26o 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



even a very lig-ht mulcli ; little injury was 

 done where the trees stood in fairly well 

 drained soil containing a moderate amount 

 ot fertility and humus; no injury was found 

 where the trees were under the grass mulch 

 method of culture; no injury was observed 

 in any case where the stems of the trees had 

 been slightly banked or mounded with a few 

 shovelfuls or forkfnls of soil, peat or 

 manure. 



\'ery few trees which, within the past few 

 years, had been afTeoted with leaf curl or in- 



fested wit'h San Jose scale or borers, re- 

 mained alive or uninjured; and very few 

 trees existing upon infertile or exhausted 

 soil, depleted of humus, escaped uninjured. 

 (J)ther bulletins received by The Horticul- 

 turist are : one on the maintenance of fertility 

 I)y the use of lime, from the Ohio experi- 

 ment station at \\' ooster ; and The Prepara- 

 tion and Use of Sprays, and Disease-Re- 

 sistant Potatoes, from the Vermont station 

 at Burlington. They contain useful infor- 

 mation and are worth writins: for. 



SELF-STERILITY IN FRUITS* 



TIIICO ROSS, B. A., P. E. I. 



FOR some reason which we do not un- 

 derstand many varieties of fruit are 

 self-sterile. The pollen of that variety will 

 not fertilize the pistils of the same variety, 

 as for instance the Northern Spy. The 

 pollen of a flower of a Northern Spy tree 

 may fall on the pistil of a flower of a North- 

 ern Spy but fertilization does not take place. 

 We say the Northern Spy is a self-sterile 

 variety, and then we are in the dark grop- 

 ing blindly. This subject of self-sterility 

 has not yet been worked out and it will not 

 be for a long time to come, for self-sterility 

 is influenced by climate and location to quite 

 a degree. 



There are some varieties of nearly all 

 kinds of fruits self-sterile, and by a self- 

 sterile variety is meant a variety that is un- 

 able to set fruit when alone ; in order to be 

 productive it must be set near some other 

 variety. Planting near them more trees of 

 the same variety does not make them fruit- 

 ful, but if trees of another variety are 

 planted near them they are often made fruit- 

 ful. Then there asre all the gradations 

 from self-sterility to self-fertility. Some 

 varieties will set fruit with their own pollen, 

 but the result will not be nearly as good as 

 if fertilized by pollen from another variety, 



while again with other varieties it will be 

 just as good. 



In some work done at Cornell, Stark pis- 

 tils weire fertilized with Wagner pollen and 

 others with Stark pollen with these results, 

 so with Longfield Greening. In these in- 

 stances the size was much increased by 

 cross-pollination, but it might have b?en 

 still further increased if some other variety 

 had been used as a fertilizer. In the case 

 of the Talman Sweet there has been very 

 little improvement, but there again if some 

 other pollinizer had been used we might 

 have had different results. The number of 

 crosses that might be made are \tvy large 

 and in most of our orchards, v^here there 

 are a great number of varieties, the number 

 made every year is undoubtedly larger but 

 we cannot check up the results. 



Experimenting with various pollinizers 

 is not only pleasant work but it requires 

 really no outlay, and much good might re- 

 sult. All that is necessary is a few paper 

 bags and some twine and a pair of scissors. 

 Cut the stamens from some blossoms as soon 

 as they open and fasten paper bags over 

 them to prevent pollination. liien. when 

 the pistil is ready, dust some pollen taken 

 from some stamens that have been protected 



Extract from an address delivered at the annual convention of the Prince Edward Island Fruit Growers' Association. 



