118 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



GREENHOUSE LABORATORY WORK AT THE SCHOOL 

 OF AGRICULTURE. 



PROF. S. B, GREEN, ST. ANTHONY PARK. 



The illustration showing students at work budding roses in the 

 greenhouses of the school of agriculture is given to call attention to 

 a phase of horticultural instruction which we call greenhouse 

 laboratory work — for it is laboratory work. It will be remembered 

 by those familiar with the course of instruction at this school that 

 its session is from October to April, which precludes doing such 

 work as budding and grafting in the open air; so it is taught in the 

 greenhouses. The boys of the A class bud roses and root-graft 

 apples, and both buds and grafts are started at once into growth 

 that the students may become familiar with the callousing process 

 by which both buds and grafts unite, and they see the results of 

 their labor. Roses are selected for practice, because they can be 

 got into the right condition for working in January. Other lines of 

 work followed are mixing of potting soils, potting of cuttings, re- 

 potting,inaking and rooting of cuttings,sowing of flower seeds,prick- 

 ing out of seedlings, the destruction of insects injurious to house 

 plants, testing farm and other seeds to determine per cent, of germ- 

 ination and quality and quantity of impurities and the crossing of 

 plants. 



For crossing plants we use the Chinese primrose, which readily 

 crosses, has flowers large enough to be easily manipulated by stu- 

 dents and is well adapted to illustrating the principles involved in 

 such work. 



The object of this instruction is not to make gardeners but to 

 teach some of the more common things relating to plants, that the 

 students may think of them as individuals instead of as fields of 

 plants, and also to encourage a love for plants, in and about the 

 home. 



SUBSOILING WITH DYNAMITE. 



S. M. Kmery, director of the Montana Experiment Station has 

 resorted to the novel expedient of using dynamite to loosen the sub- 

 soil on a portion of a tract to be used for fruit setting. He describes 

 the process as follows: "Two-inch holes were drilled to a depth of 

 4^/^ feet, in which were placed quarter-pound dynamite cartridges to 

 which were attached sufificient lengths of fuse to admit of the safe 

 discharge of the cartridges. The holes were filled with earth and 

 thoroughly tamped. The explosion effected a complete mechanical 

 disintegration of the soil for many feet in all directions from the 

 hole. Two results will thus be attained — a porous, friable soil much 

 sooner than would result from cultivation and an abundant moist- 

 ure storage system." 



We hope to report the practical results of the experiment later. 

 Sec'y. 



