I plant my orchard to corn, potatoes, garden-truck, and small fruits, and keep this up, with clean cultivation, using a Planet jr. horse hoe, until they begin to bear, and cease cropping after ten years, planting nothing unless the above-mentioned crops or clover in a bearing orchard. Windbreaks are injurious unless planted at least 200 feet from the orchard. The best protection is to plant the two outer rows of fruit-trees close together; they can be cut out, if desired, when they become too thick. This is better than high-growing shelter trees or evergreens. We want a free circulation of air to pass among the trees. A high and heavy protection produces an eddy which blights and sun-scalds the trees, as well as hastens the ripening and dropping of apples. We have had no occasion to use any protection from rabbits and borers since we quit pruning off the lower limbs. Pruning is not thoroughly understood. Trees are pruned to make them live, grow fast and stocky, and also slender; to make them bear young, give form, light and air, and to make them look alike; to bear heavy crops and fine specimens. It is claimed all this can be done by pruning; it can be accomplished without pruning in a much shorter time and without extra labor. We do not recommend pruning apple trees at any times excepting _after_ the trees are well established in the orchard; then the lower limbs _may_ be gradually removed to form the head, about two feet from the ground; but the longer we allow them to remain the heavier and stockier they become; for the body of the tree increases in size just in proportion to the amount of foliage on the lower limbs. We prune off dead, broken and sucker limbs, and have no objections to taking off limbs that chafe each other (if this should happen from neglect). We have lost more trees from pruning than from all other causes together. We have seen large orchards just in their prime that have been so injured from pruning that they never recovered. On the other hand, I have seen orchards that were so neglected, dilapidated and crowded that I thought a thorough pruning would make them more productive. I never thin the fruit on the trees; it is not necessary.