WINDOM TRIAL STATION. ANNUAL REPORT. 



59 



We had a little experience with the strawberry rust. It was 

 on a patch of one-quarter acre set the spring of 1902, and in a 

 sheltered locality. The only covering the plants had was the 

 snow which drifted over them. There was a lot of freezing and 

 thawing in the spring after the snow had melted away, but the 

 plants appeared to be in good condition, however, set fruit for a 

 good crop and grew finely until we had got one or two good 

 pickings of ripe fruit from them. Then they failed, those va- 

 rieties carrying the most fruit failing the most completely. We 



AFTER SLEET STOEM ON PLACE OF MR. DEWAIN TOOK. IN APRIL, 1903. 



Honeysuckle in the foreground nearly in full leaf covered with ice. 

 got no good fruit from the Warfield or Bederwood, even the 

 plants about all died. The Glen Mary, Dunlap and Crescent 

 gave us two good pickings and then failed. It began to rain 

 continuously and the foliage on the Glen Mary died, and the 

 fruit partly covered with dead strawberry leaves lay almost lit- 

 erally in heaps rotting on the ground. 



There was no rust or failure on the older beds or upon any 

 of the new ones that had been properly covered with mulching 

 the previous autumn. 



The apple has been an interesting study the past season. 

 The ground was so wet that many trees on the lots of our nearby 

 village of Jefifers that were set the past spring, box elder and 

 elms, died in midsummer from no apparent cause except exces- 

 sive moisture in the soil. 



