DIRECTIONS FOR BLUEBERRY CULTURE. 
9 
ground not only allows such circulation but makes it easy to work 
among the frames. (4) The frames should be kept closed until 
the cuttings are rooted. This closing not only keeps the air satu- 
rated with moisture and prevents the drying of the cuttings, but it 
also tends to maintain a cool ground temperature within the frame. 
When frames are thus located, constructed, and managed, the max- 
imum temperature on sunny days within the frames is often 10 de- 
grees lower than the shade temperature outside, and the period of 
safety for cuttings that are not yet rooted is greatly prolonged. Low 
temperatures can be maintained in such coldframes much later in 
the season than in a greenhouse of the ordinary construction, even 
though the greenhouse is well shaded and well ventilated. 
The use of a greenhouse in which to start the cuttings, followed by 
the transfer of the cutting boxes to coldframes at the beginning of 
warm weather, permits an even more prolonged protection of the 
cuttings than can be secured in either greenhouse or coldf rame alone 
and increases the percentage of rooted plants. 
The directions for rooting winter cuttings of the blueberry by the 
use of a coldf rame are as follows : 
1. Make the cuttings in late winter before the buds have begun to swell. If 
more convenient, they may be made in late autumn, after the leaves have fallen, 
laid rather loosely in clean moist sphagnum in a covered but ventilated box or 
other package, and stored until early spring on ice at a temperature just above 
freezing or in commercial cold storage at a temperature of about 35° F., if such 
storage is available. 
2. Make the cuttings from wood of the preceding summer's growth, rejecting 
such portions as bear the large fat flowering buds. The cuttings are to be 
made from well-matured unbranched twigs or shoots grown in well-lighted 
situations, and therefore well stored with starch. Excellent wood for cuttings 
is afforded by the long stout shoots that grow the first summer from a blueberry 
plant that has been pruned to the stump. In the swamp blueberry these have 
few or no flowering buds and often are 3 to 5 feet in height and a quarter of an 
inch or more in diameter at the base. 
3. About 4 to 5 inches is a suitable length for finished cuttings. A sharp 
thin-bladed knife should be used. In the finished cutting the upper end of the 
diagonal cut at the base of the cutting should come just below a sound bud, 
and the cut at the upper end of the cutting should be about an eighth of an 
inch above a sound bud. If the cuts are first made with pruning shears, remove 
with the knife the bruised wood at the cut ends. The diagonal knife cuts 
should be as short as is practicable without bruising the bark or- lplitting or 
straining the wood. Cuttings that have been kept in cold storage should be 
recut at both ends, so as to present clean surfaces that show no discoloration. 
In order to avoid infection of the cuttings, the knife must be kept clean. This 
may be done conveniently by dipping the blade in alcohol and wiping it on a 
clean towel. The cuttings must not be allowed to become dry. This is easily 
prevented by laying them in the fold of a clean moist towel. 
4. The coldframe may be of the usual form, the top about 1 foot above the 
surface of the cutting bed at the front and 2 feet at the back, and tightly 
constructed of material not less than an inch in thickness, with closely fitting 
sash of the ordinary kind. The "cutting bed, 4 inches in depth, should be laid 
down over a groundwork of gravel or other material that will provide good 
