Hi.
My name is Sheriden Hansen, and we are here
at the Agricultural Experiment Station in Kaysville, Utah.
And we're talking today a little bit
about our windbreak demonstration trial.
So why you would want to have a windbreak on your farm
is a thing that should be discussed.
The agriculture/ urban interface is coming very close together
as we see more building, as we see more people coming
into Utah, we're starting to have homes and residential
areas right up next to our farms.
So having a windbreak becomes an important factor
not just to block out and give privacy,
but also to reduce dust and to reduce noise and reduce
pesticide or spray drift from your farm
into the residential areas.
So behind me, there are several different types
of trees and shrubs that we've demonstrated as a windbreak,
and we actually looked at eight different trees and shrubs.
So I'm standing in front of our aspens and our poplars.
And you can see they're really big, they're good size,
they filled in the space really nicely.
Just to the right of me, those are our cottonless cottonwoods.
Then we have our columnar poplars,
and then we have our Swedish aspen
And you can see that the poplars filled
in the space a little bit better than the aspens did.
These aspens are very columnar, but they do a great job.
This is only five years of growth.
So they are very tall, very wide,
and they have filled in the space nicely,
giving you some protection to provide
that barrier between you and a residential area.
Now, I'm in front of our juniper.
This is a Taylor juniper, and it's
a very upright narrow juniper You
could see that we have a little bit of gap
in between these plants.
And we probably could have spaced
them a little bit tighter together in order to give us
a little more protection.
But it does very well.
It's really well suited to Utah.
All of these trees get watered once
a month for about 24 hours.
They're receiving about 22 gallons of water per month,
and you can see how nice and green and thriving
these plants are in those types of conditions.
So this is a great selection for Utah.
This is the prairie sentinel hackberry.
And as you can see, they're probably not
the most ideal plant to select for your windbreak.
They are a narrow columnar variety.
But you can see I don't have a lot of foliage
here on the base of the tree, on a lot of these trees.
They just don't provide enough wind protection, enough
dust protection.
And then we seem to have a problem with them.
We get this little gall on the back of the leaves.
And this is formed by a little insect that stings the leaf
and causes these little growths on the back.
And it's stunted our plants a little bit because we've had
such intense insect pressure.
But this is the hackberry.
I would probably choose a different variety
if it were me, based on what we see here.
This is a shrub section in the windbreak.
And these are plants that replace
some of the plants that died like the Leyland
cypress and the hornbeam, both.
So we replanted.
This is the third year for these plants.
This is the lilac.
And you can see that third year is starting to really take off.
It's starting to produce some really nice new growth in it.
And you can see they're really nice and shrubby, a really good
type of habit that they have.
And I think this will be an excellent selection
for windbreaks in Utah.
It's incredibly drought-tolerant.
The other one that we have here is called the Cheyenne privet
And the Cheyenne privet is actually outgrowing
the lilac a little bit.
It's getting quite tall.
It does put on a beautiful white bloom early in the spring.
That bloom is just finishing up.
And this also has a really nice shrubby habit
and is very well suited to dry conditions
without a lot of supplemented water.
OK.
These are the skinny jeans oaks.
These are supposed to be trees, but you can see that.
They're really short and really shrubby formed.
This is supposed to be a columnar type oak.
What has happened is we've had a lot of deer pressure,
particularly with this plant.
And the deer come in, they rub, they eat the oaks.
For some reason, they're very attracted to the oak.
So instead of trees, we're having shrubs.
So this has not filled in the space very well.
Again, we probably could have spaced it a little bit tighter.
Our spacing was based on nursery recommendations,
but obviously those recommendations
were more for the Pacific Northwest and not for Utah.
But they've struggled a little bit.
So this is probably not one that I would highly
recommend like how I would with the poplars in the aspens.
If you are thinking about adding a windbreak to your property,
cost can become an issue.
Obviously, the poplars and the cottonwoods
are a lot less expensive than some
of these really hybridized varieties like the skinny jeans
oak that didn't perform as well anyway.
So you may want to stick with some
of the more common varieties, easier to find,
definitely those poplars.
The Swedish aspens were a little bit less expensive.
The hackberries were moderate.
And the lilacs, of course, are not terribly expensive
while the Cheyenne privet might be a little bit more pricey.
So hopefully, this will help you figure out
which plants you want to add to the edges of your property
to help give you some protection.