408 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



life Stored in the roots that they get to blooming and have flow- 

 ers down to August. There is a wonderful progress being made 

 in growing peonies from seed. I have some Japanese peonies, 

 and they are beautiful. They are different from the others. 

 They are single and semi-double, and I obtained some very fine 

 blooms, and I expect to get some choice flowers as crosses. 

 They are standing side by side with the others, and I expect to 

 have the bees do the fertilizing. Peony culture has reached that 

 stage where we are ready to astonish the world with the display 

 of beauty. 



Mrs. M. M. Barnard: How many years will it take for the 

 seedlings to bloom? 



Mr. Harrison : Perhaps some six or seven years. I have 

 known peonies to live single for twenty years and then come out 

 double. It is also a fact that some of the double ones produce 

 single flowers. That is an abnormal condition. 



Mr. Long: Do you remove any of the buds in order to se- 

 cure larger blossoms? 



Mr. Harrison : It is not necessary as a rule. We have one, 

 it is a new one, which we call the Ste. Cecilia. We have a su- 

 perintendent of music, a young lady, and as I did not have a 

 name for the flower she asked permission to name it. She gave 

 it the name of Ste. Cecilia, and we have classed it under that 

 name. We have three large ones growing on one stem. I 

 should hate to cut one of them off. However, you can cut off 

 the inferior buds and leave the larger ones. Those that come up 

 first will bloom first, and if you have some come up a little later 

 you can in that way prolong the blooming season. 



MULCHING. 



H. H. POND, BLOOMINGTON. 



When our fathers first began their attempts to raise apples in 

 what is now Minnesota, they considered this a cold and un- 

 congenial climate on account of its winters. Therefore they se- 

 lected the warmest accessible places for planting their apple 

 trees — south slopes protected by trees or hills from the north 

 winds and where the sun could reach them with the greatest 

 force. 



They failed ; not always and entirely, but generally they 

 failed. Some of them got a little fruit, and then their trees died. 

 Many trees perished before they bore any fruit. 



Among the first there were no long lived trees, or, rather, 

 they were all very short lived — a little later a very few, as 

 Mr. Somerville, for instance, succeeded in getting trees to live to 

 a good old age. But generally speaking they were all lost. 



Of course the natural question was, "What causes the fail- 

 ure," and the natural answer was, "The cold winter." 



