516 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



DISCUSSION ON IRRIGATION. 



Prof. W. W. Penderg^ast : I do not know that I shall be able to be 

 here again, and there is one thing I wish to speak about, and my 

 experience has been a little peculiar. A great deal of the loss of 

 apple trees that is attributed to the winter should be charged to 

 drouth. Where I live at Hutchinson, there is about a foot of very 

 fertile soil, underneath which is a very coarse gravel that runs 

 down about thirty feet. The soil is almost dry. If it should rain 

 every day during the summer it would be none too wet. Mj^ experi- 

 ence during twenty-five or thirty years is that I could get nothing- 

 through the winter. I tried six or seven different kinds of currants, 

 but they would all die, except the Red Dutch. Apple trees would do 

 the same — the Yellow Siberian is an exception. I set a row of 

 silver leaf maple and they grew up to be thirty to fortj' feet high, 

 and one year when it was very dry in the fall every one killed. The 

 box elder is one of the hardiest trees we have, 3'et one-half of my 

 box elders killed one winter three years ago. Now I have got an 

 artesian well in my garden. Since I have that artesian well, I have no 

 trouble with winter killing. My currant bushes go through the win- 

 ter all right, and so it is with everything that killed before. I give 

 my parsnips and salsify a good watering in the fall, and they come 

 out all right in the spring, but they would not do it before. It seems 

 to me more attention should be given to planting our orchards on 

 ground that will stand drouth well. That will obviate much of the 

 difficulty. It is the dry late falls that do the mischief. I would like 

 to know if the experience of others coinpares with mine. 



Mr. J. A. Sampson : You take a dry spell in the middle of the sum- 

 mer and it will check the growth of a tree ; then later it will take on 

 a new growth, and the wood will not ripen, when it is apt to kill in 

 the winter. If irrigated, the tree ripens its growth and lives through 

 the winter. 



Prof. W. W. Pendergast : I examined some maple limbs, and b}' 

 their appearance no one would have suspected that they were dead^ 

 but cut them in two and I found the wood was full}' seasoned to the 

 very core,] ust like firewood. There was too little sap in the tree. I have 

 had ash leave out as late as July. That tree has remarkable power 

 of recovery from any backset of this kind. Sometimes they will be- 

 gin to leave out late in the spring and by the last of June will be in 

 full leaf. 



Mr. E. H. S. Dartt : I have no doubt that drouth is one of the worst 

 enemies we have to contend with. Drouth does not operate alone 

 in the summer. Things freeze dry. You know how quickly the 

 clothes on the line will freeze dry, and I think it is the same kind of 

 freezing dry that kills the trees. They freeze so dry that when sum- 

 mer heat comes it continues the dryness, and the result is that the 

 trees die. 



Mr. Wm. Somerville : There are several conditions to be observed 

 in setting out trees in Minnesota. In the section of country I live 

 in, we have a heavy clay subsoil, and it is not essential to put 

 water around the trees in the fall of the year, but it is essential to 



