tomatoes and cabbage for seven years, using a cultivator and harrow (I
like the Acme and spading harrow). Cease cropping after seven years;
plant bearing orchard to blackberries and raspberries, but this is not
advisable; clover or cow-peas are better. Windbreaks are essential on
the prairie; would make them of a double row of Osage orange or
evergreens, on the south and west. For rabbits I wrap the trees with
paper or veneering, and for borers I mound the tree up. I prune a little
with my pocket-knife to remove dead and crossed limbs; it does not pay
to saw and chop. I thin my fruit by hand when the crop is heavy, not
later than July 15. My trees are in mixed plantings. I fertilize my
orchard with ashes and bone-meal; both are beneficial, but not necessary
in good potash soils.

I pasture my orchard with six-months-old pigs--think it advisable in an
orchard that is over four years old. My trees are troubled with
canker-worms, round- and flathead borers and tent-caterpillar, and my
trees with codling-moth, curculio, and gouger. I spray with London
purple and Paris green, using a hand pump. For borers I wash the trees
with whale-oil soap, carbolic acid, and sulphur, and then mound the
trees up. I pick my apples in baskets, from a ladder wide at the bottom
and narrow at the top, and leave the apples in the orchard four to six
weeks, then sort into three classes, from a padded table 5x12 feet,
sloping; pack into twelve-peck barrels, mark with variety, and haul to
market on a spring wagon. Sometimes I sell apples in the orchard at
retail; pack my best apples in one-peck baskets for stand trade, my
second grade in barrels. Feed the culls to the hogs; cider does not pay.
My best market is Kansas City. Have tried distant markets, but it did
not pay--too great freight and commission charges. I am successful in
storing apples in barrels in an earth cave five feet deep, earth sides
and roof; keep it open when not freezing; apples can be stored in bulk
by leaving a space of six inches at the sides and bottom. Jonathan and
Gano keep best. I have tried artificial cold storage and lost fifteen
per cent. of my apples. I found it too expensive and unreliable. I have
to repack the stored apples before marketing, and lose from fifteen to
forty per cent. of them. I do not irrigate. Prices have been: Jonathan,
$3 to $5 per barrel; Ben Davis, $2.25 to $3 per barrel. I employ men
mostly, at from $1 to $1.25 per day.

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