474 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



is worth more as a windbreak than a dozen set in the coininon way, 

 because if rows are planted close tog-ether the lower limbs are soon 

 lost. Three rows thus set are amplj' sufficient to protect the house 

 and out-building's on anj' farm from winds and snowdrifts. 



"Our Native Fruits" was the title of a paper by B. Mathews, of 

 Knoxville, in which he maintained that from a horticultvxral stand- 

 point ournative fruits have great possibilities, and that from them 

 can be developed through cultivation, selection, crossing and 

 h3'-bridizing man}^ fruits of great value for the Northwest. Other 

 papers on "The Definite Annual Growth and its Relation to Hardi- 

 ness" and "Fruit from the Health Standpoint" completed the papers 

 of the day in which the general public will be interested. 



The election of officers for the ensuing year took place in the 

 evening and resulted in the re-election of A. F. Collman, of Corning, 

 president and J. L. Budd, of Ames, secretary. 



On Thursda}^, November 22d, the society held three long sessions 

 and put in a faithful day's work.. The first pap'er was on "The Stone 

 Fruits" by J. J^. Budd. He stated that over a larg-e portion of the 

 central prairie section of Iowa, the native sorts of plums and soine 

 of the Russians were well laden with fruit, but the long continued 

 drouth following the spring rains so affected the fruit that it was 

 dwarfed in size and lower in qualitj' than in any previous year 

 since our present varieties have been cultivated. The fine speci- 

 mens shown at Chicago were grown on the loose soil of the west 

 slope on sites in the prairie district and on the bluffs with a deep 

 porous sub-soil or in neighborhoods favored with timely showers. 

 The lesson drawn is that the most favorable sites for plum growing 

 are on soils underlaid with a porous sub-soil, permitting the ascen- 

 tion of moisture from below. Yet, he sa3'S, we now have varieties of 

 the plum which every home owner in the state can plant with a 

 reasonable certainty of gathering pa3'ing crops four j^ears out of 

 five. High culture and rich manured soil gives the best returns of 

 fruit. Trees in bluegrass sod on poor drj^ soils in such a season as 

 the last do not produce fruit worth gathering. Heading in or short- 

 ening the annual growth of stone fruits has been tried with good 

 result. It is done during the leafless period. The effort is to give a 

 more compact top that shelters the fruit from hot suns, and saves 

 the branches from becoming sunburned. A trial of apricot seed- 

 lings for stocks for root grafting plums proved a bad failure, but 

 experiments with the sand cherrj^ for stocks would indicate that all 

 kinds of plums take well on them. In this country few trees have 

 been grown from root cuttings, but these few confirm the belief 

 so common in Europe that trees thus grown are hardier and longer 

 lived, and that they bear better than trimmed or grafted trees. 



Among other good things presented during the day were papers 

 on "Horticulture from a Climatic Standpoint," "Best Fruit Soils," 

 "Fruit Lists", etc. 



The attendance is said to have been a little less tlian the average, 

 owing to the meeting being held a little too earlj' in the season, and 

 the next meeting is to be held on the second Tuesday of December. 

 Our Iowa neighbors are very sanguine that fruit culture will in 

 the near future be one of the leading industries of their state. 



