A YOUNG TOP-WORKED ORCHARD. 21 



Mr. Lee: I have had no experience in that line. I think 

 it could be done in the fall. If a trench was dug around them 

 and the trench covered with mulch you could lift them in the 

 spring. 



Mr. Crosby: How about when the roots are frozen in the 

 winter time, wouldn't that be best? 



Mr. Lee: I would move them early in the spring while 

 still frozen. 



Mr. Kellogg : Is there danger of forming a cistern in heavy 

 clay soil under a tree that would be a damage to it, to hold water? 



Mr. Lee: How would you form such a cistern? 



Mr. Kellogg: The dynamited hole. 



Mr. Lee: I don't exactly get your idea. There can be no 

 cistern as long as there is no air, and it certainly don't leave any 

 air space if you fill the hole up afterwards. The hole isn't as big 

 as you think. The hole isn't over three feet in diameter and the 

 earth is loosened up around that hole for several feet further on. 



Mr. Brackett : I would like to ask if you would recommend 

 the planting of Delicious in a commercial way here in this part 

 of Minnesota? 



Mr. Lee : That is a very difficult question to answer. I have 

 been experimenting along that line myself. I have a hundred, 

 part of them on grafts and part of them on their own roots. 



Mr. Brackett: Do you consider them hardy enough? 



Mr. Lee : I think the roots are hardy enough, although the 

 buds are very tender. They have light growth, and I think it is 

 due to bud injury in the winter. 



Mr. Richardson (of Winnebago) : I wish to say that some 

 fifteen years ago I top-worked a Delicious and the tree is there 

 all right, but it never has borne a single apple. What is the 

 cause of it. I don't know, but there has never been an apple 

 on that tree that I know of. I have done considerable top-work- 

 ing in my life, and I have found that some varieties do well on 

 one kind and some on another. I top-worked some scions of a 

 seedling I had there on a Hibernal and some on a Virginia crab. 

 Those top-worked on the Hibernal never bore, never amounted 

 to anything, while about four or five rods away those top-worked 

 on a Virginia crab bore very heavily. It is a question of adapta- 

 bility of the trees perhaps. I don't know the reason. I found 

 another thing in top-working and in grafting; you don't always 

 get exactly everything like you put in. I will bring up this after- 

 noon some specimens of the Allen's Choice apples and you can 

 taste them. The Allen's Choice is a sweet apple. I did the top- 

 working, and I did the root grafting, and it was grown on a red 

 -crab tree, and I want some of you to taste the apples to see 

 whether they are sweet apples. 



Mr. Sauter: Mr. Lee, isn't there danger in dynamiting in 

 an old orchard that the falling dirt will ruin the near-by trees 

 by big chunks of dirt falling down upon the tops of the trees and 

 spoiling them? 



