420 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. Smith: I would make my rows eight feet apart, and 

 would put my trees four feet apart and thin out when needed. 



Mr. Richardson: If you will come with me and go twenty - 

 five miles west of my place, I will show you a windbreak that I 

 set thirty years ago. I can show you where the trees were set, 

 the rows sixteen feet apart and the trees twelve feet apart in 

 the row, and they have had to trim them out in order to drive 

 a buggy through between the rows, and they have been a suc- 

 cess all through. 



Mr. Smith: I can show Mr. Richardson one of the best plant- 

 ations of larches that were set four feet apart— 



Mr. Richardson: If they had been put eight feet apart each 

 way they would have been four times as valuable. 



Mr. Smith: If you plant them thin in the first place, they 

 will never amount to anything. 



Mr. Richardson: We have got them planted thick and they 

 do not amount to anything. 



Prof. N. E, Hansen (South Dakota): If you will just think a mo- 

 ment, you will find it very easy to harmonize those different opin- 

 ions. Take cottonwood, for instance; it is too close to plant them 

 four feet apart; it takes all the moisture within a radius of four feet. 

 In forestry we have what are called shade enduring and light de- 

 manding trees. In plantations in South Dakota we find that the 

 green ash, the birch, black wild cherry and white elm planted four 

 feet apart each way form the most perfectplantations, and for such 

 varieties close planting is essential simply for the sake of the shade 

 and to avoid the necessity of too long cultivation. If you plant 

 them too far apart each way you will have to cultivate too long. I 

 just want to say a word about what Mr. Patten said in regard to 

 where you obtain your seed. I was up in Manitoba three hundred 

 miles west of Winnipeg, where I found that they had the box elder, 

 the elm and the ash from southern Minnesota, and they killed out. 

 They had the native elm, of the same species, which was perfectly 

 hardy. We also found in Iowa that the red cedar of Tennessee is 

 tender, while the same species in Iowa is hardy. A few years ago 

 at Moscow I heard the same thing. The Scotch pine of western Eu- 

 rope is killed back year by year. So in all of our timber planting* 

 we should follow the law of getting our seed as near home as pos- 

 sible, or to buy north of us. Never send south for seed. 



Mr. H. F. Busse: In traveling over the state, I found where they 

 had planted cottonwood mostly in tree claims they had planted 

 them four feet apart each way, and their groves were entirely killed 

 and the wood used for fuel. But I ran across a place once where 

 they were planted six feet apart one way and eight feet the other, 

 and the trees were perfectly good and sound. The cottonwood is not 

 a very profitable tree to plant on those prairies, but where they 

 planted box elder and white ash they were all good trees. The wil- 

 low also were nearly all killed by close planting. 



