THE OSAGE ORANGE AS A HEDGE PLANT. 



portaiit :i suliject. Had an unknown writer made the diseourapntr remarks about 

 the Osage that you liave, I should not have thouglit it of mueh courjequcnce, but 



"One blast upon your bugle horn 

 AVas worth five hundred men." 



Now, I desire to express my opinion of the plant in this prairie country as far as I 

 have seen it, 300 miles south of Wisconsin, a few miles north of its south line and 

 almost to and across the Mississippi, and I would say of this Osage Orange plant as 

 God said of everything that he had made ; and if it is not the plant made for the 

 hedge plant of all this country, I do not know what the plant is. I have made dili- 

 gent search for the past 8 years for the best hedge plant, have traveled all over the 

 northern states to find it, and I have found nothing that bears any comparison to the 

 Osage Orange. I have seen the famous hedges in New Haven, Springfield, around 

 Boston, &c., made of difi'erent kinds of thorn, privet, buckthorn, &c., and almost all 

 were protected by a good fence, and many had a fence both sides to protect them, 

 and I have never seen 100 rods of good hedge fence, except the orange, only around 

 Gardens, and built at great expense ; but I have seen many hundred rods of good Osage 

 Orange hedge. I will proceed to contrast my views of the plant with yours. You 

 say "but it requires (jreat attention," &c. I planted two miles last year, and have 

 planted eight miles this year; after my ground was prepared, my men set 40 rods a 

 day. -I go four or five times over it in the summer with the cultivator, and three or 

 four times with a hoe, enough to keep the weeds down all the time , and after the 

 first year I cut it twice with a scythe; and it takes four or five years to make a fence, 

 costing one days' work for forty rods in planting, as much for cultivating and hoeing 

 as it would cost to hoe a row of corn, and no more ; say a half day for cutting and 

 hoeing forty rods yearly, which for five years would be two and a half days, making 

 in all three and a half days for forty rods, at §1 a day would be 68 50. The cost of 

 preparing good dry ground, and the cost of the plants for forty rods would not ex- 

 ceed S4 50, or 20 cents a rod. There is a company here who set out thousands of 

 rods of Osage hedge yearly; they charge 60 cents a rod, but get but little pay down, 

 they guarantee a good fence, and wait for most of the pay till the fence is perfected. 

 It is true that the ground should be well prepared, and all the work well done and 

 in season to make a good hedge row; so it must to make a good row of corn, and 

 there is no more difficulty, and but little more labor, in cultivating the Osage row 

 than the corn row. I agree with you that it is a greedy feeder, but with us it does 

 not "extend its roots far and wide and exaust the crop," &c. ; but on the contrary, 

 the roots run right down, growing to twice the size of the stock, and drawing its 

 support from deep down in the earth, and you cannot strike the roots with the 

 plough, and I never saw a sucker grow from it ; and further, the lower branches do 

 not want inteilacing as you say. 



Day before yesterday I was on the grounds of my neighbour Capt. James Moore, 

 is an intelligent horticulturist, and has sixty rods of Osage Orange hedge 



