288 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



process of boxing, or by wrapping with any material, I think 

 it adds to the life of the tree very much. One of the best cov- 

 erings that I have ever seen or ever tried is cotton cloth. 

 Tear it up into strips and, beginning down on the ground, wind 

 it up to the branches. You can do this considerably earlier 

 than you can put on the boxes, and it can be removed in the 

 spring. The heat of the sun does not go through the white 

 cloth and start the flow of sap prematurely. 



President Underwood: I should think this matter of protec- 

 tion would be a good one for the experimental station to take 

 up. I should think they might plant some trees and protect 

 them in different ways, and see which way is the best. 



Dr. Frisselle: Last year and the year before, our friend, Mr. 

 Keel, spoke of wrapping trees with gunnysacking, as being an 

 economical and easily applied protection, and said that it was 

 even better than boxing. 



Mr. Keel: I have had some experience in protecting trees 

 with gunnysacking, but it has been done mostly to protect 

 them from the rabbits. Down in our part of the country it 

 does not seem necessary to us to protect the trees with boxes 

 or anything else, except from the rabbits. 



Col. Stevens: I would like to ask Mr. Keel, if his pre^ces- 

 sor, Mr. Jordan, did not recommend mulching trees in the fall 

 of the year? That is. putting something around them to pro- 

 tect them from the freezing and thawing in the* spring. He 

 said if you did not protect the trees they would not only root- 

 kill during the winter, but the bark of the tree next to the sur- 

 face of the ground was bound to be injured. He claimed that 

 by protecting them in that way, he was able to star this orchard. 

 That was twenty- five years ago, perhaps. 



Mr. Richardson: I was in an orchard a few weeks ago where 

 a gentleman had bound the trees with straw, and his trees were 

 apparently doing first-rate. He used it as a protection against 

 the rabbits and left it on all summer, with apparently no bad 

 results. 



Mr. Terry, Slay ton ^ I have been engaged in tree planting 

 ever since 1873, and I have found the following plan very suc- 

 cessful. In the first place, I go out with a lot of newspapers 

 and wrap them around my trees, and after doing that I throw 

 up about six inches of earth around each tree. I have suc- 

 ceeded in preserving my trees, without an exception. The 

 paper, of course, is to protect them from rabbits, but the earth 

 thrown up around the trees is to prevent the tree from being 



