290 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



rarily in after years. One of its chief causes is the cut worm and 

 other insects which injure in any way the living tissues of the root. 

 If the cHmatic conditions are right when this is done, a swelHng 

 appears whch lasts for a greater or less length of time. In fact, 

 it appears any unnatural bruise to the root surface is apt to pro- 

 duce the phenomena under proper conditions. Its appearance 

 among nursery trees, according to Prof. Hedgecock, is due largely 

 to the great amount of cultivation given the trees in the nursery 

 row. The cultivator teeth naturally damage many of the roots, as 

 these are very near the surface of the ground in young trees. 



The most signal act of the convention was that of increasing 

 the scope and powers of the legislative committee, which has been 

 laboring for many years past to harmonize the inspection laws of the 

 various states. Experience has proven that it is an impossibility 

 to remedy in this manner the evil that confronts the horticultural 

 world, and an unlimited appropriation was voted to the committee 

 with instructions to consider the matter in the light of securing 

 national legislation. 



The assistant secretary of agriculture' Hon. W. M. Hays, was 

 present one day and gave a most instructive lecture on the subject 

 of plant breeding. The convention for 1906 will be held at Dallas, 

 Texas. The development of the fruit industry in Texas has been 

 the most remarkable of any state in the Union. They are planting 

 peach orchards of from one to ten thousand acres and other fruits 

 in proportion. Nurserymen of the country are manifesting much 

 interest in the new field. 



Enjoy the Roses. — A queer fallacy induces some people to leave the 

 roses unpicked with the idea of encouraging the plant. As a matter of fact, 

 roses should not only be picked as freely as possible but with as long stems 

 as the growth will permit, merely observing the precaution to leave an out- 

 ward growing eye, or perhaps two for safety, on the stem below the cut. 



Where it has been found impossible to pick all the roses for use, then the 

 plants should be gone over daily, and all faded flowers removed to a point at 

 least two eyes below the flowers. A regular practice of this precaution is the 

 only means of assuring some autumnal bloom, in our climate, from "hybrid 

 perpetuals." 



Salting Asparagus. — The old and widely accepted idea that heavy ap- 

 plications of common salt were necessary to grow asparagus has been 

 thoroughly disproven by modern practice as well as by a chemical examina- 

 tion. Good asparagus, as is well known, may be grown without salt, but some- 

 times upon soils of the sandy type better asparagus may be grown with it. 

 Some tests made at the Arkansas Experiment Station call attention to these 

 facts and advise those growing asparagus for home use to plant it in open 

 rows instead of in the thick bed, as it has been the custom in the past. 



