ck loam, with clay subsoil, on a
northern slope. I cultivate for six or eight years in corn, and then
seed to clover. Do not think windbreaks are a necessity. I pasture my
orchard with horses and cattle; don't think it advisable, and don't
think it pays. I am troubled with canker-worm and round-headed borers. I
spray with Paris green for canker-worm, and dig borers out with the
knife. I sell my best fruit at wholesale, often in the orchard. With the
poorest culls I do nothing. I find my best market right at home. Prices
have ranged from seventy-five cents to two dollars per barrel. I pay
three cents per bushel for gathering.

* * * * *

GEO. A. WISE, Reserve, Brown county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-nine
years. Have an orchard of 22,000 apple trees; 150 are eighteen years
old, the rest are twenty-four years old. I have the Ben Davis, Gano,
Jonathan, York Imperial, Winesap, and Missouri Pippin, and for my own
use add to the above Grimes's Golden, and some summer varieties. I have
tried and discarded Willow Twig as short-lived, and Northern Spy for shy
bearing. In this county I would choose upland, northern slope, with
black loam soil. Would plant two-year-old, sound trees, without fork,
thirty-three feet apart each way, and three inches deeper than they grew
in the nursery. I cultivate thoroughly, planting to corn from six to
eight years. I use a disc harrow and one-horse, five-tooth cultivator; I
then sow to red clover, and cease cropping when the limbs reach out far
enough to prevent me passing through with the hay-rack. While I would
not object to a windbreak on the south side, I do not think it
necessary. I wrap my trees with grass and am not bothered with rabbits.
I believe in pruning trees while young; I cut off limbs that do not
stand at an angle of forty-five degrees, and thin out to prevent being
top-heavy. I have never thinned apples on the trees, but believe it
would pay. I fertilize the ground all over with stable litter. I believe
it does no harm and pays to pasture the orchard with hogs. I have never
sprayed any. I pick apples by hand from a step-ladder into half-bushel
measures, and sort into three grades--first, sound, and not wormy;
second, may be wormy, but otherwise sound; third, cider. I pack in
barrels, and sell at wholesale, usually in the orchard. I sell the
second-grade apples in bulk; make culls into cider and feed to horses
and cattle. Never have tried a distan