DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 9 



ground not only allows such circulation but makes it easy to work 

 among the frames. (4) The frames should be kept closed until 

 the cuttings are rooted. This closing not only keeps the air satu- 

 rated with moisture and prevents the drying of the cuttings, but it 

 also tends to maintain a cool ground temperature within the frame. 



When frames are thus located, constructed, and managed, the max- 

 imum temperature on sunny days within the frames is often 10 de- 

 grees lower than the shade temperature outside, and the period of 

 safety for cuttings that are not yet rooted is greatly prolonged. Low 

 temperatures can be maintained in such coldframes much later in 

 the season than in a greenhouse of the ordinary construction, even 

 though the greenhouse is well shaded and well ventilated. 



The use of a greenhouse in which to start the cuttings, followed by 

 the transfer of the cutting boxes to coldframes at the beginning of 

 warm weather, permits an even more prolonged protection of the 

 cuttings than can be secured in either greenhouse or coldframe alone 

 and increases the percentage of rooted plants. 



The directions for rooting winter cuttings of the blueberry by the 

 use of a coldframe are as follows : 



1. Make the cuttings in late winter before the buds have begun to swell. If 

 more convenient, they may be made in late autumn, after the leaves have fallen, 

 laid rather loosely in clean moist sphagnum in a covered but ventilated box or 

 other package, and stored until early spring on ice at a temperature just above 

 freezing or in commercial cold storage at a temperature of about 35° F., if such 

 storage is available. 



2. Make the cuttings from wood of the preceding summer's growth, rejecting 

 ' such portions as bear the large fat flowering buds. The cuttings are to be 



made from well-matured unbranched twigs or shoots grown in well-lighted 

 situations, and therefore well stored with starch. Excellent wood for cuttings 

 is afforded by the long stout shoots that grow the first summer from a blueberry 

 plant that has been pruned to the stump. In the swamp blueberry these have 

 few or no flowering buds and often are 3 to 5 feet in height and a quarter of an 

 inch or more in diameter at the base. 



3. About 4 to 5 inches is a suitable length for finished cuttings. A sharp 

 thin-bladed knife should be used. In the finished cutting the upper end of the 

 diagonal cut at the base of the cutting should come just below a sound bud, 

 and the cut at the upper end of the cutting should be about an eighth of an 

 inch above a sound bud. If the cuts are first made with pruning shears, remove 

 with the knife the bruised wood at the cut ends. The diagonal knife cuts 

 should be as short as is practicable without bruising the bark or splitting or 

 straining the wood. Cuttings that have been kept in cold storage should be 

 recut at both ends, so as to present clean surfaces that show no discoloration. 

 In order to avoid infection of the cuttings, the knife must be kept clean. This 

 may be done conveniently by dipping the blade in alcohol and wiping it on a 

 clean towel. The cuttings must not be allowed to become dry. This is easily 

 prevented by laying them in the fold of a clean moist towel. 



4. The coldframe may be of the usual form, the top about 1 foot above the 

 surface of the cutting bed at the front and 2 feet at the back, and tightly 

 constructed of material not less than an inch in thickness, with closely fitting 

 sash of the ordinary kind. The cutting bed, 4 inches in depth, should be laid 

 down over a groundwork of gravel or other material that will provide good 



