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Show Planting of Commercial Shade Trees In In This Community Urged By R. A. MORRIS In a recent edition of the News (Seen and Heard by Edgar) my attention was called to the item concerning the large pecans exhibited ex-hibited by friend Barber. For many years I have advocated advo-cated the planting of commercial shade trees in your district and now there is much evidence to sustain such a program. During my visit to the old home town last summer, I made a casual cas-ual survey of the shade tree plantings and the findings were anything but pleasing. May I draw your attention to two of the choicest blocks in St. George: The one on which the A. B. An-drus An-drus residence is located and the one on which George F. Whitehead White-head resides there are 125 rods of ditchbanks around each block and each of the 16 city lots has five or more undesirable, unproductive, unpro-ductive, undecorative trees occupying occu-pying valuable garden space. If planted properly, 30 or more feet apart, the ditch banks and lots of each block would support 100 pecan trees. And again let me draw your attention to one of the smallest blocks, the one on which Charles Seegmiller Jr., resides. Reports show that these three trees produced a total of more than 40 pound? of fine quality pecans the past season. Such nuts retail at (Continued on page eight) Shade Tree Story (Continued from first page) more than 4)o per pound; about 16 to $20. This small block miht well supKrt 10 times this number of trees and the product from such a planting would amount to nearly $2(X), which would go far toward paying the taxes on such property. Added to this you may note that these trees an' among the cleanest and cnist beautiful shade tree in the .slate. And it may be well to compure these Ihree trees with the other shade trees on this particular par-ticular block. Possibly no city in the West ?a.s a greater variety of soils than are to be found in St. George val-hy. val-hy. There are beautiful isolated pecan trees growing in every sec- tion of the town, and I failed to find one tree that showed defective defec-tive foilage from the ravages of disease or insect pests or a trunk or limb that showed defects from soil or root troubles. Every tree had received little or no culture. After being planted they were like Topsy, "jist growed". In every instance they were on their way to becoming beautiful shade trees and were bearing various amounts and varieties of commercial com-mercial nuts. Through scientific selection and breeding methods the various reliable re-liable nurserymen have evolved many varieties of highest quality nuts. These are grafted on hardy root-stocks and may be purchased for about $1.50 each. Only grafted trees should be recommended and for pollenizing purposes a variety of trees should be planted. Seedling trees are usually good but their nut production is not reliable. re-liable. Should seedling trees be desired, then anyone may purchase purch-ase nuts from grafted orchards at about c per pound. They may be planted most any time and not deeper than two inches in soil that will be kept moist; about 98 per cent will sprout and grow. Pecan trees can be expected to come into bearing along with a similar planting of pear trees. Pecans always bloom too late in the spring to be damaged by frost and the harvesting of the nuts may be accomplished at - one's leisure. No trimming nor spraying spray-ing is necessary and the nuts are not damaged by falling from the very highest trees. A community program for planting plant-ing of commercial shade trees would be a project that might well be considered by the local organizations in Washington county coun-ty and the pecan tree should appropriately ap-propriately head the list. Respectfully yours, R. A. Morris. |