4 HEDGES, WINDBREAKS, SHELTERS, ETC. 



scratch and tear. I do not know one Osage orange 

 fence now remaining in central New York that is in 

 prime condition. Most of them have been cut down. 

 A few stand as windbreaks, but are scraggy, irregu- 

 lar and unsightly. 



On the lower lands of the west, the Osage 

 orange proved not quite hardy. The difficulty was 

 largely with conditions of the soil. Careful drainage 

 was always requisite. Planters soon learned to 

 throw up ridges on which the plants were set. These 

 ridges, twenty inches high, were rapidly prepared 

 with plows, and the plants found the soil thus thrown 

 up in admirable condition to be filled with fibrous 

 roots. As soon as the hedge became strong enough 

 to serve as a fence and turn cattle, root pruning was 

 easily applied also done with the plow cutting off 

 the ends of the roots with a revolving coulter. This 

 combination of hedge and ditch was found to make a 

 very admirable fence. These open ditches, run 

 alongside of the hedges, served as drainage channels 

 during the wet months, also holding water for stock 

 during the dry season. When deepened into pools, 

 they were found to be of decided value on the level 

 lands of the west. During the dry season such 

 channels act as ditches always do, not to render the 

 soil more dry but more moist. In some cases 

 farmers grew corn rows on both sides of a ditch in 

 order to preserve the water as late as possible in 

 summer. As a rule, the best live fences required 

 double setting. Single rows did not prove absolutely 

 a defense against hogs and sheep. 



The use of honey locust (Gleditschia triacan- 

 Ihos) began a few years after that of Osage orange. 



