Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 November 1875 — Plant a Few More Forest Trees. [ARTICLE]

Plant a Few More Forest Trees.

There are few farms in the older and thickly-settled States which would not be improved in appearance by planting upon them groups or rows of forest trees. If this is true in the once heavily’-wooded regions of the country, how much more valuable must such additions be to a prairie farm. There is scarcely a farm of fifty or more acres anywhere upon which there is not some nook or corner that might be devoted to the culture of forest trees with profit, leaving the ornamental view of the subject out of the question. A grove or thickly-planted row of white ash or hickory will frequently furnish a choice stick of timber when wanted; saving the owner many an hour of time in searching through his own or neighbor’s woodlands inorder to find one of the required quality. A really tough stick of white ash or hickory is not so readily’ found in the original forests as one might suppose, even where these two kinds are plentiful, for the very best timber is usually what is termed “second growths,” or treeswhich have sprung up on the edges of the forests or in some neglected fence corner or waste place. Every’ farmer and mechanic who has had occasion to use very tough wood is aware of this fact, and, knowing this, it seems strange that farmers in particular should so seldom think of encouraging more growths of this kind. It would require no great amount of capital or time to plant a thousand or two of young hickory or ash trees, and when once started they' constantly increase in value through an ordinary lifetime. A man may in this way enhance the value of his farm by many hundred dollars, and at the same time find the timber which wilj necessarily havj to be cut out from time to (ime a very convenient article to have about,-even to dispose of to, some manufactory. * - ',.

The season is now at hand fdf either gathering .the seeds of forest trees or transplanting the young plants, such as may be pulled or dug up from almost every wood. White ash, maples and chestnut seedlings may usually be transplanted from the woods with fair success; there are others, such as hickory, black walnut and butternut, which are rather difficult to make live, owing to their few fibrous roots; consequently it is better to raise these trees from the seed, either planted directly where the trees are to grow, or sown in nursery rows, and root-pruned or transplanted when one or, at most, two years old. The nuts should be gathered as soon as they fall from the tree, then mixed with earth, and left in a pile out of doors until spring. The usual way of preserving the cqarse kinds of nuts named is to select a convenient dry spot, then spread upon it a layer of the nuts; upon this put two inches or more of fine soil, then another layer of nuts, and so on until the heap is finished, covering the last layer of nuts with'earth, and leaving the top of the heap nearly flat. It is also well to place some boards on their edges around the heap, forming a kind of pen to protect them frpm any accidental visits of hogs or other animals likely to disturb them. In the spring the nuts may be taken out and planted. This keeping in a heap during winter is a better plan than planting in the fall, as it is much easier to protect them against mice and other vermin which infest the woods and fields. Chestnuts are more delicate than those kinds which have a harder shell, but we never experienced any difficulty in preserving them through winter if they are mixed with pure, moist sand, and the boxes or other vessels containing them placed on the north side of some building or other cool position, where they will not become U>o dry or soaked with water. The seeds of tteh and sugar or other late-ripening maples may be preserved in the same manner; all that is required is to keep them moist, and so cool that germination will not commence until planting time in spring.

JJpon every farm there should be a small seedling nursery of the best kinds of ornamental and useful trees, from which the farmer can obtain whatever he may require of this kind, either for planting about his grounds for shade, or shelter, or for a future supply of timber. A half acre or an acre of such seedlings would not cost a very large sum of money, even if the seed had to be purchased. But there are many localities where all these could be obtained from forests near by, costing nothing but the time spent in gathering them. If any of our readers will but think of the difference in value between a thousand white-ash seed or hickory nuts, and trees ten to twenty years old, we believe they cannot fail to see the importance of making a beginning in the culture of such trees immediately. The trees grow in size and in value while we are sleeping ; in fact, they increase in value through hard times and good times, and the cultivator grows older no faster with such surroundings than without them. The great objection urged by many to raising forest trees is that they require so much time to reach a valuable size, which is quite true; but they neither lengthen nor shorten a man’s life but move along with him provided he gives them an opportunity of doing so. There are doubtless many men who can look back twenty years or more to a time when, if they had planted wisely, they would now have something like a fortune in place Of little or nothing. Another twenty years may pass, and doubtless will with many, bringing no better results; hence we say to every owner of a farm, look about and see if there is not something in the way of trees which you can plant with a fair prospect of a profitable return at some future time for the labor bestowed upon them. Good ash, oak and hickory timber, suitable for working into agricultural implements, has advanced in many localities 300 to 400 per cent, in value during the past years, and there are very good reasons for believing that these woods will continue to advance during the next twenty; consequently the prospects of a good market in the future could scarcely be better. If a man has no spare field in which to plant timber trees let him surround the farm with them and thus give protection to his crops in summer and at the same time add an ornament to his domain which in the end cannot fail to be a source of profit.— N. Y. Sun.