Campbell's 1902 Soil Culture Manual. 



77 



ABBORICULTUBE. 



ITS VALUE AND IMPORTANCE. 



BY J. STEELI>'G MORTON. 



Mr. H. W. Campbell, Holdrege, NebrasJca: 



Dear Sir — After an experience of more than forty years at Arbor 

 Lodge, adjoining Nebraska City, in the County of Otoe, I declare thnt the 

 best method of planting forest trees is in rows running north and south. 

 The first row on the east should be of a rapidly growing variety, like catalpa 

 speciosa, cottonwood, aspen, or soft maple. The next row should be a nut- 

 bearing tree, like the black walnut, butternut, or coffee bean. The next 

 succeeding row on the west should be, like the first one, of a rapidly 

 growing variety. Planted in this way, the swiftly growing trees act as 

 nurses for the slowly growing trees. Planted thus, black walnut, instead 

 of putting on a scrubby growth and looking like gigantic quince trees 

 when they have reached twenty years of age, run up towards the sun for 

 light and make good trunks of^ twenty feet in length. This wood is valu- 

 able, and trees thus planted are grown with relative celerity. At Arbor 

 Lodge 1 have between 100 and 200 walnuts thus treated, which were put 

 into the ground in the autumn of 1863, and if you could see and measure 

 them, it would be a work of supererogation for me to make further argu- 

 ment in favor of this system of planting. To grow either deciduous trees 

 or any variety of conifers on these plains with any degree of success, it is 

 necessary to plant them close together. All great forests, whence have 

 come the best timber that man has ever used for building and cabinet 

 woods, have been dense. The vast pineries of the Northwest were so 

 closely planted by nature that it was impossible for a horseman to ride 

 through many of them because of the interweaving branches. To success- 

 fully grow trees like those the forests produced, we must endeavor to cre- 

 ate forestal conditions. 



In 1892 I planted out 10,000 white pines, purchased of Robert 

 Douglas' Sons at Waukegan, 111, They were two years old and averaged 

 perhaps a foot to 14 inches in height. They were planted in rows 4 feet 

 apart, and the trees were 4 feet from each other in the rows. They were 

 cultivated three or four years with the plow, the same as corn is cultivated, 

 the furrows going first east and west and then north and south. They 

 have made a remarkably fine growth, both as to height and circumference. 

 Many of them are from four to five inches in diameter and from 18 to 20 

 feet in height. It is with difficulty that a man can walk among them, and 

 last summer when the drouth and hot winds were doing their worst to 



