364 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



MAV 17, 1843. 



From theTransaotionsorthe Essex Agricultural Society. ; 



ON LIVK FENCES. 

 To the Commillee on Live Fences : 



Gkntlkmen — In compliance with your request 

 that I should furnish yon with a detailed account 

 of my various e.xperiments in tlie formation of 

 " live fences," with their results, I have the plea- 

 sure to send you the following; statement; only 

 premisinnf, tlial I srave to each plant a fair and im- 

 partial trial, and that the information I offer, lias at 

 least the value of actual experience. 



Tl is now more than forty years since I became 

 convinced of the superiority, both as regards dura- 

 bility and beauty, of live fences over any other 

 mode ofeiiclosure in use among us, r.nd mado it 

 my endeavor to ascertain what plant was best suit- 

 ed to the purpose. 



1 first tried the English Hawthorn, but found it 

 would not bear our climate ; the long droughts 

 frequent in our warm summers, materially injure 

 Us beauty ; it is often blighted, and loses its foli- 

 «ge early in August, and even in the more favora- 

 ble seasons it assumes a wintry appearance in 

 September : it is disfigured by numerous dead 

 branches, which give it a ragged and unthrifty ap- 

 pearance, even in its verdant season ; and is very 

 subject to the attacks of the borer, by which I have 

 known a whole hedge to be destroyed. This first 

 hedge, which measure.'! about twenty rods, is still 

 standing in my orchard, but I have long given it 

 up as incorrigible, and it is not included in the pre- 

 sent measuroaiotit of my hedges ; and a second 

 one with which I had enclosed part of my garden, 

 was only kept from decay by subsequently inter- 

 posing young Buckthorn plants altern;itely with 

 the Hawthorns ; by this means it became a good 

 hedge ; but had it been nil of Buckthorns, it would 

 have been still better. I am so convinced of the 

 unsuilableiie.-JS of the English thorn for our c'ii. ,-:_•, 

 that I would not admit another hedge of it into (ly 

 grounds if it could be done free of e.xpcnee. My 

 next experiment was with the Triple-Thorned Aca- 

 cia. This is a very beautiful plant when grown 

 as on individual tree, but it did not answer my e.x- 

 pectations for a hedge; the plants ran up without 

 interlacing, and the thorns being mostly upon the 

 upper branches, the hedge was too open at the bot- 

 tom to be any protection to the land it enclosed ; 

 and it was besides too feeble a plant to bear our 

 more severe winters. 



I made my nnxt trial with the Crab Apple, and 

 here I failed entirely : a hedge which I formed of 

 this, had nothing to recommend it in any way. 



In the year 1808, I happened to have some 

 young plants which had come up from the chance- 

 scattered seeds of the American buckthorn, or 

 Rhamnus cartharticus, and finding they made a 

 good growth in the nursery to which they had been 

 removed, I determined to try to form a hedge of 

 them, and 1 have been well pleased with the re- 

 sult. They were set out in 180!l, and very scon 

 became a fine hedge of about twenty rods in length, 

 which has remained so until the present time ; not 

 a single plant having failed from it, nor have I 

 ever known it to be attacked by any insect. This 

 hedge being my first e.xperiment with the Buclt- 

 thorn, I did not keep it headed down so closely as 

 I have since found it expedient to do, and conse- 

 quently il is not quite so impervious at the bottom 

 as Bome of my younger hedges which have been 

 more severely pruned. 



Being fully satisfied that I had at last found the 

 plant I wanted, I have since that time set out va- 

 rious hedges of il, at difTerent periods, until I can 

 now measure 100 rods of them, all, in my opinion, 

 good hedges, — and I do not hesitate to pronounce 

 the Buckthorn the mo.st suitable plant for the pur- 

 pose that 1 have ever met with. It vegetates early 

 in the spring, and retains its verdure late in the au- 

 tumn. I have often seen it green after the snows 

 had fallen. Being a native plant, it is never in- 

 jured by our most intense cold, and its vilaliiy is 

 so great, that the young plants may be.kept out of 

 the ground for a long time, or transported any dis- 

 tance without injury. It never sends up any suck- 

 ers, nor is disfigured by any dead wood ; it can be 

 clipped into any shape which the caprice or inge- 

 nuity of the gardener may devise ; ^d being pli- 

 able, it may be trained into an arch * over a pas- 

 sage way, «s easily as a vine ; it needs no plash- 

 ing or interlacing, the natural growth of the plants 

 being sufficiently iulerwoven. It is never canker- 

 ed by unskillful clipping, but will bear the knife 

 to any degree. During the last winter, I found 

 one of my hedges had grown too high, casting too 

 much shadow over a portion of my garden, and 

 wishing to try how much it would endure, I di- 

 rected my gardener to cut it down within four feet 

 of the ground. This was done in mid-winter, and 

 not without some misgivings on my own part, and 

 much discouraging advice from others ; but it leav- 

 ed out as early in the spring as the other hedges, 

 and is now a mass of verdure. I have been ap- 

 plied to for young plants by persons who have seen 

 and admired my hedges, and have sent them to 

 various States in the Union, and I have never in 

 any instance heard of their failure. 



I have also tried the experiment with the Ameri- 

 can Hawthorn, or " Yankee thorn," as it is called 

 in this neighborhood ; but this, though a strong 

 «!.i' Hiirnble hedge, is vrryfar inferior in beauty to 

 the Buckthorn — the leaves becoming spotted in 

 AuiTust with yellow spots, which give the whole 

 plant a rusty appearance. 



My method of forming a hedge, is to set the 

 young plants in a single row, about nine inches 

 apart, eithi^r in the spring or autumn : if the latter, 

 I should clip it the following spring within six in- 

 ches of the ground : this will cause the hedge to 

 be thick at the bottom, which 1 regard as a great 

 point of excellence : after this, all that remains to 

 be done, is to keep it from weeds, and clip it once 

 a year. I consider Juno as the best time to trim it, 

 as it soonest recovers its beauty at that season. 

 The clipping may be done either with the garden 

 shears, a hedge knife, or even with a common 

 scythe. 



I believe, gentleman, I have now given you nil 

 the information in my power upon hedges; and I 

 must trust to your interest in the subject to excuse 

 me, if I have complied too literally with your re- 

 quest, and made a '• twice told tale" too long. 



I am, gentlemen, with great respect, yours, &c. 

 E. HERSY DERBY. 



Salem, Sept. 19, 1842. 



Cough in Horses. — The boughs of cedar have 

 been used with complete success. They should 

 be cut fine and mixed with the grain. — Selected. 



" Educate a community in the idea that to work 

 with their hands is degrading and dishonorable, 

 and you educate them for vice and misery." 



CULTURF, OF THE POTATO. 



It is found by experience, that in addition to the 

 fertility or riclines-s of soil indispensable for the 

 profitable growth of any crop, the potato demands 

 for its perfection a considerable degree of mois- 

 ture and a bed for tubers so light that their growth 

 may be unobstructed. A sandy soil is sufficiently 

 light, but it is most commonly too dry ; clay soils 

 are moist enough ordinarily, but they are too heavy 

 and compact. The best soil for potatoes is one 

 that contains a large quantity of vegetable matter 

 combined with the earths. Thus muck lands rare- 

 ly fail of producing good potatoes, where water is 

 not too abundant. Maine and Nova Scotia are 

 justly celebrated fur their potatoes; the newly 

 cleared lands abounding in muck, and the climate 

 insuring a supply of moisture. 



On a sandy soil, the potato should be planted in 

 furrows, so that the roots may be below the gene- 

 ral level of the earth, and hilling should be dia- 

 pe'":"d "ii.h ; wlicii L!.e o^il .a ,..o;..:ing lo be 

 heavy, or moist, the potatoes should be above the 

 level, and hilling must be resorted to ; not those 

 little sharp cones of earth some call potato hills, 

 but made as broad on the surface as the distance 

 between the rows and the proper working will ad- 

 mit. There is no necessity for the tubers being 

 buried deep in hoeing or in growing ; it is enough 

 if they are fully excluded from light and air. 

 Where potatoes are properly cultivated, the produc- 

 tiveness may generally be well guessed in autumn 

 by the appearance of the hills, which wdl be evi- 

 dently enlarged, and cracked in all directions. 



We find in our foreign journals some notices of 

 the culture of the potato, vihich our readers may 

 find useful, particularly in clay soils, or those lia- 

 ble to suffer from drought. Taking advantage of 

 the well known fact that tanner's bark retains wa- 

 ter very strongly, Prof. Voelker, of Prussia, made 

 some exjieriinents with spent bark, and found that 

 by covering his potato sets with two or three in- 

 ches of this material before turning a furrow over 

 them, he secured an abundant supply of moisture 

 for the season, besides providing a loose, spongy 

 bed for the young tubers. 



We hope some of our readers who have the 

 means, will try the professor's method, since if it 

 should succeed, a material which now has little 

 value might be made useful to the agriculturist. 



In order to obviate the difficulty arising from a 

 dense clay soil, of poor quality, M. Auber, of 

 France, strewed liberally his potato sets with chaff 

 made from rye straw, previous to their being cov- 

 ered with earth. As the results of experiments 

 made fur three _\ears, he states that his crops have 

 been most abundant and of the finest quality. 

 This practice is one that could hardly fail of suc- 

 cess in such soils ; for if not as retentive of water 

 as the tan-bark, the clay soil renders the quantity 

 less necessary ; and the material would furnish a 

 fine corrective to a compactness fatal to a large po- 

 tato crop Albany Cult. 



A yew Potato. — " Mons. A. Husson, of this 

 city," says the New-Haven Farmer's Gazette, " has 

 a beautiful variety of the potato, called the Duck 

 Bill, wihich he brought from France. He repre- 

 sents them as great bearers — having obtained from 

 one bushel of seed, 31 bushels. From one hill, 

 where but o»ic potato was planted, he dug ninety- 

 nine. We had a sample of these potatoes last fall, 

 and they proved to be a rich variety." 



