Osage Orange Hedge.
Please send instructions for raising Osage orange hedge.
B. B. R.
Spangle, Wash.
The Osage orange is a native of Texas, and consequently needs warm weather to make its growth. The seed should be planted at the time of corn planting in northern localities. A month previous to sowing place the seed in a dish of water and let it remain covered with water until ready to sow. If kept in water the length of time stated it will germinate in ten or fifteen days after planting. If kept dry and planted in that condition it will start only after six or eight weeks, and very unevenly. When planting time arrives drain off the water and mix the seed with dry sand and sow it thinly in drills in good soil. When the plants are up hoe them and keep them clean or work them with a cultivator, if on a sufficiently large scale. The first season’s growth should make them large enough to set in a hedge. They can remain standing in the seed-bed until spring and then be lifted early to be planted. Cut back the tops and the roots so that each shall be about five inches in length. The ground where the hedge is to stand should be well prepared by deep plowing, and dragging fine and smooth. If plowed up the year before and cultivated with some cleaning crop such as potatoes or carrots it will be all the better fitted. Having stretched a line for the course of the hedge the plants can be dibbled in along it, at a distance of six inches apart, or they can be set in with a spade; another way is to open a trench about six inches deep along the line and set the plants in it, one person placing the plants while another fills in a spadeful of soil against each one; then the soil is firmed with the foot against each plant and afterwards the trench filled. The after culture for the first year is to hoe and keep the ground clean. The spring of the following year before growth starts cut the plants down to within six inches of the old stock. The following year do the same; an annual rise of six inches is sufficient. At the second year’s pruning and afterwards cut the side shoots so that those at the base shall be longest, giving the hedge a broad base narrowing to a line at the top.