Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 69

GEO. E. VINCENT, PRESIDENT MINN. STATE UNIVERSITY, MINNEAPOLIS.

Now, so far as I can understand, the only excuse for interpolating me in a program of this kind is that you are giving so much attention to technical subjects, you are working so hard, you need from time to time relief in order that you may not suffer from brain fever or any of the ailments of overstudy. I am confident from this point of view anything I may have to say will meet that need completely.

The relations.h.i.+p between this society and the university strikes me as typically American. There are two ways of doing things--leaving public undertakings entirely to private initiative, to individuals, to voluntary groups; that is one plan. There is another plan which consists in putting everything into the hands of the state. Const.i.tuted authority takes charge of the whole life of the citizen's, all the activities and enterprise are made public, state affairs.

Those are the two extremes. The dangers of those two methods are very obvious. Many enterprises left to private initiative will be done in haphazard fas.h.i.+on; there will be duplication and waste. When the state undertakes all these enterprises it changes the whole aspect. Public management may make for a certain efficiency, but it sooner or later undermines the initiative, the feeling of responsibility of the individual. We are a practical people, we compromise and combine the various methods of doing things. It is the typical American way to combine private initiative with a certain measure of state co-operation.

The work for horticulture in the state of Minnesota has been developed under exactly these conditions.

If I remember rightly, this society was organized in 1867. It has a.s.sumed a definite leaders.h.i.+p in the development of horticulture in the state of Minnesota; the university has gradually been adapting itself, so to speak, to the work of this society. The society and the university have officially been in close relations.h.i.+p. I believe that in the early days the secretary was at the same time a university officer and for the last twenty-five years, I am told that at least one expert of the university staff has always been a member of the executive board of this society. This has made a personal bond.

Then the society has done a great many important things. You have stood by at times when people were not perfectly certain about the importance of various kinds of scientific work. You have been steadfast. Sometimes it required courage to stand for the scientific ideals which the university was attempting to carry out in important work that had a bearing upon horticulture.

And you have, of course, the chief responsibility and distinction of having seen to it that our fruit-breeding farm should be established. I believe you were also kind enough to pick out the site, although none of you were personally interested in the particular real estate ultimately purchased.

So that we feel--we of the university feel--that the work of horticulture in this state is distinctly a co-operative undertaking, and that the leaders.h.i.+p and enterprise and vision of this society have been the chief things that developed horticulture in Minnesota to the point it has reached. But we do believe that the co-operation of your university is an important and, we hope, from now on will be an increasingly important thing. Certain work is going on constantly at the University in the various departments, and that work is of distinct benefit because you recognize it.

We had a good ill.u.s.tration a few minutes ago. The professor of soils was having his brains picked, as he had a perfect right to have, by you. You were asking him questions, and I noticed once or twice he said he didn't know. That must have inspired confidence in him; I have a good deal of faith in people who don't know it all. That shows two things--they have a sense of humor, and they expect to find out. There is something pathetic in a person who knows it all; it is a case of arrested development.

So out of the department of soils you expect to get the result of careful and scientific study of the nature of soils. From the department of plant pathology you expect to learn about the various forms of plant diseases and the way in which these may be eliminated. From the department of entomology you expect to learn something about the troublesome insects, which are so universal an annoyance. I think they simply exist to test our character, to see whether we have courage to go on, bugs or no bugs. We do the best we can to become familiar with the habits of these nefarious creatures and let you know what we know. So I might call attention to one or two other departments--but you know how much is being accomplished. You get regular reports. You have a committee to visit and investigate our fruit-breeding farms. If I may judge from the reports which your committee makes--I don't know whether it is because it is one of your children and you are indulgent--your committee seems to think good things are being done and distinct progress recorded at the fruit-breeding farm. With your support and confidence we are enlarging the work there. It seems we should have more land in the early future, and we may ask for your co-operation in convincing the powers that be that such increase of territory is necessary.

How many members have you? 3,407 members, I believe. Perhaps you have more since that number was given this morning. At any rate, there is a good number, and when you think of all the wisdom and all the experience that those 3,407 people have, it seems a great pity not to get it organized in better form. Come and pick some more brains while these brains are still available and organize this great ma.s.s of knowledge.

Here is the next problem. Who are the people that are going to take your places? Who is to have a gold watch given him fifty years from now--or given to her fifty years from now? This thing is to go on, and how? It goes on by discovering in Minnesota the horticulturally-minded people in the state; you must always be on the lookout for people who are to do the big things. The great European governments are considering how they are going to keep their armies recruited, how the next generation is to be brought in and organized. That is the same problem in every nation.

It is extremely necessary to put out dragnets for specialists. There are probably thousands of men in Minnesota who are horticulturists, they are dormant horticulturists, and your business and ours is to try to discover them. So the problem with us is how to get out the dragnet.

You know there is a great biological principle that is ill.u.s.trated in the lower types of animals. Millions of fish eggs are produced for every hundred that actually fertilize and amount to anything. So when you are looking for results in a great subject, when you are trying to discover people, when you are putting out a dragnet, you have to try a very large number with the hope of discovering the relatively few who really show the divine spark, who are really the men that you are looking for.

It is a very interesting thing when you come to think about it, all the while we are looking for special ability in modern activities we do it by fas.h.i.+on. Fas.h.i.+on is something that victimizes the ladies. They do not care for fas.h.i.+on itself, it is thrust upon them from the outside. Most women conform to fas.h.i.+on on the principle of protective coloring; they do not care for it themselves, but they do not want to be conspicuous by not conforming; so they protect themselves that way.

I consider fas.h.i.+on is a beneficial thing when you look at it the right way. By fas.h.i.+on all kinds of new things are started throughout the country, and you discover certain people who have a special apt.i.tude. It becomes the fas.h.i.+on to do various things, and in many cases people become interested and develop their own special tastes and faculties.

I am tremendously interested just now in rural education. We want a rural school that will be attractive. We are interested in getting houses for the teachers to be built right alongside the school house.

Then there will be the garden in connection with the house, the flower garden and the tree planting. Some of us are looking forward to the time when the rural school will be the most charming spot in all the countryside, not a place from which the teacher escapes at the earliest possible moment on Friday to return reluctantly on Monday morning, but a place where she wants to remain, where the rural school will be the center of the community and community life. It will be an attractive place for the best kind of teacher. When we can get to that point we shall be able to establish in the rural regions an inst.i.tution that will be a vital part of the whole community and a thing of joy and of beauty.

That gospel might be extended to the tree planting on the farmstead. You know what the state art society had been doing. There is another dragnet. You have seen the Minnesota Art Journal, which is dealing with the problems in tree planting of the farm, planting around the farm house; That in connection with the modern farm house that has been suggested, these things have a very important bearing upon problems in which both you and the university are interested.

And then we can look forward to the time when you will have your permanent home, if not on the farm grounds themselves at least near there, where we could co-operate and use the same building, so that while it would be yours you will feel that it is being utilized throughout the year in such a way that the expenditure of the money would be justified.

There is a fine vista ahead of us, a vista of the things to be, accomplished by means of this American combination of private initiative and enterprise and idealism and the support of the state for certain details of work which can be best accomplished in that way.

The Shelter Belt for Orchard and Home Grounds.

A DISCUSSION LED BY JOHN W. MAHER, NURSERYMAN, DEVILS LAKE, N. DAK.

Mr. Maher: The subject this morning is to be on "Shelter-Belt for Orchard and Home Grounds." I am satisfied, provided the "Home Grounds"

include the whole farm.

The entire farm needs shelter, particularly from the hot, drying winds and other destructive winds that uncover and cut down crops in springtime and carry away the fertile top soil; and the summer winds, hot winds, of course, that eat up the moisture; and those destructive winds that sometimes harvest our barley and other crops before they are cut. We need protection from all these winds, and in this lat.i.tude these winds blow uniformly from the southwest. So every farm should be protected from them by a substantial shelter-belt on the west and south sides, which can also be the farm wood-lot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Apple tree windbreak at Devil's Lake Nursery. Hibernal in the foreground. Patten's Greening in the distance.]

There is another phase of protection that has been emphasized this year very much, and that is, protection against summer frosts and late spring frosts. A gentleman living at McIntosh, near Crookston, in this state, told me that corn matured up there wherever it was protected from the north wind. At the Devils Lake Nursery we had a 400-bushel per acre potato crop protected only by the blocks of nursery stock, whereas the yield in the vicinity was from nothing to fifty bushels per acre--and I believe if Mr. Andrews will inquire into the location of the good apple crops about Faribault he will probably find they were saved by similar shelter protection, or the natural lay of the land.

Mr. Kellogg: What is your best windbreak?

Mr. Maher: The evergreen is the best windbreak for the reason that it gives more shelter, retains its leaves in the winter and fewer rows of trees will make a good shelter-belt. The variety--that is, west of the timber line in Minnesota--I should say the best would be the Ponderosa pine, or bull pine, after that the jack pine may be, or else the Colorado blue spruce and the Black Hills spruce.

Mr. Kellogg: Colorado spruce is too expensive to set out as a windbreak.

Mr. Maher: Well, the green varieties. I don't see why they should be any more costly than the others. Of course, they are held at a higher price, but they make a good windbreak because they are easily grown and are perfectly hardy to stand the dry atmosphere and the hot winds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: American Elm windbreak at Devil's Lake, N.D.]

Mr. Kellogg: What is the reason there are so few of them really blue?

Mr. Maher: I don't know. There is only a small percentage, probably 15 per cent., that are blue. I think the dryer atmosphere produces more blue than the more humid atmosphere. We have more blues in North Dakota than you will find even here. I believe it is the dry atmosphere and the intense sunlight that causes the blue, because the red cedar in North Dakota, the native red cedar, is really a silver cedar and has a blue sheen, or rather, a silver sheen.

A Member: How large do the trees have to be to be of benefit?

Mr. Maher: I have a friend out of Devils Lake who had 160 acres of flax destroyed by a spring wind that hits the earth at such an angle. It picked up the earth and cut the flax off, by reason of the clay hitting the little plant, except about a hundred foot strip along the west side, and that was protected by a growth of gra.s.s and weeds not to exceed a foot in height. So it depends on the kind of wind a great deal and the angle at which the wind strikes the grounds.

Now, the distance that a windbreak will protect a field has been studied out and measured and demonstrated by a great number of men. Mr. McGee, at Indian Head, gave a great deal of thought and study to the windbreak proposition and measured the distances that the shelter-belt would shelter the crops, and he came to the conclusion that for every foot in height there would be an absolute protection for a rod in distance, and outside of that actual protection there would be a long distance that would be partially protected. The same study was made by a gentleman in Iowa--I can't call his name just now--and he came to practically the same conclusion as to the distance that the protection reached in proportion to the height of shelter-belt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mountain Ash windbreak at Devil's Lake, N.D.]

A Member: I want a shelter mostly for apple trees. Would it be five or six years before I receive any benefit, or seven or eight years?

Mr. Maher: Plant your protection when you plant your apple trees, and you will have your protection sooner than you have your apples. If you are going to do that, don't put the shelter too close to the apple trees, which is a very common fault.

A Member: How much distance would you allow for the roots?

[Ill.u.s.tration: White Willow windbreak at Devil's Lake, N.D.]

Mr. Maher: I should say not less than 100 feet, anyway.

Mr. Moyer: I live in southwestern Minnesota, about thirty miles from the South Dakota line, and I think it is a mistake to recommend the white spruce for planting out there. The white spruce naturally grows towards the North Pole, it extends even up to the Arctic Circle. Twenty-four years ago I purchased a dozen white spruce from Robert Douglas, who was then alive, and planted them northwest of my house. About five years ago they began to fail, and now only two or three are alive, and they are covered with dead branches. I feel sure that the white spruce have been injured by the hot winds that come across the prairies from the southwest. I don't think they can stand it. There is a variety of white spruce that grows in the Black Hills, which I think will be decided to be a different species when botanists come to study it, that will stand our prairies. Another tree that we like is the Colorado blue spruce; it is hardy and grows excellently. About twenty-three years ago, when Professor Verner was at the head of the Forestry Department at Was.h.i.+ngton he sent me 8,000 evergreens, and I set them out. They were bull pine and the Scotch pine and Austrian pine. I was over to look at them the other day. The Scotch pine, which have been set now twenty-three years, are over thirty feet high, the Austrian pine about two-thirds as high, and the bull pine, Ponderosa, is about as high as the Austrian pine. He told me to set these trees about two feet apart each way. I thought that too thick, so I set them in rows six feet apart and about two or three feet apart in the rows. He wished me to alternate the planting with deciduous trees. He recommended that I add a few deciduous trees, green ash and box elder and a few elm, and I set them as far as they would go, but they didn't go very far in setting the 8,000 evergreens. Then I thought it would be a good idea to use the wolfberry that grows wild on the prairies. I set them alternately with some of the evergreens, but as they have a very liberal root system it was hard to get them out. The finest tree in the plantation is the Austrian pine, and if it continues to do as well as it has the last three or four years I think the Austrian pine is going to be a very valuable pine for shelter-belt.

Mr. Kellogg: Have you tested the Douglas spruce?

Mr. Moyer: Not to a great extent. It does well in some localities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soft, or Silver, Maple windbreak--to be succeeded by permanent windbreak of Bur Oak--shown growing between man and boy.]

Mr. Maher: I think the real test is to get them as near native to your place as you can. The area over which the white spruce grows is greater than that of any other spruce, possibly greater than any other evergreen, especially through the northern lat.i.tudes. I don't think there is any question about the Black Hills spruce being the white spruce that was left there growing when the other timber was destroyed, if we can adopt that theory. The white spruce from seed from the Northwest, from the British Columbia countries especially, is perfectly hardy with you. It is perfectly hardy with us at Devils Lake, which is a very much more severe test, whereas the white spruce from its southern limits may not be hardy even here. I think the Black Hills spruce is perfectly hardy. The distance north and south relatively is not so important with reference to growing trees as to get them from too far in the humid district. The white spruce that I would be afraid of would be the seed from New England and from the farther east limits of its growth, where the conditions are so much more humid.