STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. SI 



PROTECTION FROM FROST. 



The protectioa of small fruits and vegetables from untimely 

 frosts in spring and autumn was the subject next in order. Tru- 

 man M. Smith not having furnished the appointed paper, Mr. 

 Wilcox was called up to state his experience. He said the most 

 important means of protection was to locate the fruit grounds on 

 elevated situations. His place at La Crosse was in a notch of the 

 bluffs, extending from half way up from the level of the La Crosse 

 prairie, to the summit of the bluff, which he called Mount Hope. 

 In looking over his strawberry, raspberry and grape grounds to 

 note the effect of the recent remarkable frost of May 23, he found 

 the injury decreased in proportion to the elevation as the plats 

 ascended the side hill. 



G. W. Fuller, of Litchfield, inquired if we were more liable to 

 destructive spring frosts in Minnesota than other sections of the 

 West. He had an impression that the deep freezing experienced 

 here, and the long retention of the frost in the ground in the 

 spring usually goes in our favor in comparison with some of the 

 more southern localities, by retarding the too early growth of vege- 

 tation, and recommended heavy mulching to keep the frost in. 



President Harris corroborated this view; but he had protected 

 his grapes and apples this spring by burning a lot of old straw 

 Dear his vineyard and orchard. While the smoke was circulating 

 during the night of May 23, he could hear the melting frost drip- 

 ping from the trees. Fruit on high grounds in his part of the 

 State had been comparatively exempt from injury from that frost, 

 and he thought also the trees on such locations were generally 

 showing less of the fire blight. 



Secretary Gibbs: Everywhere we find less winter-killing also 

 on elevated sites. 



Prof. Edward D. Porter being called upon, said he was sitting 

 here at the feet of the Gamaliels, but was willing to give his ex- 

 perience in the East, particularly in the regions of Delaware and 

 the Chesapeake Bay. Among the hills on that peninsula were to 

 be found the locations most exempt from frost. On the more ele- 

 vated portions, or in the near vicinity of water, there were peach 

 orchards that had not failed in fifty years. Here in Minnesota he 

 had seen, in his observations this spring, that the vegetation on 

 the hills above an altitude of say twenty-five or thirty feet, and on 

 the easterly ridges, was nearly or quite uninjured by the frost of 

 May 23, while beiow this the marks of injury were everywhere to 



