THE CRAB ROOT AS A STOCK FOR THE MINNESOTA ORCHARD. 299 



dififerent varieties in order to determine which were the most vig- 

 orous and hardy. ( )nr first difficuUy was to disting'uish which were 

 the best, as they all seemed to l)e doing- well. We also at the same 

 time boug-ht of a local nursery 5,000 grafts, mostly Wealthy and 

 Duchess. On account of the dry season a number of them died, but 

 the majority of them did finely and made wonderful progress the 

 next season. 



In the spring of the third year they sprouted nicely, but after a 

 little while the leaves began to turn yellow, and investigation showed 

 the majority of them to be dead. The fourth year, with the excep- 

 tion of a few Whitneys, there was not a tree alive of those 5,000 

 grafts. 



After having discarded certain varieties of our homegrown seed 

 as entirely useless for root stock, we had six different varieties left. 

 Among these were the Minnesota, which in the year of 1896 was 

 very much aft'ected by the cold. 



In the year of 1898 and 1899 we had 18,000 nice grafts, set out 

 in the spring of 1898 and grafted on the six following varieties as 

 stocks : Duchess, Wealthy, Minnesota, Siberian, Early Strawberry 

 and a variety of small red crabs. Of Minnesota, as above mentioned 

 being affected by the cold previous to 1898, the majority froze in 

 1898, and the same was the case with the Duchess of Oldenburg, 

 of which we had over 6,000 grafts. The Wealthy stock seemed to 

 do a little better, as only eighty-five per cent were lost. Of Early 

 Strawberry ninety-two per cent of the roots froze. The Siberian 

 came out with a loss of only twenty-eight per cent that year. But 

 there is one disadvantage with the Siberian, the majority of the 

 stocks do not seem to be able to develop in harmony and as fast as 

 the other parts of the tree ; besides this it is more or less affected 

 with rootgall, or rootknot. The sixth variety, the small red crab, 

 which had at all times proven to do well, also stood the test of 1898. 



W^e tried an experiment with the Siberian and this red crab by 

 letting them stand side by side during the winter, and then taking 

 them up and grafting them by the piece-root system in the spring. 

 In the year 1896 the Siberian was so much affected by the cold that 

 when the root was cut the wood was of a dark grayish color, and 

 every graft made on those roots died ; but the roots left undisturbed 

 in the seed beds lived and had by next fall regained the white color 

 in the wood. This showed the Siberian to be quite a hardy variety. 

 On the other hand, we have not in one instance found a root of this 

 small red crab to have lost the color of the wood after it had been 

 standing out during the winter. 



