“The most proper time for removing firs from the nursery to waste land, is when they are two years old.”—“The experience I have had enables me to say, with as much confidence as I can speak on {341} any point whatever, that the longer any fir is allowed to remain in the nursery after it has attained two years’ growth, so much the less chance is there of its success when removed to its final destination.”—“At this period (two years’ growth) larches may be obtained transplanted, as it is customary to put considerable numbers of them out into nursery-lines when they are one year old. Such plants have better roots than those that have remained in the seed-bed till they are of the same age; but as their price is considerably higher than that of the latter, it is somewhat doubtful whether they are so much superior in quality as to compensate for the greater expense. At all events, healthy larches from the seed-bed have never failed to give satisfaction when properly planted in soil suitable for them. Other species of fir are scarce ever transplanted in the nursery till they are two years old, so of this age there is no choice left but to take them from the seed-bed.”—“Birch, alder, and mountain ash, succeed well when removed from the nursery in their second year.”—“Beech and plane do not succeed well unless they have stood some time (two years at least) in nursery lines, after having been removed from the seed-bed.”
“The pitting system of planting should be {342} adopted in every instance in which the plants exceed two years old.
“The expense of planting was much reduced by the introduction, about a century ago, of the notching system. Of this there are two varieties, the oldest of which may be described as follows:—One person makes a notch in the ground, or rather two notches crossing each other, with a common spade, raising the sod by bending down the handle of the instrument, till the notch become wide enough to receive the roots of the plant. An assistant, with a bundle of trees, slips the root of one into the aperture thus made for its reception. The spade is then withdrawn, and the closing of the sod on the root is assisted by a smart blow of the heel of the planter. In this way two persons, well practised in the work, will put into the ground between five hundred and a thousand per day.
“This system was much simplified about fifty years ago, and rendered so expeditious, that it seems in vain to look for its receiving any further improvement. Instead of the spade, an instrument of nearly the same shape, but so small that it can be wrought with one hand as easily as a common garden-dibble, was introduced, and is now known by the name of the Planting-iron. With this, a notch is made in {343} the ground to receive the root; and owing to the portability of the tool, and its occupying but one of the hands, the person that works it requires no assistant, but, carrying a parcel of plants in a wallet before him, he singles out one with his left hand, inserts it in the notch, withdraws the implement, fixes the plant with his heel, and proceeds with as much apparent ease as if he were performing the operation in the soft ground of the nursery. In this way of planting, the workman goes forward in such a line as he can judge of by his eye; and as it is extremely difficult to see the plants after they are put in, especially if the heath is pretty long, he sets up poles in the first line, to enable him to keep the second a due distance from it; and in planting the last mentioned, he removes these poles into it as he comes opposite to them, which then serve as his guide in planting the third; and thus he proceeds till he cover the whole ground. The lines thus formed are necessarily so zig-zag, that when the trees grow up, they do not seem to have been planted in rows.
“In this way, an expert workman will plant between three and four thousand young plants a-day, and do it so perfectly, that the fault will not be his if a single individual of the whole number fail to {344} grow. I have assisted in planting, according to this plan, upwards of three thousand acres in Aberdeenshire; and, in all that extent, I know not of a single instance of failure, where the plants were in a healthy state when put into the ground, of the proper age and varieties, and suitable for the soil.”
“To plant well and expeditiously in this way, requires considerable dexterity on the part of the workman; and where raw hands are employed, it will be necessary to have some person to teach and superintend them.”
Mr Cruickshank disposes of the old cross system of slit planting by the spade, with very little ceremony; as it would almost seem, without being able to appreciate its merits. It is, in fact, a totally different mode of planting from that by the flat dibble-planter or planting-iron, and is well adapted for all plants with horizontal roots, and which have stood from one to three years in the nursery line. By first striking the spade in perpendicularly, as deep as the turf-soil, by again striking it in at right angles to the end of the first cut, in the form of a T, and bending back the spade, the turf-soil is raised from a horizontal bed, and the first cut opened so wide as to admit the root, which {345} inserted and drawn a little along by an experienced hand, and well tramped down, has its rootlets disposed over the horizontal bottom almost as regularly and well adjusted for growing, as can be done by pit-planting. This practice is sometimes performed singly, a clever workman managing the spade with one hand and the plants with the other, and inserting 1000 each day. The plants suited for this system are fully double the size of those suited for the flat-dibble system, and are purchased at about one half more price, thus enhancing the cost of planting to £1, 10s. or £2 per acre; but in many situations, especially where the herbage grows freely, affording an earlier growth, and more regular success, sufficient to balance the greater expense ten times over.
Although the cross-system of slitting is the best for commanding general success, yet wherever the flat dibble planting can be depended on, it merits a preference, as from the smallness of the plants, the roots receive less fracture and derangement in the woody state, and the process comes nearer to raising from the seed in situ.
The expense of each system per acre, will be nearly as follows:— {346}
| By Cross-slitting, or the Double Notch. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
3000 larches and Scots firs, from one to three years transplanted, at 5s. | L.0 | 15 | 0 |
500 hard wood, from one to three years transplanted, at 12s. | 0 | 6 | 0 |
4 days of one superior planter, or of two ordinary planters, at 3s. | 0 | 12 | 0 |
| L.1 | 13 | 0 | |
| By the Flat Dibble, or the Single Notch. | |||
4000 larches or Scots firs, from the seed-bed, or one year transplanted, at 2s. 6d. | L.0 | 10 | 0 |
1000 hard-wood plants, | 0 | 7 | 0 |
1 1⁄2 day of a planter, at 2s. | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| L.1 | 0 | 0 | |
Although our author speaks so confidently of the success of transplanting out firs at one and two years of age, yet this must only be taken under limitation to the country in which his experience has lain,—the barren mountains and moors of Scotland, where the vegetation of the heaths is extremely slow, and the herbage both thin and short. Were these small plants used in the superior climates of England and Ireland, where the vegetation of the grasses, and {347} other natural occupiers of the soil, is very luxuriant, there would scarcely be one in a hundred that would ever be seen after the first spring, unless a very expensive cultivation to check the weeds were resorted to. To effect economical planting in these soils, it is necessary to have the plants sufficiently large, not too close together, and placed in rows, that a mower may be able to distinguish them among the herbage while he cuts it down; or what is much better, that the spade or plough[65] culture may be {348} practised, and potatoes, turnips, or other green crop, raised among them, without the plants being overwhelmed. In case of grass production, the oftener during the season the young plantation is mown, the more advantageous, as well that the plants may be the more easily distinguished, as that the lower branches may not be smothered, nor the soil so much exhausted and dried by the blooming and seeding of the herbage; of course, a short scythe is required, and also a very careful mower.
Speaking of the best season for planting, Mr Cruickshank states:—
“In wet and swampy soils, as well as in land, whether dry or moist, whose surface is bare, I would be inclined to prefer the spring. Wet land swells to such a degree, that plants which have not had time to take a firm hold with their roots, are almost {349} inevitably thrown out.”—“These remarks have reference only to the system of planting by notching: when the pitting system is adopted, it fixes the plant so thoroughly, as to render the utmost power of frost incapable of doing them any injury.”—“The utmost limits of the planting season may be estimated from the middle of October to the middle of March.”—“I am a decided advocate for thick planting, and would advise that no fewer than 3000 trees per acre be planted in good land, nor a less number than 4000 when the soil is of a middling or inferior quality.”
Mr Cruickshank must surely have had little acquaintance with soft, spongy, close-bottomed soils, or he would not have asserted that pit-planted trees are not subject to be thrown. If planted in the early part of winter or autumn, trees of the usual size, which have remained from one to three years in the nursery line, are very frequently thrown from such soils. This is caused by the freezing earth first catching fast hold of the plant at the surface, and afterwards swelling underneath from the enlargement of the freezing water in its pores, and from the open crystallized honeycomb arrangement which takes place by congelation. As the stem is fast to {350} the ground at the surface, and the earth subsequently enlarged underneath as far as the congelation proceeds, the roots below the congelation must of necessity be drawn upwards to the distance which the ground has swelled after the stem was fixed to the surface. The earth, on thaw, first loses hold of the plant at the surface, and then falls away as it contracts. Each successive frost and thaw during winter thus raises the plant a certain space, till by spring it often is so far extracted, as to fall over on its side. When the plant has stood a season, there is generally a tuft of herbage around its stem, which prevents the freezing in a considerable degree; and the roots having fixed in the lower earth, resist the pulling up so much, that the hold which the frozen earth has of the stem at the surface gives way, sometimes pulling off a portion of the bark, and the earth rises around the stem in place of pulling the tree.
Instead of the season for spring planting being over by the middle of March, we think that, in many of our wet moors, it should then only be commencing, especially under the pitting system. However, planting should never be deferred a day later in spring than what is absolutely necessary to render the ground sufficiently dry for the process. {351}