148 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 



THE FRUIT GARDEN WITH AND WITHOUT THE SHEL- 

 TER BELT. 



W. W. PENDERGAST, HUTCHINSON. 



Henry Ward Beecher, when asked, by a dude, what he considered 

 the best odor for constant use, answered that the best smell he knew 

 of, was, in the long- run, no smell at all. A neighbor of mine, when 

 criticized severely, by an eastern farmer, for not putting something 

 at the bottom of his stacks to preserve the hay, replied that he never 

 built a stack in his life without spreading a load of hay under it. 



In the matter of shelter belts for fruit trees, it is still a mooted 

 question, whether the expense of buying, setting aod caring for 

 them would not yield better returns if applied to setting more fruit 

 trees. In treating this subject, it may be well to admit at the outset 

 that it is one which is very imperfectly understood, even by the old 

 stagers, and, further, that I have a firm grasp upon very little that 

 has been learned, for which reason I approach it with extreme 

 diffidence. 



There are three advantages claimed for the shelter belt: 



(1.) It breaks the force of the wind, both in winter and in summer, 

 thus, in a measure, preventing the abstraction of sap from the twigs 

 and smaller limbs, which on the open, wind-swept prairies does so 

 much damage by reducing the vitality of the trees so exposed. 



(2.) Fewer apples are shaken from trees thus protected. 



(3.) It shades the apple trees during the hot days in April and is 

 of value as a preventive of sun-scald, the deadliest foe of many of 

 our very choicest varieties. 



Referring to the first claim, it is true that every tree in a grove 

 arrests and divides the wind, so breaking its force and lessening its 

 power to do harm. We all know that everything containing mois- 

 ture dries out faster in windy than in still weather. As robbing a 

 tree of its sap is as bad as depriving a man of his blood, anything 

 that can be done to materially diminish the evaporation will be 

 helpful. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that in power 

 to resist evaporation there is a great difference in trees, both fruit 

 and ornamental. Some that are extremely hardy in other respects 

 fall easy victims to this disease when the circumstances are favorable 

 to its development. The soft maple is a familiar illustration of this 

 fact. I have seen whole rows of large, thrifty trees of this variety 

 cut down by the drying-out process in one unusually windy winter 

 following an arid autumn. All the slender branches looked bright 

 and healthy in the spring, but as they failed to bud and put forth 

 their leaves, I cut off several limbs, and found the kerf perfectly 

 clean and white, though the limb was thoroughly seasoned all the 

 way through. The trees never recovered. The white ash is often 

 affected in the same way, but its capacity for recuperation is greater. 

 It will stand more killing, and when the rains of spring come it will 

 fill up its veins and arteries with life-giving sap, and after a while — 

 sometimes as late as the middle of June — the buds will begin to 

 swell, and by the last of July the trees will be as flourishing as ever. 

 The apple tree, on account of the closeness of texture, both of bark 

 and wood, is less liable to injury from over-evaporation than are 



