DEWAIN COOK, FRUIT GROWER, JEFFERS.
By the term "plums we already have" for the purpose of this paper we shall include only those varieties that have given general satisfaction over a large territory and for long term of years, and in the writer's opinion every one of such varieties are of full blooded, pure Americana origin.
The DeSoto takes the lead of them all. It undoubtedly has more good points to its credit than any other plum we have ever grown. The Wyant and the freestone Wolf are considered as being the next two most popular varieties. These were all wild varieties, found growing in the woods of Wisconsin and Iowa many years ago.
There are a few other Americana varieties that are nearly as good as are some of those enumerated, but at present we shall not attempt to name them. There are many otherwise fine varieties that are not included in this list of plums we already have, but because of a certain weakness of the blossom they require to be intermingled with other varieties, or the blossoms do not fertilize properly. They only bear well when conditions are very favorable. We class such varieties as being not productive enough.
Many attempts, with more or less—generally less—success have been made to improve our native plums through the growing of seedlings. Mr. H. A. Terry, of Crescent, Iowa, has done more of such work in his day than any other one man. His method was to plant the Americana kinds, like the DeSoto, alongside of varieties of the Hortulana type, like the Miner, then growing seedlings from the best plums thus grown. From such cross bred seedlings Mr. Terry originated and introduced a great many very fine varieties. But where are they today? The Hawkeye and the Terry are about the only ones the general public knows very much about. I will venture this statement, that as far as I know there is no variety of native plum in which there is an intermingling of Hortulana or Chickasaw type that has proven productive enough to be generally profitable.
The Surprise plum belongs to this type, as also does the Terry plum. The Terry plum we want to keep a while longer, not because it is a mortgage lifter for the growers but because of the extraordinarily large size of its fruit, as well as for its fine quality.
There are many injurious insects and fungous diseases that tend to make life a burden to the man who tries to grow plums in a commercial way. Among the insects are the plum curculio and the plum tree borer, better known as the peach tree borer. The curculio sometimes destroys all of the fruit on the tree, and the borer very often will destroy the whole tree of any variety.
Among the fungous diseases are the shot hole fungus and the plum pocket fungus, but the worst of all is that terribly destructive disease of the plum known as the brown rot. This brown rot fungus sometimes destroys the whole crop of certain varieties, besides injuring the trees sometimes as well. This one disease has done more to make plum growing unpopular than all other causes combined. Give us a cheap and efficient remedy, one that will destroy the rot fungus and not do injury to the foliage, buds or tree, and a long stride will have been made towards making plum growing popular as well as profitable.
Japanese hybrid plums.—Just now the Japanese hybrid varieties are attracting considerable attention. One prominent Minnetonka fruit grower said this to me about them:
"Mr. Cook, what is the use of making all of this fuss about these new plums? Plums are only used for the purposes of making jelly anyway, and we can usually get a dollar a bushel for our plums, and they would not pay any more than that, no matter how large and fine they are."