that wasn't the case. We
didn't get any apples, and yet during county fair why there was quite a
nice show of nice fruit that they had picked up a few here and a few
there, where really their location seems to me could not have been any
better than ours. I don't know what the reason was, but it was very
patchy, and I didn't dream we would have such a good show of fruit as we
did, and I couldn't tell where it came from.

Mr. Philips: I think when the trees are loaded so heavily, if you would
pick off a third of them you would get more out of the balance of the
crop.

Mr. Andrews: Yes, I think that. The question is, if we pick off a third
of a heavy crop, if we have a heavy crop, if that wouldn't help the next
crop. It surely would.

Mr. Philips: Help that crop, too, in the price.

Mr. Andrews: Yes, sir, it will pay that year besides paying the next
year, too; it will pay double.

Mr. Philips: It is a good plan any year.

Mr. Andrews: Yes, we ought to do that, we are lacking in that work of
thinning the fruit. We sometimes have a late frost that will take off
part of them, thin them that way, or wind, or something of that kind,
and we rather depend on that feature of it. Then in that time of the
year we are very busy and liable to have some things neglected, and that
seems to be the one that is almost always neglected.

Mr. Brackett: Would you advocate the extensive planting of apples in
this climate?

Mr. Andrews: I would not. At the same time you take it in the southern
part of the state I presume they can grow them there. They can grow
there many things we can't think of growing in this part of the state
unless it be along Lake Minnetonka.

Mr. Older: Where you have an orchard ten years old, is it best to seed
it down or still continue to cultivate it? In the west they have to
cultivate. What is the best in this country? I know one man says it is
best to keep on cultivating while it is growing, and another man says
that that will kill the trees. I want to know which is the best.

Mr. Andrews: I think cultivation is the thing that ought to be done
until the trees get well to bearing, anyway, and then it furnishes
nitrogen to the soil to seed it down to clover. If we don't do that we
are very liable to neglect that element in the soil. The better way to
my mind is to cultivate for eight or ten years, and then I do think it
is all right perhaps, for farmers, I mean, who will neglect the
cultivation if they de