342 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



alike and eighteen years old. Two years ago I lost one, and last 

 year I lost the other. If I had mulched them, they would have 

 lived. One of inj"- neighbors had some over twenty years old, but 

 the place they were in was used for a pasture by the cattle, and 

 the horses were in it, and the drouth has killed the trees. So I 

 can see that the dry seasons will kill almost any kind. We had 

 a variety of them; we had all kinds and most of them died. I 

 see that the common oak has died at Como Park, more than fifty 

 of them, the last two years. 



Pres. Underwood: How about the Scotch pine? 



Mr. Busse: Mr. Hendrickson had a good number of them, and 

 more than two-thirds are dead. 



Pres. Underwood: How about the bur oak? 



Mr. Busse: The drouth does not seem to affect the bur oak so 

 much. The black oak is pretty much dying out in that vicinity, 

 and I see a good deal of the same thing all over the state, and 

 it is no wonder that fruit trees should die the same way. 



Mr. Somerville: I would say to those who grow trees in Minne- 

 sota, either fruit or evergreen, we must take care of them. That 

 is the great secret of success with any kind of a tree. Many 

 ignorant people set out more than they can take care of, and 

 others think they are going to get fruit by digging a hole in the 

 sod and sticking in a tree. That is all a mistake. I think the 

 vitality of our trees can be kept up by keeping the ground cool 

 with mulch? There is no grass around my trees; the grass and 

 weeds do not come up. The ground two years ago, dry as the 

 season was then, the ground was always perfectly moist. You 

 could go in there at any time and take away the mulch from the 

 trees, and you would find the ground perfectly cool and moist. 

 The great secret of success is to keep the ground cool and retain 

 the moisture. 



Mr. Allyn: Over twenty years ago I got some Scotch fir, Nor- 

 way spruce and other evergreens. I raised them in a bed first — 

 were seedlings— and after a year or two I set them out in a bed 

 eight feet apart. The spruce are all dead but two; the white pine 

 are all dead; the Austrian pine are nearly all alive, and the Scotch 

 pine are all alive but two, that is, about an equal number of each 

 one. The Scotch pine are now about thirty feet high, and with 

 the severe drouth we had the last two years only two of them 

 died. They are eight feet apart, too close together to do their 

 best. The soil is sandy, and they have never been mulched. They 

 were cultivated clean two or three years after we set them out, 

 but they have never had any attention paid to them since, either 

 as to cultivating or trimming, and they are all alive and doing 

 well, both the Austrian and Scotch, and of the white pine that 

 are alive only two are doing well. 



Mr. Clarence Wedge: I am very glad the gentleman mentioned 

 the Austrian pine. I had thought the question of the Austrian 

 pine pretty well settled a few years ago. I think about the time 

 we had our hard winters, about 1884. we had planted out trees 

 that were perhaps six feet high at that time, Austrian and Scotch 



