uld make them of red cedar or Russian apricots planted
on the west, south and east sides, thirty feet from the orchard. I feed
the rabbits corn and clover; have no trouble with borers. I prune
heavily, to make the apples large and keep down too much wood growth. I
fertilize my trees with timber dirt, and think it pays. I believe it
pays and is advisable to pasture orchards with hogs. I pick by hand, and
sort into three classes: large, medium, small and blemished. Have not
dried any. Store in the cellar, in crates two feet long, ten inches
wide, and eight inches deep. Have sold at fifty to eighty cents per
bushel.

* * * * *

E. K. WOLVERTON, Barnes, Washington county: I have resided in Kansas
twenty-eight years; have an apple orchard of 18,500 trees from five to
twenty-seven years old. For market I prefer Missouri Pippin and Ben
Davis, and for family orchard would add Duchess of Oldenburg. Have tried
and discarded Winesap and Rawle's Janet on account of shy bearing and
poor keeping quality. I prefer a rich bottom with a porous subsoil, an
east and north slope. I prefer good, thrifty, two-year-old trees. I
plant by wire after the principle of check-row corn-planting; make the
links twenty feet long, tie a white cloth in each link coupling, make
the line long enough to plant ten trees (eleven links in length),
stretch the chain east and west, say on north side of plat intended for
planting; stick a stake at every tag. Draw another line ten trees south
of it, and stick a stake at every tag, and so on to the south side of
the plat. Then draw the line from the northeast stake to the east stake
of the second row, the one due south, having the north tag at the stake.
Then plant at every tag, placing the tree on east side of wire. When the
row is planted move the wire west to the next stake, and so on till you
reach the west side. The ground should first be prepared by plowing as
for corn; float off [?] every evening all that you have plowed that day,
which leaves the ground in the best condition.

I cultivate my orchard to corn for six to eight years. I plant twenty
feet each way, and take an oak plant sixteen feet long, and place one
section of a disc at each end of it, making it cut sixteen feet wide
from outside to outside, and running within two feet of the trees at
either end, leaving a space eight feet wide in the middle. Run another
disc on that ground with another team and you have the