164 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



It is a hard task to raise plants from seed under the one hundredth 

 meridian, the fatal line almost for horticulture. It is trying to see 

 the plants come up covering the ground with greenness and then see 

 them go down in platoons before the hot blasts. You may make 

 your screens perfect, yet the breath of a 112° blast is too much for 

 them, unless extra precaution is taken. Some years are much more 

 favorable for this work than others ; in an ordinary year there seems 

 but little trouble. I have often had excellent stands of plants, but 

 this year has been disheartening. It is a melancholy thing to attend 

 the funeral of a half million of bright promising plants as ever 

 crowded their way into an unfriendly world. Yet it has not been all 

 a failure. I have developed some things which I might keep to my- 

 self and defy you to find out. But we all have a mighty work to do 

 to clothe these fair prairies with greenness and beauty. 



Mother Nature is an excellent horticulturist, and her teachings are 

 not to be despised. She succeeds in raising trees where it seems im- 

 possible for them to grow. Take the Ponderosa, so sensitive to the 

 damps that it will die by the thousand if you do not work just right, 

 and yet they grow in the hot, dry foot-hills. Why do they not damp 

 off there? See how Nature does it; she lets the seed fall among the 

 needles and down into the leaf mould. What makes the tiny plant 

 die? It is the action of the hot air or sun just where the delicate 

 stem comes out of the ground. The top is all right. Death always 

 attacks the base. Nature always defends this and never allows it to 

 be exposed to the sun or currents of hot air, and you are to follow 

 her example. I thought I could defeat the disaster by darkening the 

 whole bed, but I found the currents of hot air could see in the dark, 

 and I looked under the heavy screen and the plants were dead — all 

 gone. Some beds I covered with moss, but the common moss of Wis- 

 consin settles down as you water the bed and leaves the stem unpro- 

 tected. One bed I covered with mountain moss, which does not pack 

 and lets the plant grow up through it, and there I succeeded. Another 

 I covered with the trimmings of some Pungens, that acted in the same 

 way. I think now I can say eureka, and even in the region of drouth 

 and hot winds conifers can be raised to advantage, and yet I query 

 whether we had not better raise our plants in the mountains ; but then 

 they are already raised there and are ready for shipment, only the 

 plants must be secured from gravelly locations, where you are sure of 



