Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 Part 70

Mr. Moyer: I live in southwestern Minnesota, about thirty miles from the South Dakota line, and I think it is a mistake to recommend the white spruce for planting out there. The white spruce naturally grows towards the North Pole, it extends even up to the Arctic Circle. Twenty-four years ago I purchased a dozen white spruce from Robert Douglas, who was then alive, and planted them northwest of my house. About five years ago they began to fail, and now only two or three are alive, and they are covered with dead branches. I feel sure that the white spruce have been injured by the hot winds that come across the prairies from the southwest. I don't think they can stand it. There is a variety of white spruce that grows in the Black Hills, which I think will be decided to be a different species when botanists come to study it, that will stand our prairies. Another tree that we like is the Colorado blue spruce; it is hardy and grows excellently. About twenty-three years ago, when Professor Verner was at the head of the Forestry Department at Washington he sent me 8,000 evergreens, and I set them out. They were bull pine and the Scotch pine and Austrian pine. I was over to look at them the other day. The Scotch pine, which have been set now twenty-three years, are over thirty feet high, the Austrian pine about two-thirds as high, and the bull pine, Ponderosa, is about as high as the Austrian pine. He told me to set these trees about two feet apart each way. I thought that too thick, so I set them in rows six feet apart and about two or three feet apart in the rows. He wished me to alternate the planting with deciduous trees. He recommended that I add a few deciduous trees, green ash and box elder and a few elm, and I set them as far as they would go, but they didn't go very far in setting the 8,000 evergreens. Then I thought it would be a good idea to use the wolfberry that grows wild on the prairies. I set them alternately with some of the evergreens, but as they have a very liberal root system it was hard to get them out. The finest tree in the plantation is the Austrian pine, and if it continues to do as well as it has the last three or four years I think the Austrian pine is going to be a very valuable pine for shelter-belt.

Mr. Kellogg: Have you tested the Douglas spruce?

Mr. Moyer: Not to a great extent. It does well in some localities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soft, or Silver, Maple windbreak--to be succeeded by permanent windbreak of Bur Oak--shown growing between man and boy.]

Mr. Maher: I think the real test is to get them as near native to your place as you can. The area over which the white spruce grows is greater than that of any other spruce, possibly greater than any other evergreen, especially through the northern lat.i.tudes. I don't think there is any question about the Black Hills spruce being the white spruce that was left there growing when the other timber was destroyed, if we can adopt that theory. The white spruce from seed from the Northwest, from the British Columbia countries especially, is perfectly hardy with you. It is perfectly hardy with us at Devils Lake, which is a very much more severe test, whereas the white spruce from its southern limits may not be hardy even here. I think the Black Hills spruce is perfectly hardy. The distance north and south relatively is not so important with reference to growing trees as to get them from too far in the humid district. The white spruce that I would be afraid of would be the seed from New England and from the farther east limits of its growth, where the conditions are so much more humid.

Mr. Kellogg: Do you find any trouble with too much protection for orchards?

Mr. Maher: Where the protection is too close to the orchards I think it is very bad. It destroys the air drainage--

Mr. Kellogg: That is why they are liable to blight.

Mr. Maher: And they blight also. The air drainage is interfered with, and you get blight, and you also smother the orchard. I don't know but what the apple and the Americana plum are about as hardy trees as we have anywhere. I don't make any attempt to protect them specially except from the south and west. I don't put any northern windbreak around any orchards I set out. Of course, we may lose a crop with a spring frost all right when northern protection might save it, but with us up in our country if we have a good spring frost it is usually heavy enough to catch them anyway.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Norway Poplar windbreak at Devil's Lake, N.D.]

I have a question here: How long should a shelter-belt be cultivated?

Now, that is a point on which I think too much emphasis is placed. If you set out your trees as Judge Moyer did his, close together, inside of a few years they will take care of themselves, they will form forest conditions very quickly, and cultivation is not necessary any more. Of course, if you set your trees a great distance apart where there is nothing to protect them from the burning sun, and the ground bakes and dries, then you must cultivate or mulch, but I think cultivation much better than mulching.

Another question: How many rows of trees make a good windbreak? My idea is that it takes twenty rows to make a good one--of deciduous trees, of course. Two or three rows of evergreens, planted not further than eight feet apart and with joints broken, probably makes as good a windbreak as the twenty rows of deciduous trees and take less ground.

Mr. Horton: Wouldn't you have an open s.p.a.ce in those trees? You wouldn't put them all together?

Mr. Maher: If I had twenty rows of trees I would put them together.

Mr. Horton: Would you have an open s.p.a.ce outside of those twenty trees for the snow to lodge in?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ponderosa Pine windbreak--at Devil's Lake (N.D.) Nursery.]

Mr. Maher: I have never known the snow to do any hurt in a twenty row windbreak. It distributes itself in there, and the more comes the better.

Mr. Horton: I have seen them broken badly with the snow.

Mr. Maher: That would be probably the poplars and trees that break easily.

Mr. Horton: On my farm I put out a row of twenty trees. Outside of that I left a s.p.a.ce on the north and west six rods wide, and I put out some golden willows outside of that, and that made an open s.p.a.ce for the snow to fall in.

Mr. Maher: That is a very good plan, to have a row of willows back of your shelter-belt, especially around the home and orchard and barn ground, to hold the snow back.

Mr. Moyer: I found that the snow drifted into my evergreens but didn't break them. I used lilac bushes; I planted a long row. Lilacs are very common, and I got enough to plant a long row. They are now ten feet high, and it is a magnificent sight in summer.

Mr. Maher: I know the lilac is a splendid thing, better than the golden willow, because they last longer. They are more hardy, and they make a better protection, and as far as wood goes from the golden willows you get nothing except branches unless it is the white willow.

I have another question here: What would you plant around the garden?

For a windbreak around the garden orchard, that should have an inside protection, and the shelter-belt itself should be too far away from the garden to be sufficient protection. Around the garden I would plant Juneberry or dogwood or any of those common native berry plants. They will afford the very best kind of protection, just as good as the lilacs and just as hardy, and at the same time will produce food for the birds and bring them about your garden and keep them with you and shelter them.

Mr. Kellogg: The barberry--

Mr. Mahler: The barberry would be all right, but I prefer the Juneberry and the mulberry and the dogwood, because they come up a little higher.

The barberry is all right.

Mr. Kellogg: I had barberry, and I dug it all up.

Mr. Maher: It spread too much?

Mr. Richardson: I like the Russian mulberry.

Mr. Maher: Yes, sir.

Mr. Richardson: Is the mulberry hardy with you?

Mr. Maher: No, sir.

Mr. Moyer: The buckthorn makes a very good protection.

Mr. Maher: Yes, sir.

Mr. Huestis: How would the golden elder do as a hedge?

Mr. Maher: It would be a protection, but it is liable to spread too much.

Mr. Huestis: Do you know whether the mulberry is hardy in Minnesota or not?

Mr. Maher: I think from here south it is hardy, especially southeast.

Mr. Moyer: It occurs to me that the Tartarian honeysuckle is about as good as any thing you can plant for birds. It is perfectly hardy on the prairies and grows up ten or fifteen feet high.

Mr. Maher: The Tartarian honeysuckle and several varieties of the bush honeysuckles are splendid, and they are hardy and will grow anywhere.

A Member: Did I understand some one to say that the mulberry was not hardy?

Mr. Maher: It was stated that it wasn't hardy in North Dakota.

A Member: I put mulberry trees in my garden yard that have been bearing mulberries for years and years.

Mr. Maher: I think the mulberry is hardy from here south and especially southeast. I don't think it would grow out on the prairie very far.

Mr. Richardson: It grows on the prairies southwest of here.

My Color Scheme.

MRS. R. P. BOYINGTON, NEMADJI.