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.
"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 s.p.a.ce on the west where hundreds of pansies nodded their lovely faces to the stately blue larkspurs. Are we sure, as has been said, that G.o.d forgot to put a soul in flowers?