hard; it is not advisable, does not pay. Do not spray.
Prices at picking time are forty to fifty cents per bushel.

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H. DUBOIS, Burlingame, Osage county: I have lived in Kansas forty-one
years. Have an orchard of fifty apple trees from ten to twenty years
old. For market I prefer Ben Davis, Winesap, and Missouri Pippin, and
would add for family orchard Early Harvest, Duchess of Oldenburg, and
Maiden's Blush. I prefer a rich bottom having a red subsoil, and a
northeast slope. I prefer thrifty, two-year-old, medium-height trees,
set thirty feet each way. I cultivate my orchard as long as it lives
with a shovel plow and cultivator, and keep the ground stirred. Plant
potatoes in a young orchard, and cease cropping when the trees begin to
bear; then sow oats and let the pigs eat it off while it is green.
Windbreaks are not essential here, but some have forest-trees planted on
the north side of their orchards. I prune my trees in the spring to give
shape; cannot say whether it is beneficial or not. I fertilize my
orchard with barn-yard litter. I pasture my orchard with pigs until the
ripe fruit begins to fall; I think it advisable and that it pays, as the
pigs eat all the wormy and worthless fruit that falls. My trees are
troubled with tent-caterpillar, root aphis, round- and flat-headed
borers, and woolly aphis, and my apples with codling-moth.

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A. J. KLEINHANS, Grantville, Jefferson county: I have lived in the state
forty-one years. Have an apple orchard of 300 trees, twenty to
twenty-five years old. For market I prefer Winesap and Ben Davis; and
for family orchard Summer Astrachan, Bellflower, and White Winter
Pearmain. Have tried and discarded Missouri Pippin, Russet, Baldwin, Red
Astrachan, Little Romanite, and Pound Pippin. My orchard is situated in
the Kaw valley. I plant my orchard to corn, until the trees get too
large; then cease cropping and seed to clover and timothy. I prune
lightly, to keep the limbs off the ground and let in the sun and light;
I think it pays. I do not thin the fruit while on the trees. I pasture
my orchard late in the fall with young dehorned cattle; I think it
advisable and that it pays. My trees are troubled with canker-worms; and
my apples with codling-moths. I do not spray. I sell apples in the
orchard at wholesale.

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J. W. ATKINSON, Perry, Jefferson county: I h