Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 7

This is the time of the year when the unsightly heaps of coal ashes are likely to appear in one's back yard--eyesores and apparently useless.

Yet there are several ways in which they can be used to advantage about the garden.

They should first be sifted, using a quarter-inch wire mesh. The rough or coa.r.s.er parts are well adapted for use on paths and driveways, forming a clean, firm surface with use. These paths are especially good in the garden, for weeds do not grow readily in them, and they dry off quickly after a rain.

Such parts of the ashes as will pa.s.s through an inch mesh will make a very good summer mulch about fruit trees and bushes that require such care. This mulch will conserve the moisture at the roots of the tree or plant at a time when it is very necessary to have it.

About a pyramid of these coa.r.s.e ashes one may plant anything that requires much water. The roots of the plants will run under the ashes and keep moist and cool. Through a drought a little water poured upon the ashes will be distributed to the roots without loss.

The fine sifted ashes will render the tougher hard soils more friable, their chief virtue being lightening it. In a very mild degree they are a fertilizer, though in no degree comparable in this respect to hardwood ashes. Yet it has been proved that soil to which sifted coal ashes had been added grew plants of richer, darker foliage. They must be very well mixed with the soil by a thorough spading and forking.

The following experiment was noted in the Garden Magazine: A soil was prepared as follows: One-eighth stable manure, one-eighth leaf mold, one-quarter garden soil (heavy), one-half sifted coal ashes. Plants grown in this soil surpa.s.sed those grown in the garden soil next to them.

Coal ashes would not be advised for a light soil.

Watch this page for announcement of Garden Flower Society meetings.

January 20th, Public Library, Minneapolis, Tenth and Hennepin, Directors' Room, 2:30 p.m.

SUBJECTS:

Hotbeds, coldframes, management and care of the young plants, Mr. Frank H. Gibbs.

The Minnesota Cypripediums. Can they be successfully cultivated? Miss Clara Leavitt.

Five-minute talks on "The Best Things of 1915."

Members are urged to bring their friends to this meeting. No one who contemplates having a garden this year can afford to miss it. Let us be generous and share our good programs with as many as possible. Each member is host or hostess for that day.

SECRETARY'S CORNER

ANNUAL MEETING WISCONSIN STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCY.--This meeting is to be held at Madison, Wis., on January 5-7. Mr. Chas.

Haralson, superintendent of our State Fruit-Breeding Farm, is to represent this society at that meeting. We may look for an interesting report from him in the February issue of our monthly.

IS YOUR ANNUAL FEE PAID?--If not, won't you please send it in promptly, remitting by a $1.00 bill, which is a safe medium of payment, instead of using check unless you draw on a bank in one of the larger cities of the state. Checks on country banks, as a rule, can only be collected here by a payment of ten cents, which the society can ill afford to pay for so many members.

ANNUAL MEETING S.D. HORT. SOCY.--The annual gathering of this sister a.s.sociation will be held in Huron, S.D., January 18-20. Quite a good many of our members live so near the state line that they may find it convenient to attend this meeting, which will certainly be a profitable one. Prof. N. E. Hansen is secretary. Mr. Wm. Pfaender, Jr., of New Ulm, is to be the representative of this society at the South Dakota meeting.

ANNUAL MEETING SOUTHERN MINNESOTA HORT. SOCY.--This very wide-awake auxiliary of the state society will hold its annual meeting in Austin, January 19th and 20th next. The program of the meeting is not yet at hand, but you may be sure that it will be an interesting and practical one. If the reader is living anywhere within convenient range of Austin by all means attend this meeting and get inspiration and help for the work of another season.

YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN.--This refers to members of the society who have paid their annual fee for 1916 and are wondering why they have not yet received the members.h.i.+p ticket. There is always a little unavoidable delay in sending out these tickets after the annual meeting.

First the tickets must be printed, and then the society folder that goes out with them must be prepared, and the material making up this folder comes from quite a number of sources, and it takes more or less time to get all of these matters together and in shape. You need not be solicitous in regard to members.h.i.+p fees remitted, as the chance of loss in transmission is approximately nothing; hardly half a dozen instances of the kind have come up in the twenty-five years of service of the secretary.

Pa.s.sING OF MICHAEL BENDEL, SR.--This old member of our society and resident of Madison has just been called away, December 23rd, at the age of seventy-nine years. While not an attendant at our meetings he was a most loyal member of the society, and especially conspicuous in the western part of the state, where he lived, as a successful experimenter in orcharding, in which work he had a large experience. His portrait and a brief sketch of his life appear in the 1914 volume of our report, on page 150. Mr. Bendel was for many years president of the Lac qui Parle County Agricultural Society, was always greatly interested in everything to improve the interests of his community, and especially those pertaining to farm life. He has left an enviable record.

FARMERS AND HOME MAKERS WEEK.--University Farm, midway between Minneapolis and St. Paul, have prepared a royal program for all interested in agricultural work and life, including the needs of the household, filling all of next week, from January 3rd to 8th, inclusive.

Seventy-nine professors and instructors by count are on the program for the week, and it is so arranged that those attending pa.s.s from one lecture room to another, from hour to hour, selecting the subjects that they have a special interest in. Horticulture, or subjects closely akin, have a place on this program Monday afternoon, Tuesday forenoon and afternoon, Wednesday forenoon and Thursday forenoon; Thursday afternoon the horticultural program is devoted entirely to vegetables; Friday forenoon and afternoon; and Sat.u.r.day forenoon altogether spraying. When this magazine is received it will be too late to send for a program, but not too late to attend the meetings, which we hope many of our members may have the opportunity to do.

ATTENDANCE AT ANNUAL MEETING.--The badge book, which is issued at every annual meeting, containing the list of those who notify the secretary of a purpose to attend the meeting, is a pretty good index of the attendance. This year the badge book contained 442 names. Of course not all of these were present at the meeting, but a great many who were there had not sent notice of attendance and whose names were not in the badge book, so that the figures given elsewhere in this magazine as to attendance, estimated at from 400 to 500, are certainly not any too high.

Of this number not to exceed fifteen members, including vice presidents and superintendents of trial stations living at a distance, receive their railroad fare to and from the annual meeting, which is the only compensation they receive for their work in operating the trial stations and preparing the annual or semi-annual reports connected with their positions. This is not in fact any compensation for service but rather a recognition of the large obligation under which the society rests towards them for such gratuitous service.

PLANT PREMIUMS FOR 1916.--On the inside front cover page of this monthly will be found a list of the plant premiums offered to our members.h.i.+p the coming spring. This list is also published in the society folder, of which copies will be sent to each member and which can be supplied in any number desired by application to the secretary. The list of plant premiums includes a considerable variety of plants both ornamental and otherwise useful. Those of special interest this year are the new fruits being sent out from the State Fruit-Breeding Farm, including No. 3 June-bearing strawberry, which gives promise of being a very valuable fruit for Minnesota planters; No. 1017 everbearing strawberry, the kind which has been selected from thousands of varieties fruiting at the station, a good plant maker and also a prolific fruiter of high quality berries; No. 4 raspberry, a variety of extraordinary vigor and hardiness, large fruited, and a prolific bearer; and several varieties of large fruited plums. Every member of the society with facilities for growing fruits should be interested in trying these new varieties, which of course are still being sent out on trial, and we desire to hear from our members.h.i.+p as to their measure of success with them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A. W. LATHAM O. C. GREGG CHAS. G. PATTEN

From photograph taken in front of Administration Building, at University Farm, on the morning of January 8, just before presentation of certificates referred to on opposite page.]

While it is not the intention to publish anything in this magazine that is misleading or unreliable, yet it must be remembered that the articles published herein recite the experience and opinions of their writers, and this fact must always be noted in estimating their practical value.

THE MINNESOTA HORTICULTURIST

Vol. 44 FEBRUARY, 1916 No. 2

OPEN LETTER TO MEMBERS

OF THE

Minnesota State Horticultural Society

FROM ITS SECRETARY.

Probably members of the society very generally noticed a few weeks since in the daily papers of the Twin Cities and elsewhere an announcement that "certificates of award for special meritorious services in the advancement of agriculture" would be made by the Minnesota State University to Mr. O. C. Gregg, Hon. W. G. LeDuc, Mr. Chas. G. Patten and Mr. A. W. Latham.

These certificates were awarded Sat.u.r.day, January 8th, 1916, at the closing exercises of the Farmers Week at the University Farm before an audience of twelve hundred people, gathered in the chapel in the Administration Building. Appropriate exercises were conducted by the President, Geo. E. Vincent, and the Dean of the University Farm, A.F.

Woods, in the presence of Hon. Fred B. Snyder, President of the Board of Regents of the State University, and other members of the Board and a large representation of the professors.h.i.+p of University Farm School, also occupying the platform.

Dean Woods read a sketch of the life of each one of the recipients, and the certificates were formally presented to each in turn by the President of the State University. All the persons who were to receive this honor were in attendance except Gen. LeDuc, who was probably unable to be present on account of his extreme age.

When this matter was first called to my attention I felt that it would be entirely out of place, being its editor, that I should make reference to it in the society monthly, but as the fact has been widely published throughout the state, and whatever honor is connected with this presentation is to be shared with the members of the Horticultural Society, I have changed my view point in regard to this, and it seems to me now that the members of the society should be fully informed as to what has taken place.

Mr. O. C. Gregg received this distinction on account of his connection with the farmers' inst.i.tutes of the state, of which he was the pioneer, and in connection with which he remained as superintendent for some twenty-two years.

Gen. LeDuc was for a number of years Commissioner of Agriculture at Was.h.i.+ngton and introduced many important reforms in the management of that department.