54 MASS. EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETIN 428 



Butternut Squash. The Butternut squash has become popular on the Boston 

 jT^arket during the past few years. The origin of this squash is somewhat obscure. 

 Seed production has been in the hands of local growers. There has been a marked 

 lack of uniformity in this squash, and an increasing desire on the part of grow- 

 ers for a better and more uniform strain. To determine whether any of the 

 strains now in use are superior to others, 18 different strains were secured from 

 both seedsmen and growers for trial. The yield varied from 269 to 562 boxes 

 per acre, the percentage of cracked fruit from 10 to 31, and the percentage of 

 crooked fruit from 1 to 37. Crooked fruits are very objectionable because they 

 are difficult to pack in the bushel box which is the market package for this squash. 



Almost all of the strains contained at least one good characteristic but none 

 seemed to combine them all. Breeding work has been started to produce a true 

 high-yielding Butternut squash. 



DEPARTMENT OF POMOLOGY 

 R. A. Van Meter in Charge 



The Influence of Various Clonal Rootstocks on Apple Varieties. (J. K. Shaw 

 and L. Southwick.) The hurricane of September, 1944, caused damage to the 

 trees on the dwarfing rootstocks. Those on Mailing IV and IX suffered most. 

 Those on Mailing V and on the standard and near standard stocks showed no 

 injury. 



Some trees broke off at the point of union between stock and scion, a few broke 

 below the union, and some were tipped, varying from little to complete prostra- 

 tion. The proportion of trees ruined was small, but large enough with some 

 stock-scion combinations to make the use of them doubtful. We had considered 

 Mailing IV to be one of the best semi-dwarfing rootstocks, but this experience 

 suggests its greatest weakness. Most varieties on this rootstock grow rapidly 

 and bear early in life, but they have poor anchorage-. Trees on Mailing IX are 

 usually poorly anchored and the stock, though large in diameter, is brittle so 

 that the trees tip or the rootstock breaks when subjected to severe winds. It is 

 a good rootstock for the home garden, making low-headed trees which bear at 

 the age of two to four years. Home garden trees are usually located where they 

 have some protection from high winds, and some support such as stakes made 

 from used iron pipe is easily provided. 



This experience should not discourage the use of semi-dwarf apple trees, but 

 such orchards should not be planted on poor soils or on wind-swept sites. They 

 should be headed low and pruned rather more severely than standard trees in 

 order to keep them low headed. Perhaps they should be budded 8 or 10 inches 

 high so that they can be planted deeper in the orchard. In this experimental 

 orchard, all the trees were treated alike for purposes of comparison. 



The crops of both 1944 and 1945 were much reduced by spring frosts. The 

 amount of bloom is the best indication of potential early production of trees on 

 dwarfing and semi-dwarfing rootstocks. It is evident that the usual habits of 

 varieties appear when they are grown on these stocks but with some modification. 

 Trees on Mailing VIII and IX may be expected to bear at the age of two years 

 for Golden Delicious, and four or five years for Northern Spy. Production of 

 some naturally early-bearing varieties as Oldenburg and Wagener seems to be 

 hastened less than that of Golden Delicious. Trees on the semi-dwarfing stocks 

 seem to begin to bear from two to four years earlier, according to variety, than 

 trees growing on seedling stocks. 



