Davis, Missouri Pippin, and Winesap, and for family orchard I would add
Maiden's Blush and Bellflower. I prefer bottom land, black, sandy loam,
with a clay bottom and a north slope. I plant my trees thirty-six feet
each way. I plant my orchard to corn and potatoes, using a disc, and
plant tame grass in a bearing orchard, and cease cropping when they
begin to bear. Windbreaks are essential. I would make them of Osage
orange, and would surround the orchard with a fence of the same. I prune
to keep the limbs from rubbing, and I think it pays. I do not thin the
fruit while on the trees. My trees are in mixed plantings. I do not
fertilize my orchard; am on bottom land, which does not need it, but
think it would be beneficial on some soils. I pasture my orchard with
hogs, but do not think it advisable; it does not pay. My trees are
troubled with canker-worm, tent-caterpillar, flathead borer, roundhead
borer, twig-borer, and leaf-roller. I spray with Paris green and London
purple when the worms are at work on the leaves. I dig borers out. I
hand-pick my apples in baskets from ladders, and sort into two
classes--large and perfect in number one, small and perfect in number
two; the balance for cider. I pack in barrels filled full, and mark with
the grade; then haul to market in a wagon. I make the culls into cider.
Coffeyville is my best market. I dry some and find a ready market for
them; it pays. I am successful in storing apples in bulk in a cellar,
and find Ben Davis, Missouri Pippin and Winesap keep best. Prices have
been about fifty cents per bushel; dried apples, five cents per pound.

* * * * *

C. E. HILDRETH, secretary Altamont Horticultural Society, Altamont,
Labette county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-seven years. I have an
apple orchard of 15,000 trees eight years old, five inches in diameter,
and prefer Ben Davis, Jonathan and Missouri Pippin for market; and for
family use Early Harvest, Red June, Jonathan, Maiden's Blush, Winesap,
and Missouri Pippin. I prefer gray or red soil, porous subsoil, with an
eastern slope. I set first-class, two-year-old, well-branched trees, in
large furrows, deeply plowed out, twenty feet north and south, and
thirty-two feet east and west. For six years I grow corn in the orchard,
cultivating well; after that nothing. I plow shallow, and disc or harrow
until midsummer as often as the weeds start. I cultivate as long as the
trees live. To protect from ra