Mr. Sauter:  You think it best for anybody with a small orchard to make his own lime-sulphur solution?

Mr. Dunlap:  That depends on how he is equipped.  It costs a great deal less to make your own solution than it does to buy it.  Whether you could afford to do it or not depends upon the amount you spray and your equipment.  You really ought to have, in making your own lime-sulphur, a steam boiler, although you can make it in an ordinary farm feed boiler.  You can boil it right in that and turn it out after it is made, stirring it with a wooden paddle while cooking.  I find that if we are equipped for it we will make a product that is equal to the imported product, but we ought to have a little more equipment.  We ought to have steam and run this steam into our cooking vat to keep it boiling at the right temperature right along, and boil it for an hour, and then have a mechanical agitator in the bottom of the tub that keeps it stirred up, and keep the cover closed down as nearly tight as possible so as to exclude the air as much as possible, letting the surplus steam escape, and in that way we get a product as good as anything we are able to buy, at less than half the price.  If one is using a great quantity that is the way to do it, but in small quantities I don’t think it would pay to bother with it. (Applause.)

Marketing Fruit at Mankato.

P. L. KEENE, UNIVERSITY FARM, ST. PAUL.

(Gideon Memorial Contest.)

Mankato has a population of about twelve thousand and is just about within the car-lot market.  In seasons of low production it can easily use all the fruit grown in the vicinity, but in seasons of good production some must be shipped out.  This irregular supply makes it difficult to obtain a satisfactory method of marketing the fruit.

Nearly all kinds of fruit are grown here.  Apples, strawberries and raspberries are grown to the greatest extent.  There are several orchards having from five hundred to a thousand trees, while many small fruit growers have several acres of strawberries and raspberries.  Plums, blackberries, currants and gooseberries are grown on a smaller scale, so that there is seldom enough produced to make it necessary to ship them.

The number of varieties grown is very great, as it is in almost every locality where the industry is relatively young.  There are over forty varieties of apples grown on a more or less large scale.  This makes the marketing problem still more difficult.  Many of the growers are beginning to specialize in two or three varieties, such as Wealthy, Patten, Northwestern and Malinda.  Last year some of the growers produced as many as five carloads.  Small fruits are brought in by the wagon load during the heaviest part of the season, making it possible for the fruit houses to load a car in a day.

The commercial growers use good, practical methods of culture, keeping the land well cultivated and using cover crops and mulch; but many of the small growers of half-way fruit men—­those who do not specialize in fruit growing—­neglect their orchards.  Most growers properly prune and thin their trees and bushes, while many are beginning to spray.