will be planted in the state for the next five years, that we could do more for the fruit growing industry of the state than could be done in any other way. But as long as nurserymen will send out any of the tender varieties as suitable stock for our planting, we are under the influence and at the mercy of these men whose interests are not with us. So what we need first of all are good, honest, interested and experienced men, who will use their influence as to varieties and will send out only those that are sure to stand. In this way they can gain the confidence as well as the patronage of the true farmer.

We have come to believe that the cold winters are not our worst enemies but rather that our high, dry atmosphere, which is so abundant in all parts of our state, is the severest test of hardiness. From experience we know trees from an atmosphere as dry as ours though much warmer will stand much better than those from moist atmosphere even though located in colder climates. At different times planters have tried to avoid this failing in the trees by starting small nurseries in the semi-arid belts, thinking that trees grown there would stand the dry atmosphere, but too small a percentage of the grafts live through the first winter or on account of the drought ever start at all. The main trouble came through the tender roots killing out during the winter, but this is partially over. come by the use of Siberian stocks or propagation by means of the cutting graft. Since we realize that most of our supplies must come from moist atmospheres, we must select those varieties that will stand the drought.

Eastern and southeastern Dakota's climatic conditions are very moist as compared with the central and western parts of our state. Several varieties of trees are known to do well in the eastern part which utterly fail in the west. The hard, or sugar, maple which is a native of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Canada and recently found in South Dakota, where the atmosphere is cold but damp, fails completely in those parts of the state where it is very dry. The Golden prune, a native of California, is a grand success in parts of our state. It is

for the same reason that the Fameuse apple thrives in Canada but is a rank failure in South Dakota. From this data, the sooner we give up the idea that it is our cold winter alone that kills our trees, the sooner will our prairies be dotted with orchards and plantations.

Another drawback has been the lack of cultivation, both before and after planting. We have a very hard subsoil, loosening of which manifestly aids the tree planter. In an experiment at the College Station as to the behavior of the roots of seedling trees with ordinary culture or on sub-soiled land, it was fully demonstrated that there was a great advantage to be had by subsoiling. Many growers have found it beneficial to give complete culture to the orchards and never seed them to grass or clover, for as soon as the grass once gets started the trees cease to grow. Probably the hardest question to solve is the one of late spring frosts. It has been estimated that the crop of 1897 was reduced 90 per cent. by the frosts the latter part of May. It seems almost an impossibility to pile up enough brush straw and etc. to keep the temperature above freezing for a period of three or four nights in succession, but, nevertheless, many of our most successful men are doing this.

Until recently our orchards have been comparatively free from blight, but last year seems to have been a bad year, for out of fifty varieties of mostly Russian apples snd crabs the Shields crab was the only one that was perfectly free. The Martha and Duchess were only slightly affected, while the Early Strawberry and Transcendent crabs were so badly used up that it was found advisable to remove the trees bodily from the orchard.

During the past five years the jack rabbits have been increasing so rapidly as to cause no little alarm as to how we are to protect our orchards. It is not an uncommon thing to see them running in droves of from fifty to one hundred and fifty. As yet they are not doing the damage that the wood, or cotton-tail, rabbits are doing, because they do not burrow under the snow, but rather prefer the young, tender shoots which project above the snow, and are espe cially fond of one year old trees. The average farmer will be able to protect his few trees from rabbits by means of wire netting or laths and wire, which will serve also as a protection to the stems of the trees from sunscald.

Aside from the apple, other fruits have met with similar draw. backs. In parts of our state, and more especially along the Missouri river, are thickets of wild plums of the yellow and red varieties. They are, of course, hardy and adapted to the climate, except where the trees have been pruned very high, in which cases the stems have become sunscalded, which is common in all orchards where the trees have not been headed very low. Scattered over the state are a few very creditable plum orchards grown from pits and trees obtained along the river.

The Buffalo berry (Sheperdia argentia) and sand cherry (Prunus pumila) are both being cultivated, with the expectation of developing palatable fruit from them.

Strawberries have done fairly well where they have had a reasonable amount of care, but too many people take care of them during

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