lOO MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAI, SOCIETY. 



witli the experience of our horticultural society and having Virginia 

 crab and Hibernal stock to graft on, and trying to do something 

 in our trial station, we commenced again and found with proper stock 

 to graft on success was assured. Our Virginia crab trees were too 

 large to whip-graft on, and not wishing to use the clett graft and split 

 the stock and leave a bad place to decay, we went into the tops of 

 quite large trees and cut out limbs, sometimes three or four inches in 

 diameter, about the time the leaves were half grown — the best time 

 to cut large limbs to have them heal quick and sound — and waited 

 developments. The next season we had a fine lot of thrifty sprouts 

 to whip-graft on, and, as has been demonstrated, it was a complete 

 success. This season on two-year-old grafts we had as fine Baldwin 

 .apples as I ever saw, and we are expecting later to get Spys, Green- 

 ings and other half hardy kinds to bear. 



Our plums we top-worked, a score or more of new sorts, on 

 sprouts in a thicket where we could find just the size -and shape 

 we desired, put on one or more grafts on the top of, say, two-year- 

 old sprouts three or four feet from ground, and made the top entirely 

 out of the graft. We have some ideal trees in that way and had 

 nice specimens of fruit this season on scions tvi^o years' set. We 

 found this a very satisfactory way to test new varieties. 



OWATONNA TRIAL STATION, ANNUAL REPORT, 1906. 



THOS. E. CASH MAN, SUPT. 



The outlook at the station is very encouraging indeed. The thin- 

 ning out of the poor growers, bad blighters and varieties that pro- 

 duced inferior fruit, together with thorough cultivation, has given 

 worthy varieties an opportunity to show the stuff of which they 

 are made, and the size of the fruit has increased materially. A great 

 many new seedlings have borne this year for the first time, and 

 some of them are splendid sorts. 



The question of hardiness was settled at the Owatonna station 

 the moment that former Supt. Dartt planted the seed selected from 

 our hardy northern varieties. It is true that some of them had tender 

 ancestral weakness instilled into them and succumbed to the winter's 

 blasts and Father Dartt's "hurry along system" of girdling, but the 

 majority of them are equally as hardy as the parent varieties, and 

 many new seedlings have borne this year for the first time, and a 

 number of the Wealthy seedlings are hardier than the parent — and, 

 by the way, we will hear from a number of these later on. 



I exhibited 138 varieties of seedlings from the Owatonna station 



