TREE PLANTING IN SOUTHWEST MINNESOTA. 405 



seen before. The cottonwood, balm of gilead and willow are the 

 most injured. All but the lower branches are broken off — limbs 

 sometimes six or eight inches in diameter are snapped off, and the 

 trees look like giant bean poles. The soft maples suffered very 

 badly, the branches splitting at the butt, carrying with them, very 

 often, the bark from the trunk of the tree. Many of these trees are 

 50 or 60 feet high. Elms have measured their length on the ground, 

 lanes and sidewalks have been made impassable. The apple trees, 

 young or old, have suffered the least as yet. At this writing the 

 rain has turned to snow and is drifting, and I fear almost every tree 

 will be held down by the drifts ere nature releases them of their 

 burden. Some lessons can be learned by this calamity. Those of 

 us who have planted by thousands will find the trees helping to 

 support one another, and what we do lose will be little missed, and 

 they will make room for the spreading of the branches of the rest; 

 but to those who only plant a few street or ornamental trees I would 

 say, shorten them in and trim the branches, and you will not only 

 avert this calamity, but they will make handsomer, healthier and 

 better shade trees. City and village councils should place the care 

 of the street trees in the hands of a competent person. 



CIRCUMVENTING DROUTH. 



(The truth contained in this article cannot be too often repeated.— Sec'y.) 



It is impossible to overestimate the importance of thorough, fre- 

 quent but shallow culture as a means of obviating to a great extent 

 the ill-effects of drouth. In the garden, the field or the orchard, it is 

 equally efficacious. Mulching with some coarse material, as straw, 

 chaff, leaves, etc., is in most cases really superior to the earth-mulch 

 but for lack of the necessary material is impracticable on a very ex- 

 tensive scale; while, on the contrary, the earth-mulch can be prac- 

 ticed everywhere and by everj'body, as well as on as extensive a 

 scale as heart could wish. The feasibility of the earth-mulch at all 

 times and in all places, constitutes, it the more valuable of the two 

 methods for accomplishing the same object, viz., the retention of 

 moisture. 



According to the exhaustive experiments of Prof. F. H. King, of 

 the Wisconsin experiment station, three inches is the best depth for 

 the loose dirt, or blanket, on the surface. In either the garden, or- 

 chard or field, in long continued spells of dry, hot weather, the use 

 of the earth-mulch means the difference between profit and loss, 

 success and failure. The dryer and hotter the weather, the greater 

 and more imperative the necessity for a frequent stirring of the 

 surface. 



We do not advocate deep culture for any single cultivated plant 

 of our acquaintance. In any and all cases where it is desired to 

 deepen the soil, the deepening process should be put in practice at 

 the time of preparing the soil for the reception of the seed, and not 

 at the time of cultivating the growing crop. In very hot, dry weather, 

 the soil will dry out just as deep as plowed. — Western Farmer. 



