GARDEN WITH AND WITHOUT SHELTER BELT. 149 



ojaay others which are usually considered hardy. I incline to think 

 that the greatest danger lies in cutting off the supply of moisture 

 from the roots by drought at the close of the previous season. This 

 can be largely prevented by the dust blanket system of cultivation 

 and by fall watering, by means of a good well, a windmill and home- 

 made canvas hose. At all events, it seems to me plain that no great 

 amount of good can be accomplished by setting a row or two of 

 evergreen trees around the entire orchard, as the shelter would be 

 too far from the main body of the trees to be protective. 



The second advantage of the shelter belt is supposed to be the 

 protection it affords the growing fruit against summer gales, which 

 sometimes entail loss by causing windfalls. Many of the apples 

 thus blown off are, however, wormy or otherwise imperfect; and 

 where they are perfectly sound, the mother trees are generally car- 

 rying too heavy a load. But it occasionally happens that trees are 

 almost completely stripped of their burden of fruit, and, in such 

 cases, a certain amount of damage is caused. In my own experi- 

 ence, the great trouble has been to get trees into good bearing con- 

 dition rather than to make them hold the fruit, once set. 



As a preventive of sun-scald, it cannot be denied that some pro- 

 tection on the south side of fruit trees is of very great importance. 

 Hills, bluffs and buildings have proved their great value over and 

 and over again. The lives of fruit trees are often saved by shutting 

 out the hot mid-day sun of April, when we get our first foretaste of 

 summer. This prevents the early circulation of sap, and the conse- 

 quent unseasonable formation of the tender, succulent inner bark 

 or liber, which is sure to occur when the so-called protection is on 

 the north side. In this climate, a few weeks of warm, growing 

 weather in early spring time is generally followed by a "cold 

 snap" which freezes the liber, bursting its cells and destroying its 

 life. Then the outer bark, detached from the body of the tree, dies 

 and falls off, and the tree is doomed. In spite of the efforts of the 

 tree to reclothe the dead south half with new wood and live bark, 

 unfavorable seasons will continue to enlarge the dead area until, 

 some fine spring morning, the sad owner says to the hired man, 

 "Cut it down. Why cumbereth it the ground?" When the wound 

 is first discovered, protection may help the neighboring wood to 

 grow over it; but the tree will be, like our false friends, hollow- 

 hearted, and the rest of its crippled life will be unsatisfactory. 



As in all other cases, the best way to get out of trouble is to keep 

 out. A shelter belt of straw, cornstalks, woven laths or even paper, 

 placed around the stem — thickest, when possible, on the south side 

 — would have averted the disaster, and a vigorous tree, instead of a 

 pile of dry brush, would have been the result. 



The great objection to a grove along the south side of an orchard 

 is that it steals both the moisture and the fertility of the soil from 

 the fruit trees in close proximity, while it fails to protect the trees 

 more than fifty feet away from the dread scourge of which I am 

 speaking. Probably all have noted that scant growth and shy 

 bearing characterize apple trees set along the edge of a forest or 

 near to thickets and scattering clumps of trees. It is just the same 

 with those planted along our windbreaks. They all have a dejected 



