STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 121 



and learned the one north had been left the summer before to grow up to a heavy 

 thick growth of grass and that it stood undisturbed all winter. The south orchard 

 was planted to potatoes and other light crops such as left the ground nearly in a 

 nude condition. Here we saw the whole thiug in a nut shell. What we thought 

 had ruined our former arguments on this subject you now see turned out when 

 properly investigated to be one of the strongest evidences in favor of our position. 

 The snow coming as it did caught the north orchard entirely without frost in the 

 ground, holding the roots all the time in readiness to send up the sap at the first call 

 of the sun. The same sun that melted the snow called up the sap day after day and 

 at the same time freezing it solid at night. The sap passing up in the inside as it 

 does and coming down on the outside in the inner bark and sap wood growing thin- 

 ner and cooler as it must in its downward flow, would as a matter of consequence 

 commence to stop by freezing outside at least a few minutes sooner than the sap 

 would stop piessing up on the inside. This action would cause a superabundance 

 of sap to gather on the inner bark on the trunk which by sudden and severe freez- 

 ing would cause the bark to loosen from the trees, as was the case with many trees 

 in this north orchard. The south orchard being nearly clean ground froze some 

 three inches just as the snow commenced falling, which helped to keep the ground 

 cooler than in the north. Had we all gone to work and cleaned the snow away 

 from the trees as we talked of doing a number of times during the winter we have 

 no doubt but that our trees would have come out last spring. 



That we may not be misunderstood on this great and leading point now so much 

 attracting the attention of the progressive orchardist, particularly throughout the 

 Northwest, first we say, we do not pretend to claim that excessive cold alone does 

 not kill many tender varieties. This we admit. But we do net admit that the 

 most hardy kinds are injured as much from excessive cold as from untimely heat 

 which starts the sap out of season, and suddenly freezing catches it up in the tree 

 above ground or above snow line, and in this condition the sap wood and inner bark 

 are so much and so suddenly enlarged from their normal condition that the sap 

 cells are so broken up and injured that death follows. Any unusual warm spell 

 followed by a sudden freezing at such times as when the leaves are off in fall or 

 winter, or when they may be partly formed in spring is almost sure to be followed 

 by disaster, particularly so if the ground is not frozen when the warm spell occurrs. 



Orchardists should consider here in the Northwest how best they can secure the 

 freezing of the ground early in the fall and hold it so till time for trees to leave 

 out in spring. Our plan is to seed to grass and soon as the ground is well froz- 

 en mulch thoroughly. 



The ground in 1884 and 1885 was not frozen from fall till spring but very little, 

 and this mainly where the earth was by accident or. in other ways made bare. 



FUTURE OF ORCHARDING IN THE NORTHWEST. 



Shameful ignorance and alarming stupidity, has marked our path while attempt- 

 ing to produce choice, hardy apples here in the Northwest. Look back on our 

 track and see how uncertain and unreasonable has been the course we have been 

 pursuing till recently. The seed to grow our stock, for roots to start the kinds we 

 now have have been grown in Michigan, Ohio or New York; not one in a thousand 

 proving valuable as standard trees. These results are nothing more than we 



