616 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



• 



Miss Louise K. Miller delivered an illustrated lecture before the section on School 

 Garden Work in Cleveland, which was stated to be the outgrowth of the efforts of 

 the Home Gardening Association. School gardening now constitutes a regular depart- 

 ment of the Cleveland city schools. Last year the schools sold 250,000 penny pack- 

 ages of seed to the school children of the city, reaching some 50,000 homes. The 

 school children are given instruction in the laying out of gardens, preparation of soil, 

 use of fertilizers, methods of planting seed, making cuttings, constructing hotbeds, 

 habits of injurious and beneficial insects, etc. 



Society for Horticultural Science. — The number in attendance at the New Orleans 

 meeting of the society was small, but a large number of unusually interesting papers 

 were presented. 



The presidential address by Prof. L. H. Bailey dealt with the recent progress in 

 American horticulture, covering the period since 1902. This progress, Professor 

 Bailey held, had been largely along the line of further development of work already 

 established, rather than in the projection of entirely new lines. Distinct progress 

 has been made in teaching agriculture in schools and in presenting horticulture and 

 country-life subjects to the people in an attractive way by means of periodicals and 

 books. There have been published during the past three years nearly 600 bulletins 

 on horticultural subjects. 



In technical horticulture plant breeding is occupying unusual attention. The 

 work of Mr. Burbank was characterized as remarkable and significant, but often 

 sensationalized and overstated. 



Many new horticultural regions, particularly trucking in the Gulf coast and fruit- 

 growing in the west and northwestern States, are being developed. Fruit fully 

 mature but still firm has been found to keep longer and better in cold storage than 

 green or immature fruit. The large losses of citrus fruits in California by decay have 

 been found to be due to carelessness in clipping the stems and delay in putting the 

 fruit into storage. 



In a comprehensive paper on Light as a Factor in Plant Culture, V. A. Clark dis- 

 cussed the effects of various colored lights, of direct and diffused sunlight, and of 

 various artificial lights on the growth of plants. The red rays of the spectrum in 

 general promote vegetative growth, particularly that of the leaves, while the more 

 refrangible blue rays act upon the molecular structure of the plant, giving rise to 

 mutations. In arid regions direct sunlight is injurious to many plants and the suc- 

 cessful culture of such plants depends upon furnishing them with partial shade. 



Leaf growth is largest and tenderest in light of rather low intensity, a fact which 

 suggests the desirability of growing salad plants in partial shade, or better still in red 

 light. From observations in Arizona it is believed that the intensity of direct sun- 

 light is greater than the intensity most favorable to bud formation, and that better 

 results would be obtained with very light shading on the south and southwest sides 

 of fruit trees. A sorghum hedge was found too dense for this purpose and the use 

 of sesbania, a native tall, thinly branching herb, was suggested. Volatile oils appear 

 to develop best in red light. Hence, flowers grown for fragrance might be grown in 

 a combination of red and blue light. 



Strong light has been found in some instances to inhibit the growth of pollen 

 tubes. This is thought to be the reason why tomatoes and cucumbers do not bear 

 fruit in midsummer in Arizona. Strong direct sunlight in summer also prevents 

 chlorophyll formation. Thus, strawberries in Arizona are yellow for about three 

 months in summer even when grown under shade of cheese cloth. When grown on 

 the north side of a dense shade of sorghum or cotton the plants remained green and 

 dense all summer and were the most vigorous in the garden. It was believed that 

 the matter of shading is of greater horticultural importance in arid regions than fer- 

 tilization is in the East. The paper contained a number of suggestions on methods 

 of analyzing light and methods of growing crops under partial shade. 



