Be prepared for the first early frosts, having ready to use some light
covering, such as cheesecloth. The garden can be prolonged from two to
six weeks by this slight protection.
ORCHARD NOTES.
Conducted monthly by R. S. MACKINTOSH, Horticulturalist,
Extension Division, University Farm, St. Paul.
A CONFERENCE OF HORTICULTURAL EXTENSION WORKERS.
A conference of the Horticultural Extension leaders of Wisconsin,
Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota was held early in
August at the Iowa State College, at Ames. The subject of apple and
potato clearing houses was the chief question discussed. The work of
this kind was started by Professor Greene in Kansas when they had the
big apple crop in 1913. Later Iowa and Minnesota undertook similar work.
It is expected that a co-operative plan will be formulated which will be
of greater value than when each state works alone.
The visiting members were very glad to have President Pearson discuss
co-operation as he saw it while visiting a dozen or more countries in
Europe.
One hour was spent in an automobile tour of the grounds and farms.
Considerable land from one to three miles from the main campus is now
used for experimental work. One of the latest additions to the
horticultural equipment is a cold storage plant and range of
greenhouses, costing over sixty thousand dollars.
HORTICULTURAL TOUR IN WESTERN IOWA AND EASTERN NEBRASKA.
The horticultural societies of Iowa and Nebraska joined in an automobile
tour of the orchards, vineyards, nurseries, and truck farms August 2 to
4. The first day was spent in and around Council Bluffs. Interest
centered around the large Co-operative Grape Growers' Association. A
grand picnic dinner was served by the ladies. This association has been
in active operation for fifteen years. Professor Beach emphasized the
value of the work that is being done, and especially the value of having
a contented lot of people in a community mutually interested in one kind
of work. On the return trip a stop was made at the experimental apple
orchard that is conducted by the Horticultural Department of the Iowa
State College. This orchard of 900 trees was leased in 1910 for ten
years to determine if an old orchard that has been unprofitable could be
made profitable. Careful records have been kept of expenses and of the
size and grade of all fruits produced under the several soil treatments.
To date six crops have been harvested from the 475 trees under
experiment. The lowest was 1,700 bushels in 1911 and the largest was
6,000 bushels in 1915. It is estimated that there is about thirty per
cent. of a crop on the trees this year. Demonstrations were given in
spraying, dynamiting trees, treating trees affected with blister canker,
and grading apples with a large grading machine.
The second day was spent in orchards near Omaha. Some excellent orchards
that have been very profitable were visited. It had been very dry in
that region, consequently the fruit was undersized.
The third day was spent in southwestern Iowa, from Hamburg to Glenwood.
It is impossible to tell about all the good things seen on this trip. We
saw all kinds of pruning, cultivated and "sod cultivated" orchards and,
above all, corn, corn and more corn. At Shenandoah the nurserymen and
seedsmen took charge of the party and entertained all in a very
hospitable manner. There were ninety at the noon banquet. In the
afternoon they showed us the large nurseries and seed warehouse.
Toward the end of the trip we stopped at a 40-acre orchard, mostly
Grimes Golden. A hailstorm had injured the fruit very much.
One of the great lessons gained from the 150-mile automobile tour was
the fact that _spraying_ is _one_ of the _most important orchard
operations_. It was interesting to hear what some of the older
orchardists would say when they saw fruit injured by scab. It is an
important matter with them, because it means dollars to have
disease-free fruit to market.
[Illustration: VETERAN DOUGLAS FIR, STANDING MILES OUT FROM THE
PROTECTING MOUNTAIN, EXPOSED TO ALL THE FIERCE WINDS OF THE
PLAINS.]
While it is not the intention to publish anything in this
magazine that is misleading or unreliable, yet it must be
remembered that the articles published herein recite the
experience and opinions of their writers, and this fact must
always be noted in estimating their practical value.
THE MINNESOTA HORTICULTURIST
Vol. 44 OCTOBER, 1916 No. 10
Camping on the Yellowstone Trail.
CLARENCE WEDGE, NURSERYMAN, ALBERT LEA, MINN.
I suppose that civilization is the correct thing for mortals to aspire
to. As a boy, while I hated it with a bitter hatred, I accepted it as
inevitable because my elders approved it and because it seemed
indissolubly linked to the school, the church and the things of good
repute. As I grow older the yoke sits easier on my shoulders, but doubts
have increased as to its necessary connection with the good, the true
and the beautiful. It surely kills the sweet virtue of hospitality. In
my home church lately there was a call for volunteers to entertain a
visiting delegation, and I was interested in observing how perfectly the
number that might be accommodated in any home was in inverse ratio to
the size and furnishings of the house. High heeled shoes and hobble
skirts, two-story starched collars and tile hats are fashion signs of
civilization, but I cannot see why a ring in the nose and a tattooed arm
might not have answered just as well. I am getting harder to convince
that a broad foot, shaped on the lines laid down by the Creator, is less
beautiful or desirable than the one-toe pointed shoe, decreed just now
by our particular brand of culture, and today I would as lief defend the
cult of the simple red man as the savagery that disgraces the lands
across the water.
Whatever the merits of the matter, for one month of the year we and our
tent and automobile abandon ourselves to barbarism, and live as we
please. This year we chose to spend our month on the Yellowstone Trail,
the road that leads from the Twin Cities to the Yellowstone National
Park, and which is different from other roads leading in the same
direction mainly by its yellow mark, faithfully directing the traveler
on his way and preventing the loss of time in getting directions at
doubtful cross roads. Our party consisted of a young botanist, and his
wife, my wife, myself and our small boy Alan. Our equipment consisted of
a tent, 7x7 ft., weighing, stakes, poles, partition and all, 16-1/2
lbs.; a trunk on the running board made to hold bedding and grub box,
and an oil cloth to use as a tent floor. Like the Indians we go light,
and live the simple life while on the trail. We get off at six o'clock
in the morning, eating our breakfast on the move as we get hungry; lunch
at noon by the roadside, and camp early, seeking the most interesting
spot, from the top of a butte to a pleasant river valley--and cooking
the one square meal of the day by such a brushwood fire as we are able
to gather.
[Illustration: "Us" and some others at a mountain cabin.]
For the first few days we try to provide some straw to temper the hard
earth, but as the days go by, and we get used to roughing it, we sleep
soundly with nothing but a blanket and oil cloth between us and mother
earth. We pin back the tent door, and with the night wind fanning our
faces, close our eyes to the stars and flickering campfire. Some who
have never camped are afraid of bugs, snakes and wild animals. We have
spent our vacation month this way for twenty-five years, have camped in
most of the counties of Minnesota, and in Iowa, the Dakotas and Montana,
and have never had but one unpleasant experience of the kind. That was
one night when we pitched our tent after dark on the bottoms below Fort
Snelling, and did not know till we had laid ourselves down that a colony
of ants had pre-empted the spot before us. We did not get much sleep,
but we had the comfort of feeling that they were nice, clean,
self-respecting, self-defending ants. Would that our experience in
hotels had been equally fortunate!
[Illustration: A young Douglas fir.]
Leaving the western boundary of the forests of Minnesota near Glencoe
and going across the prairie and plains to the mountain forests of
Montana is an interesting experience. The only trees in Western
Minnesota and the Dakotas are those found along the lakes and water
courses, and west of the Missouri the trees and shrubby growth, even in
such places, becomes very scanty or entirely disappears, giving a weird
appearance to one who has always associated water and trees together in
his mind. As we draw near the Montana line, trees begin to appear on the
tops of the buttes and high bluffs on the distant horizon. Traveling on
the railroad I have wondered what they were. With our own private car we
satisfied our curiosity by zig-zagging our way up to a camping place
among them, the first night they came in sight. Of course they were our
old friends, the Ponderosa pine, whose name will always be associated
with our grand old man from Nebraska. They ought to be renamed the
Harrison pine. How they endure the drouth and cold in a soil so poor
that grass withers and dies out, and how they stand erect where every
other living thing bows to the bleak winds and blizzards of the
prairies, is one of the mysteries of plant life. What a splendid bonfire
we made of their boughs that night, flaring as a beacon out over the
ocean of prairie about us!
The day before we had passed by hundreds of clumps of a beautiful blue
lupine with finely cut foliage and profusion of color that rivaled any
flower of its shade I have seen in cultivation. On the way home we
gathered a handful of seed from which we shall hope to grow some plants
at home. We tried to dig a few to transplant, but their roots seemed to
go down, down, till with my short handled shovel, I got discouraged. The
herbage of the plains has learned to dig deep for water.
[Illustration: A camp by the Red River of the North, Mrs. Wedge sitting
by a giant cottonwood. Our 16 lb. tent at the right.]
Leaving the Yellowstone at Big Timber and striking across the plains to
the Snowy Mountains, we found the Ponderosa pine, and soon the Flexilis
pine, wherever a rocky ridge is lifted above the level of the plains, so
that these trees were in sight a large share of the time, even far away
from large rivers and groups of mountains. If a homestead anywhere in
that state is not cozily protected by bright colored evergreens it is
not because there is any difficulty in getting trees that will thrive in
that soil.
[Illustration: A young Ponderosa pine.]
The Snowy Mountains are in the center of Montana, quite unsheltered from
the other ranges of the Rockies. It is the meeting place of the flora of
the mountains and the plains. I think it is the eastern limit of that
peerless tree of the Rockies, the Douglas fir. I gave my impressions of
this tree to the society a year or two ago. I am still more in love with
it from what I again saw last August in its native Snowy Mountains, and
from the bright, sturdy little trees that have been growing at my home
in Minnesota for two years past, giving assurance of their willingness
to be transplanted to our moister air. It is the coming evergreen for
the prairies, and it will be a happy day for all who plant an evergreen
west of the natural timber when the Douglas fir has displaced the trees
that come from the cool, moist forests of Europe and the sheltered woods
of our own lake regions.
I think the Snowys are also about the eastern limit of the little
broad-leaved evergreen called the Oregon grape, that I believe every one
in Minnesota can grow for Christmas greens. From my first acquaintance
with it I got the impression that it required shade, but this time I
noted that it was growing all over the bare ridges that radiate from the
mountains, wherever it was possible for a little snow to lodge. We can
substitute a light sprinkling of straw when snow is lacking. It
certainly does not require shade.
The Mariposa lily is a unique flower that springs up in open places and
produces a white blossom about the size and shape of the wild morning
glory. It grows about a foot high and produces one or two flowers on
each stalk. It must have a long period of bloom for ripe seed pods, and
blooming plants were common at the same time in August.
The Canadian buffalo berry and a dwarfish birch are two mountain plants
of no small ornamental value for the plains. They may not endure the
moister air near the Mississippi, but there we have already many useful
natives, like the black haw and thorn apple, that are as yet almost
unnoticed.
[Illustration: Group of Douglas fir on the mountainside. Thirteen trees
in a space of only two square rods. None less than two feet in
diameter.]
One of the principal charms about the great country traversed by the
Yellowstone Trail is its newness and freshness. Millions of acres just
as the Indian, the buffalo and the coyote left them--broad stretches as
far as eye can reach without a sign of human habitation. But this is
fast passing away. Out among the sage brush in land as poor and
desert-like as could well be imagined, homes are being mapped out by the
thousand, and crops of grain were grown this year that rival the best
yield in any of the older states. The time is close at hand when the
main highways will be built up and made so hard and smooth that two
hundred and fifty miles will be made as easily as our average runs of
one hundred and fifty. The way will be safer and speedier, but it will
lack some of the spice of adventure, and it will be harder to realize
the simple life about the camp fire that now seems to harmonize so well
with the wildness of the plains.
The Minnesota Orchard.
A QUESTION AND ANSWER EXERCISE LED BY J. P. ANDREWS, NURSERYMAN,
FARIBAULT.
Mr. Andrews: This is a very important subject. We have been talking
about it a long, long time, and we have advanced a little, ought to have
advanced quite a little more, and this exercise is along the road of
improvement in that line. Anything that is bothering us, anything that
is in the way of our success with the apple orchard, ask what questions
you can, not that I can answer them all, but there are some good
orchardists around here that I know I can call on, in case I can not. In
this exercise the questions come first, and it is for you fellows to
start the ball rolling.
There is one thing we are lacking, that is winter apples. We have enough
of fall apples, seems to me, so we can get along very well, but we are
looking for something a little better quality than Malinda and that will
keep somewhere near as long. All these new seedlings that have been
introduced in the past and big premiums offered, they seem to have
stopped right there and we are not getting the benefit of but one or
two. If they had been adapted to the north, as they should have been, we
undoubtedly could have had several good varieties of apples that we
could recommend for planting a considerable ways north of here that are
good. As it is now we are really looking in this southern part of the
country for keeping apples.
I should think if we could get these new varieties of seedlings that are
keeping well introduced into the Fruit-Breeding Farm and let Supt.
Haralson handle them under number and send them off to the north of us a
good ways, we could have them tested. Those that have exhibited these
new seedlings and got premiums for them, they ought to be a little more
free to get them in some shape so that they will be tested and we will
learn their worth. They have their premiums, they got those simply
because they are good keepers. Well, now, that isn't anything in their
favor for Minnesota planting, not very much. Of course, good keepers,
that is a good thing, good quality is another thing, but the first thing
is hardiness, and the people who have been drawing these premiums have
been seemingly backward in getting them in shape to test. They are
afraid to put them out for fear somebody might steal them, but if Mr.
Haralson had the handling of them under number nobody could steal them.
You have got title to them and control them just as well as when you
keep them right on your place where they haven't a chance to show
whether they are hardy or not. There is the weak point in this seedling
business for Minnesota, I think.
But the apple orchards of Minnesota, if you are not all getting the good
results that you want from your orchards, if you are not all getting a
full crop, what is the reason? The last year and this year we have
failed of getting a good crop of apples or almost any crop, whereas
before, ever since the old orchard was planted in 1878, why, we have
regarded the apple crop as really a very much surer crop than almost any
of the farm crops, but the last two years we have failed to get a crop.
I attribute the poor crop a year ago to such an excessive crop as we had
the year before that. Two years ago everything was loaded, breaking
down, because we didn't thin them as we ought to, and we could hardly
expect very much the next year. This last year, you know we had frosts
quite frequent up to about the 10th of June, I think that was the reason
we had such a failure this year. Our own orchard is on ground that is
about 225 feet above Faribault, so we have got air drainage, and we
would expect to escape frosts on that account and have as good a crop as
anybody else would in that neighborhood. But that wasn't the case. We
didn't get any apples, and yet during county fair why there was quite a
nice show of nice fruit that they had picked up a few here and a few
there, where really their location seems to me could not have been any
better than ours. I don't know what the reason was, but it was very
patchy, and I didn't dream we would have such a good show of fruit as we
did, and I couldn't tell where it came from.
Mr. Philips: I think when the trees are loaded so heavily, if you would
pick off a third of them you would get more out of the balance of the
crop.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, I think that. The question is, if we pick off a third
of a heavy crop, if we have a heavy crop, if that wouldn't help the next
crop. It surely would.
Mr. Philips: Help that crop, too, in the price.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, sir, it will pay that year besides paying the next
year, too; it will pay double.
Mr. Philips: It is a good plan any year.
Mr. Andrews: Yes, we ought to do that, we are lacking in that work of
thinning the fruit. We sometimes have a late frost that will take off
part of them, thin them that way, or wind, or something of that kind,
and we rather depend on that feature of it. Then in that time of the
year we are very busy and liable to have some things neglected, and that
seems to be the one that is almost always neglected.
Mr. Brackett: Would you advocate the extensive planting of apples in
this climate?
Mr. Andrews: I would not. At the same time you take it in the southern
part of the state I presume they can grow them there. They can grow
there many things we can't think of growing in this part of the state
unless it be along Lake Minnetonka.
Mr. Older: Where you have an orchard ten years old, is it best to seed
it down or still continue to cultivate it? In the west they have to
cultivate. What is the best in this country? I know one man says it is
best to keep on cultivating while it is growing, and another man says
that that will kill the trees. I want to know which is the best.
Mr. Andrews: I think cultivation is the thing that ought to be done
until the trees get well to bearing, anyway, and then it furnishes
nitrogen to the soil to seed it down to clover. If we don't do that we
are very liable to neglect that element in the soil. The better way to
my mind is to cultivate for eight or ten years, and then I do think it
is all right perhaps, for farmers, I mean, who will neglect the
cultivation if they depend on it. That is, if they make up their minds
it is better to cultivate than it is to seed down, their trees are more
apt to be neglected. During the busy part of the season they won't
cultivate as constantly as they ought to. If they would do that I have
not much doubt but what cultivation would be all right right along, if
you will furnish that nitrogen that ought to be in the soil for the
protection of the crop. Clover is the easiest way to get that, and the
trees will be more sure to have the benefit of that if you sow to clover
and grow a crop of hay and turn it under, possibly let it be into clover
two years, but turn that under and cultivate for two or three years and
then put into clover again. I think that would be preferable for the
farmer, for the farmer especially, than it would to undertake to either
cultivate all the time or seed down all the time.
I don't believe it is a good thing to seed down where there are young
trees growing and while the orchard is young. If you will plant your
potatoes in that orchard between the rows and cultivate it, you will do
the cultivating. I haven't got very much faith in the average farmer--I
don't mean you horticulturists--but the average farmer. If he will plant
trees and you advise him to cultivate them while they are young, they
will be neglected after the first year or so. He may while the fever is
on, he may cultivate them one year and the next year about half
cultivate them, and the following years they will grow up to grass and
weeds. Whereas, if he plants potatoes he gets just the right cultivation
for the trees if he cultivates the ground enough to get a good crop of
potatoes. Then in the fall when he digs the potatoes he loosens up the
ground, and it takes up the moisture, and after the fall rains they go
into winter quarters in good shape. It seems to me that is as near right
as I could recommend.
Mr. Hansen: What distance apart ought those apple trees to be?
Mr. Older: Another question along that line. Suppose we concede that a
young orchard ought to be cultivated until it gets eight or ten years
old, then which is the best when you seed it to clover to cut the clover
and throw the hay around the trees for a mulch or just take the hay
away, or what?
Mr. Andrews: I think it would be better to put the hay around the trees
for mulching. If the hay is used and the barnyard manure is taken to the
orchard that would fill the bill pretty well.
Now, the distance apart? Grown trees really need about thirty feet apart
each way. If you run the rows north and south and put them thirty feet
apart, and sixteen feet or a rod apart in the row, with a view to
taking out every other tree, you might have to go under bonds to take
them out when they are needed to come out (laughter), or else you would
leave them there until you hurt your other trees. If you would take out
every other tree when they get to interfering after several years, eight
or ten years, you can grow a double crop of apples in your orchard, but
if you do the way you probably will do, leave them right there until
they get too close, you will--
Mr. Hansen: Spoil all of them?
Mr. Andrews: Yes. Then you better put them out a little farther apart,
and, as I said, two rods apart each way I don't believe is too far. Our
old orchard that we put out in 1877 is just on its last legs now. At
that time, you know, we didn't know anything about what varieties to
plant, we didn't have as many as we have now. The old orchard only had
the Duchess and Wealthy for standards, and half of the orchard was into
crabs, because I thought at that time crabs was the only thing that
would be any ways sure of staying by us. Well, those trees are about
through their usefulness now, the standards. They have borne well until
the last two years, generally loaded, and they were put out at that time
fourteen feet apart each way, breaking joints so that they didn't come
directly opposite. And when they got to be twelve or fifteen years old,
it was difficult to get through there with a team or with any
satisfaction, it was rubbing the limbs too much. Then the next orchard
we put out on the farm was twenty-four feet by fifteen or sixteen feet
in the row, the rows twenty-four feet apart. I wish they were a little
farther apart, although that hasn't bothered very much about getting
through between the rows, but it shows that a tree that is any ways
spreading in its habit really needs about two rods each way. Are there
any other questions?