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A FARM HEDGE FENCE IN MINNESOTA. | 343 
will make just as pretty a hedge as the arbor vite. It will grow 
right close up and make close branches. You may not see so 
much beauty in it as in the arbor vite, but at a little distance away 
itis just as nice, and you can trim it inany shape you wantit. If 
you choose you can use it for a hedge, or you can let it grow up for 
a windbreak. I have had the nicest trees ten feet high. 
Mr. Lyman: It depends a great deal upon the soil in planting ~ 
arbor vite. If you havea sandy subsoil many of them will die. I 
have a clay subsoil; and J have never seen an arbor vite die. I 
have a number of trees that were planted twenty years ago, and I 
never lost one of them. 
Mr. Wedge: I would like to ask the president if he would consider 
that trees planted four feet apart for the purpose of making a hedge 
would make a good hedge? 
The President: I think so, Mr. Wedge; four feet is not too far 
apart. The branches have only to grow two feet until they are 
together, and I am sure they do that in a short time. I do not 
know but what six feet would be about right, they only need to grow 
three feet to come together, but Iam quite sure four feet would not 
be too great a distance. 
Mr.C.L. Smith: I have over forty rods of arbor vite hedge. They 
have been clipped three and one-half feet high, and were set out six 
years ago four feet apart,and today I knowa man could not get 
through them anywhere. They are solid clear down to the ground, 
and so thick now a chicken cannot get through. Itis clay subsoil, 
and they are doing well. 
Mr. Dartt: I should think it would make a good fence. 
Mr.C.L.Smith: My neighbor’s cattle get down there sometimes, 
but they never got through it. 
Mr. Bush: I havethe same example on my place, and itis entirely 
practical to plant them that close together; it makes a better look- 
ing hedge, and I donot think they are nearly as apt to suffer from 
drouth. 
Mr. Jewett: There is an example of sucha hedge at Fillmore. I 
had occasion four years ago to stake out some ground there, and I 
had to get down on my knees to punch the chain through. There 
are twenty-five rods of that fence, and it is so solid a chicken could 
not get through. A hog would have to root a long time in order to 
getthrough it. The hedge is planted around a garden. 
Mr. T. T. Smith: Is that all the fence there is around the garden? 
Mr. Jewett: There is no protection for that garden on the other 
side of that hedge, no fence or anything. Mr, Andrews will remem- 
ber that on the sandy ground just below the hedge died out, but 
this is on higher ground where there is clay subsoil. 
Mr. Andrews: On this lower ground the hedge was planted closer 
together. The further apart they are planted the better the hedge. 
I used to plant them a foot and a half apart, but I noticed that those 
which were planted three feet apart did better. 
Mr. Bryant, (Illinois): As a general thing the tendency is to plant 
hedges too close together for long continued results. We get too 
much in the ground ina small space, just the same as we get the 
