DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 11 



14. The plants are best left in the open coldframe all winter, mulched with 

 leaves, preferably oak leaves, and in the early spring, before the buds have 

 begun to push, they should be very carefully lifted and moved, with the whole 

 root mat and adhering soil intact, to a peat and sand nursery bed at a spacing 

 of about a foot each way. 



ROOT CUTTINGS. 



The early experiments with root cuttings gave such a small per- 

 centage of rooted plants that further experiments in the greenhouse 

 were abandoned. At Whitesbog, N. J., however, in order that the 

 roots as well as the tops of selected wild plants might be utilized, 

 cuttings of the roots were made about 3 to 4 inches long and of all 

 sizes down to a little less than an eighth of an inch in diameter. 

 These were given the same treatment as tubered cuttings in cold- 

 frames. A high percentage of rooted plants resulted. (See PI. XI.) 

 This may prove to be one of the most satisfactory methods of propa- 

 gating plants that have large root systems. 



TREATMENT OF YOUNG PLANTS. 



When blueberry plants, either large or small, are grown in porous 

 pots, the surface of the pot should never be allowed to become dry, 

 for the rootlets which grow through the soil to the wall of the pot 

 for air are extremely fine and easily killed by drying, to the great 

 injury of the plant. This danger may be eliminated by bedding the 

 pots to the rim in a well-drained bed of sand or by setting the pot 

 in another pot of 2 to 4 inches greater diameter, with a packing of 

 moist sphagnum moss between and broken crocks at the bottom. (See 

 PL XII, fig. 1.) 



A burning of the young leaves and growing tips of twigs is often 

 produced by the hot sun from the middle of June to the middle of 

 September. Plants in pots or nursery beds are easily protected from 

 such injury and forced to their maximum growth by a half -shade 

 covering of slats, the slats and the spaces between being of the same 

 width. On cloudy days the shade should be removed. It should not 

 be used in the fall or spring. 



During the winter the rooted cuttings, or 1-year-old plants, should 

 be kept outdoors, exposed to freezing temperatures, their soil 

 mulched with leaves, preferably oak leaves. When kept in a warm 

 greenhouse during the winter they make no growth before spring. 

 Even then their growth is abnormal, often feeble, or sometimes 

 deferred for a whole year. 



FIELD PLANTING. 



Plants from cuttings or rooted shoots are ready for permanent 

 field planting when they are 1 or 2 years old and 6 to 18 inches 

 high. (See PI. XII, fig. 2.) 



It is a curious fact that these plants send out no new roots in 

 spring until they are in full leaf, when their flowering is nearly or 



