HUCKLEBERRIES AND BLUEBERRIES. 33 



Its perfect hardiness and adaptation to all kinds of soil, render it 

 as easy of cultivation as any of the small fruits, and it can be 

 grown anywhere that corn will grow. 



Plant the large varieties four by five feet apart, and they will 

 form large bushes. The small varieties, plant in rows five feet 

 apart and from one to two feet in the row. Cultivate to keep 

 down all weeds, and prune by shortening in the long growths, to 

 induce the growth of short, fruit bearing laterals, and trim out the 

 old wood when it has ceased to be productive ; when they begin 

 to bear, mulch heavily with straw, leaves, wild grass, or any 

 material that will keep the ground moist and cool, and the culti- 

 vator will be rewarded by a bountiful crop of delicious fruit." 



In the Report of the New York Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion for 1883, p. 227, will be found notice of a successful attempt 

 at cultivation about 1868, bj' W. J. Scott, of Bridgewater, Oneida 

 Co., N. Y. He removed the bushes from a cold, wet swamp to 

 dry and gravelly upland. The plants were of both the High Bush 

 and the Low kind. In 1883, he reported that the plants had 

 borne abundantly. The bushes grew taller and better than those 

 in the swamp, and the berries increased in size. 



Discussion. 



Jackson Dawson, gardener at the Arnold Arboretum, said he 

 began fourteen or fifteen years ago to grow these plants from 

 seeds, and now has plants of almost every variety that will endure 

 our climate. Mr. Dawson then read a letter, which was received 

 at the Arnold Arboretum in 1885, from E. S. Gofl, of the New 

 York Experiment Station, at Geneva, N. Y. It contained 

 an inquiry what to do with his huckleberry plants to make them 

 grow. He had had no difficulty in securing germination, but after 

 the young seedlings attained about five leaves they stopped grow- 

 ing for a few months, and then died gradually. He had used sand, 

 muck, and loam, and various mixtures of these soils, but the re- 

 sult had been the same in all. The soil had been kept pretty 

 wet. Mr. Dawson's reply was published in the " Country Gentle- 

 man," for 1885, page 660. Therein he recommended using seed 

 pans four inches deep, half filled with broken crocks, thinly 

 covered with sphagnum. The soil preferred was a compost of 

 one part good fibrous peat (upland preferred), one part well 

 rotted pasture sod, and one (larger) part of clean, fine sand, free 

 3 



