304 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



.lishment of the plantation to the time the grove was measured, and 

 also ten cents per acre per annum for taxes at the same rate of in- 

 terest, the grove has produced a net annual acreage value of $10.70 

 in profits. Such profits as these are far better than anything that 

 can be had in wheat growing. No other grove of broad-leaf trees 

 either in Minnesota or the Dakotas has produced such an enormou^s 

 increment in value as this grove of European larch. When our 

 nurserymen succeed in growing larch seedlings for $5.00 per thou- 

 sand to a size ready for transplanting into the field, the probabilities 

 are that every Minnesota prairie farm will have plantations of this 

 valuable species. 



Many of our tree growers advocate handling seedling trees very 

 tenderly in the operations of transplanting. If the proper conditions 

 of moisture are maintained around the roots of the trees during 

 transit from the nursery to the field, or in shipment, rough usage 

 will not often cause any great damage. In the states farther south 

 osage orange hedges have been planted by simply opening a furrow, 

 laying the plants down and covering the roots with the earth thrown 

 from the next furrow. Tree planting, in order to be profitable, must 

 be reduced to the same degree of perfection and simplicity that our 

 farmers have brought into their production of agricultural crops. 

 The tree planter who advises the farmer to put the roots of his little 

 trees in the same position they occupied in the forest or seed bed, 

 and to be careful to sift the loose, rich earth around the rootlets, 

 and not to leave them until he has poured a bucketful of water 

 around each plant, might just as well preach to the wind, because 

 these precautions are absolutely impossible of execution, being pro- 

 hibitive in cost. 



A farmer in Richland County, N. D., had a block of ten acres 

 of land that he wanted to plant to green ash seedlings. Instead of 

 purchasing high priced seedlings that were four to five feet tall, with 

 great large roots that would require a spade and shovel for their 

 planting, he bought the smallest, cheapest seedlings he could find 

 quoted on the market. He had a ten-year-old boy who was a very 

 industrious little fellow and one good hired man to assist him. He 

 and his hired man carried spades, and with the spade they would 

 make an incision in the ground, moving the spade handle back and 

 forth so as to make a little narrow slit in the soil. The boy was 

 on hand with a bucketful of trees with their roots well moistened, 

 and would hand out a tree to the planter when he was ready to slip 

 the little seedling down alongside the spade into the narrow slit in 

 the ground. The spade was then withdrawn, and as the planter 

 advanced he tramped on the earth at the base of the tree and firmed 



