WINTER INJURY TO APPLE TREES. 183 



WINTER INJURY OF YOUNG APPLE TREES FOL- 

 LOWING SETTING IN DYNAMITED HOLES. 



W. J. Morse. 



Of the two original Baldwin orchards on the farm, one was 

 so far gone through a combination of neglect, and the direct and 

 indirect effects following- the severe winter of 1906-7 that it 

 was removed soon after the Station took control in 1909. The 

 other, though very unpromising, was retained, largely for the 

 purpose of determining what might be expected from reclama- 

 tion work upon other orchards similarly injured and neglected. 

 A certain proportion of the trees in the last named orchard 

 failed to recover and were removed from time to time. In 

 the early spring of 1913 the places formerly occupied by 150 

 of these were filled by setting young Baldwin trees. 



In the case of 126 of these trees, they were set where holes 

 had been blasted with dynamite the fall before. With these 52 

 other trees, similar in every respect, were set in the same 

 orchard in the usual manner by digging a hole with a shovel. 

 In both cases, whether dynamited or not, a large hole was 

 dug and filled in with top soil to where the tree was to be set, 

 This was necessary in both instances for the primary object of 

 the dynamiting was to shatter the subsoil rather than simply 

 to make a hole. As far as the location of the trees in the or- 

 chard was concerned, conditions were ideal from an experi- 

 mental standpoint. Since they were to replace trees which had 

 been removed from different parts of the orchard for one 

 cause or another, chance rather than design determined where 

 the young trees should be placed. Consequently they were 

 scattered indiscriminately through the orchard, those in dyna- 

 mited and shovel dug holes mixed in with no particular order. 



As first outlined this experiment was in no way concerned 

 with pathology and the writer had no part in planning or carry- 

 ing it out and knew nothing of the former treatment of the in- 

 dividual trees previous to collecting the records with regard to 

 the winter injury upon them. The work was undertaken at the 

 instance of one of the large firms which manufacture explosives 

 and the dynamited holes were made by one of their experts. 

 The primary object of the experiment was to determine whether 

 or not the trees would make a better or more vigorous growth 



