Chapter 39

Now, the distance that a windbreak will protect a field has been studied out and measured and demonstrated by a great number of men. Mr. McGee, at Indian Head, gave a great deal of thought and study to the windbreak proposition and measured the distances that the shelter-belt would shelter the crops, and he came to the conclusion that for every foot in height there would be an absolute protection for a rod in distance, and outside of that actual protection there would be a long distance that would be partially protected. The same study was made by a gentleman in Iowa--I can't call his name just now--and he came to practically the same conclusion as to the distance that the protection reached in proportion to the height of shelter-belt.

A Member: I want a shelter mostly for apple trees. Would it be five or six years before I receive any benefit, or seven or eight years?

Mr. Maher: Plant your protection when you plant your apple trees, and you will have your protection sooner than you have your apples. If you are going to do that, don't put the shelter too close to the apple trees, which is a very common fault.

A Member: How much distance would you allow for the roots?

Mr. Maher: I should say not less than 100 feet, anyway.

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.

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 latitudes. 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.

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 space 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 space outside of those twenty trees for the snow to lodge in?

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 space on the north and west six rods wide, and I put out some golden willows outside of that, and that made an open space 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.

"Oh, my garden lying whitely in The moonlight and the dew, With its soft caressing coloring, Breathing peace to all who view."

Our garden color scheme this year was a number of red, white and blue pictures, these pictures being supported, on the different sides, by brilliant, oriental color effects.

The first picture had for its north side the south side of the cottage, which was covered with climbing roses (American Pillars and Crimson Rambler). A bed of petunias, six feet wide and as long as the cottage, came next, and was separated from about four hundred delphiniums (belladonna) by a walk which was bordered on both sides by a row of candytuft and a row of forget-me-nots, blue as a baby's eye. To the south of the delphiniums was a great bank of bridal wreath chrysanthemums, white as the driven snow.

A walk on the east had the same--candytuft and forget-me-not border. To the south and west of this picture were irises and Oriental poppies in all the gorgeous coloring of the Orient, with a small space on the west where hundreds of pansies nodded their lovely faces to the stately blue larkspurs. Are we sure, as has been said, that God forgot to put a soul in flowers?

To the east, beyond the walk, is another picture--Shasta daisies and blue cornflowers. On the north side is a brilliant hedge of red sweet peas. On the east and south of this most exquisite picture are Iceland poppies, red pyrethrums, and here and there are clumps of dark red sweet william. In the early morn, just after the "morning stars have sung together," and the forces of day are slowly coming into action, this is a wonderous picture.

On the north side of the cottage is a screened-in porch. Here cardinal climber gives its myriads of cheerful bloom, while blue lobelia and white anemones, with the porch boxes filled with vinca atmosphere of beauty and cheer to those who come and take the social cup that truly cheers. The broad lawn slopes north to the driveway. To the east, separating the lawn from the walk, which is west of the canna beds, is a border of dusty miller next the grass and one row each of blue anchusa and red snapdragon. The silver leaved poplars in the distance give a soft sheen to the whole picture.

Away to the west is a spruce hedge and inside the hedge red hollyhocks and phlox with a great row of crimson poppies. A simple garden made of simple things, and yet as we go through it to our peony bed, that gorgeous flower, standing alone in its regal, queenly beauty, we do not wonder that when one of old walked with God it was in the cool of the evening and in a garden.

"Where in all the dim resplendent spaces, The mazy stars drift through To my garden lying whitely in The moonlight and the dew."

My Experience in Grape Culture.

JOSEPH TUCKER, AUSTIN. SO. MINN. HORT. SOCIETY

During fifteen years I have had in my garden several varieties of grapes, namely, the Concord, Worden, Moore's Early and a green grape (not certain of its name). All have done remarkably well whenever the season was reasonably favorable. I mean by that the absence of the late spring and the early fall frosts, which are the greatest drawbacks to grape culture. For that reason I would not advise anyone to undertake it as a business venture on a large scale. On the other hand, where it is desired to supply the family table with fresh fruit as long as it will keep, also to add a variety of jellies and preserves for the winter, a dozen of vines will supply an ordinary family with grapes whose flavor I have never seen surpassed.

You who do not always expect money to grow on everything you touch, you who admire and love a plant or vine and feel well repaid for your labor to see it grow and bear fruit, you who have a vacant corner in your garden well adapted to that purpose, I urge you most earnestly to plant some grape vines, and I assure you that with some knowledge of their care and a determination not to fail you will succeed, and you will eventually be able to see a pretty sight--for, to my mind, nothing is handsomer than a well trimmed grape row with the ripening fruit. The soil that will grow corn will produce good grapes. My advice is to select early ripening varieties, for then you will only have the possible spring frost to contend with, and that is easy to guard against.

Do not fail to adopt some system of pruning, for that is the most essential part of the secret to grow good grapes. Other necessary information will no doubt be furnished by any reliable nurseryman with whom you are dealing. I wish to say in conclusion that so far I have had no trouble from any insects attacking the vines or fruit, and I have always been able to produce fruit that commands the first premium wherever exhibited.

Protect the Garden against Winter Weather.

U.S. DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE.

At this season many inquiries come to the United States Department of Agriculture regarding the protection of garden plants and shrubs during the winter. Such flowers as peonies and hollyhocks will come up again the following year if they are properly protected during the winter, while others, like cannas and dahlias, which are more accustomed to warm climes, must have their roots or bulbs dug up and stored in a cellar. The department's specialists give the following suggestions for "putting the garden to bed":

_Hardy Perennials._--Cover hardy perennials, such as peonies, larkspur, hollyhocks, columbines, iris, platycodons and perennial poppies, with a good coating of manure or other litter to a depth of 3 or 4 inches. In more southern localities this will hold the frost in the ground and keep the plant from alternately freezing and thawing; in more northern regions the manure will protect the plant from freezing to a depth that will cut off its water supply.

_Cannas and Dahlias._--As soon as the tops of cannas, dahlias, gladiolus, caladiums and similar plants are killed by frost, dig up the roots or bulbs and store them in a cellar where the temperature will remain at 55 degrees, and should never go below 50 or above 60 degrees. Do not shake any more earth from the clumps of cannas and dahlias than is necessary in removing them from the ground. Place the plants on racks or in slat boxes so the air may circulate freely through them. No frost must reach the roots nor must they become too warm or dry.

_Shrubs._--As a rule shrubs should not be trimmed in the fall. This process is timely immediately after the blooming period, if this is in the spring, as in the case of the snowball. If the shrubs bloom in the fall, as do some hydrangeas, the rose of Sharon, and some lilacs, they should not be cut directly after blooming but in the spring of the following year. Lilacs, snowballs and mock orange should be let alone during the winter, being neither trimmed nor covered with straw and manure.

_Roses._--Almost all kinds of roses are hardy in the vicinities of Washington, D.C., and St. Louis and to the south of a line drawn between these points. From Washington northward local conditions influence the successful cultivation of certain varieties. Some roses, as the brier and rugosa, need no protection, but other varieties, such as the hybrid perpetuals, teas and hybrid-teas, need special care, particularly north of the fortieth parallel. Teas and hybrid teas hardly succeed in Chicago, although the hybrid-perpetuals grow as far north as Canada. All these classes do well on Long Island and in Boston near the sea when proper care is given them. These varieties in the vicinity of Washington need merely a little manure on the ground to prevent alternate freezing and thawing. Farther north, however, they should be treated as follows:

Cut the tops to within 30 inches of the ground. Cover the roots with coarse manure or leaves or similar litter. Hold this in place by evergreen boughs which also acts as a protection. Brush from deciduous trees or shrubs may be substituted for the evergreen boughs except in the most northern regions.

Mounds of earth about six or eight inches in height should be drawn about the base of the rose bushes to keep them from mice. As an added protection against mice, permit the ground to freeze slightly before winter protection is supplied. In fact, roses should not be protected until after the first light freeze, which may be expected in Washington, D.C., about the first of December, but earlier farther north. (Tops must be protected in Minnesota.--Sec.)

_Climbing Roses._--In the latitude of Philadelphia and farther south climbing roses usually need no protection during the winter unless they are a particularly tender variety. Farther north these roses need protection similar to that given to the tea and hybrid tea roses.

Where it is possible to do so, remove climbing roses from their supports, and cover the branches with a little dirt. A little fall trimming might be desirable to lessen the space occupied by the branches on the ground. Such side branches as are not to be needed for next season's blooming may be cut off. Such cutting off and shortening of the ends as would otherwise be done in the spring may be done in the fall before covering, merely for convenience.

Growing Asparagus.

A DISCUSSION LED BY E. W. RECORD, MARKET GARDENER, BROOKLYN CENTER.

A Member: I want to ask if many put salt on asparagus?

Mr. Record: Salt is very good, but I think only for the reason that it makes the plant tender and keeps down insects. But if I was to use anything to keep insects down I should use Paris green. Shorts or bran, that is the best for cutworms. Everybody knows that with the least scratch or mar on the side of the asparagus it will grow crooked, and then it is a pretty hard proposition to get it into the bunch ready for market in any kind of shape.

A Member: Some have the idea that salt helps the growth of the plant.

Mr. Record: Well, I never found it did.

Mr. Baldwin: I would like to know how to control rust on the stems in the summer time.

Mr. Record: Well, I can't answer, but I find that the Palmetto has less rust on it than any other variety. I have never been bothered with asparagus rust yet.

Mr. Baldwin: After the bed gets to be a few years old the grass and weeds commence to come up. After you get through cutting, it is pretty hard work to get in there and clean them out. Do you find it the best way to hoe them after you get through cutting?

Mr. Record: I will tell you. I cultivate right over the tops of the rows and keep on cultivating until the asparagus comes up and begins to sprout. By the time the weeds come up the second time, it is time to quit cutting.

Mr. Baldwin: How deep do you put the plant below the surface in transplanting?

Mr. Record: From twelve to fourteen inches. In the east they are growing asparagus, and they set out their plants, and they fill in and wait until the asparagus comes up and then they fill with rotted manure and never fertilize any more, but here there are very few that do that. I never did, but I find in putting on manure broadcast a year afterwards the shoots were very crooked. I did that one year only. After I put it on I thought I would have something good, and I didn't have anything. As soon as it comes up it starts to get crooked.

Mr. Baldwin: You mean to say that putting manure on top makes the asparagus crooked?

Mr. Record: That was my experience.

Mr. Baldwin: I have always practiced that. I think what makes it crooked is cultivating the top and cutting the crowns off.

A Member: When the weeds come in we disk it.

Mr. Record: I never like to disk it. If your bed is very old you are liable to cut some of your crowns rather than to keep the weeds out.

A Member: Your manure would be all gone then?

Mr. Record: I know there was a man right adjoining me who had an asparagus bed, and he used a lot of rotten manure the summer before, and he got very little asparagus that was marketable. I asked him what the trouble was, and he said he didn't know. This year he had a good crop. I can't say it was the manure that did that, only it looks that way.

A Member: How would you start a new planting?

Mr. Record: I would plow my ground thoroughly and get it in good shape.

A Member: Wouldn't fertilize the first season?

Mr. Record: I would. I would fertilize my asparagus ground two years.

A Member: I mean in preparing your patch for the new planting?

Mr. Record: I would first plow and harrow and then fertilize. Plow both ways from fourteen to sixteen inches deep and with a fine cultivator loosen up the bottom of furrow and put in the plants and cover with a little earth. Then with the horse keep filling in the furrow. I saw this summer several men with hoes working. That is all right, but it takes a long time, especially with the proposition we are up against about hired help. I can do it just as well with the horse and four times as fast. The second year you can harrow it any way you want to.

A Member: Common corn land, is that fit for raising asparagus?

Mr. Record: Yes, sir, asparagus will grow on poor ground better than many other vegetables will.

A Member: Will it improve that land by fertilizing with top dressing?

Mr. Record: I think so.

A Member: The heavy land I suppose wouldn't be good for it?