336 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



you wish to propagate or grow that as a side issue you can do so. If 

 you cut the top of the crab and undertake to make a top out of your 

 new apple you have organized failure then and there. 



Prof. Hansen (S. D.) : To look at the question from the stand- 

 point of the whole northwest I think it can be put in this way, that 

 in a very large part of the country root-killing comes only once in a 

 generation or two, and the people need lose no sleep on that account. 

 In Minnesota and the north root-killing comes oftener, especially 

 along the west line of Minnesota, where there is little snow. There 

 you are forced to investigate the subject more closely. Then as you 

 go farther north in North Dakota and the northern part of Minne- 

 sota, root-killing is a factor they have to deal with every winter, and 

 then what are you going to do ? All the cultivated apple stocks that 

 I know anything about kill every winter, seedlings and the rest. We 

 have to find something that will stand the rigors of that climate, and 

 so far as I can see I do not know of anything else to try except the 

 Siberian. With us we get the very severest freezing when the 

 ground is perfectly dry and bare. 



Mr. S. D. Richardson : If we have our ground clean and bare 

 we get root-killing every time, but if the ground is covered in any 

 way the roots will not take any injury. We do not need to have the 

 bare ground unless we want it. If it has a protection of weeds it is 

 all that is necessary. 



Prof. Hansen : Perhaps the only thing to do is to grow weeds. 

 The whole thing is still in an experimental stage. We have to 

 abandon the ordinary apple stocks in certain portions of the north- 

 west. What are you going to^ do when you get into this severe sec- 

 tion ? How are you going to grow apples where you have no snow 

 at all when severe freezing comes, and you are just as liable to get 40 

 degrees below as you are to get 10 below, and either will do the busi- 

 ness with no 3now on the ground. In Iowa root-killing comes so 

 seldom that it is hardly considered a factor in the business. I am 

 firmly convinced that in the far north, north of the northern Iowa 

 line and in northern Minnesota and in North Dakota and in a portion 

 of South Dakota we have to be content with dwarf trees only two- 

 thirds the size of the ordinary apple tree, and have to keep them cut 

 back to keep them in dwarf shape. It is not commercial stock 

 we talk about ; what I mean is the yellow Siberian for the far north 

 where root-killing has to be taken into account every year. That is 

 what I am speaking about. The w^hole thing, however, is still in the 

 experimental stage. 



Mr. C. E. Older : There is a nurseryman in our part of the 

 state who says he does not fear the first year in the way of root- 

 killing. He runs a furrow on each side of the row of seedlings and 

 then takes a hoe and covers them up, but the second winter gets him. 

 Two years ago he lost twenty thousand. 



Prof. E. S. Goff (Wis.) : The gentleman on rny right made a 

 statement which surprised me very much. I understood him to 

 say that his experience in root-killing was limited to the nursery, that 

 after the trees were transplanted he no longer feared it. That is a 

 very different experience from ours at our place two years ago. At 



