Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1868 [PAGE 291]

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279

planted at once, and will come up nearly as quick as corn; and, if well cultivated, will obtain by fall a growth of from two to four feet. The ground should be put in good order before planting the seed. Sugar maple may be raised in the same way, but the seed is later in ripening, and the plants will make but little growth the first year. Black walnut may be raised by planting the walnuts in the fall and covering with chip manure, so that the ground may not bake when it drys off in the spring. But I would recommend to all who possibly can, to plant more or less evergreens for wind-breaks ; such as red cedar, Scotch and Austrian pine, Norway spruce and hemlock; all of which do well on our prairies, and can be obtained of nurserymen cheap. What a beautiful country we soon would have if every man owning and living on a prairie farm, would plant about his premises a few dozen evergreens every year, for five or six years in succession. It would soon look like the land of promise ; the dreary waste would disappear, and coming generations "rise up and call us blessed." Evergreens may be grown in large quantities from seed. I have thousands on my farm now, from three to six feet in height, raised from seed a few years since. But the difficulty in procuring seed in this country would deter many from attempting to propagate them from seed. I sent to Germany for my seed, and obtained them at less cost than they can be purchased in this country. But red cedar is easily obtained here, and should be propagated and planted. The seeds of the pine should be planted early in the spring in beds, and covered with leaf mould. When they germinate and show signs of coming through the ground, they should be shaded, and the shade should be kept over them until the hot summer weather is passed, when it may be removed, and then they will do well if kept clean from grass and weeds. Cedar seed may be planted in the fall and covered with leaf mould, and when they begin to come up, shaded the same as the pine. S. P. I >ardman.—In forestry I have had but little experience; have a number of thousands > soft maples growing, now two years old. In this latitude we have to f go to the creek bottoms and gather our seed, as near as may be, just about the 20th day of May, one year with another. Plant the seed in drills immediately; drills some eight or ten feet apart, the seed to be covered not to exceed an inch in depth. If kept well cultivated will make a growth of from eighteen inches to two and a half feet the first season, I plant walnuts in the fall as soon as gathered ; plow furrows and drop them in, then plow a furrow on them to cover the seed. I am also planting peach seeds in groves, for shelter, fuel and fruit. By having them quite thick we sometimes get peaches in such groves even when they may be all killed in the orchard. I haul my wood seven miles, and I am satisfied that I can grow it cheaper than I can haul it that distance. B. Sweet.—Forestry: One would think to advise anything relating to this would be absurd; but it is a stubborn fact that even so-called arborists commit unpardonable blunders. They will take no lessons from nature ; nor even when passing through young groves will learn anything but this fact, patent: " These trees ought to be pruned." And this in the face of the truth of nature's teachings. Examine the young grove which has been pruned two years, and you will find worms eating opposite the scars made by pruning ; and as the tree grows in years it grows larger in bulk around the place abuse fl, because the sap jets are eaten off, and the quantity of sap ascending and descending must go round that obstruction, and build you a hollow tree while the wormg work it inside.