Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1894 — Healthy Bark of Trees. [ARTICLE]

Healthy Bark of Trees.

Meehan's Monthly. After a few years nature does her best to get rid of the external bark. Few operations are more useful in comparitively old orchard trees than to scrub or wash the bark in the winter season. Some few people think that this old bark in some way protects the trees from low temperature, but any observer may note that it is not until a branch is several years old—in the apple tree, for instance, it is ten years old before the rough bark appears, and if protection from cold be the province of old bark, the young branches would require that protection much more surely than the older and stronger portions of the tree.