The Bee

DEPARTING FROM
OLD TRADITIONS
High Schools Aid In Developing
Kentucky Fruit Growing.
60,000 TREES IN ONE PLOT!

Extensive Apple Growing Associations
Launched in Rowan and Hardin
Counties—Movement Means
Wider
Use of Agriculture and Horticulture
In Rural High Schools of the State.

'The present year has seen a great
impetus given to the fruit growing interests in Kentucky.
Two different
sections of the state have launched
extensive co-operative apple growing
associations.
Both in Rowan and in
Hardin counties the work has been
helped and developed by our state department of agriculture. The department
has furnished these counties
60,000 NEWLY GRAFTED APPLE TREES.
with four standard varieties of apple
trees free of charge and has also
agreed to advise and train the members of the association in the care and
general cultivation of the young trees
and orchards during the next five
years.
When the newly grafted young trees
were received by the association in
Rowan county they were divided
among the members, to be placed in
home gardens for the summer's
growth. In Hardin county it was decided best to plant and cultivate the
60,000 young trees in one nursery plot.
While plans were being discussed as
to the best place and manner of caring for this nursery work the agricultural class of the county high school
offered to take the trees and carry
them through the summer until trans-
planting time next autumn.
Just next to the high school at Elizabethtown a fertile piece of sod land
was broken and carefully prepared for
the tender young stock. The day the
planting took place was made something of a gala day for the students,
especially as two experts from the
state agricultural station, a government
expert and a Louisville newspaper
man came to inspect the work.
'When the 60,000 trees, enough to set
1,500 acres, were stacked in the side
yard they did not look as if they would
require much time to plant. But after
the bundles were opened and tiny
HIGH SCHOOL BOYS SETTING OUT YOUNG
STOCK.
bunches that could be held in one
hand were seen to contain seventy-five
or a hundred small trees the boys started first at the bundles and then at the
well-worked ground.
The splendid part of this work lies
in the fact that the high school is stepping outside of the old, narrow, musty
limits of educational tradition and is
doing something of very definite value
for the community. It will undoubtedly be of great benefit to the boys who
do the work, their fathers, their friends
and neighbors, in gaining a new viewpoint of what education will mean in
the coming years.
The development of Kentucky's resources should be the first aim of every
citizen, and when the enormous practical value of this work is realized it
will give a great impetus to every form
of agricultural endeavor.
If this work is a pronounced success
this year it will naturally mean a wider use of agriculture and horticulture
in our rural high schools over the
whole state. When this comes it will
also mean that each community will
be willing to put much larger sums of
money into its school than it has in
the past. Let us hope that many high
schools will follow this splendid start.