462 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



October 



phasized too much. It is difficult to 

 estimate the amount of comfort that 

 can be derived on a bleak prairie from 

 a shelterbelt of forest trees. 



Every forest plantation on the un- 

 protected prairies of Minnesota should 

 have a secondary protection, consisting 

 of a separate forest plantation. This 

 secondary plantation has been named 

 a "snowbreak." The purpose of the 

 snowbreak is to cause the snow to drift 

 outside the boundaries of the main 

 forest plantation or outside the farm- 

 stead. As is well known, snowdrifts 

 form on the lee side of the obstruction 

 causing the drift rather than on the 

 windward side. For instance, a belt 

 of trees running east and west along 

 the north side of a public road will 

 cause the road to fill up with snow- 

 drifts, providing the prevailing wind 

 be from the north. If the farm forest 

 plantation is in the form of a block, 

 the snow will pile up in the whole 

 block almost to a uniform depth, and 

 during the long winter season it is not 

 likely to melt off in such a situation; 

 on the contrary, it will constantly ^ac- 

 cumulate, sometimes getting to be 

 twenty-five or thirty feet in depth. 

 When it begins to melt in the spring- 

 time it will settle down on the branches 

 of the trees and crush them. Many 

 an excellent grove in western Minne- 

 sota and the eastern Dakotas has been 

 almost ruined in this manner by the 

 drifting and settling of the snow. If 

 the plantation is a narrow belt, and a 

 space between the belt and the object 

 to be protected is provided, the most 

 of the snow will drift on the lee side of 

 the belt outside of the boundaries con- 

 taining the trees and in this space. A 

 snowbreak should consist of an L- 

 ' shaped belt of trees one or two rods 

 wide, planted about ten rods to the 

 windward of the main forest planta- 

 tion ; that is on the north and west 

 sides in Minnesota. The main body of 

 this belt may be planted with cheap 

 species of trees, such as white willow, 

 cottonwood, boxelder, etc., whose 

 breakage will not be any great damage 

 to the plantation or much loss to the 



planter. The row on the extreme 

 north and west should consist of a tall- 

 growing species, an evergreen such as 

 pine or spruce being preferable. The 

 remainder of the rows may consist of 

 almost any cheap species. The open 

 space ten or twelve rods wide between 

 the snowbreak and the main forest 

 plantation will serve as a trap for the 

 snow into which the drifts will be 

 piled. 



The location of the forest plantation 

 will be determined to a considerable 

 degree by the amount, kind, and posi- 

 tion of any waste land that may hap- 

 pen to occur on the farm. It is al- 

 ways a good financial policy to utilize 

 the waste corners of the farm for for- 

 estry purposes whenever possible. 



METHODS OF ESTABLISHING A FOREST 

 PLANTATION. 



Even after two or three decades of 

 experience in tree planting in the prai- 

 rie states the popular mind is still 

 greatly clouded as to what is meant by 

 a forest plantation and what methods 

 should be used for its establishment. 

 Many of our nurserymen, whose cus- 

 tomers are chiefly city people, have 

 confused forest planting and land- 

 scape gardening. Their catalogues 

 abound in eulogies of imported species 

 from all quarters of the globe. They 

 advertise novelties as though such ma- 

 terial had been tested and its merits 

 proven. They place fancy prices upon 

 their nursery stock and expect the 

 planter to be able to purchase this ma- 

 terial to be used in a forest plantation. 

 A little figuring will probably throw 

 some light on the possibilities of farm- 

 ers following their advice. A nursery- 

 man who can sell transplanted Nor- 

 way spruce trees two feet high for 

 twenty-five cents apiece seems to think 

 that he is offering goods at bed-rock 

 prices and often cannot quite under- 

 stand why every forest planter in Min- 

 nesota does not give large orders for 

 this kind of material. He forgets that 

 a forest plantation to be of any value 

 must have a sufficient number of trees 

 on it to shade the ground as nature 

 does in her forestry operations. In 



