-14- 



standing trees o£ Spartan gave an overall mean of 12, 273 lbs/acre. 



Nutrition trial in a close planting of compact apple trees : Upon 

 reaching their fourth leaf stage 'slender bell' shaped appl e trees, 

 planted at 500 trees/acre had their third cropping year in 1980. 

 Twelve fertilizer treatments were applied at zero, low and high 

 levels of N, P, K, Ca, Mg to the cultivar Morspur Mcintosh grafted 

 on M9, M7, Ott. 3 and M26. 



The best yields of 25 lbs. per tree were obtained from the 

 trees submitted to low N and high amounts of the other elements. 

 The analyses revealed that the amount of elements kept increasing 

 in the soil, as did the pH in the Ca treated plots. Mg deficiency 

 was the prime cause of low yields and poor tree vigor. Trees on 

 Ottawa 3 were particularly sensitive to this deficiency while 

 those on M26 proved to be affected mostly by lack of P. A low Ca 

 regime aggravated preharvest fruit drop. Data on fruit and leaf 

 mineral content are not yet available. 



********** 



NOTES CONCERNING THE HARSH WINTER OF 1980 -SI-*- 



Raymond L. Granger 

 CD. A. Research Station 

 St -Jean- sur- Richelieu 

 Quebec, Canada J3B 6Z8 



The winter of 1980-81 was the second most severe of this 

 century in the province of Quebec. It was preceded by drought 

 in June and July, 1980 and then the fruit trees received an 

 abundance of rain in early and late fall. Thus, the trees lacked 

 maturity at the first cold period on September 28, 1980. Unhar- 

 vested fruits were frozen on the trees. 



On Christmas Eve thermographs recorded -33 C for 2 hours at 

 the CD. A. farm at Frelighsburg . This was followed by some bark 

 splitting. From February 16 to the 24th in 1981 we had unusually 

 warm weather. At this time some of our apple trees grafted on 

 M. robusta 5 started to break their dormancy with bud swelling. 

 In March we had some sun scald injury. April was more or less 

 normal but in May a freeze was experienced at bloom and growers 

 used burners and irrigation systems to protect their apple crop. 

 Regardless of the fact that there were long periods without snow 

 cover the frost penetration in the ground was not abnormal and no 

 particular injury to the root system of fruit was noticed. 



I 



Talk presented at the Annual Summer Meeting of the Massachusetts 



Fruit Growers' Association, Inc., July 15, 1981. 



