154 State Horticultural Society. 



We have said that cover crops were of value in regulating the 

 food and water supply. Take for an example a young peach orchard. 

 In the growing season we cultivate and encourage the trees to avail 

 themselves of all there is in the soil for them. By the middle of the 

 summer they should have attained the desired growth, and must 

 now be induced, if possible, to check their rapid growth, and mature 

 the wood before the winter season. If cowpeas, or some such cover 

 crop, are sown after the last cultivation, some of the available food 

 must be temporarily used to mature that crop. They take the food 

 from the tree then, but give it back in the spring when it is most 

 needed. While they will also take from the soil a large part of the 

 moisture, they shade the soil and prevent baking. 



By the proper use of cover crops we not only benefit the soil 

 and produce the conditions most favorable to the proper growth and 

 development of the tree, but we are doing it at the least possible 

 expense. It is true that we might use some crop that could be har- 

 vested at a profit, but this would be robbing the soil. Where con- 

 ditions will admit of it, hogs might be pastured to an advantage, but 

 iliis would be advised onlv with caution. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH CROWN GALL. 

 (By W. L. Howard, Assistant Horticulturist, Columbia, Mo.) 



A great deal is heard about galls on the roots of apple trees and 

 also on raspberries, especially the reds. The galls are warty-looking 

 excrecences, which on the apple seem most often to attack the trees 

 at or near the crowns^ — hence the name "crown gall." It is found, 

 however, that the galls may form on any part of the main root or 

 roots wherever there is a wound. This is why the trouble is gener- 

 ally found at the point of union between scion and stock. 



The true galls are warty excrescences which are not to be con- 

 fused with the knots and enlargements which are caused by woolly 

 aphis or by either the stock or the scion outgrowing the other. All 

 of these last have smooth surfaces, while the tree galls are warty 

 and rough. Galls generally cause a tuft of fine, fibrous roots to form, 

 but in some instances aphis may also do this, but not often. 



It must be remembered that crown gall is no new disease, it 

 being so far as we know as old as orcharding, but with the rapidly 

 increasing number of apple tre^s is becoming more and more prevalent 

 and noticeable. 



