DIRECTIONS FOB BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 15 



underground parts as well as the tops of selected wild plants might be 

 utilized, cuttings of these parts were made, about 3 to 4 inches long 

 and of all sizes down to a little less than an eighth of an inch in diam 

 eter. These were given the same treatment as tubered cuttings in 

 coldframes. A good percentage of unusually vigorous rooted sprouts 

 resulted. (PI. XVIII.) It was found later, however, that most of 

 the pieces that rooted were not true root cuttings, but were from 

 underground portions of stems, properly stem-base cuttings. 



MOUND LAYERING. 



Wild blueberry jjlants, and hybrids also, vary greatly in their 

 response to the different methods of propagation here described. 

 Cuttings of the common lowbush blueberry {Vaccinium angusti- 

 folium.) usually do not yield a large percentage of rooted plants. The 

 same is true of hybrids between this species and the swamp blueberry. 

 For these plants the old-fashioned method of mound laj^ering has 

 been found satisfactory. The procedure is simply to cover up the 

 bases of the stems to the depth of 2 to 4 inches with the peat and 

 sand soil in which the plants are growing. If this is done in spring, 

 soon after flowering, the stems are usually well rooted by the end of 

 the season, and each one is ready to be taken off as a separate plant. 



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. 



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 blueberry plants should be kept outdoors, ex- 

 posed to freezing temperatures, their soil mulched with leaves, pref- 

 erably oak leaves. When kept in a warm greenhouse during the 

 winter they make no growth before spring. Even then their growth 

 is late, abnormal, often feeble, sometimes deferred for even a whole 

 year. 



