Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1886 [PAGE 298]

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292 the solution of the stored materials and undue absorption of water puts the tissue in condition to freeze in the manner mentioned, when exceptional cold follows in winter. The more severe the drouth the more the likelihood of such spring-like start in autumn,. Florists know very well that to cause a plant to grow out of its season nothing so prepares it as a preceding rest brought about by withholding water. Without such rest the same stimulating influences will not operate. In its normal season maturation may result instead of new growth, under the attempts to secure the latter. There can be no doubt but that apple trees are more or less checked in many situations by the want of water during the dry times of July and August, and more in some soils and situations than others. Neither can there by any doubt of a 'responsive activity to the effects of a warm and wet autumn. The buds swell and burst into shoots or flowers in many cases, and even fruits are sometimes very conspicuously developed. With a corresponding activity of the cambium and a subsequent hard freeze it is little wonder that damage is done. The evil consequence then of the summer's drouth is what we should in the first place strive to avoid. This may be accomplished in several ways known to us all, and I may only mention such as the choice of site, deep drainage to favor the penetration of roots into, soil likely to be moist in summer, good surface cultivation during dry times, extensive mulching, selection of varieties possessing powers of withstanding drouth. Of these only the first will be here further discussed. Horticulturists have usually advocated the selection of high and dry sites for orchards, and this more especially throughout the level districts of our western prairie regions. But, in view of what has now been said, is it not probable that an improper choice of location has often been made? It cannot be said that the highest lands are always most susceptible to drouth. The quality of the soil, its absorbing and retentive properties, must also be considered. We know very well that it is not necessarily true that the amount of water in the soil and subsoil in springtime determines the amount held during the summer. A close, tenacious, compact clay, on which, and in which, water stands in abundance in the early part of the season, may become hard and cracked at a later time, wrhen the demand for water by trees is very great. Upon the other hand, a well drained loam, never holding water in the liquid state free from the attractive forces of the particles of solid matter, may under similar conditions retain its moist and friable condition throughout the year. Now it cannot be too strongly insisted upon that cultivated plants in general and apple trees in particular take their supply of water from moist soil from which not a drop of free water can be had by drainage or even by pressure, to far better advantage to themselves than from water in its liquid, molecularlyfree state. The water requirements of a tree in full leaf, in warm, sun-shiny weather, is astonishingly great. Experiments upon potted plants show that there escapes upon an average about one and one-fourth ounces of water per square foot of leaf surface each fair summer day. A good-sized apple tree having 25,000 square feet of evaporating surface—by no means a large estimate—according t o