THE MINNESOTA 



HORTICULTURIST. 



VOL. 27. SEPTEMBER, 1899. No. 9. 



THE RUSSIAN REMEDY FOR ROOT-KILLING 

 OF APPLE TREES. 



PROF. N. E. HANSEN, AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE, BROOKINGS, S. D. 

 [See frontispiece.] 



The past winter has wrought wide spread destruction in the 

 northwestern nurseries and young orchards, and the afflicted area 

 extends far to the south. Hundreds of thousands of apple root- 

 grafts have been root-killed, and the tales of woe come from very 

 many localities. The winter of 1872-3 will long be remembered by 

 fruit men for devastation wrought, the winter of 1884-5 was another, 

 and now that of 1898-9 is added to the list. 



At Brookings we find apple root-grafts root-killed every winter 

 unless deeply covered. Several thousand were root-killed in the 

 winter of 1896-7. Root-grafts that had made a good growth in 1897 

 were taken up in the fall of 1897 and wintered in cellar. Root-grafts 

 made in the winter of 1897-8 were planted at the same time in the 

 spring of 1898. Both lots root-killed. In all hardy varieties we find 

 the scion alive and sound but the American seedling root dead. 

 Both Vermont apple and French crab seedlings root-killed. The 

 Hibernal and other hardy varieties had not rooted sufficiently from 

 the scion to carry the tree through; indeed the past winter the scion 

 roots of all (even Hibernal and Duchess) of the cultivated varieties 

 winter-killed. So that "trees rooting from the scion" will not be 

 hardy enough in winters like that of 1898-9. Several hundred seed- 

 lings were grown in 1896 from seed of wild crabs gathered near Des 

 Moines, Iowa, but all but one plant were killed the first winter. 



Will the experience of the past winter change nursery methods? 

 Probably very little except in the northern nurseries. Commercial 

 methods change slowly, and the test winters do not come often 

 enough to compel a quick changing. Certain it is that the western 

 American method of root-grafting makes possible the production of 

 apple trees at prices lower than those of Europe with cheap labor. 



Let us make a flying trip to the largest empire in the world, Rus- 

 sia, a country containing one-seventh of the earth's surface. We 

 will find that the growers in the northern fruit growing regions have 

 had the same trouble with root-killing, that our tale of woe was 

 theirs also years ago, but that they have met and solved the problem 

 and are now masters of the situation. 



