352 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



APPLE SEEDLINGS AT PETER M. GIDEON'S PLACE. 



(Some months since Prof. N. E.Hansen visited the place of this veteran hor- 

 ticulturist, at Excelsior, Minn. The following interesting article is an extract 

 from a published account of this visit. Sec'y.) 



Mr. Gideon has many seedling's coming on of Wealthy, Peter, 

 Martha, Florence and other of his earlier seedlings. He is still 

 working for the long keeping apple. On being asked how he ex- 

 pected to get it, Mr. Gideon replied: " I have many of the best long 

 keeping American apples in orchard. If they bear before we have 

 another such hard winter as 1884-85, I hope to cross these American 

 long keepers with my hardiest cross-bred Siberians and then plant 

 the seed of the American long keepers. My experience with thous- 

 ands of seedlings is that a seedling will ripen its. fruit at or near the 

 season of its mother. From the Siberian the first requisite, hardi- 

 ness, will be obtained; from the American, the long keeping capa- 

 city. It is useless to plant seed of the common American market 

 apples. In my first attempts I planted in orchard and grubbed out 

 again more than twenty thousand seedlings of old Eastern market 

 varieties before I got one apple to eat. Every year I would plant 

 seed, and the next winter would clean them all out. Every year for 

 nine years I persevered, and at the end of ten years I had one tree 

 left, and that one was a crab seedling; so I regard that point as well 

 demonstrated on my grounds. I am this year planting seed of the 

 Peter only, which is one of my first seedlings of the Wealthy. I 

 cannot distinguish between these two varieties by the fruit, but the 

 Peter is the hardier tree; it is as hardy as a crab. I now have be- 

 tween two and three thousand seedlings of the Peter from seed 

 sown last spring. 



" I have had very poor success with apple seed kept dry 

 over winter and soaked and frozen in the spring. My method 

 is to plant in the fall. I have had very good success with 

 planting the cores, or the pomace fresh from the cider press, cover- 

 ing not more than one inch deep. Seed gathered in the fall at vari- 

 ous times may be dried a little in the shade without harm and then 

 planted as soon as possible in the fall, and covered not over one 

 inch deep. Have had little trouble with cut worms. I leave the 

 seedlings in nursery row two years, and then select those of clean, 

 smooth growth, with perfect terminal bud. My rule is always to 

 reject a seedling if it loses its terminal bud the second winter. A 

 seedling of smooth, clean growth with large, smooth, thick leaves 

 and not too many thorns, is promising. Wealthy and Peter both 

 had thorns on when young, but not many. Any little thorny, brushy 

 seedling, generally with small leaves, I throw away every time. 

 The seedlings are all taken up and the rejected ones are cutoff and 

 used at once as stocks for root-grafting, if needed." 



Economical Irrigation. — The California experiment station 

 finds that irrigation water does the most good when placed close to 

 the stem of the plant or trunk of the tree and allowed to soak down- 

 ward. 



