J. B. WILCOX, Muscotah, Atchison county: Have lived in Kansas thirty-five years; have 4000 trees seventeen years planted. Prefer Winesap, Missouri Pippin and Ben Davis for market, and would add Grimes's Golden Pippin, and Jonathan for family orchard. Have tried and discarded many varieties. I prefer a black loam, with clay subsoil, on a northern slope. I cultivate for six or eight years in corn, and then seed to clover. Do not think windbreaks are a necessity. I pasture my orchard with horses and cattle; don't think it advisable, and don't think it pays. I am troubled with canker-worm and round-headed borers. I spray with Paris green for canker-worm, and dig borers out with the knife. I sell my best fruit at wholesale, often in the orchard. With the poorest culls I do nothing. I find my best market right at home. Prices have ranged from seventy-five cents to two dollars per barrel. I pay three cents per bushel for gathering.
GEO. A. WISE, Reserve, Brown county: I have lived in Kansas twenty-nine years. Have an orchard of 22,000 apple trees; 150 are eighteen years old, the rest are twenty-four years old. I have the Ben Davis, Gano, Jonathan, York Imperial, Winesap, and Missouri Pippin, and for my own use add to the above Grimes's Golden, and some summer varieties. I have tried and discarded Willow Twig as short-lived, and Northern Spy for shy bearing. In this county I would choose upland, northern slope, with black loam soil. Would plant two-year-old, sound trees, without fork, thirty-three feet apart each way, and three inches deeper than they grew in the nursery. I cultivate thoroughly, planting to corn from six to eight years. I use a disc harrow and one-horse, five-tooth cultivator; I then sow to red clover, and cease cropping when the limbs reach out far enough to prevent me passing through with the hay-rack. While I would not object to a windbreak on the south side, I do not think it necessary. I wrap my trees with grass and am not bothered with rabbits. I believe in pruning trees while young; I cut off limbs that do not stand at an angle of forty-five degrees, and thin out to prevent being top-heavy. I have never thinned apples on the trees, but believe it would pay. I fertilize the ground all over with stable litter. I believe it does no harm and pays to pasture the orchard with hogs. I have never sprayed any. I pick apples by hand from a step-ladder into half-bushel measures, and sort into three grades--first, sound, and not wormy; second, may be wormy, but otherwise sound; third, cider. I pack in barrels, and sell at wholesale, usually in the orchard. I sell the second-grade apples in bulk; make culls into cider and feed to horses and cattle. Never have tried a distant market. Never dried any. Sometimes store a few for winter in bulk in a cave; not satisfactory. Find that the Winesap and Missouri Pippin keep best. Some years apples keep better than they do others. Have never tried irrigation. Prices have varied from sixty cents to $1.25 per barrel. I use all kinds of help, paying from seventy-five cents to one dollar per day.