OUR UNUSED CAPITAL. 369 



the sides and don't get more than you can care for. Don't 

 forget the strawberries ! 



Nozv wc come to the farm — and at the best how it has been 

 neglected ! These are not places which you never could plow, 

 and you have been raising weeds there for thirty years when 

 you should have been raising houses and barns. I show 3^ou 

 here the possibilities of forestry. Here is the Norway poplar, 

 or the "sudden sawlog" — the cutting came from Minnesota. It is 

 about nine feet tall. Get a dozen from your nurseryman, and 

 you have the nucleus of a mighty forest. Plant your waste 

 places and have these trees dig gold out of your mud. Don't 

 you know that there is a mighty timber famine at your very 

 door? In your own state these trees have grown to be sawlogs 

 in fifteen years. Here is the Thurlow weening willow with stem 

 straight as an arrow, and the branches droop like fountain 

 sprays. I don't know how hardy it is here, we are going to try 

 it. B}' the way, I am an old man, seventy-four. I tried my best 

 to sell out the past summer. I didn't find a purchaser. So I 

 doubled my plant and doubled my stock, and have put in a 

 branch nursery in my old home at Paynesville, in this state, 

 where we will soon have about 100,000 choice shrubs, plants 

 and trees. 



Nozv for evergreens. The tree for the semi-arid regions and 

 for the great northwest is the Ponderosa, or bull pine. Trees 

 from seeds gathered from Colorado foothills are not always 

 hardy up here. Get seed from the highest points of the Black 

 Hills and from the highest altitudes of the Rockies, and you are 

 all right. We nurserymen have been at fault with this tree and 

 treated it like other conifers. We have raised them under 

 screens. This is wrong. Plant them in the open — they resent 

 coddling. In the Black Hills I saw them growing near the rail- 

 road where the soil had been scraped to the hardpan. They 

 never had any protection and were doing finely. The best time 

 to plant is in the fall. Perhaps you can't get the seed then. In 

 that case soak the seed in warm water till they sprout and cover 

 with half an inch of earth and plant early. I used to be troubled 

 with their damping off under the screen. I have no trouble out 

 in the open. Don't let the ground dry while they are germinat- 

 ing. When they get up then they go down — look at these roots 

 fourteen inches long. These are yearling plants. Let them 

 grow in the open, and they are much more hardy, These were 

 one year old when planted this spring. Look at them now — 

 fine sturdv trees, and readv for business. 



