Types of Farming in South Dakota

The fruit-breeding experiments at this station since 1895 have yielded the many new hardy fruits described in Bulletin No. 224. Some of them have become popular and are now widely grown in many western states and north into Canada. These thirty-three years of work in producing several hundred thousand fruit seedlings have enabled the writer to make some deductions which have been presented in addresses prepared for International Science meetings and published in the reports of these associations. It appears best at this time to publish three of the papers in order to make them available to a larger audience. In recent years the land in this department was all planted to fruit seedlings and there was no more land available. Since there was no money available for the purchase of land, the only way was to secure the use of state land and of land furnished free by local people interested in the development of horticulture. In past year as soon as one generation of fruit seedlings was fruited, the selections for propagation were made and the remainder dug up, and burned. This gave room for the next generation. In recent years it became necessary to establish orchards else· where. It was a much better test of hardiness than to plant them all at one place, since there is a wide diversity in climate in so large a state as South Dakota. This wide diversity is evident in the recommended Fruit List of the South Dakota State Horticultural Society, in which the State is divided into six fruit districts