DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 5 



7. Cover the frame with muslin or other white shade suspended above the 

 glass, giving the plants plenty of light but no direct sunlight, and for the 

 first two or three months keep the temperature at not to exceed 05° F. if 

 practicable. When subjected to high temperatures the newly cut shoots are 

 liable to die and rot from the base upward. The outer surface of the pots 

 should never be allowed to become dry. The desired condition may be assured 

 by bedding, or " plunging," the pots in moist sand up to the rim. 



8. Watering should be as infrequent as practicable, only sufficient to keep 

 the soil moist but well aerated. 



9. The frame should receive ventilation, but not enough to cause the new 

 twigs to droop. These are most susceptible to overventilation and to over- 

 heating when they have nearly completed their growth. (See PI. III.) 



10. After the new twigs have stopped growing and their wood becomes hard 

 new root growth takes place. Then secondary twig growth follows, either from 

 the apex of the new twigs or from another bud lower down on the old wood 

 of the original rooted shoot. Until this secondary twig growth takes place the 

 life of the plant is not assured. 



11. Those plants that make sufficient growth to require repotting during the 

 first summer should be set in clean pots of 2 inches larger diameter in a 

 standard blueberry-soil mixture. 



SOIL MIXTURE FOR BLUEBERRIES. 



A very successful potting mixture or nursery-bed mixture for 

 blueberry plants consists of one part of clean or washed sand, nine 

 parts of rotted upland peat, either chopped or rubbed through a 

 sieve, and three parts of clean, broken crocks, that is, pieces of ordi- 

 nary unglazed, porous, earthenware flower pots. No loam, and espe- 

 cially no lime, should be used. Manure is not necessary, and in the 

 present state of our knowledge may be regarded as dangerous, 

 although in small quantities it serves to stimulate the plants, at least 

 temporarily. The danger from manure apparently lies in its tend- 

 ency to injure the beneficial root fungus of the blueberry plant. 



The use of broken crocks in the potting mixture is based on the 

 fact that the rootlets seek them and form around them the same kind 

 of mats that they form at the wall of the pot, thus increasing the 

 effective root surface and the vigor of growth. If crocks are not 

 available, the soil mixture should consist of 2 to 4 parts of peat to 

 1 part of sand. 



The peat most successfully used for potting blueberry plants is an 

 upland peat procured in kalmia, or laurel, thickets. In a sandy soil 

 in which the leaves of these bushes and of the oak trees with which 

 they usually grow have accumulated and rotted for many years, 

 untouched by fire, a mass of rich leaf peat is formed, interlaced by 

 the superficial rootlets of the oak and laurel into tough mats or turfs, 

 commonly 2 to 4 inches in thickness. These turfs, ripped from the 

 ground and rotted from two to six months in a moist but well-aerated 

 stack, make an ideal blueberry peat. A good substitute is found in 

 similar turfs formed in sandy oak woods having an underbrush of 

 ericaceous plants other than laurel. The turfs of low-bush blue- 



