MONTEVIDEO TRIAL STATION, ANNUAL REPORT, I906. 97 



MONTEVIDEO TRIAL STATION, ANNUAL REPORT, 1906, 



L. R. AIOYER, SUPT. 



The past season was an nnusually wet one, the moisture deposit 

 being- at least fifty pereent above normal. The Minnesota and Chip- 

 pewa rivers were at fiood height several times during the summer. 

 Notwithstanding- the wet season, apple trees were but little injured 

 by blight, doubtless owing to the cool weather. 



But while the apple trees escaped the plums suffered. Plum rot 

 was unusually prevalent. Varieties like Aitkin and Cheney, having 

 Prunus nigra for their ancestry, were a complete loss. The larger 

 and earlier varieties of Prunus Americana suffered nearly as badly. 

 Late plums did rather better, and were we to select the best plum 

 from this year's experience it would be the De Soto. Nothing was 

 done here to check the ravages of the plum rot, and the result was an 

 almost complete loss of the crop. The only good Americana plums 

 that the writer saw this year were raised in South Dakota, near 

 the Missiouri River. The Americana plum has been a great disap- 

 pointment to planters. 



Among the experimental apple trees the Blushed Calville gave 

 the most satisfaction. Several days earlier than the Oldenburg, it 

 is always in eager demand for cooking and eating out of the hand. It 

 is a regular and annual bearer of fine flavored, white skinned apples. 

 It would hardly be possible to grow it for the market, for it is thin 

 skinned and easily bruised, and will keep for but a few days. It 

 makes apple sauce of such exquisite quality that we find it profitable 

 to can it. 



Estelline is a small apple — about the size of Anis — ripening be- 

 tween Oldenburg and Wealthy. It is a rather better bearer, ' al- 

 though of not quite so good a quality as the Anis. 



It seems probable that on the heavy soils of western Minnesota 

 none of the pines or spruces will ever find a very congenial home. 

 The soil is too rich. It is mostly of glacial origin and came from 

 the northwest. Unlike the drift soils of eastern Minnesota, which 

 were formed largely from archaic rocks, the drift in western Min- 

 nesota is formed largely from magnesian limestone broken and 

 ground up by the glacial flow. It is perhaps the richest soil on the 

 continent in its agricultural possibilities. Except in spots where the 

 limestong-laden-boulder cla}- has been modified by water, or where 

 the winds have carried on to the drift a sort of loess, or loose light 

 soil, the raising of evergreens has been difficult. 



It is on a light soil, perhaps of wind formation, in jA^hich the 

 8,000 pines furnished to us by the Forestry Division of the Depart- 



