136 Nebraska State Horticultural Society. 



SIBERIAN CRABS AS A HARDY STOCK FOR THE APPLE IN 



NURSERY AND ORCHARD. 



Professor N. E. Hansen, South Dakota Agricultural College, 



Brookings, S. D. 



This subject may not interest the peach belt people of southern Ne- 

 braska. But on your northern border, and especially as you go westward 

 where the snowfall is light and the severest cold may come without snow 

 on the ground, the subject assumes more importance. I have presented 

 this matter at various times before our northern horticultural societies, 

 because in that section root-killing of apple stocks occurs very fre- 

 quently. But it is only in such winters as 1898-9, when the severest 

 cold came in early February with the ground bare, that the disaster 

 is so general over many states as to compel general notice to be taken 

 of the situation. The money losses of thousands of farmers who suffer 

 from root-killing of unmulched apple trees do net usually reach our 

 ears, but when a nursery loses three hundred thousand apple grafts in 

 one winter, we are apt to hear about it at the next horticultural meet- 

 ing. However, as the trouble only occurs at the south about once in 

 fifteen or twenty years, nurserymen continue their old methods, as it 

 is expensive and slow to make a change, and if suitably practiced 

 there will be no need of making any change. However, I maintain to 

 propagate our apple trees in such a manner that mulching is necessary 

 is to put your apple orchard on crutches, which may be taken away at 

 any time. In Russia, at the northern borders of orcharding, I learned 

 in the course of two trips to Russia in 1894 and 1897, that great 

 trouble was formerly experienced from root-killing of the ordinary 

 commercial apple stocks. In southern Russia, at the large nurseries 

 at Kiv, where French pears are raised successfully, ordinary apple 

 seed is used for stocks, either from their local apples or imported from 

 France or Germany, as happens to be the most convenient. At the 

 north, however, it was found that ne seedlings of the common apple, 

 Pyrus malus, would stand dhy winter freezing with the ground bare, 

 say 40 degrees F. below zero. It was not until they went outside of the 

 Pyrus mains species that sufficient hardiness was found. This was in 

 the pure Siberian crab, Pyi-us baccata, represented in our old orchards 

 by the Cherry and Yellow Siberian crabs, and by Pyrus prunifolia, 

 which is considered by Professor Bailey to be a group of hybrids of 

 I'yrus nialus and Pyrus baccata. In the United States the crabs of the 



