However I do not advise growing squashes unless you have the market or grow mammoth kinds for stock feeding on the farm.

In my part of the state, I have seen no necessity for cover crops, as we usually have plenty of snow, and I have always considered that a cover crop takes too much moisture from the soil, especially in a dry fall and a winter when it freezes up without rain.

The most severe winter, that I ever experienced, was preceded by a dry fall and I had a young crchard in which beans had been grown, the snow was deep, and I did not lose a tree.

I do not want to go on record as saying that clean cultivation is not advisable, as I think, under some conditions, it may be the best way. But I have found that I could grow a crop and trees at the same time, without having the crop cost more than it is worth.

However, with the average farmer, with little and expensive help, I think clean cultivation might be best, but by all means cultivate. The partial cultivation and partial mulch system looks to me like an excuse only.

W. H. MARSH, Antigo.

As my experience has been somewhat limited along this line, I will not take up the time that might perhaps be better used by others. I will say, however, that I have worked more along the grass culture line. The trees have made a very good showing, a little slower growth, perhaps than if cultivated but they are coming well to fruiting. The grasshopper proposition presented itself in a very striking manner this summer and in looking over other orchards I am well satisfied that cultivation is the proper method to be used. But as far as I have worked out the thing, I like the small cultivated crop system in preference to clean cultivation. I think potatoes and beans are all right.

D. E. BINGHAM, Sturgeon Bay.

For fourteen years we have been practicing cultivation of orchards. In that time we followed about the plan which I am going to give you. We crop our orchards from the time they

are planted, using the rotation that Mr. Moore outlined, potatoes, beans and small fruits excluding the strawberry. I would not under any consideration use the strawberry in the orchard the first year, that is, unless I was going to dig the plants for sale in the fall. The first year you get very good results, the tree does nicely, the second year you get a set back that practically puts you back more than you gained. The reason for that is, the strawberry takes a great deal of moisture from the ground and you have practically a sod condition with the excessive amount of moisture that the strawberry takes from the soil. We have practiced planting or sowing a narrow strip of peas between the rows of trees and cultivating each side with a spring-tooth harrow; we have found that is not as practical as using open culture. We have set strips of clover leaving a chance for cultivation around the trees, and still we found that in the seasons when it gets a little dry we are in need of a little more moisture by the strip of clover taking out some of the moisture that we ought to have for the trees. We find our best condition is clean culture. We do not get it always, oftentimes we have a little strip of sod, sometimes we have more than we can handle, and sod gets around the tree, say a circle of three or four feet, but we find that is not injurious to the tree, the feeding roots are out beyond that, and we have ample room to cultivate and give all the moisture that is necessary. We do not use a cover crop in the orchard. It has always been a question in my mind as to how we add fertility by a cover crop. If we use a cover crop, what do we add to the soil in the way of humus? We allow the late growth of weeds to form our cover crop, say, from the middle of August we get a sufficinet covering over the land to protect the ground during the winter. I have sometimes thought that it was better to use a crop en the land during the growing season. I believe that if you take a young orchard and continue cultivation for a number of

years without any crop you will destroy or use up the humus. You have to add that in scme way. I believe if I were going to use a cover crop I would have some thing that would grow luxuriously and give me something to turn under in the way of vegetable matter. The system we follow is rotation of crops like beans and potatoes. I do not like a corn crop, it is a detriment to the foliage, especially if the corn crop is high, the foliage on the trees will be poor, especially in the cherry orchard.

The apple orchard is under discussion, but I believe the same would be true in the cherry orchard, lack of circulation of air and you would have foliage injury that you would not have in open culture.

R. J. COE, Ft. Atkinson.

Really I do not know what there is left for me to say. Prof. Moore, Mr. Bingham and Dr. Loope have said about all that there is to say along this line but to cultivate or not to cultivate, that is the question; whether it is better to cultivate and make our trees grow and keep them healthy, or to not cultivate and let them die. That is about the way I look at it. The ideal cultivation, I take it, is absolutely clean cultivation. That is to say, absolutely clean cultivation holds the moisture in the soil, puts the soil in the best possible mechanical condition for the tree to grow; but, on the other hand, it has some disadvantages. In other words, clean cultivation constantly followed up, robs the soil of its fertility, robs the soil of the one thing that we must have in the soil to make our crops grow well, namely, decaying vegetable matter or humus. So then we are driven of necessity to the growing of some crop, or adding some material to the surface of our soil to keep our soil in the best mechanical condition. I believe that we can grow some cultivated crop the fore part of the season with very beneficial effect. We want to keep the soil covered with some growing crop almost constantly, because there is almost all the time. some fertility developed in the soil by the cultivation and if we had to raise some growing crop in there, it would take up this fertility that is developed, made available and we can hold it near the surface of the soil so that our plants can get it a little later on when these roots and tops go to decay. This in brief is about my idea of whether we should cultivate or not. A few years ago this may be a little off the topic perhaps, but it is along the same line-at the Nurserymen's Convention in Chicago, Prof. L. H. Bailey, whom everybody knows to be the best horticulturist the world has to-day, made the statement that there are more nursery trees grown and planted every year than there are bearing trees all told, following this statement by another, which was something like this: People will buy and

8-H. S.

plant trees and not care for them and they never arrive at the
fruiting age.
The moral was of course that if we plant trees
we should care for them. The immortal Patrick Henry once
said, "I care not what others may say or do, but, as for me, give
me liberty or give me death." As for me, Mr. President, give
me a cultivated orchard, or give me none.

L. H. PALMER, Baraboo.

Clean cultivation followed with a cover crop would be an ideal way to raise fruit if one could afford to wait eight or ten years for returns. I always had to make my land pay as I went by raising crops among my young trees.

The first year I plant to some cultivated crop, rowing both ways to save too much work with the hoe, and leaving the space next to the trees a little wide. As the trees grow lessen the amount of land cropped, thus giving more to the trees.

It is generally necessary to seed to clover every two or three years, to loosen the soil and prevent washing. Fruit trees like any other crop require plenty of fertilizer and I find my best. trees are those I feed the best.

It is my belief that if there is something coming in as you go along, the average man will work his trees a little better, than if obliged to wait eight or ten years for the first crop. This method of cultivation gives me good trees free of cost at ten years of age.

I have been thinking about this bean culture, I have never tried it. I would like to ask what kind of beans they raise among the trees and how they raise them.

Mr. D. E.Bingham: We plant the common white bean and I believe we get goods results, not figuring the beans for the market. The results that we get are better cultivation and less humus loss, and we also get the crop of beans, sometimes they average fifteen to twenty-five dollars an acre in one season, it depends upon the conditions under which you can get them harvested and threshed. I believe we are coming to that method of orchard culture planting something and cultivating it without any, reference to the crop that we get. A very convenient way

of planting beans is to use the single horse planter, mark out the ground, then hitch the horse to the planter, then go along the mark, planting two or three beans every two or three inches, depending on the size of the beans. You can plant from one peck to one bushel per acre. We usually use about a bushel to the acre on our orchard.

The President: We have delegates from sister states whom we wish to hear from, and I will ask Mr Pratt from Michigan to speak on this subject.

Mr. Pratt: Perhaps our methods are a little different than yours in Wisconsin. I have noticed from the discussions that you are planting your trees a great deal closer than we do at the present time. We used to plant them closer, but now our apple trees are planted from thirty to forty feet apart each way. Of course we raise a great many other kinds of fruit. At Benton Harbor, down in the southwestern corner of Michigan, we raise a great many peaches. While they used to be planted, fifteen or eighteen years ago, as close as twelve, now, we are planting twenty to twenty-four feet each way and we get better crops, better peaches, more satisfactoin all the way around. As to cultivation there are two methods practiced; We have the sod mulch system, that is used only on land that is hilly and likely to wash. The trees are set on this land and it is seeded down to either clover or timothy and this is cut each season, and a large portion of that is piled around the tree so that no grass will grow under this mulch right around the tree, and the rest if it is used for grazing until the trees get big enough to take it all up. The mulch around these trees is kept up as far as the limbs of the trees reach and as the trees grow bigger, the sod mulch is stretched out farther.

In regard to clean culture methods, the first year we plant our trees in the corn field, each tree taking the place of a hill of corn and we get very good results that way, better than any other method we have practiced. After that there are various methods used, some use potatoes, same use beans, others vegetables. In the southern part of the state we have a good many small farms, five and ten acres that make a good living and every foot of ground has to be utilized, and the consequences are that we raise a great many vegetables there, as we are close to the Chicago market, and they can sell their vegetables at a