DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 13 



drought, although the soil outside the root ball contains plenty of 

 moisture. 



An early autumn field planting has furnished a remarkably suc- 

 cessful means of avoiding this trouble with potted plants. At this 

 season the excessive heat of summer is over, the plants are in full 

 and vigorous leaf, and, being taken from pots, carry their whole root 

 system with them. The formation of new roots begins at once and 

 proceeds with great activity until the leaves are shed, at the approach 

 of winter. In the spring, when new leaf growth begins, the plants 

 are already well rooted in the soil. They pass through the early hot 

 period without injury and develop remarkable size and vigor by 

 autumn. 



In preparing for a field plantation one precaution of special im- 

 portance must not be overlooked. For the production of a crop of 

 fruit under field conditions, insects are required to carry pollen 

 from one flower to another. The honeybee works little on blueberry 

 flowers. Her tongue is so short that she can not easily reach the 

 nectar. The flowers are pollinated chiefly by bumblebees, whose 

 tongues are long, and by some of the solitary wild bees that are 

 small enough to crawl through the narrow opening of the corolla. 

 When blueberry flowers are pollinated with pollen from their own 

 bush the berries are fewer, smaller, and later in maturing than when 

 the pollen comes from another bush. Some bushes are almost com- 

 pletely sterile to their own pollen. (See PI. XIII.) The pollen of a 

 plant grown from a cutting is likewise unsatisfactory for the polli- 

 nation of the parent plant or of other plants grown from cuttings 

 of it. It is important, therefore, that a plantation should not be 

 made up wholly from cuttings from one bush. Two stocks should be 

 used, a row of plants from one stock being followed by a row from 

 the other. 



In the permanent field plantation the bushes should be set 8 feet 

 apart each way. When the}' reach mature size they will nearly or 

 quite cover the intervening spaces. 



When blueberry culture is to be tried in a sandy or gravelly soil 

 deficient in peat or peatlike matter, the plants should be set in sepa- 

 rate holes or trenches about 12 inches deep in a mixture of two to 

 four parts of peat or half -rotted oak leaves to one part of clean sand. 

 The excavations should be wide enough to provide ample space for 

 new growth of the roots, not less than a foot each way from the old 

 root ball. In small plantings, if the materials for the mixture are 

 easily available in quantity, an 8-inch bed of it may be laid down 

 over the whole surface of the ground, and if a planting is to be tried 

 on a soil wholly unsuited to the blueberry, the area may first be cov- 

 ered with a 6-inch layer of sand, the bed of peat and sand mixture 

 being then laid down on top of the sand layer. Wherever used, the 

 peat and sand mixture should be thoroughly manipulated, so as to 



