354 .MINN^ESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



I was in a nursery establishment last winter where they were drivini^ 

 the men, and where a man was expected to run off 2,500 a day. I 

 said to them, "You are just wasting your material and your time. 

 There is no use in grafting unless you can make the scions and the 

 roots join perfectly, and the way you are doing it it is impossible to 

 do good work. You had better do the work right, and if you can- 

 not make more than six hundred a day it will pay you." (Applause.) 



The Chairman : There was a question asked this morning as 

 to the advisability of sowing oats in the orchard. I would like to 

 call for some experience in that direction. 



Mr. Taylor: I think buckwheat is prefcral)le to sow for winter 

 protection, and if the grafts get weedy do not kill the weeds out, but 

 let them stay weedy until the next season. 



Mr. S. D. Richardson : I have been working in Minnesota since 

 1865. I used to sow buckwheat, but I quit it, and now I sow oats. 

 Two years ago I was down at Mr. Wedge's place, and he had sown 

 buckwheat, and he had sown rape, and I told him that I had sown 

 oats and my protection was altogether superior to his, and my ex- 

 perience has been that a good growth of oats, letting it get up to 

 about eighteen inches high, will give you a perfect protection for 

 your trees. That winter that trees root-killed so bad I had sowed 

 oats, and where my trees were not covered with weeds or oats 

 I lost them all, but where I let the weeds grow and where the oats 

 stood I did not lose a thing. 



Mr. C. S. Harrison : What time do you sow the oats ? 



Mr. Richardson : From the middle of August to the first of 

 September. 



Capt. A. H. Reed : There is one point in the treatment of root- 

 grafts that has not been discussed, and that is in regard to the mate- 

 rial for winding. You want to wind your rootgrafts with waxed 

 paper. 



Mr. Elliot : L. H. Bailey says in his book on "Grafting" that 

 we should use scions from fruit-bearing trees, and then others again 

 come here and tell us they get their best results from scions cut from 

 nursery stock. I have seen in some Minnesota orchards trees 

 planted from which they expect to get only scions.. 



Mr. Yahnke : I suppose everybody has got his own opinion, and 

 I have always believed, and I believe it yet, that it is better to cut 

 scions from bearing trees, even if the trees are set back a little in 

 growth the first year, for by the time they get to be three years old 

 they will, as a rule, be up to the standard. I believe such trees bear 

 earlier and we get more prolific trees by taking scions from a bear- 

 ing tree. (Applause.) 



The President : Can you get the scions ? 



Mr. Yahnke : The trouble is right here : Nurserymen are often 

 unable to get them, and so they do the next best thing. I will state 

 right here that a tree grown from scions taken from a bearing tree 

 must be more expensive because it requires three times the work 

 to cut the scions. 



