640 Report of the Department of Horticulture of the 



phosphoric acid and potash. Applications should be liberal and 

 checks should be left so that benefits, if any, may be apparent. The 

 following amounts are only suggestive: Two to three hundred 

 pounds per acre of nitrate of soda or three to six hundred pounds 

 dried blood to stimulate growth, applied as soon as the leaves have 

 unfolded; one ton of wood-ashes or two to three hundred pounds 

 muriate of potash; six to seven hundred pounds acid phosphate; all 

 to be applied early in the spring. If the soil is already well supplied 

 with any one of these forms of plant food it is useless to make addi- 

 tional applications of that kind. The fertilizers will not take the 

 place of humus. 



Propagation. — Nurserymen are usually well supplied with plants 

 to fill orders, yet the varieties are easily propagated and the fruit- 

 grower can often raise his own plants to advantage. In the fall, 

 as soon as the leaves have dropped, hard wood cuttings from six 

 to ten inches long, the longer cuttings being preferred for dry soils, 

 are made from well-ripened wood of one season's growth; they may 

 be planted at once in nursery rows or tied in bundles and buried 

 butt end up in moist sand or moss to callus for a few weeks, after 

 which they are planted or they may remain in the sand until early 

 spring. The cuttings are planted deeply leaving but one or two 

 buds above the surface, placing them from four to six inches apart 

 in the row, and compacting the soil firmly about the cuttings. If 

 fall-planted, they must receive winter protection either with a slight 

 back furrow of earth directly over the row or with a covering of 

 coarse stable manure or straw applied after the ground freezes, to 

 prevent heaving from the action of frost. They are left in nursery 

 rows from one to two years, receiving thorough cultivation whenever 

 necessary. A few plants are occasionally propagated from layers — 

 the canes being bent down and a portion covered with earth, leaving 

 the tips exposed. Roots soon develop from the covered cane which 

 may then be separated from the main bush and planted in a per- 

 manent location. 



Selection of varieties.— A variety may succeed in one place and 

 yet be undesirable in another locality. Under different environ- 

 ments and under unlike surroundings the same variety may change 

 both in plant- and fruit-habits. As with strawberries, adaptation 

 should be determined before planting extensively in the commercial 

 plantation. But few of the thirty-three varieties growing on the 

 grounds of this Station have any commercial value. We may 

 determine what varieties to set, first, by observation of the kinds 

 doing well in the immediate locality under apparently similar con- 

 ditions and, second, by a trial of a few plants before setting extensively. 

 No variety has all the qualities equally developed that go to make 

 perfection. The newer, most promising kinds should be tested in 

 a small way and their value determined. Occasionally one may be 

 found superior to the older varieties. 



