128 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



ashes? Is there any fertility in ashes, or are there any benefit in keep- 

 ing" the ground moist? 



Mr. C. L. Smith: On sandy land a reasonable quantity of coal 

 ashes is very beneficial, but on clay land I thought they were an. 

 injury. I tried them on both. 



Mr. Hartwell, (111.): I do not believe mulching is a successful 

 practice for the farmer. It is an effort to do a Ihing easily from 

 which you do not obtain good results. Mulching will hold moisture 

 under limited conditions, but in a mulched blackberry field many 

 of the berries dried up, while in the one that was cultivated the 

 berries were in a much finer condition, and the mulching had been 

 very thoroughly done. I put it on in May, and the ground was very 

 wet when I put it on, but when I dug down below the straw the dirt 

 was as dry as it well could be. The remark made as to mulching 

 being a nest for breeding pests is a well-timed statement. I do not 

 know what is meant by discarding the currant bushes; if they are 

 pruned well and properly they will run as long as the majority of 

 men's existence. 



Mr. Richardson: I farmed for sixteen years, and I did not have 

 much time to bother with currants. They stood in rows six feet 

 apart, and they got full of quack grass. I took a two-horse plow 

 and turned the sod over on the bushes; then I went to an old chip 

 pile and cleaned up all I could get and covered the ground four or 

 five inches deep, enough to kill the grass; then I put on manure six 

 inches deep, and the next year I rented the place. I was back there 

 two years ago, and the bushes were lying flat on the ground, bushes 

 four feet high. I know I made a success of it by mulching freely 

 enough to kill out the grass. At Winnebago City I had good suc- 

 cess in putting in the bushes six feet apart and mulching the 

 rows, that is, mulching between the plants and cultivating on the 

 outside. 



Mr. T. T. Smith: I would like to ask Prof. Lugger whether mulch- 

 ing with clover or green manure would invite the insects? 



Prof. Lugger: The insects will mature at a time when the mulch 

 is dry and will spin cocoons anywhere you give them shelter. 



Mr. T. T. Smith: Then one way of solving that question would be 

 by keeping the fruit perfectly clean? 



Mr. Lyons : I think using only straw and removing it late in 

 the season will solve that question. 



Mr. Tomlinson: The gentleman from Illinois said the way to 

 keep the currant bushes going is to trim them. How does he do 

 that? 



Mr. Hartwell: I cut out the old wood every year, and I get lots of 

 fruit. 



Mr. C. L. Smith: In answering Mr. Tomlinson's question in re- 

 gard to cutting out the old wood, I would say cut out the canes 

 whenever they begin to turn black. This year's growth of wood, at 

 the close of the season when you come to clean them up, you will 

 find to be gray, and in two or three years, if it is clean and healthy, 

 it will be a grayish brown, but the fourth year it will change to 

 black and will be black from one to three years, then it will begin 



