In 1924 I ordered one hundred small beechnut trees, Fagus ferruginea, from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  The company was very generous and sent me three hundred of them.  I planted these trees in a heavy clay soil with limestone running near the surface.  They grew well the first year, except that there was heavy mortality during cold weather.  In working with these trees my lack of experience and horticultural knowledge was against me.  They could not tolerate the soil and within three years they were all dead.

To give variety to the landscape at my farm, I planted several other kinds of trees.  Among these were Kentucky coffee-trees which have beautiful bronze foliage in the spring and honey locusts.  I planted five hundred Douglas fir but unfortunately, I put these deep in the woods among heavy timber where they were so shaded that only a few lived.  Later, I moved the surviving fir trees into an open field where they still flourish.  About two hundred fifty pines of mixed varieties—­white, Norway and jack—­that I planted in the woods, also died.

I decided, then, that evergreens might do better if they were planted from seeds.  I followed instructions in James W. Toumey’s “Seeding and Planting in the Practice of Forestry,” in bed culture and spot seeding.  In the latter one tears off the sod in favorable places and throws seed on the unprotected ground.  In doing this, I ignored the natural requirements of forest practice which call for half-shade during the first two to three years of growth.  Thousands of seedlings sprouted but they all died either from disease or from attacks by cows and sheep.  One should never attempt to raise trees and stock in the same field.

Because of these misfortunes, I determined to study the growth of evergreens.  I invested in such necessary equipment as frames and lath screening.  Better equipped with both information and material, I grew thousands of evergreen trees.  Among the varieties of pine were: 

native White Pine —­Pinus strobus
Norway pine —­Pinus silvestrus
Mugho pine —­Pinus pumila montana
sugar pine —­Pinus Lambertiana
(not hardy in northern Wisconsin)
Swiss stone —­Pinus cembra
(not hardy in northern Wisconsin)
Italian stone —­Pinus pinea
(not hardy in northern Wisconsin)
pinon —­Pinus edulis
(not hardy in northern Wisconsin)
bull pine —­Pinus Jeffreyi (hardy)
jack pine —­Pinus banksiana (very hardy)
limber pine —­Pinus flexilis
(semi-hardy, a fine nut pine).

Many of the limber pines came into bearing about fifteen years after the seed was planted.  At that age they varied in height from three to fifteen feet.  One little three-foot tree had several large cones full of seed.  Each tree varied in the quality and size of its seeds.  Although it might be possible to graft the best varieties on young seedling stocks, in all the hundreds of grafts I have made on pine, I have been successful only once.  I doubt that such a thing would ever be practical from a commercial standpoint unless some new method were discovered by which a larger percentage of successful grafts could be realized.