Remember, Professor Gifford said, "Collection of tree seeds should yield good returns if properly conducted." Every business to be successful must be conducted properly. There are some simple principles. You need not be an expert forester but the more you know about trees the better. If a dealer buys six quarts of red maple seeds of you he will be disappointed if you send him silver maple, discouraged if you send him sugar maple, and disgruntled if you send him ash. Furthermore, he will not send you the money nor any orders for more. If there is a maple tree with a peck of seed on it in your yard, in five minutes or less time you can find out what kind it is with "The Tree Book." Before the seeds are ripe write to a several seed men and tell them what you have; ask if they want any, at what price, and on what date. Some trees ripen their seeds in the spring, shake them off, and let the wind scatter them. In the case of some kinds, the seeds sprout within a few days after they reach the ground. These should be gathered as soon as ripe, spread out to dry for a few days, and planted within a few weeks at latest. Seeds of other kinds do not grow till the following spring. None of these should be allowed to dry too thoroughly. Nuts and acorns for seed should not be allowed to get dry over winter. These should be packed in moist sand and kept cool but not frozen. Cherry, plum and peach pits are better for being frozen.
The supply of white pine seed is never equal to the demand. The market price is said to vary from two dollars fifty cents to four dollars fifty cents per pound. You get a little over a pound of seeds from a bushel of unopened cones. White pine trees require two years to mature their cones and they set seed only once in every four or five years. But every year there will be some trees bearing seed. Nineteen hundred and four was a big "on" year in the New York white pine forests. You can tell when the tiny cones first appear that a crop is coming. The cones should be watched as August wanes and gathered before they open. September is the month as a general thing. Boys can earn thirty cents or so a bushel gathering the full cones. But I should not be satisfied to let the other fellow get all the profits just because he knows how to cure and market the seed. That is easy. Spread the cones out in the barn to dry. Slat trays are best to get free circulation of air. You can make these at odd times before the crop is ready. A fanning mill comes in handy to thrash and free them from rubbish and imperfect seed. Market them immediately to avoid loss. If you are to keep the seed for home consumption, mix with dry sand and store in a cool but not too dry place. If allowed to dry or freeze and thaw they lose their vitality. Tree seeds need pretty careful handling.
Any one interested in gathering tree seeds should get information from books and bulletins on forestry. He should write to firms who make a specialty of selling tree seeds and they will help him by giving directions about the treatment of seeds.
Did you ever wonder where the nursery men get the thousands of apple trees they sell every year? Go a step back of the budding or grafting that is done in the nursery. Where did the little tree come from whose top was cut off after the first bud was set? It came from a seed; just any apple seed. And where do apple seeds come from? From apples? Yes, just any apples. Did you ever make cider on your farm? You put in whole apples, skin, core, stem, seeds, and all; shovelled them into the hopper. The pulp was squeezed dry and thrown away, wasn't it, at your cider mill? That is proof of the wastefulness of some good farmers. If the pulp were washed in tubs, the seeds would find the bottom (or the top) and they would bring a good price per pound.
COLLECTING CHRISTMAS GREENS
Once upon a time everybody who wanted Christmas greens had the fun of gathering his own. That was in the generation when all the grandmothers lived in the country and only the plain fathers and mothers and children lived in the cities. But now we children have grown up and our children want to go to grandmother's house for Christmas just as we did. Can't you imagine how surprised and disappointed they are to find their grandmothers living in city houses, even in flats? Didn't we tell them about going out to gather holly and mistletoe and ground pine and hemlock and even how we used to cut the Christmas tree itself in grandpa's woods? In the middle West where Christmas trees do not grow in the woods we used to choose a shapely young oak. To make it look like an evergreen we used to get grandpa to go out with his big jack-knife and cut off the largest branches he could spare from the evergreens in the door yard. With good, strong twine we tied these to the branches of the oak. When all the decorations were on and the oranges and the apples and the popcorn strings and the candles and the presents, we children who had never seen a real live Christmas tree couldn't have told the difference. We didn't even mind the fact that some of the oak's outer branches were pine, some were spruce, some were cedar. It was all evergreen to us and all Christmassy. We were easy to please.
But now—alas! The gathering of Christmas greens has been commercialized. It has ceased to be fun, and has become a business. The boys and girls may share in the profits and perhaps get some fun out of it if they go about it right.
Holly, which of all the Christmas greens is the most popular, is a hardy and beautiful tree, which grows wild in great numbers in the Southern states and in the Chesapeake region. Many country boys and girls make easy Christmas money from the holly trees in their own woods. To these boys and girls I want to say "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg." A tree with fine berries on it this year will, if treated right, produce a good crop again in a few years. Pruning is good for a tree, but brutally hacking its head out destroys the tree's future, and the boy who does it is not a good citizen.
Holly wood is close grained, light, and tough and is valuable in some forms of cabinet work. Here is an industry that might be developed as a side issue in the holly trade.
The best market calls for holly wreaths. I have a picture of a girl of fourteen who can make sixty wreaths in a day and she gets six and a half cents for each. That is good wages for a girl of her age, but she must get pretty tired making wreaths every minute all day long. If she could help her brothers gather the holly for part of the time, it would be easier on her back. The wreaths are made on frames of twigs, twisted into circles, and tied. Young twigs of any flexible shrub are used. Somebody has to gather these. It is a wonder that more holly trees are not planted in door yards. And wouldn't it be a good idea for some boys to begin a plantation of holly now so they can reap the harvest later? Holly will not go out of fashion in a great many years. But at the present rate the supply cannot last. The amount used every year is past belief. From one small railway station 150,000 wreaths! One year, several carloads were burned because the market was overstocked.