324 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



cle the writer secured a copy while in Russia. The Transcendent 

 crab is of this type and blights badly. Seed from Siberia is not yet 

 commercially obtainable. The old Yellow or Red Siberian, with 

 fruit the size of a cherry or less, may prove very useful, also the old 

 Cheriy crab — old trees, forty years old or more, are found scattered 

 through the older parts of the west. The true P. baccata deciduous 

 calyx segments, that is the old sepals at the "blossom end" of the ap- 

 ple, fall off towards maturity. A Russian writer recommends espec- 

 ially Pyrus baccata cerasiformis aurea and Pyrus baccata 

 cerasiforznis rubra. 

 * Experience has already shown that the cultivated apple makes a 

 poor union in top-grafting upon the Siberian crab; nor will root- 

 grafting on pieces of crab root be enough. No roots from the scion 

 should be permitted. The stocks for a fair test should be handled 

 much like the Mahaleb or Mazzard stocks for the cherry in the east- 

 ern nurseries, setting the stock in nursery first and afterwards, when 

 established, budding or grafting the cultivated apples on them. It 

 may largely do away with root-grafting in the winter and, hence, 

 make trees more expensive, but the method is worth trying. Per- 

 haps both hybrids and pure seedlings will be too much subject to 

 blight for the method to be successful in all localities. But 

 cerain it is that the present method of growing apple trees on 

 French crab or Vermont cider apple seedlings will not do for a con- 

 siderable area of the northwest in test winters. 



It will take many experiments to fully settle the question. Let all 

 who can try a few and report results. 



MELONS FOR MARKET. 



H. C. ELLERGODT, LANESBORO. 



Location and Soil — While melons can be grown on almost any 

 kind of soil, they cannot be grown successfully as afield crop unless 

 the soil and location are favorable. Light, porous, sandy loam is 

 the best, and it must be full of humus, or decaying vegetable mat- 

 ter in some form, to secure the best results. Do not be afraid of the 

 soil being too dry or too light, but in such cases use extra care to 

 provide an abundant supply of humus in the soil, which is most 

 easily supplied by plowing under a good clover sod; or the field can 

 be sown with rye in September and the whole plowed under in the 

 spring. The melon is a lover of drouth, and while it attains a large 

 size in a moist season or situation it will not be of as good a quality. 

 I always raised a big crop and the best melons when the season was 

 hot and dry. The field should be high enough to secure good drain- 

 age, and if level is the most easily cultivated and least liable to 

 washing by heavy rains. 



Melons can be successfully grown on slopes, as this not only in- 

 sures a good drainage in a wet season, but the crop grown on a 

 southern slope is materially assisted in early ripening thereby. If 

 the land is rather wet on level soil, it can be made better for melon 

 culture by back-furrowing a strip of land two or three rods across. 

 This will make the laud slope gradually to both sides. If the soil 



