-3- 



11, Currants - *Y,'ilder - not allcved in many towns. Consult Department 

 of At;riculture, Stato ilouso, Boston, Ivlass. 



12. Blueberries - Cabot, Pioneer, Concord, *Rubel, *Jersey. 



Notej Many varieties of fruits are partly or wholly self sterile. Usually 

 it is best to plant more than one variety. (The list of varieties 

 recoiimended for trial only will appoar in the next issue of Fruit 

 Notes. 



SHRIVELL INrT OF A PPLES III S TO RAG^ 



In the animal world, a v;rinkled skin may sug£,est old age. 

 Not so in an apple. If an apple shrivels in storage it's a safe bet that 

 the ov,ner has been careless about the humidity of the storage air, Vihen- 

 ever apple cells lose v^rater to the surrounding air or to the container, 

 they tend to shrink, and the skin ;\'hich encloses them becomes wrinkled. 

 This condition is widespread in luassachusetts storages, and in some cases, 

 s^-rious. The reasons are obvious. 



The difficulty may go back to the harvest season when the crop 

 was placed in d ry boxes. Then to make matters v/orse, the boxes were 

 set in a dry storage and nothing done in the meantime to increase the 

 humidity of the storage air. In •.■'ne storage, the boxes near the ceiling 

 along a dry wooden beam seemed to shrivel worse than the others. Dry 

 storage conditions are very easily overlooked. They creep upon us 

 gradually without much advance warning. To play safe we ought to provide 

 ourselves v.rith a simple deviec for testing, such as a Vv'et and dry bulb 

 thermometer and a relative humidity table, 85^o relative humidity should 

 be considered a minimum. 



If boxes are left out in a rain before harvest that v:ill help 

 to prevent drying of the apples, Tlien the floor of the storage should 

 be vjet down from time ta time or whenever there is a suspicion that the 

 air is getting dry. And as might be expected Golden Delicious, russetted 

 Baldwins and scabby Mcintosh tend to siirivel early because they have a 

 poor protective covering. Shrivelling can be prevented, but not by 

 the methods in common use in many of our storages. 



Winter Injury in Fruit Trees. There are at least 

 eight distinct iinds of winter injury in fruit trees. 

 Some are much more common than others although all 

 have probably occurred in Massachusetts. They are 

 as follows; root killing, bark-splitting, trunk- 

 splitting, sunscald, crotch injury, killing back 

 of braziches, black heart, trunk injury, Killing of 

 dormant buds and winter-killing of svrollen buds may 

 also be classed as winter injury. 



