CHOP TALK ON HORTICULTURE. I65 



season, after transplanting thirteen hundred Holland and Belgium 

 winter cabbage plants on nicely prepared land, ground hogs, or 

 woodchucks, and rabbits ate them up in four days. The crop would 

 doubtless have been a good one had it not been molested, but when 

 we consider the low prices prevailing this fall and the hauling eigh- 

 teen miles to market it would have been grown at a loss. Can any 

 one present give an economical method of destroying either, or both, 

 of these pestiferous animals? 



Blight: Blight has injured the apple and pear trees in a greater 

 number of orchards the past season than for several years before. 

 It has been frequently asked why trees blighted this year when last 

 year they were nearly exempt from this blasting scourge? If we 

 review the atrnospheric and soil conditions of 1901, when drought 

 prevailed during the season of most rapid growth, we shall perceive 

 it was an ideal one to promote a healthy, medium growth, while this 

 year the conditions have been reversed, and at the time trees were 

 making their most rapid growth the atmosphere and soil were satu- 

 rated with moisture, and the growth has been exceedingly large, or, 

 in other words, they have grown too fast to maintain a healthy con- 

 dition. When the soil and air have an excessive amount of moisture 

 accompanied by bright sunshine and the temperature above the nor- 

 mal, the roots take up and push forward more sap than the trees 

 and their leaves can manufacture into healthy wood elements, and 

 the sap cells become gorged, causing the leaves and young, succulent 

 growth to blight. I believe it to be a superabundance of moisture 

 in the air and soil, more than any one thing, that causes trees to 

 blight. 



To give a practical illustration, I have found in digging many 

 two-years old seedlings the varieties having short tap roots with 

 numerous roots near the surface of the ground blight much more 

 than those having long tap roots with few surface feeding roots. In 

 nearly one hundred varieties dug this fall, I found a great variation 

 in root growth, the roots of some being long and straight, penetrat- 

 ing the soil two to four feet, while others had short, stubby roots 

 with many fibrous surface feeding roots. Header's Winter grows 

 a splendid long tap root. Pride of Minneapolis a short branching 

 root, while Peter has a long straight tap root. It has been suggested, 

 that the tendency to blight may be prevented, in a measure, by re- 

 moving the roots nearest the surface, thereby hindering too rapid 

 growth. 



There is no industry having a wider diversity of detail or greater 

 possibilities than horticulture; there is none requiring more intelli- 



