Weekly New Oregon Plain Dealer

Preparing Trees to endure the Winter.

As animals endure the exposure to storm and cold the better when well fed and clothed, so do trees. If their shoots are full and plump, and well supplied with healthful material contributed from clean healthy leaves, the chemical movements which attend growth, assist greatly in maintaining the tree against cold by heat which is developed. In a thin, weakly tree, this force is wanting.

A great aid to the preservation of the tree is a mulch or covering of the surface during winter, with some vegetable material in a state of decomposition. This shelters the roots, and imparts warmth, evolved by its slow combustion, and the more, if nitrogen-aceous matter is excluded, as in stable manure, the better for the purpose.

This application is of vastly more usefulness when applied in the autumn than if left, not only on account of the shelter it affords, but because of its strong growth early in the spring which becomes ripened before winter; whereas manure applied in the spring, especially if raw, often does not become effective until late in the season, when the wood should be ripened instead of growing.

For a ripe, ruddy, well varnished and finished coat of bark is to the tree what the coat is to the animal, and something more, and the effect of a very small break or rent in it shows how very important its perfect condition is, especially that of its outer skin or epidermis.

It must be remembered that the bark only ripens well in full light. Trees, therefore must have their
Country Gentleman.