[NOTE BY EDITOR—Heavy shade can reduce soil temperature, on summer afternoons, more than 20°F six inches underground. This may largely explain the benefits of companion trees.]
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SAWDUST MAKES GOOD FRUIT TREE MULCH
Many kinds of material ranging from paper to glass wool have been used as mulches for fruit trees, discloses J. H. Gourley, of the Department of Horticulture at The Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. Straw, hay, and orchard mowings have been most commonly used.
In some areas, sawdust and shavings are available in quantity and have been used to some extent for mulches which raises the questions of whether they make the soil acid.
The Experiment Station has used both hardwood and pine sawdust and also shavings for a number of years in contrast with wheat straw, alfalfa, timothy, and others. No difference in appearance or behavior of the trees can be noted. Sawdust packs and gives poorer aeration than straw and it requires a large amount to mulch a tree. This mass also absorbs a large amount of rainfall before passing through to the soil but no injurious effects have been noted.
The chief question has been about soil acidity and it may be stated that after 12 years of treatment the soil is little or no more acid than it is under bluegrass sod. The soil under the latter has a pH of 5.22, the hardwood sawdust 5.07, the softwood sawdust 5.07, hardwood shavings 5.20, and wheat straw 5.35. Contrary to the common conception, no objection to sawdust from the standpoint of soil acidity is justified from Station experience.
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TWO FAMOUS TREES
(Taken from "Bruce Every Month," December, 1938, page 17. Published by E. L. Bruce Company, Memphis, Tennessee.) Living monuments to a great governor of Texas are two nut bearing trees, a pecan and an old fashioned walnut. The last wish of Governor James S. Hogg was that "no monument of stone or marble" be placed at his grave, but instead there should be planted—"at my head a pecan tree and at my feet an old fashioned walnut; and when these trees shall bear, let the pecans and walnuts be given out among the plains people of Texas so that they may plant them and make Texas a land of trees." His wish has been fulfilled in its entirety, many trees from these two parent ones adorning the lawns of schools and court houses throughout the State of Texas.