A STUDY OF WIND-BREAKS. Under direction of the United States Department of Agriculture à practical and scientific study of shelter belts will soon be going on in fourteɛn western states under the direction of the tree-planting and farm experts employed by the government. This is the first time in this country that a study of this much-discussed question has been undertaken over a wide region, under one plan, for the purpose of collecting data for the benefit of the agriculturists who are developing the western plains. At present wind-breaks are planted at haphazard, one kind here, another there. If one kind is better than another the government experts think that fact ought to be known, and it is believed that the study about to be undertaken will settle the question once for all. It will at least collect facts never before brought together. The work will be done by the United States forest service. In some states the agricultural experiment stations will co-operate in the studies, and in these cases the forest service will provide the necessary apparatus, and the other expenses will be shared half and half by the government and experiment stations. The investigations will be taken up in five states this year and extended to the other nine as rapidly as the investigations are completed. Four of the states in which the study will be made this year are Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas. The fifth will be either Minnesota, North Dakota or Iowa. Ultimately the investigations will cover Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, California, Washington and Idaho. Morris Thompson, who lives near Downs, Kan., gives his yield of corn from a field protected on the south by a row of tall cottonwoods as six bushels per acre more than in places where there was no protection. About fifteen acres are benefited in this way. It is highly improbable that the wind-break occupies sufficient land to offset this benefit. An Illinois farmer in a report to government officials, sums up his observations upon this matter thus: "My experience is that now, in cold and stormy winters, wheat protected by timber belts yields full crops, while fields not protected yield only one-third of a crop. Twentyfive or thirty years ago we never had any wheat killed by winter frosts, and every year a full crop of peaches, which is now rare. At that time we had plenty of timber around our fields and orchards, now cleared away." The forest service proposes to find out just when and how much wind-breaks increase the yield of crops. To carry out the plans, much technical work will be necessary. Instruments will be used to measure heat and cold, moisture and dryness, both above and below ground; to register the force of the wind near the wind-breaks and some distance away; to measure light intensity, and take note of the effects of shade; to register frost at different distances from the trees; and to keep account of the effect of the wind-breaks on the snow which covers the ground to leeward in winter. Many other measurements and tests will be made, and elaborate data will be collected by experts of the forest service at Washington, who will have charge of the study. Many disputed questions will thus be settled and the data gathered will be placed at the disposal of the farmers who desire it. The forest service will study all sorts of conditions,including the relative value of wind-breaks, consisting of a single row of trees, and shelter belts, made up of a number of such rows. A wind-break is usually planted for protection alone, a shelter belt for both protection and the growth of timber. Corn will be the crop studier behind the wind-break this year. Trustworthy conclusions cannot be obtained by comparing results from different crops. Each crop makes its own demand upon the soil, so that what would destroy one might do little harm to another. Corn is a particularly good crop to experiment with because it is easily injured by hot, dry winds, will not stand shading and is very sensitive to frost. The work will continue until crops are gathered, when the actual yield of sheltered fields will be measured, and results compared with near-by unsheltered fields. Some of the observations will continue through the winter. In connection with this work, efforts are being made to have the waste portions of farms made profitable by means of tree planting. In explanation of this, one of the officials of the forest service said: "Many poor soils, now waste spots on the farm, would become profitable if planted with the right kind of forest trees and cared for in the right way. Trees will often grow where grain anr grass will not. Swamps, stony ridges, exhausted fields and washed hillsides need not be abandoned. There is money in most of them if they are set to work producing wood lots and forests. But knowledge and judgment are necessary, and a bad guess may be costly. "Many trees do well in their soils-cone-bearing trees in particular. The farmer is fortunate whose land has no poor spots. Few land owners are so well off. Fertile acres are usually fairly profitable, but the gravel bars, rocky knolls, marshy swales and exhausted and eroded slopes are not. Scarcely one of them need remain unproductive. They will grow timber-pine, locust, poplar, Osage orange, oak, chestnut or some other kind. But the soil must be studied and the species selected to suit it. Failure might follow the planting of "Studies of various regions and trees that suit them have been made by the forest service at Washington. Results and conclusions have been published and may be had for the asking. The aim of these studies has been to point out how the farm's waste and neglected corners may be turned into wood lots, where the farmer may grow his own posts, poles, fences and saw logs. "It is decidely worth while to keep all of the farm at work. The owner pays taxes on all his land, and is out of pocket for whatever is not earning him something. Further, by growing a tree crop on land which is too poor to plow, the quality of the land itself is improved. Forests add humus to the soil, bettering its character, and it has lately been discovered that the decaying leaf litter has also the power of gathering from the air a certain amount of nitrogen, the most important of plant foods. In this respect the forest does for the soil what the leguminous crops, like clover and alfalfa, do. Wood growing on worn-out land thus becomes doubly profitable. The land is made useful and improved at the same time." |