62 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
It has been suggested that I have a great lot of trash at the tree 
station I should get rid of. I probably destroy hundreds of varieties 
every year. It is known that in a lot of seedlings perhaps hundreds 
will not be very valuable. I am thinning them out as fast as I can 
by girdling, and it will still take a long time to find out whether there 
is an apple at the station that is very valuable. I have great faith 
in a number of varieties; but my report is intended to cover that 
ground. I simply thought I would preface it by turning your 
thoughts in the right direction. 
At the beginning of the year there were growing on the station fully 
one thousand varieties of grafted apples, and about the same number of 
varieties are growing at the present time. Of these about two hundred 
are Russian varieties, about three hundred are seedlings contributed by 
growers of the cold northwest from their hardiest stock, and the remainder 
have originated on the station, being grown from seeds of our best apples 
and crabs. 
It has been my custom to carefully survey the field each fall and select 
the most promising varieties for grafting the following winter. One hun- 
dred and fifty-six varieties were grafted last winter, and about the same 
number of varieties will be grafted this winter. 
Our last winter, though severely cold, was not a test winter. Very little 
harm was done except by root-killing, and that only occurred where our 
light covering of snow was blown off. About forty orchard trees were thus 
killed and the most of the root grafts set in the spring of 1898. By the side 
of the winter of 1884-5, our last winter was a tame affair. On the former 
occasion 800 Wealthy trees in one orchard were killed to the ground. Last 
winter the Wealthy, Haas, Ben Davis, and many others of that grade of 
hardiness escaped material injury. We talk about hardy roots, but root- 
killing when it has occurred on the station has made a clean sweep, taking 
apples and crabs alike. 
Far the most interesting and important experiment that I have tried is 
that of girdling fruit trees to produce early bearing and test hardiness. 
This I have practiced on a large scale, having girdled thousands of trees. 
Death is always the result of injury, and the amount of injury that a tree 
or animal can receive and still live is the true test of hardiness or tenacity 
of life. Certain kinds of injury invite the attack of certain diseases, and the 
interference with the flow of sap, which is the great promoter and protector 
of plant life, makes the girdled tree especially susceptible to sun scald. bark 
blight, and, perhaps, to many other diseases of which we know nothing. 
When the tree doctor knows half as much as the man doctor pretends to 
know we may have a long list of tree diseases with remedies as infallible 
as the patent medicines that cure all the diseases that flesh is heir to. 
Girdling makes the young tree prematurely old, brings out all its latent de- 
fects, and if persistently followed up only permits the survival of the fittest. 
It seems poison to some varieties while entirely harmless to others. Two 
trees of Tetofsky seed No. 3 that have been girdled three years in succession 
are now in fine condition and well loaded with fruit buds, while two trees of 
Tetofsky seed No. 4, standing near, were both killed—bark blight starting 
in at the wound and extending entirely around the tree. Okabena seed No. 
1, which bears a small winter apple-——may get larger—has been girdled 
