AND EXPERIMENT STATION. 125 



best for trees, but the work may be done in spring, and often- 

 times with good results; the peculiar conditions of each year 

 having always to be considered. 



CLOSE vs. WIDE PLANTING, The distance at which to 

 plant trees apart seems a subject ol controversy. The Manuals 

 of the Minnesota and Iowa horticultural societies advocate close 

 planting and this is the practice of Kuropeans foresters. It should 

 be the object of the planter to make his grove independent as 

 soon as possible. This seems of especial importance in this 

 State, where help is scarce and each man depends largely on his 

 own efforts for all the work of the farm. 



The advantages of close planting are manifest. Trees 

 planted three or four feet apart, if of proper varieties, shade the 

 ground so completely in their fourth or fifth year that it is im- 

 possible for grass and weeds to grow beneath them. Thus the 

 period of cultivation is materially shortened, Close planted 

 trees serves as a protection for each other and form straight, 

 clean pole~, which are free from knots and make the best kind of 

 timber. They also make a much better wind break than trees 

 planted from six to ten feet apart, because they quickly become 

 massed, the branches touching one another. 



The principal disadvantage of close planting is the neces- 

 sity of early thinning; if the trees are allowed to stand too 

 long they are thought to exhaust the soil and thus the great 

 majority of them die and the planter has little to show for his 

 labor. But there seems to be a misconception on this point also. 

 Trees will grow longer without thinning than is popularly sup- 

 posed. There is a plantation on the grounds of the University 

 <)f Illinois which was close planted, and had not been thinned 

 when the trees stood from twenty-five to forty feet in height. 

 Doubtless a somewhat better growth would have been secured 

 had a first thinning been made sooner, but the excellence of the 

 stand and the thriftiness of the trees when examined, showed they 

 liad not materially suffered. It should be remembered, too, that 

 thinnings from a grove of trees twenty feet in height, can be used 

 for fuel. Probably the cost of such fuel would prevent its use in 

 more favored regions, but the State of South Dakota is 

 remote from coal fields, and [fuel is one of the {heaviest items 



