The Practical Planter Or A Treatise On Forest Planting

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION VIII. On Pruning. No part of the culture of timber is more important than that of Pruning. That we may be enabled to follow the subject clearly, and bestow due attention on valuable individuals, let us proceed with, 1. The Oak. And, as already hinted, planted Oaks generally require to be headed down about the second or third year after planting. I say generally, for who in madness would head down a plant, evidently thriving, and forming for a timber tree ? In speaking of heading down, I allude to bushes, or plants so distorted in the stem, that they will not, if left to nature, hastily acquire an upright tendency, and consequently might disappoint our best wishes of seeing them speedily shoot forth for timber of magnitude. Therefore, to remedy this defect, the third season after planting, by which time the plants will have made good roots, and beestablished in the soil, go over the field, and head down, to within two inches of the surface, every Oak of the above description; making clean wounds with a sharp knife. Such plants as have a good leader, and clean smooth stem, are not to be touched; and most of the sown Oaks will come under this description. The season for performing this operation, is November or March. The plants thus treated will push vigorously the ensuing season; and about midsummer, they should be looked over, 'and divested of all but two of the strongest shoots, by simply rubbing off the others with the finger. Two shoots are retained, in case of accidents, until March following; at which time, the weakest, and also any other trifling ones that may have issued in consequence of rubbing off those in the preceding summer, are to be lopped clean off by the stem. At midsummer next following, the plants are again to be looked over; and whate...