Select plump, well ripened seed, keep them in damp sand until the ground begins to get warm in January or February, according to location. But such an undertaking will cost you vastly more in time, in labor, and waste of land than it would to buy well-grown nursery trees budded with the variety which you desire. Such trees would give you practically a uniform lot of trees in your orchard while planting seedlings and grafting afterward would give you very irregular and for the most part unsatisfactory results - providing you get any seeds to grow at all in the open ground, which is doubtful.
Resistant Apple Roots.
A few apple trees which are almost dead from ravages of the woolly aphis. I am going to dig them out and plant in their places other apple trees on woolly aphis-proof root. Will it be necessary to use measures to exterminate the woolly aphis in the old roots or their places in the ground before planting new trees in the places of the removed trees?
It is not necessary to undertake to kill aphis in the ground when you are planting apple trees on resistant roots. It will give your trees a better start to dig large holes, throw out the old soil, and fill in with some new soil from another part of the land to be planted, but it has been demonstrated that these roots are resistant, no matter if planted in the midst of infestation.
Apples and Cherries for a Hot Place.
What kind of apple do you think would do best in a dry, hot climate?
What do you think of the Early Richmond cherry in such a place?
Apples most likely to succeed in a dry situation are those which ripen their fruit very early. The Red Astrachan is on the whole the most satisfactory, but there are many places which are altogether too dry and hot for any kind of apple. Whether cherries would succeed or not you can only tell by trying. Possibly the trees would not live through the summer if your soil becomes very dry. The most hardy cherries are the sour or pie cherries and the Early Richmond is one of this group.
Die-back of Apple Trees.
What causes the death of the top shoots in apple trees?
New wood is sometimes diseased by mildew, but die-back is usually due to two different causes: One, the accumulation of water in the soil during the excessive rains of mid-winter; second, the occurrence of low temperatures, including frosts, after the sap has risen. Which of these causes operate in a certain case depends, of course, upon whether the soil was heavy and inclined to retain standing water too long, or whether there were such frosts at about the time when the leaves should start. Sometimes, of course, both of these conditions worked in the same place; sometimes one and sometimes the other, but certainly both of them are capable of causing the trouble. There seems to be no specific disease; it is rather a matter of unfavorable conditions for growth.