Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 309 



Osage Okange Hedges. 



Mr. E. W. Brown, Cambridge, 111., stated that he had set more or 

 less osage orange each season for a dozen years past, and he gave the 

 following observations as the result of this extended experience : I 

 think osage will grow anywhere that apple trees will, but here it 

 must be mulched for the first winter or two, and then it will kill 

 down after it is half a dozen years old, sometimes, but will shoot out 

 in the spring,' making six or eight feet growth generally. The plants 

 one foot apart are near enough ; too near, they smother out. About 

 the fourth spring slash them, leaving here and there a stump to weave 

 in. If you get them too flat they will die ; made that way they will 

 hold anything from a chicken to a bull ; for after it has grown one 

 Tear it will be so that a bird cannot go through it, and the wind may 

 blow and the flood come, still you have a good fence. If it is allowed 

 to grow too high it will shade some ; but around all fields there is 

 about twelve feet that you cannot cultivate, and generally grows up 

 to weeds ; but after the hedge gets four or live years old, I seed down 

 to timothy next to the hedge, and that is not hurt by the shade of 

 the hedge, for generally it will grow two tons to the acre right up as 

 close as you can run a mower. One piece I have had into corn, and 

 have turned around on the strip, cultivating as usual ; still the mower 

 would cut clean, so you do not lose any ground in a meadow or culti- 

 vated field. In a pasture, stock will eat the young sprouts so much 

 that it will furnish more feed than the same ground in grass. The 

 most of the trimming is done in March, when we cannot do anything 

 else. The brush we use to patch up other fence, or to weave into a 

 wire fence, so that a wire fence thus fortified will hold any cattle, and 

 brush at the bottom will make it hog tight. I made some cheap fence 

 this way : I had hedge two years old, then I set posts in it, say a rod 

 a part, and put on a pole ; ' then put hedge in the bottom and nailed 

 some on the posts ; then took hedge and straddled it over the poles. 

 It has held hogs, horses and cattle, and I would rather have it than a 

 fine board fence, as long as it lasts. For a permanent fence it is the 



best tiling I know of. 



Adjourned. 



October 10, 1871. 



Nathan C. Ely, Esq., in the chair ; Mr. John W. Chambers, Secretary. 



Potatoes. 

 Mr. Aaron Wright, Penn's Grove, N". J. : I will give the readers 

 of the Club proceedings the result of an experiment made with 



