DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. | eye 
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. (Pl. 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 plants, and hybrids also, vary greatly in their 
response to the different methods of propagation here described. 
Cuttings of the common lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angusti- 
folitwm) 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 layering 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. 
