REPORT OF CRANBERRY SUBSTATION 

 FOR 1915. 



BY H. J. FR,\NKLIN. 



The season's studies followed chiefly the lines of previous years, but more 

 extensive storage experiments were conducted with the fruit than here- 

 tofore, and considerable attention was given to the possibility of growing 

 selected varieties of the swamp blueberry {Vaccinium corymbosum L.) 

 on bogs where cranberries do not pay, somewhat more than half an acre 

 of land having been partially prepared to test the feasibility of this sub- 

 stitution. 



It is hoped that Massachusetts cranberry growers will give special con- 

 sideration to the new ideas suggested in the discussion of bog manage- 

 ment. They are advanced, not as established principles, but as possibili- 

 ties which, in the light of general experience and the results of several 

 years of extensive investigation, appear to be promising. 



"Weather observations were carried on as in previous seasons, the 

 readings of the maximum and minimum thermometers and the amounts 

 of precipitation being telegraphed to the Boston office of the United States 

 Weather Bureau during the periods of frost danger, and advice concerning 

 temperature possibilities being given by telephone to individual growers 

 on cold nights when asked for. 



Experiments with tobacco shade cloth for frost protection were con- 

 tinued, with the general result that its use for this purpose appears less 

 advisable than the 1914 tests seemed to indicate, the difficulties con- 

 nected with its manipulation on the bog evidently being considerable. 

 The cloth should be given further trial, however. There is as yet no 

 other promising means of protection for many dry bogs, but the total 

 acreage of such bogs is small. In the present opinion of the writer, a 

 cheaper and more certainly effective means of protection may be had on 

 most unprotected bogs by properly conserving and manipulating (by 

 means of small pumping plants, the bog areas being more extensively 

 divided by low dikes) the water of the winter flowage (see the more ex- 

 tended discussion of this idea on page 46). 



Fungous Diseases. 

 These studies were carried on, as heretofore, in co-operation v/ith the 

 Bureau of Plant Industry of the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 Dr. C. L. Shear having charge of the more technical part of the work. 



